By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
To those of us who have dared to question on scientific and economic grounds the official story on global warming, it is a continuing surprise that there is so little concern about whether or not that story is objectively true among the many who have swallowed it hook, Party Line and sinker.
For the true-believers, the Party Line is socially convenient, politically expedient, and financially profitable. Above all, it is the Party Line. For those who think as herds or hives, it is safe. It is a grimy security blanket. It is the dismal safety in numbers that is the hallmark of the unreasoning mob.
But is it true? The herd and the hive do not care. Or, rather, they do care. They care very much if anyone dares to ask the question “But is it true?” They are offended, shocked, outraged. They vent their venom and their spleen and their fury on those of us who ask, however politely, “But is it true?”
Their reaction is scarcely distinguishable from the behavior of the adherents of some primitive superstitious cult on learning that someone has questioned some egregiously, self-evidently barmy aspect of the dogma that the high priests have handed down.
They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.
The question arises: can science function properly or at all in the absence of true religion and of its insistence upon morality? For science, in searching for the truth, is pursuing what is – or very much ought to be – a profoundly moral quest.
Yet what if a handful of bad scientists wilfully tamper with data, fabricate results, and demand assent to assertions for which there is no real scientific justification? And what if the vast majority of their colleagues cravenly look the other way and do nothing about their bent colleagues? What you get is the global warming scare.
As every theologian knows, the simplest and usually the clearest of all tests for the presence of a moral sense is whether or not the truth is being told. The true-believers in the New Superstition are not telling the truth. On any objective test, they are lying, and are profiteering by lying, and are doing so at your expense and mine, and are bidding fair to bring down the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, flinging us back into the dumb, inspissate cheerlessness of a new Dark Age.
Nothing is done about the many lies, of course, because the many lies are the Party Line, and no one ever went to jail who safely parroted the Party Line.
“The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus! A 97.1% Consensus! Doubters Are As Bad As Holocaust Deniers! Global Temperature Is Rising Dangerously! It Is Warmer Now Than For 1400 Years! Well, 400 Years, Anyway! Tree-Rings Reliably Tell Us So! The Rate Of Global Warming Is Getting Ever Faster! Global Warming Caused Superstorm Sandy! And Typhoon Haiyan! And 1000 Other Disasters! Arctic Sea Ice Will All Be Gone By 2013! OK, By 2015! Or Maybe 2030! Santa Claus Will Have Nowhere To Live! Cuddly Polar Bears Are Facing Extinction! Starving Polar Bears Will Start Eating Penguins! Himalayan Glaciers Will All Melt By 2035! Er, Make That 2350! Millions Of Species Will Become Extinct! Well, Dozens, Anyway! Sea Level Is Rising Dangerously! It Will Rise 3 Feet! No, 20 Feet! No, 246 Feet! There Will Be 50 Million Climate Refugees From Rising Seas By 2010! OK, Make That 2020! The Oceans Will Acidify! Corals Will Die! Global Warming Kills! There Is A One In Ten Chance Global Warming Will End The World By 2100! We Know What We’re Talking About! We Know Best! We Are The Experts! You Can Trust Us! Our Computer Models Are Correct! The Science Is Settled! There’s A Consensus!”
And so, round and round, ad nauseam, ad ignorantiam, ad infinitum.
Every one of those exclamatory, declamatory statements about the climate is in substance untrue. Most were first uttered by scientists working for once-respected universities and government bodies. For instance, the notion that there is a 1 in 10 chance the world will end by 2100 is the fundamentally fatuous assumption in Lord Stern’s 2006 report on climate economics, written by a team at the U.K. Treasury for the then Socialist Government, which got the answer it wanted but did not get the truth, for it did not want the truth.
Previously, you could count on getting nothing but the truth from the men in white coats with leaky Biros in the front pocket. Now, particularly if the subject is global warming, you can count on getting little but profitable nonsense from your friendly local university science lab. They make the profits: you get the nonsense.
The central reason why what Professor Niklas Mörner has called “the greatest lie ever told” is damaging to civilization arises not from the staggering cost, soon to be $1 billion a day worldwide. Not from the direct threat to the West posed by the avowedly anti-democratic, anti-libertarian policies of the UN, the IPCC, and the costly alphabet-soup of unelected busybody agencies of predatory government that live off the taxpayer’s involuntary generosity. Not from the dire environmental damage caused by windmills and other equally medieval measures intended to make non-existent global warming go away.
