Readers may recall this piece Monckton’s Schenectady showdown in which he schools a number of students despite “en-masse” collections (to use Donald Rodbell’s words) of naysayers. Mr. Rodbell and Erin Delman, pictured below, wrote this essay (which I’ve excerpted below) in their student newspaper The Concordiensis, citing their angst that Monckton was speaking.
A lord’s opinion can’t compete with scientific truth
Erin Delman (left), President of the Environmental Club, debates with Monckton – photo by Charlotte Lehman | Department Chair and Professor of Geology Donald Rodbell (right) asks Lord Christopher Monckton a question at the event on the “other side” of global warming. – photo by Rachel Steiner, Concordiensis
By Donald Rodbell and Erin Delman in Opinions | March 7, 2012
As Earth scientists, we were torn. The College Republicans and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) were hosting Lord Monckton, a globally recognized climate skeptic, on Mon., March 5, and we were not quite sure how to respond. Frankly, the sentiment vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger. On one hand, it seemed ludicrous to give Monckton a second of time or thought. On the other, however, dismissing him and allowing his speech without rejection risked that he would have an impact, and a dangerous one at that.
And thus, the college environmentalists – including Environmental Club members, the leaders and members of U-Sustain, concerned citizens, and renowned Earth scientists with PhDs from prestigious research institutions – decided to oppose the presence of Lord Monckton on our campus. We collected en-masse before his presentation to make it unambiguously clear that we would not allow such erroneous discourse to go unnoticed.
…
Lord Monckton does not stand alone in his beliefs on this issue; however, 97 percent of scientists overwhelmingly oppose his viewpoint. He kept asserting that this debate must follow a rigorous, science-based approach, and that the consensus of experts is, by itself, an insufficient basis on which to decide the veracity of the evidence for significant human-induced global warming.
…
Serious scientific debate cannot be carried out in the blogosphere, nor in highly charged and politically motivated presentations either by Lord Monckton or by Al Gore. The fact of the matter is that science has spoken, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence has shown very, very clearly that global warming is occurring and is at least mostly caused by humans. While scientific consensus can be wrong, it most often is not.
[end excerpts]
===============================================================
Sigh, there’s that ridiculous 97% figure again. You’d think these “educated” people would bother to check such things before mindlessly regurgitating them and making themselves look like sycophants. And then there’s this: “Serious scientific debate cannot be carried out in the blogosphere…” well, then, PLEASE tell that to the RealClimate team so they stop trying to do that on the taxpayers dime.
It seems Erin Delman is training to be a professional enviro-legal troublemaker…
She is interested in pursuing a joint Ph.D. and law degree in geology and environmental law and is considering a career in environmental policy, particularly involving water rights.
…so I suppose I’m not surprised at this article. With that California background and water rights bent, I predict she’ll be joining the Pacific Institute to supplement Gleick’s mission.
Full article here: A lord’s opinion can’t compete with scientific truth
===============================================================
Monckton responds in comments to that article
Monckton of Brenchley March 16, 2012 at 2:34 pm | Permalink
Oh, come off it, Professor!
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Professor Donald Rodbell’s personal attack on me in Concordiensis (“A Lord’s Opinion Can’t Compete with Scientific Truth”) deserves an answer. The Professor does not seem to be too keen on freedom of speech: on learning that I was to address students at Union College, he said that he “vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger”. My oh my!
The Professor should be reminded of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”. I exercised freedom of speech at Union College. The Professor may disagree with what I said (though his article is lamentably unspecific about what points in my lecture – if any – he disagreed with); but, under the Constitution, he may not deny or abridge my right to say it.
He and his fellow climate extremists ought not, therefore, to have talked of “opposing the presence of Lord Monckton”: for that would be to abridge my freedom of speech. It would have been fair enough for the Professor to talk of opposing my arguments – yet that, curiously, is what his rant in Concordiensis entirely fails to do.
The Professor says it is certain that “the world is warming, climatic patterns are changing, and humans are a driving force”. Let us look at these three statements in turn.
– The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695. In the 40 years to 1735, before the Industrial Revolution even began, the temperature in Central England (not a bad proxy for global temperatures) rose by 4 Fahrenheit degrees, compared with just 1 F° in the whole of the 20th century.
– Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.
– Humans are indeed exercising some influence. Indeed, though the Professor implies otherwise, I stated explicitly in my lecture that the IPCC might be right in saying that more than half of the warming since 1950 was caused by us. However, that tells us little about how much warming we may expect in future. My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.
Next, the Professor asserts, without any evidence, that “97% of scientists overwhelmingly oppose [Monckton’s] viewpoint”. Overlooking the tautology (the word “overwhelmingly” should have been omitted), as far as I am aware there has been no survey of scientists or of public opinion generally to determine how many oppose my viewpoint. I am aware of two surveys in which 97% of scientists asserted that the world had warmed in the past 60 years: but, in that respect, they agree with my viewpoint. No survey has found 97% of scientists agreeing with the far more extreme proposition that unchecked emissions of CO2 will be very likely to cause dangerous global warming. And, even if there had been such a survey, the notion that science is done by head-counting in this way is the shop-worn logical fallacy of the argumentum ad populum – the headcount fallacy. That fallacy was first described by Aristotle 2300 years ago, and it is depressing to see a Professor trotting it out today.
Science is not done by headcount among scientists. It is done by measurement, observation, and experiment, and by the application of established theory to the results. Until Einstein, 100% of scientists thought that time and space were invariant. They were all wrong. So much for consensus.
Next, the Professor says I made “numerous inaccuracies and mis-statements”. Yet he does not mention a single one in his article, which really amounts to mere hand-waving. He then asserts that I have “no interest whatsoever in pursuing a truly scientific approach”. Those who were present, however, will be aware that I presented large quantities of data and analysis demonstrating that the principal conclusions of each of the four IPCC climate assessments are defective; that the warming to be expected from a doubling of CO2 is 1 C°; and that, even if 21st-century warming were 3 C°, it would still be 10-100 times cheaper and more cost-effective to do nothing now and adapt in a focused way later than to try to stop the warming by controlling CO2.
The Professor goes on to say that “the fundamental building block of all science is peer-reviewed publications”. No: rigorous thought is the cornerstone of science. That is what is lacking in the IPCC’s approach. All of its principal conclusions are based on modeling. However, not one of the models upon which it relies has been peer-reviewed. Nor is any of the IPCC’s documents peer-reviewed in the accepted sense. There are reviewers, but the authors are allowed to override them, and that is not peer review at all. That is how the IPCC’s deliberate error about the alleged disappearance of all Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was not corrected. Worse, almost one-third of all references cited in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report were not peer-reviewed either. They were written by environmental campaigners, journalists and even students. That is not good enough.
Next, the Professor says that, in not publishing my own analysis of “global warming” in a reviewed journal, I am “fundamentally non-scientific”. Yet he does not take Al Gore to task for never having had anything published in a reviewed journal. Why this disfiguring double standard? The most important thing, surely, is to shut down the IPCC, whose approach – on the Professor’s own peer-review test – is “fundamentally non-scientific”.
The Professor goes on to say, “It is impossible to scrutinize [Monckton’s] methods, calculations, and conclusions without a complete and detailed peer-reviewed publication that presents the important details.” On the contrary: my slides are publicly available, and they show precisely how I reached my conclusions, with numerous references to the peer-reviewed literature and to the (non-peer-reviewed) IPCC assessment reports.
Next, the Professor says that “rather substantial errors” were pointed out to me at Union College. Yet in every case I was able to answer the points raised: and, here as elsewhere, the Professor is careful not to be specific about what “errors” I am thought to have made. I pointed out some very serious errors in the documents of the IPCC: why does the Professor look the other way when confronted with these “official” errors? Once again, a double standard seems to be at work.
The Professor ends by saying that “science has spoken” and that, “while scientific consensus can be wrong, it most often is not”. Well, the eugenics consensus of the 1920s, to the effect that breeding humans like racehorses would improve the stock, was near-universally held among scientists, but it was wrong, and it led directly to the dismal rail-yards of Oswiecim and Treblinka. The Lysenko consensus of the 1940s and 1950s, to the effect that soaking seed-corn in water over the winter would help it to germinate, wrecked 20 successive Soviet harvests and killed 20 million of the proletariat. The ban-DDT consensus of the 1960s has led to 40 million malaria deaths in children (and counting), 1.25 million of them lasts year alone. The don’t-stop-AIDS consensus of the 1980s has killed 33 million, with another 33 million infected and waiting to die.
