Lord Monckton invites ‘Chazza’ to spar over ‘unroyal’ global-warming remark
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales,
Clarence House, London.
Candlemas, 2014
Your Royal Highness’ recent remarks describing those who have scientific and economic reason to question the Establishment opinion on climatic apocalypse in uncomplimentary and unroyal terms as “headless chickens” mark the end of our constitutional monarchy and a return to the direct involvement of the Royal Family, in the Person of our future king, no less, in the cut and thrust of partisan politics.
Now that Your Royal Highness has offered Your Person as fair game in the shootout of politics, I am at last free to offer two options. I need no longer hold back, as so many have held back, as Your Royal Highness’ interventions in politics have become more frequent and less acceptable in their manner as well as in their matter.
Option 1. Your Royal Highness will renounce the Throne forthwith and for aye. Those remarks were rankly party-political and were calculated to offend those who still believe, as Your Royal Highness plainly does not, that the United Kingdom should be and remain a free country, where any subject of Her Majesty may study science and economics, may draw his conclusions from his research and may publish the results, however uncongenial the results may be.
The line has been crossed. No one who has intervened thus intemperately in politics may legitimately occupy the Throne. Your Royal Highness’ arrogant and derogatory dismissiveness towards the near-50 percent of your subjects who no longer follow the New Religion is tantamount to premature abdication. Goodnight, sweet prince. No more “Your Royal Highness.”
Hi, there, Chazza! You are a commoner now, just like most of Her Majesty’s subjects. You will find us a cheerfully undeferential lot. Most of us don’t live in palaces, and none of us goes everywhere with his own personalized set of monogrammed white leather lavatory seat covers.
The United Kingdom Independence Party, which until recently I had the honor to represent in Scotland, considers – on the best scientific and economic evidence – that the profiteers of doom are unjustifiably enriching themselves at our expense.
For instance, even the unspeakable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has accepted advice from me and my fellow expert reviewers that reliance upon ill-constructed and defective computer models to predict climate was a mistake. Between the pre-final and final drafts of the “Fifth Assessment Report,” published late last year, the Panel ditched the models and substituted its own “expert assessment” that in the next 30 years the rate of warming will be half what the models predict.
In fact, the dithering old fossils in white lab coats with leaky Biros sticking out of the front pocket now think the rate of warming over the next 30 years could be less than in the past 30 years, notwithstanding an undiminished increase in the atmospheric concentration of plant food. Next time you talk to the plants, ask them whether they would like more CO2 in the air they breathe. Their answer will be Yes.
The learned journals of economics are near-unanimous in saying it is 10-100 times costlier to mitigate global warming today than to adapt to its supposedly adverse consequences the day after tomorrow.
Besides, in the realm that might have been yours there has been no change – none at all – in mean surface temperature for 25 full years. So if you are tempted to blame last year’s cold winter (which killed 31,000 before their time) or this year’s floods (partly caused by the Environment Agency’s mad policy of returning dozens of square miles of the Somerset Levels to the sea) on global warming, don’t.
You got your science and economics wrong. And you were rude as well. And you took sides in politics. Constitutionally, that’s a no-no. Thronewise, mate, you’ve blown it.
On the other hand, we Brits are sport-mad. So here is option 2. I am going to give you a sporting second chance, Charlie, baby.
You see, squire, you are no longer above politics. You’ve toppled off your gilded perch and now you’re in it up to your once-regal neck. So, to get you used to the idea of debating on equal terms with your fellow countrymen, I’m going to give you a once-in-a-reign opportunity to win back your Throne in a debate about the climate. The motion: “Global warming is a global crisis.” You say it is. I say it isn’t.
We’ll hold the debate at the Cambridge Union, for Cambridge is your alma mater and mine. You get to pick two supporting speakers and so do I. We can use PowerPoint graphs. The Grand Debate will be televised internationally over two commercial hours. We let the world vote by phone, before and after the debate. If the vote swings your way, you keep your Throne. Otherwise, see you down the pub.
Cheers, mate!
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
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Related: Chicken al la still not a king
James Abbott:
tsk, tsk. You must not swallow all that alarmist hype. CO2 is entirely beneficial. It is the basis of life. It is a plant fertilizer and as such, augments food production for a growing population which will double and re-double this century. The Sahel is greening, thanks to increases in atm CO2 this century. There are many other benefits provided by CO2. Some climatologists have contended that increased CO2 will lead to milder winters,which is nice, but so far this has not happened.
So relax, prop your feet up next to the fire and have some warm cider, and try not to let those alarmist types frighten you.. Everything is going to be fine.
And still when mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!
Says a lot right there.
“Monckton: Challenge to Prince Charles”
Prince who? Are we talking about: “The Commoner Formerly Known as Prince”?
Jean Parisot says:
February 6, 2014 at 8:05 am
I believe I read Charles has a substantial chunk of the royal treasure invested in wind ventures, at what point do statements of individuals that could influence markets constitute tampering in England?
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if this is true, then Prinny is even dumber than he looks.