The damage caused by the Great Lie arises from the fact that just about the entire global governing class has found it expedient or convenient or profitable to adopt the Great Lie, to peddle it, to parade it, to parrot it, to pass it on, regardless of whether anything that it says on the subject of the climate has any truth in it whatsoever.
The fundamental principle upon which Aristotle built the art and science of Logic is that every individual truth is consistent with every other individual truth. The truth is a seamless robe. Religion – or at any rate the Catholic presentation to which I inadequately subscribe (practising but not perfect) – is also built upon that fundamental principle of the oneness of all truth.
Science, too – or at any rate the classical scientific method adumbrated by Thales of Miletus and Al-Haytham and brought to fruition by Newton, Huxley, Einstein, and Popper – was also rooted in the understanding that there is only one truth, only one physical law, and that, therefore, every truth unearthed by the diligence of the curious and hard-working empiricist or theoretician must, if it be truly true, be consistent at every point and in every particular with every truth that had ever been discovered before, and with every truth yet to be discovered.
It is in the understanding of that central principle of the remarkable oneness and self-consistency of all truth that men of true religion and of true science ought to have become united. For there is an awesome beauty in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all.”
The beauty of the truth is sullied, the seamless robe rent in sunder, if not merely a few individual scientists but the entire classe politique not merely of a single nation but of the planet advantages itself, enriches the already rich and impoverishes the already poor by lying and lying and lying again in the name of Saving The Planet by offering costly and environmentally destructive non-solutions to what is proving to be a non-problem.
The very fabric of the Universe is distorted by so monstrous and so sullenly persistent a lie. Those scientists who have been caught out trampling the truth, and those universities in which it has become near-universally agreed that the best thing to keep the cash flowing is to say nothing about the Great Lie, are by their actions or inactions repudiating the very justification and raison-d’être of science: to seek the truth, to find it, to expound it, to expand it, and so to bring us all closer to answering the greatest of all questions: how came we and all around us to be here?
We who are not only men of science but also men of religion believe that the Answer to that question lay 2000 years ago in a manger in Bethlehem. The very human face of the very Divine was “perfectly God and perfectly Man”, as the Council of Chalcedon beautifully put it.
We cannot prove that a Nazarene made the Universe, or that any Divine agency takes the slightest interest in whether we tell the truth. But, for as long as there is no evidence to the contrary, we are free to believe it. And it is in our freedom to believe that which has not been proven false that the value of true religion to true science may yet come to be discerned. For our religion teaches us that truthfulness is right and wilful falsehood wrong. We cannot prove that that is so, but we believe it nonetheless.
Science, though, is not a matter of belief (unless you belong to Greenpeace or some other Marxist front organization masquerading as an environmental group). It is a matter of disciplined observation, careful theoretical deduction, and cautious expression of results. The true scientist does not say, “I believe”: but he ought, if there is any curiosity and awe in his soul, to say “I wonder …”. Those two words are the foundation of all genuine scientific enquiry.
Yet the global warming scare has shown how very dangerous is science without morality. The scientist, who takes no one’s word for anything (nullius in verba), does not accept a priori that there is any objectively valuable moral code. He does not necessarily consider himself under any moral obligation either to seek the truth or, once he has found it, to speak it.
Science, therefore, in too carelessly or callously rejecting any value in religion and in the great code of morality in which men of religion believe and which at least they try however stumblingly to follow, contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Yea, truth faileth (Isaiah, 59:15). The Great Lie persists precisely because too many of the scientists who utter it no longer live in accordance with the moral yardstick that Christianity once provided, or any moral yardstick, so that they do not consider they have any moral obligation to tell the truth.
That being so, we should no longer consider ourselves as laboring under any obligation, moral or other, to pay any particular heed to scientists seeking to meddle in politics unless and until they have shown themselves once more willing to be what al-Haytham said they should be: seekers after truth.
Two hundred and forty-six feet of sea-level rise, Dr. Hansen? Oh, come off it!
A merry Christmas an’ a roarin’ Hogmanay to one and all.