The climate “consensus” is also killing millions by diverting billions of dollars from helping the poor to enriching governments, bureaucrats, bankers, landowners, windfarm scamsters, and environmentalist racketeers, and by denying to the Third World the fossil-fueled electricity it so desperately needs. It is time to stop the killing. If arguing for a more rational and scientifically-based policy will bring the slaughter of our fellow citizens of this planet to an end, then I shall continue to argue for it, whether the Professor likes it or not.
He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
March 18, 2012 at 7:40 am
4. I also discussed the very rapid warming in the Central England Temperature Record from 1695-1745 (at a rate of 3.9 C/century, many times the 0.7 C/century observed in the 20th century); and the three identical rates of rapid warming during the global instrumental record, at 0.16-0,17 C/century, from 1860-1880, from 1910-1940, and from 1976-2001.
Illustration: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-100-150-100.htm
There are good natural reasons for the warming in the early 1700s and that the same natural variability, can account for most of the temperature rise since 1900 when there are good records and reliable data.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
I love the man and his gifts for debate but he’s mixed up the freedom of speech to include a guarantee of an audience. Nowhere in the US Constitution are you guaranteed to be heard – you have to be gifted an audience or create your own audience by your own means and in accordance with local statute. Your freedom of speech does not give you the right to approach any gathering on your radar to present your thoughts, and that will hopefully remain true long in to the future.
Technically – the constitution describes limits against the government and so the free speech amendment was intended to prevent the government from pre-punishing or censoring speech against the government. Subsequent rulings have broadened that significantly and confused the role of the constitution in keeping the government in check.
Thankfully the good Lord Monckton has had the opportunity to be heard far and wide and ever may it be so.
Hugh Pepper says:
March 18, 2012 at 5:11 am
“WHere is your research published Mr Monckton? Please refer me to this work and I will be delighted to read it. Please note: I am not referring to intellectual commentary, which can be easily done from the sactuary of our homes. There are legions of people (thankfully) who trudge around the frozen regions of our world, and who venture onto the oceans, folks who do actual research and who write papers summarizing their work. It is this kind of inquiry, Mr Monckton, which I am asking you to cite.”
As Hugh Pepper can see from the last link below, Lord Monckton’s paper was reviewed by the APS — which promptly climbed down. That is what passes for climate science pal review. It takes Prof Richard Lindzen a year to be published, while Michael Mann gets his science fiction published in a month. And of course the only times Mann will “trudge around the frozen regions of our world, and who venture onto the oceans” is when he is frolicking around holiday venues at taxpayer expense, partying with his fellow climate charlatans, while real scientists go at their own expense.
I’ve generously helped out Hugh Pepper here, doing an archive search on his behalf. Hugh claims to desire to be referred to Lord Monckton’s published research and says he “will be delighted to read it”, so I’ve provided some of it below. Of course, Hugh will now climb down from his statement, and begin to attach new conditions to his request, and re-frame what he asked for. Nitpicking is sure to follow. But for those who may be new to Lord Monckton’s expertise and his scientific views, the following articles are a good starting point.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/27/monckton-on-pulling-planck-out-of-a-hat
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/24/moncktons-letter-to-the-journal-remote-sensing
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/17/monckton-on-paul-nurses-anti-science
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/monckton-responds-to-skeptical-science
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/29/1-k-or-not-1-k-that-is-the-question-2
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/07/hurrah-for-8-orders-of-magnitude
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/30/feedback-about-feedbacks-and-suchlike-fooleries
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/28/sense-and-sensitivity-2
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/09/durban-what-the-media-are-not-telling-you
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/05/monckton-on-sensitivity-training-at-durban
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/20/monckton-wins-national-press-club-debate-on-climate
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/30/why-windmills-won’t-wash
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/09/monckton-skewers-steketee
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/06/moncktons-mexican-missive
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/07/moncktons-mexico-missive-2
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/09/moncktons-mexican-missive-3
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/10/moncktons-mexican-missive-4
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/27/dr-roy-spencer-lord-christopher-monckton-to-challenge-climate-orthodoxy-at-cancun-un-conference
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/28/the-season-of-disinvitation-continues-monckton-and-delingpoles-mep-affair
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/monckton-why-current-trends-are-not-alarming
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/14/abraham-climbs-down
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/14/condensed-monckton
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/24/lord-monckton-wins-global-warming-debate-at-oxford-union
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/14/from-bonn-with-love
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/monckton-climate-change-video-goes-viral
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/27/american-physical-society-reviewing-its-climate-stance
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/06/aps-fellow-supports-moncktons-position
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/22/roy-spencers-testimony-before-congress-backs-up-moncktons-assertions-on-climate-sensitivity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/19/american-physical-society-and-monckton-at-odds-over-paper
This is not a complete list, so when Hugh Pepper completes his reading I will be happy to provide more articles by and about Lord Monckton. Or, Hugh may prefer to bask in his ignorance, and instead get his talking points from the small echo chamber blogs he usually inhabits. The knowledge is here, if Hugh really wants to get educated on a subject he currently knows little about.