Gunga Din and Colorado Wellington:
Sincere thanks for your informative posts to me at February 6, 2014 at 9:22 am and February 6, 2014 at 9:24 am. They do, indeed, add to the understandings provided to me by Tom in Florida.
I trust you will understand that the shortness of this simple note of thanks is not an indication of any lack of gratitude. On the contrary, your facts and opinions require serious thought before I would be willing to make any comment, and I have yet to conduct such thought.
Thankyou.
Richard
richardscourtney says….
Glad to be of service Richard and thank you for the lesson in UK Government.
Our Supreme Court was supposed to be “above politics” since they are appointed for life. Unfortunately no such luck. Our court system was supposed to be a trial by jury with the jury having the RIGHT to judge both the person AND the law. (Jury nullification) This has been slowly removed by the Supreme Court which now allows a bureaucratic tribunal to judge cases involving the same department. In other words the EPA tribunal would judge those the EPA wants to fine or jail for breaking EPA regulations.
Our Senators were supposed to be appointed by our state legislatures to veto power grabs by the Federal Government. (Article I, section 3,) The Seventeenth Amendment ratified in 1913 changed election of Senators to election by popular vote thus removing this check on our federal government.
We lost the Senate as a control on the Federal government got the 16th Amendment (ratified February 3, 1913) allowing direct taxation of citizens wealth AND got the bankers as controllers of our economy.( Federal Reserve Act of 1913)
That is why I point out 1913 as a very bad year for the USA. Makes you want to believe the number 13 is unlucky!
jim hogg: … if we are to eventually become a genuine democracy.
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richardscourtney says: @ur momisugly February 6, 2014 at 6:41 am
Fortunately, that horrific outcome is not possible here in the UK. Mob rule and lynch mobs are not a good idea.
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AMEN!
I would like to see our Senate return to the original Constitution voting method or if not that a random drawing of two people from each state.
Heck, take a leaf out of one of Heinlein’s books and make the drawing open only to veterans with high school diplomas or better. Sure would cut down on the number of overseas military actions and other idiocies. :>)
Right now we have an Aristocracy, with self-voted privileges, that have to take bribes in the way of campaign contributions to keep their jobs. Some have ‘served’ for more than 50 years.
@ur momisuglyGreg @ur momisugly Zeke. Perhaps Lord Monckton was referring to no statisticlly significant warming CET or global, would one of those get to 25 years perhaps ?
Gail Combs:
Thankyou for the additional information for me at February 6, 2014 at 10:31 am.
As illustration of how difficult ‘obvious’ things can be to outsiders, I cite the self-admitted confusion of our host about the differences between the UK, Britain and England. That cuts both ways across the Atlantic.
I have yet to ‘come to terms’ with all that you and your ‘fellow Americans’ have told me. Hopefully, after I have digested it all then I will not need to interrupt future WUWT threads discussing American issues with questions intended to gain my understanding of ‘what is going on’ but you guys fail to comprehend because you take those matters for granted.
One response I will now make to your comment to me is the observation you make which echoes a comment from Gunga Din. It seems that your system is based on a written (so fixed) Constitution but is changing with time. As you will appreciate, our system is not ‘fixed’ and has been evolving for many centuries. It is tempting to think change to your system is limited by your Constitution more than change to our system is limited by our monarchy. As a result of comments, I need to think about that a lot more than I have. Perhaps this explains much of my puzzlement in threads discussing American issues.
And I add a personal point for information but NOT for discussion in this thread. I am frequently abused by Americans on WUWT because I am a socialist. It seems that to many Americans ‘socialism’ means anything they don’t like. In historical reality, socialism was invented in Dorset, England, as a philosophy to protect individuals by providing justice for all individuals in all stations of life (from peasant to King) while avoiding the horrors of the French Revolution. That valuing of the differences between people is a hallmark of what it means to be British, and it can be seen in the support for our Queen from all sections of society (which is not to say we don’t have republicans – we do – but those individuals are entitled to promote their ideas, too).
Richard
Colorado to Richard: “The hard truth is that you as a foreigner may come to understand and appreciate our founding system better than many of my fellow Americans who will ultimately decide the fate of our country.”
I’d bet my home this statement is already true!
Thanks Tom, Colorado, Gunga and Gail for the excellent description of our system and the events that have allowed our government to achieve regulatory control over the gas integral to respiration of humans and animals. While the first step is “bankrupting” coal plants, CO2 regulation permits control of literally every aspect of our lives from family size (2 and 4-legged) to food and housing choices.
For a statist, CO2 regulation is nothing less than eventual checkmate. And the whole charade teeters precariously on CAGW…
Is CET measuring the temperature for the entire country like the BEST dataset?
richardscourtney: socialism was invented in Dorset, England. Be proud. The best known form of it was a National Socialism, developed in Germany and in power 1933 – 1945.
to richardscourtney
richard,
One additional point on the subject of the U S Constitution. The Constitution is written from the perspective that the people start off with all the rights and that the people, seeing the necessity for a government, grant the government certain restricted powers in order to function for the benefit of the people. Those powers are spelled out in the Constitution. It always makes me very angry when I hear politicians and news people speaking just the opposite, that the people only have rights granted by the Constitution. Now, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution not as a starting point but as an extra measure of certainty for specific rights that the Founders believed were the reasons for the revolution in the first place. History shows that there was a bitter fight over including the Bill of Rights, one side claiming it could be misconstrued as the Constitution granting rights to people and the other side insisting the extra safeguards were needed as all governments eventually take away rights from the people. A compromise was reached by including within the Bill of Rights both the 9th and 10th Amendments.