Warren says:
December 24, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Reg Nelson: any science publication or peer reviewed paper dealing with your question will illustrate the main point…that the models duplicate the rise in earths temperature seen in the 20th and 21st century (not year by year, as I explain in my last post, but trend lines)
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LOL. As I expected, you have not read the AR reports. Else you would not say something so foolish.
Warren says:
December 24, 2013 at 7:58 pm
Dbstealy: what is your source? Mine is from scientific papers. You can check any of them for this info. I’m afraid you are deeply uninformed
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Confronted with facts, unable to discuss them or the science, Warren retreats into argument from authority.
I don’t what you mean by AR, but you can see the modelling results I cited in Wolfsons lectures, or in other science books. Are you reading the 0.2% of papers that dispute something about AGW, or the 99.8% that support it?
Ah the Catholic Church. The wonderful, truth-seeking Catholic Church. Would that be the same Catholic Church that burnt Giordano Bruno to death just over four hundred years ago?
For the benefit of the great mass of people here, the vast majority of whom have never heard of Bruno, I’m sure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
Anyone who wants to be taken seriously in scientific matters will leave out all mention of god and church and religion.
Religion: Applied ignorance.
Dbstealy: Youre the one that made unsubstantiated assertions. Let’s see your science sources.
Thanks for a colourful Christmas gift from a Lord of vivid exposition. May you wax even more eloquent in defense of the Truth and the poor.
Warren says: December 24, 2013 at 7:47 pm
Richard: yes, Co2 is given off by the oceans as temp rises…if you read the science, you’ll find that co2 is thus both a cause of temp rise, and a result of temp rise. This is the commonly found phenomenon of positive feedback, seen elsewhere in both engineering and science.
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Fail. Not supported by data. As you allude to science, recall that all positive feedback systems at least in biology exist within larger negative feedback systems. I suspect equilibrium laws govern the atmosphere and climate, e.g. Le Chatelier’s principle
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As a result, atmospheric temperature increases due to co2 emissions from fossil fuels are larger than they would be otherwise.
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Fail, not supported by data and indistinguishable from natural climate variation.
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Actually, the oceans have taken up a larger portion of the temp rise from co2 emissions, while the atmosphere is warming more slowly so far in the 21st century.
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Wishful thinking and mere assertion on your part. BTW, temps are falling this century.
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To understand anthropogenic climate change, one has to consider time periods of at least 25 years to see trend lines within the yearly variability, and to consider that the warming includes both oceans and atmosphere.
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Who says??? I imagine when that threshold is met the goal posts will be moved again
Looks like they’re getting ready to drop a geo-engineering bombshell on us. Will we buy it from them?
Volume 121, Issue 3, December 2013
Special Issue: Geoengineering Research and its Limitations
http://link.springer.com/journal/10584/121/3/page/1
Billions of dollars, pounds, euros, and yen yielding 10, 000 papers all predicated on ‘ if what isn’t happening were happening I think the following would happen’
It’s the old Russian joke about stealing wheelborrows. The facts or truth of the science are what we are arguing while the smart fellows are rolling out the gate with a new wheelborrow everday.
In response to climategate The Chairman of the House Science Commitee said “we need more research”
Warren says:
“…what is your source?”
My sources are very easy to see: just look at the address bar of the links, and you will see sites such as Wood For Trees — which is a database of empirical observations from GISS, HadCRUT, etc., and which are accepted by all sides of the debate. Only you seem to question them.
On the other hand, you do not provide any empirical observations yourself; only [always-inaccurate] computer models, and Pal-Reviewed papers <–[arguments from corrupt authorities].
When we look at empirical [real world] observations – versus your models and papers – we see that the climate alarmist case has been thoroughly debunked. As stated above: make your arguments based on the real world.
But you will not, for the simple reason that the real world falsifies your belief system. Your "carbon" scare is complete nonsense. But don't take my word for it, listen to what Planet Earth is clearly telling you.
So, who should we believe? Planet Earth? Or Warren?
Because they cannot both be right.
Nice bit of writing, Merry Christmas .
Warren, are you real? Or are you a joke made up to reinforce Monckton’s point?
Those bitching about the religious component, read the article again.
God, Gods or The Universe, whatever you call it changes very little, the fact we barely comprehend the immediate environs we live in, could offer humility to our thinking.