WE all know that Mr Monckton is a prolific publisher of articles, most of which are in the genre of “opinion pieces”. I’ve read many. This, however, is NOT science. Science progresses only after scientists conduct research in an acceptable fashion. But you must already know this Smokey and I’m sure I’m not telling you something new. Our source of disagreement is right here, I think.
My view is that “facts” follow acceptable (yes, peer reviewed) empirical research. YOu often mock Michael Mann and his “hockey stick”, failing to acknowledge that his work has been replicated seven times. This “consensus “results in widespread acceptance. If you disagree with the results of this collective research, do your own investigation, and propose an alternative hypothesis. Not as some sort of academic exercise, but as a starting point for data collection, and measurement. You have to do more than express opinions to gain legitimacy as a science critic.
Smokey and Rockyroad: Please check out the interview with Michael Smerconish (5 days ago) and Michael Mann. All your concerns about his (Mann’s) work are addressed in the 15 minute interview.
LamontT says:
March 18, 2012 at 9:12 am
Certainly Greg I’ll be glad to analyze your 3 points.
3. You claim that there has been warming n the last 15 or so years except ….
—————————————–
No, I did not say that.
Wijnand says:
March 18, 2012 at 8:41 am
Wow! Serious alarmist asskicking going on in the comment section of the article. I wonder how long after Monday morning the comments will stay there….
Yeah, just came from there, had some fun and it’s a turkey shoot, blasting fish in a barrel with a twelve-gauge, as it were. It’s starting to feel wrong and dirty. No adults about, lots of silly snickering from the prof’s loyal groupies and the best argument so far can be summed up as, “I believe because Science told me so.” What the Hell happened to our universities? No, never mind.
See:
http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19844
.
Michael Palmer says:
“While I don’t doubt Monckton’s good intentions, I don’t think his panoply of failed consensus helps his case; none of them hold even a drop of water.”
Perhaps a better example of the consensus (not 97% but 100% of chrystallographers,with hundreds of peer-reviewed papers betwen them) being wrong was provided by the Nobel Prize for Chemistry which was awarded to Dan Shechman in 2011.
“On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Dan Shechtman’s electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal.
Shechtman’s image, however, showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons, when a sphere needs both five- and six-cornered polygons. His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter”
source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2011/press.html.
@richard Patton
I’ve read a few state constitutions. They tend to have a bill of rights incorportated into themselves that includes free speech from the perspective of each state. My point to Monckton is that bills of rights constrain legislatures, not professors, and especially not professors at private institutions. Academic institutions proscribe speech right in their student manuals. Professors can kick you out of their class if they don’t like what you’re saying. Whether the courts make the states subject to federal law or not, I can’t believe that the “free speech” clause of any bill of rights has been successfully asserted against a college professor. That would be interesting if that were the case.
The remarks about the First Amendment seem to have gone a little off track. The Constitution says nothing about what sort of speech Congress can not prohibit. No law of Congress can ban free speech on any topic, and it says nothing about citizenship. Criticism of government is just one such topic. By extension, neither can lower governments or their agencies, such as public universities. Thus SUNY could not have banned Moncton for no reason other than his opinion, but the private Union College could. Not that they should and they evidently didn’t. Seems to have worked out.