9th: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
10th: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The 10th clearly states that if the Constitution has not delegated a power to the federal government, then the federal government does not have that power. Alas, the 10th Amendment is the most abused and disregarded of all our safeguards.
And lastly, I have said this before, the United States is not a Country but rather the United States are a Country. The States are individual entities loosely combined to promote unity among themselves. That is the Jeffersonian and States Rights point of view, to which I subscribe. The other view, based on Alexander Hamilton’s reasoning, was that a strong central government was needed to control national economics for the benefit of all the people Our government has been a compromise of both ideologies ever since the beginning, with the advocates of a strong central government clearly prevailing in the last century.
Curious George:
Your post at February 6, 2014 at 11:52 am says
Really?
I suppose then that the best known form of democracy was developed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
And,yes, I am proud to be a socialist. But, clearly, I am not as proud as you are to demonstrate you are an idiot.
George, if you were more curious you would have found a clue. As it is, all you have demonstrated is that if your brains were dynamite then you would not have enough to blow your hat off.
Come back when you understand what you are blathering about.
Richard
Tom in Florida:
Thankyou for the additional information you provide to me at February 6, 2014 at 11:58 am.
It seems that the apparently great differences between our systems reflect some hidden similarities which perhaps may explain why both systems ‘work’.
In terms of ‘rights’ our system is top-down and yours is bottom-up but in both cases it seems to result in a working compromise.
Again, thankyou. Most educational.
Richard
RE: M Seward says:
February 5, 2014 at 10:47 pm
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As you are probably aware, there is something to the seeming stronger showing of the two Princes. The Spencer line brought with it a remnant of the old Carolingian line. 🙂
Presumably LORD Monckton will give up his Lordship if he is deemed to have lost the debate.
Pulseguy,
I would bet that Lord Monckton would make that wager — assuming that Charlie forfeits his Prince title should he lose the debate.
But of course, he wouldn’t. What would he do? Go on the dole?
Monckton is a successful businessman who doesn’t have to worry about that.
RE: richardscourtney says:
February 6, 2014 at 12:10 pm
And we can all thank the Magna Carta!
Mike Jonas wrote:
“…Loudoun is a Scottish earldom, do we have to go back to the Plantagenets? This inheritance thing is really rather tricky.”
The last Plantagenet was the nearest thing England ever had to a ‘good’ king. Betrayed by Lord Stanley (whose life he had previously spared) and then slaughtered and usurped by a Welshman of a bastard line, who was a murderer of children and a paranoid miser, Richard III was generous in victory and brave in defeat, a loving husband and a liberal king: he introduced the idea of bail for prisoners and protection for juries. When that old reprobate Shakespeare sneeringly wrote these lines for his perverted play ‘Richard III’ he was unwittingly writing what England had truly thought of him:
‘Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York’
I understand descendents live in Canada. If they’d like to get in touch….
Richardscourtney – A true conservative reaction Richard, and no less a rant than mine. We all have our values, and even the poor and less well educated are entitled to theirs. And who are you to deny them democratic rights equal to those you surely believe you have the necessary qualities to exercise.. Burke would have been proud of your remarks; Burns would have despised them. Thatcher would have loved them. JsMill would have respected your right to express them but would hardly have agreed with a word of them. Your position of course reveals your view of your fellow man: that most of us are not fit to wield a vote, and to the extent that we have a democratic system it must be compromised for our sakes by the largely hidden powers that serve vested, selfish and mainly exploitative interests. And what a puny viewpoint you’ve fastened yourself to: it’s founded on fear, insecurity and lack of respect for your fellow man. Seems we’re both AGW sceptics though: so here’s to truth, freedom and letting the people flourish, and standing firm against those who think they know what’s best for us . . . the climate establishment for a start.
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The problem with both systems (or any for that matter) is that there are people involved. “Human nature” is prone to be selfish and bend the rules for some personal gain, not always financial.
jim hogg:
I see you have provided another fatuous rant at February 6, 2014 at 12:43 pm which is as devoid of reason as your first failed attempt to post a rational thought.
The idea of ME supporting Thatcher is too funny for words!
And YOU are the one who has “a puny viewpoint you’ve fastened yourself to”. Indeed, I have spent much of my time on this thread trying to expand my “viewpoint” by seeking – and attempting to understand – views on government of our American cousins. Whereas you have made pointless rants. But you can take some consolation in that your posts failed to be as daft as the post from Curious George.
I shall ignore any more of your rubbish. None of it is worth the time or the bother to read.
Richard
Gunga Din:
re your post addressed to me at February 6, 2014 at 12:54 pm.
Yes, I agree. And that is why the Rule Of Law is an imperative under any system.
Richard