There is a whole lot more.
Lying, choosing to mislead for gain, are acts that undermine human interactions,destroying trust. A global fad of falsehood, threatens civilization as we know it.
How can we expect trade, which requires trust, to function in a world of lies?
That former Canadian Minister of the Environment, Christine Stewart said it best.
Proudly proclaiming her choice to deceive for a good cause.
If you have no social values, what is “good’?
Richard: all of what I reported can be found in Science Magazine or in other peer reviewed articles. The article on warming of the oceans vs warming of the atmosphere was published this year, and peer reviewed. Unless you’re personally measuring the oceans temperature averaged over the Earth, as well as the Atmosphere over the earth, you would need to read the science papers to make conclusions. Are you doing either?
Because they cannot both be right.
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Exactly. On the one hand we have the models. They are wrong. Every one of them. Why? Simple human error, confirmation bias, rent seeking, malfeasance and fraud, ………..On the other hand we have reality – the data.
Warren = Troll…that simple. Isn’t there a bridge to return to?
The idea, expressed by several commenters, that morality is not dependent on religion can be argued. To get to morality, meaning and purpose must exist. Meaning and purpose require a sufficient reference point (a hammer has purpose only in the hands of a user). If the universe is totally explainable as a natural system and human beings are nothing more than complex machines, then free will is an illusion, and without free will there can be no meaning or purpose or morality. How can one fight one’s brain chemistry if it makes one lie, cheat, or steal? Similarly, how can there be virtue in altruism if altruistic acts originate solely from brain chemistry? Those who think science provides all the answers should ponder these questions carefully. Philosophers have been thinking about them for thousands of years and have not derived a foundation for meaning or purpose on the basis of science and/or logic. Simply stating, I have meaning and purpose because I think I do, doesn’t count. As a Christian I can say that I have meaning and purpose because the creator of the universe says that I do. Read Francis Schaeffer’s, “How should we then live?” if you aren’t afraid to expose yourself to the logic that led a philosopher to traditional Christianity. Then there is also the case of Anthony Flew, a life-long atheist philosopher, who decided in his later years, based solely on reason, that it was likely God does exist. To quote a phrase that is well known in science, absence of (physical) evidence is not evidence of absence (of God). There is nothing unscientific about faith and naturalism leads only to nihilism.
Warren says:
December 24, 2013 at 8:06 pm
I don’t what you mean by AR, but you can see the modelling results I cited in Wolfsons lectures, or in other science books. Are you reading the 0.2% of papers that dispute something about AGW, or the 99.8% that support it?
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LOL. I’m going to help you out Warren in the hopes that you learn to think for yourself.
The AR reports are the official state of climate science as summarized by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC for short. The first report was called AR1, the second AR2 and so on. AR5 is the most recent. This is the official literature which supposedly represents the consensus position of the world’s climate scientists. You can read all of their reports here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
I suggest that you do. WG1 is the section that deals with the science. I urge you to read it and understand it. It is the actual science, not a marketing gimmick like your precious DVD.
Once you read the actual reports, you will learn that the models are NOT in fact accurate at all. Oh, they do a fine job of reproducing the past, but none of the predictions that they made in previous reports have come true. Every last model prediction, all 22 models, and all the predictions from all the models, have failed. This isn’t some random paper from 0.2% of the scientists, this is the exact science as published by the 99% that you claim support your position.
Here’s an excellent article that goes into depth as to what the models predicted, with the graphs taken directly from the science published by the supposed 99% that you are so certain say what you think they say:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/04/no-matter-how-the-cmip5-ipcc-ar5-models-are-presented-they-still-look-bad/
Note carefully the changes that were made to what the scientists presented. Note that these changes were made not by the scientists, but by politicians. Even with all the spin that the politicians managed to put on it, the fact that the models have over estimated warming by a considerable margin is readily apparent. In fact, the very scientists (most notable Hansen and Santer) who claim to represent the consensus, argued that the models would have to be thrown out if they were wrong for a period of 10 years. They then revised that to 15 years. Then they revised it to 17 years. It has now been 17 years and they are mumbling something about perhaps as much as 30 years.
Read and learn my friend. Learn what the scientists ACTUALLY say instead of relying on what other people claim they say. Learn what the models ACTUALLY predicted and what the observational data ACTUALLY is. Stick around. Read some articles. Ask some questions. Learn.