On another topic, whether picking 10-15 years ending now is “cherry picking” is semantic. Obviously, it was chosen for maximum effect. It does not demonstrate that there is no longer a trend upwards, of which the last decade-plus is an anomaly. Warmists correctly point this out. It does make it harder to argue that the the upward trend exists at the alarming rate proposed by them. Informed skeptics acknowledge the basic physics of CO2 in the atmosphere, and find it a little odd that so much time has passed with so little observable temperature arise, while CO2 concentration has risen apace.
Nothing is gained by overstating a case. The skeptical position should be that the lack of any real rise for a decade suggests that the long term rise varies around a typical rate that is far below what IPCC and their ilk want us to believe. There is no hockey stick. We should stick to that and not gloat about a decade that has been very kind to us.
Excellent comment. No doubt it went right over his/her head.
“I love the man and his gifts for debate but he’s mixed up the freedom of speech to include a guarantee of an audience.”
He was invited to a public institution that receives millions each year in federal funds. The right of all of us to hear an invited guest in a public venue is covered under the first amendment. A small group tried to prevent all interested parties from hearing the invited guest. (typical “progressive” behavior I might add)
Seek legal advice on this if you still don’t see it.
“A lord’s opinion can’t compete with scientific truth.”
“What about a patent clerk’s?”
Don’t forget the alchemist and theologian
Solomon Green says:
March 18, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Perhaps a better example of the consensus (not 97% but 100% of chrystallographers,with hundreds of peer-reviewed papers betwen them) being wrong was provided by the Nobel Prize for Chemistry which was awarded to Dan Shechman in 2011.
—
Very good example. Another great example is the discovery of prions by Prusiner – infectious protein particles, which went straight agains the “central dogma of molecular biology”, i.e. that hereditary information could only be transmitted in the form of nucleic acids. He certainly got his share of ridicule before finally proving his point.
There must be more examples of failed consensus, less politically charged, yet more valid than the horror stories selected by Lord Monckton. Collecting some of these would be a more interesting and useful exercise than calling each other names.
Peter Kovachev says:
March 17, 2012 at 9:54 pm
Michael Palmer says:
March 17, 2012 at 6:35 pm
For someone who claims to have gone to medical school or to be, God-forbid, lecturing students, you’ve yet to learn to distinguish between livestock breeding, genetics and eugenics. The latter may employ and apropriate principles of the former two to support its inherent ideology, but it is an entitity on its own. Eugenics is a racist ideology developed in California, of all places, and well before Hitler. It was about protecting and enriching a presumed superior human group, the “Nordic Race,” and to enhance its health and intelligence, as subjectively defined by some people at the time, through programs including selective breeding, forced sterilization and genocide.
So, learned doctor, when you pop a howler like “you [johanna] are confusing ethical with scientific objections”, I don’t know whether to laugh or throw up. Are you defending, for example, David Starr Jordan’s “race and blood theory,” the notion that only 10 percent of the White population is eugenically viable, that Blacks are mentally inferior, that Jews are genetically poisonous?
—
As a doctor, I can say with confidence: By all means, throw up, if it makes you feel better. Better now? Able to pay attention again? There.
If you do not trust in university education, maybe you believe Wikipedia? On eugenics, it has this to say:
“Eugenics has, from the very beginning, meant many different things to many different people. Historically, the term has referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia. To population geneticists the term has included the avoidance of inbreeding without necessarily altering allele frequencies; for example, J. B. S. Haldane wrote that “the motor bus, by breaking up inbred village communities, was a powerful eugenic agent”. Much debate has taken place in the past, as it does today, as to what exactly counts as eugenics. Some types of eugenics deal only with perceived beneficial and/or detrimental genetic traits. These are sometimes called “pseudo-eugenics” by proponents of strict eugenics.”
It also says:
“The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin. At its peak of popularity eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling and Sidney Webb.”
So obviously the narrow definition of the term that you espouse is everything but generally accepted. You probably knew that – you just needed a straw man in order to work up a good rage. Silly and boring.
Below is what I posted on Concordiensis, the student newspaper of Union College, about the Monckton lecture:
Here is how they conclude: “The fact of the matter is that science has spoken, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence has shown very, very clearly that global warming is occurring and is at least mostly caused by humans.”
Wrong, science has not spoken. Furthermore, it is irrelevant how large the “bulk” of that “evidence” is, just one measurement can wipe out all of it. I will do exactly that to your “evidence” now. The scientist whose work I will refer to is Ferenc Miskolczi, a Hungarian scientist at NASA who studied absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere. Using NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948 he was able to show that the transparency of the atmosphere in the infrared where carbon dioxide absorbs has been constant for the last 61 years (E&E 21(4):243, 2011).
During that same period of time the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of all this carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. There goes your “evidence” with all its “bulk.” This is an empirical observation, not derived from any theory, and it overrules any deductions from theory that contradict it. Specifically, it invalidates all climate models that use the greenhouse effect to predict warming. That means that all predictions of dangerous warming emanating from the IPCC are dead wrong.
Carbon dioxide simply does not warm the atmosphere, even if you double it, which means that temperature sensitivity becomes exactly zero. His paper was peer reviewed and has been available in scientific literature for more than a year now. No peer reviewed articles opposing it have appeared, presumably not for lack of trying. It follows that belief in an Armageddon caused by greenhouse warming is just a fairy tale. Unfortunately those who believe this fairy tale have instigated governments to pass laws detrimental to living standards of all citizens. It is time to start reversing this trend by voiding these irrational laws.
Hugh Pepper [falsely] says of Michael Mann:
“…his work has been replicated seven times.”
Folks, we have a comedian!
If Mann’s MBH98/99 has been “replicated” then I’m sure the IPCC will begin to use his original hokey stick chart again; you know, the same chart they were forced to stop publishing in 2007. Wake me when that happens.
. . .
Michael Palmer,
You seem to have missed my observation that human nature being what it is, the most odious use of eugenics is what governments always revert to. Eugenics always ends up being the excuse for disposing of individuals and groups. Always. That is why eugenics [or whatever Newspeak label that is currently in vogue] is an ethics problem: it condones murder.
Arno Arrak says:
March 18, 2012 at 1:38 pm
……….
Interesting and important point, one which I did come across a few years ago, but failed to understand even partially. I penned a reply to you, but it looks like the Concordy moderator is back from his nap, and my post is still in limbo. This is what I wrote:
Arno,
I was sure there must be some peer-reviewed challenges you might have missed, given how potentialy (if not actually) damaging the impact of Miskolcz’s research on UN-IPCC’s climate doctrine is, but wasn’t able to find such. Seeing how poorly the Warmies here are faring, I thought it would be sportsman-like to play the Devil’s advocate, so I looked, although not intensely or deeply. Lots of hollering from the PR sites, but zilch from the peer review press I could see. I welcome corrections on this. Here are links to an unpublished critique on a blog and an attempt to get someone to refute him:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Miskolczi.html
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=232818
Now, I’m leary of Rodbell’s claim that the “fundamental building block of all science is peer-reviewed publications (sic.),” but seeing how good the East Anglia and Mann crowd have been at controlling and bullying the process, it’s indeed surprising that there is no credible refutation of his hypothesis. Miskolczi, it appears, has been black-listed as well (see: http://www.omsj.org/authors/blacklisted-scientist-challenges-global-warming-orthodoxy).
Ok, Hugh Pepper–give us a citation or two or three showing who has “replicated Mann’s work seven times”.
Time to put up or shut up.
Read Michael Mann’s book Rocky. There are several references to this research in the book. From Mann’s references you can locate the original research.
LamontT says:
March 18, 2012 at 9:12 am
1. – Central England. Note the word Proxy in there.
============================================
To use something as a proxy you need a cause-effect relationship. And you need to be sure, that nothing else causes the same effect.
Is there a cause-effect relationship between temperature in Central England and the global temperature?
Greg House says:
And yet somehow you equate the two (trees and thermometers)?? Trees were never intended to be thermometers, while thermometers were built with but one function: to measure temperature.
Epic Fail, Greg; Epic Fail.