Warren says:
“I don’t what you mean by AR…”
“AR” refers to the IPCC’s Assessment Reports, noob. Obviously, you are just parroting misinformation you just picked up on one of the alarmist echo chambers.
Warren says: “Youre the one that made unsubstantiated assertions. Let’s see your science sources.”
Look again, newbie. I posted my sources, all of them. And other folks here have asked you questions that you ignore.
Why do you ignore them?
Because you are incapable of posting an answer that would back up your assertions with empirical [real world] data.
You think I’m wrong? Then post your data showing runaway global warming. Or post your measurements showing the degree of global warming due testably and verifiably to human emissions.
In fact, you can’t — because there are no such measurements. All you have are false assertions, and conjectures; speculation and opinion.
But science is based on measurement. We have provided empirical mesurements backing our skeptical view. But you have poisted nothing in the way of real world measurements.
That is why you have lost the debate.
Warren says: December 24, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Richard: all of what I reported can be found in Science Magazine or in other peer reviewed articles. The article on warming of the oceans vs warming of the atmosphere was published this year, and peer reviewed. Unless you’re personally measuring the oceans temperature averaged over the Earth, as well as the Atmosphere over the earth, you would need to read the science papers to make conclusions. Are you doing either?
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Dear Warren. What I do is based on rigorous peer review, government and insurance oversight, as well as professional standards of conduct. Any moderately educated person in basic science and statistics will conclude that much of what passes as climate science is akin to most psychology and virtually all sociology……..junk science. Engineers and geologists? Good luck convincing them.
Me:
Reg Nelson says:
Warren, I repeat,: name one prediction\projection\model by Climate Scientists that what right, or even remotely accurate over the past twenty years.
It can’t be that hard can it? Out of tens of thousands of “peer reviewed” papers, random chance says at least one of them must be correct.
Just one. I beg you.
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You:
Warren says:
December 24, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Reg Nelson: any science publication or peer reviewed paper dealing with your question will illustrate the main point…that the models duplicate the rise in earths temperature seen in the 20th and 21st century (not year by year, as I explain in my last post, but trend lines) and also predict relatively flat temperature trends when the CO2 emissions from human activity are excluded. Sorry to disappoint you, but if you don’t believe that, check the Wolfson lectures I recommended earlier, or other sources.
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LOL
What main point?
You ignore the main point. Again, name one model that has predicted the climate over the last twenty years with any degree of accuracy. You cannot. I know that. Do you?
Why would any sane rational, reasonable person put any trust in any of this?
Again, please prove me wrong.
Here are quotations on truth from Mencken:
Yes, democracy (Greek for rule by the herd) is the worst form of government, except for all the others. We are fortunate to live in a time where people of intelligence and integrity have some means to discuss widely the complexities of truth.
Enjoyed your post as usual, lord Monckton.
Merry Christmas all!
Off I go. Warren why is it impossible for you to admit to a little healthy skepticism when confronted with a known fraud? If you had it would have added force to your arguments. Very smart people question their own assumptions on this site daily.
That you can’t do the same should trouble you. Adios for now.
Monckton: Of meteorology and morality
Posted on December 24, 2013 by Guest Blogger
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
“They have gotten religion, but they call it science. They have gotten religion, but they do not know they have gotten religion. They have gotten religion, but they have not gotten the point of religion, which, like the point of science, is objective truth.”
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I feel for their loss. I do indeed feel for their loss, and I was quickly over it and back in reality……
Video not redacted!
It seems this is a forum dominated by those who don’t accept peer reviewed scientific journals, the IPCC Assessments, or in some cases, simple physics. And some resort to demonization when they don’t like what they hear from those that do accept the Scientific near-consensus. To all skeptics, my question is: of all other near consensus-science issues….relativity, plate tectonics, evolution…do you single out AGW for derision, and if so why? Is it a rational skepticism? Or is it dislike for the implications? I hope for most it’s the former, in which case PUBLISH so the world can benefit from your insight. (So far, almost no skeptics have) If it’s the latter, and you don’t want to see a carbon tax, I ask you to consider that your asking mankind to adapt rather than mitigate. And maybe that’s the discussion that should be conducted on this forum instead.