If not, show me a tree that is a more accurate (or precise or representative) measuring device for temperature than a hardware-store thermometer. (The key to this mental exercise, of course is hidden in the word “thermometer”: Thermo (for heat) and meter (to measure). If there’s a tree by the name of Thermous Meteror, I’m not aware of it.
Here’s a WUWT thread on Monckton vs. Abraham:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/a-detailed-rebuttal-to-abraham-from-monckton/
Here’s the first video in a series of videos titled “Monckton Refutes Abraham”:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cfact#p/u/26/Z00L2uNAFw8
Greg House says:
March 18, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Wow, really hung up on these heat measuring trees, eh, Greg? Do you place a greater reliance on trees as thermometers than thermometers as thermometers?
First of all, I don’t believe trees are even in the same ballpark–you may have convinced yourself they are, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
But here’s the ultimate squash: Do they calibrate thermometers against trees, or do they calibrate trees against thermometers?
The answer to that will settle your confusion.
I always get a kick out of people like Greg that think trees make good thermometers. Most people that think this are ignorant of Liebig’s Law of the Minimum.
Read all about it here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/
I’m sure Greg will be able to tell us how the separate a temperature signal in a tree ring width from a precipitation one from El Nino/ENSO and all that in the Bristlecone pines of the Southwest.
– Anthony
Hugh Pepper says:
March 18, 2012 at 1:02 pm
” Science progresses only after scientists conduct research in an acceptable fashion…
My view is that “facts” follow acceptable (yes, peer reviewed) empirical research.”
I’m sure that your fellow travelers were equally adamant about the quality of Jewish research in the 1930s. Certainly a number of them published documents showing that Einstein had everything wrong with Special Relativity, the Photoelectric Effect, and a number of other publications in Physics and Mathematics that he and other Jews had made. That was definitely the consensus at that time, right? Yep, Acceptable Empirical Research – gotta have it…
Michael Palmer says:
March 18, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Doctor, you are repeating the same error again and again like broken automaton, not understanding or pretending not to understand the issue.
Once again, same story different post: We are talking about eugenics as a specific historical program which serves as a prime example of what happens when governments and people panic and begin acting before thinking. Eugenics as brought up by Lord Monckton and commonly understood by most is not a neutral word for a sector in genetics. It is not synonymous with medical genetics, a good but misunderstood idea with a few little mistakes here and there. The example regarding problems of consanguinity doesn’t support the validity of eugenics. Nor am I interested in the silly-buggers word game of “eugenics vs. pseudo-eugenics.” Perhaps you are hoping to start afresh under stricter rules and better ethics, to establish “neo-eugenics” or real-scientific-eugenics” or whatever (a tacticallymisguided approach given how polluted the word has become), but the eugenics we all know and love is a pseudoscientific belief more accurately described as “raciology,” an ugly fraud which was peddled in the guise of science, and brutally enforced with a series of policies which caused massive suffering and deaths.
So again, this is not a case of science and ethics as seperate issues, this is a case of a fraudulent pseudoscientific movement (b.1900s-d.WWII) which is both grossly unscientific and morally abhorent. Are any new or different lights blinking yet? I don’t how how else I can rephrase things, and clearly other folks here are not penetrating through either.
Cause and Effect: The tree vs. the thermometer (liquid bulb type).
Thermometer:
Cause–additional heat. Effect–rise in liquid level.
Cause–less heat. Effect–drop in liquid level.
Tree:
Cause–Additional sun, rain, wind, temperature, nutrients, length of growing season, disease, insects, snow depth, lightning strikes, birds, deer, etc., etc. Effect–variable growth ring width.
Now, quoting you: “And you need to be sure, that nothing else causes the same effect“. The thermometer is measuring just one thing (it is designed to pretty much eliminate all other factors). The tree is generally out of your vision and control–there are at least half a dozen things that impact it, yet you continue to say a tree is more representative than a thermometer.
I’m sure I won’t convince you, Greg, but that’s not my intent. My intent is to display the blatant disparity in your argument to all the thousands of other readers on this site. Those are the ones you should be worried about.
We are living those “interesting times” of the end of the “fifth Sun”(!!), when things, it seems so, will be back to its traditional order. Lord Monckton is an ambassador of that future, but now closer, new era.