Guest opinion by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
University College, London, one of the constituent colleges of what was once a respectable and serious academic institution, has declared open, vicious war on academic freedom. In doing so, it has forfeited the right to be taken seriously as a seat of learning.
Last month Professor John Butterworth, the useless bureaucrat in charge of the College’s department of Physics and Astronomy, learned – no doubt via the coven of paid hacks who routinely menace vice-chancellors and heads of department at any university at which those of us who ask questions about “settled” science are scheduled to speak – that one of his faculty, Profess Athem Alsabti, had booked a lecture theatre for a conference on the forbidden topic of climate change on 8-9 September.
Did Professor Butterworth react as the Vice-Chancellor of Louisiana State University had reacted a couple of years ago when the Professor of Economics there had invited me to give a lecture to his faculty on mitigation economics, whereupon he, the Dean of his Faculty and the Vice-Chancellor had been subjected to weeks of threatening letters and phone calls from this poisonous, over-funded PR machine?
The Vice-Chancellor, after receiving one nasty threat too many, called in the Professor of Economics and said, “The last time I looked, this university was committed to academic freedom. The lecture is to go ahead. No doubt those on campus who disagree with Lord Monckton will feel free to attend his lecture and raise questions. That is how science advances. We hear both sides. We are proud to do so. Come one, come all!”
When I arrived down south to give my lecture, the Professor of Economics, hopping nervously from one foot to the other, said he had had the worst few weeks of his academic career. Yet he was delighted that his university was still one of the few that heard both sides of an academic discussion and not just the currently fashionable dogma. He was proud of his Vice-Chancellor, and rightly so.
The true-believers and freedom-haters, as they increasingly do, simply stayed away. None dared to turn up and ask what they hoped might be difficult questions. They now know they are in the wrong scientifically and still more in the wrong economically. Instead, those who came (it was a packed house) wanted to learn, and there were several intelligent and constructive questions after my lecture. Everyone had a good time.
Did Professor Butterworth stand up to the totalitarian bullies when they tried to do to his university what they had tried to do to Louisiana State and countless others? Um, no. This is what – to his eternal shame – he wrote to his distinguished academic colleague Professor Alsabti:
“It has been brought to my attention that you have booked a room at University College, London, for an external conference in September for a rather fringe group discussing aspects of climate science.
“If this event were to go ahead at UCL, it would generate a great deal of strong feeling, indeed it already has, as members of the UCL community are expressing concern to me that we are giving a platform to speakers who deny anthropogenic climate change while flying in the face of accepted scientific methods. I am sure you have no desire to bring UCL into disrepute, or to cause dissension in the UCL community, and I would encourage you to think about moving the event to a different venue, not on UCL premises.”
The same day, Professor Alsabti, who felt menaced and degraded by this shameless and unprincipled bullying and harassment on the part of a senior academic who should have known better, canceled the booking.
Now, who are the members of this “rather fringe group” that might have caused the “UCL community” to go into the corner, turn its back to the room, suck its thumb and blub?
They include not only Professor Alsabti but also Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, who has published more refereed papers on sea-level rise than Professor Butterworth has had hot dinners; Professor Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo, who publishes a widely-circulated monthly data update on global temperatures and related matters; Professor Jan-Erik Solheim of Norway; members of the Swedish Polar Institute, of the Asociacion Rural de Paraguay; of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, of the U.S. Geological Survey; of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the former president of the Italian National Research Council; the Professor of Paleobotany at the Sapienza University, Rome; a world-leading physicist from the François Rabelais University in Tours; an analytical expert from the Laboratoire Analyse at the University of Paris; the brother of the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the House of Commons; dozens of doctors of science; and a sprinkling of IPCC expert reviewers, including your humble servant.
If this is a “rather fringe group”, then the academic mainstream must – as many of us have long suspected – have been reduced to a thin, dreich, terrified, narrow, narrow-minded, insignificant trickle, confined deep within the gloomy and inspissate canyon of its own no doubt profitable but increasingly discredited prejudice.
Will Professor Butterworth ever pay heed to the inexorably-growing evidence that the world is warming at a rate many times below the central estimate predicted with “substantial confidence” by IPCC in 1990? That temperature feedbacks are net-negative? That the CO2 radiative forcing has been overestimated? That the Sun has something to do with the climate, while CO2 has little to do with it? That sea level is barely rising? That global ice loss is barely significant? That hurricanes hardly ever happen? That droughts are declining? That the cost of mitigation today is orders of magnitude greater than that of adaptation the day after tomorrow? That tens if not hundreds of millions have died because the billions of dollars that could and should have been spent on building coal-fired power stations to give them life-saving electricity have instead been squandered on lavish taxpayer subsidies to ineffectual, muddle-minded, academic profiteers of doom, and to the installation of over-priced 13th-century solutions to an overstated 21st-century non-problem?
For as long as places like University College, London, are allowed to gobble up taxpayers’ largesse unsupervised and unscrutinized, they will continue to think it acceptable to bully and harass innocent colleagues. Professor Butterworth owes Professor Alsabti an abject apology.
Well, the London Climate Conference is going ahead notwithstanding Professor Butterworth’s intolerant and menacing attempt to stop us. It will begin at 9.00 am sharp on 8 September and 9 September 2016. Come to the Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. This will be the most high-powered academic conference on the climate question ever to have been held in Britain, and arguably in Europe too.
Will you hear some things you are likely to disagree with? Almost certainly. Though my own presentations will be concerned strictly with mainstream science, as will nearly all of the presentations by the distinguished contributors to the conference, there will of course be some ideas that are not yet accepted, for they are too new.
How much more valuable is our open-minded approach than that of a recent climate conference that I attended in the Mathematics Department at Cambridge University, my alma mater? Nothing but regurgitated pap from IPCC. None of those present, except the handful of skeptics who got in, raised any of the scientific questions that would have been raised by active, enquiring minds in my day at the university.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity of giving a blackboard seminar on the mathematics of climate sensitivity to two of the world’s foremost mathematical logicians the following day. One found the seminar “extremely interesting”. The other, as I was reaching for the duster to wipe off the equations with which I had covered the blackboard, said, “No, no: please leave them. I want to think about this, and I want the president of the faculty to see it.”
Despite all that the totalitarians have tried to do, there are still some open minds in powerful academic positions. It is they, not the likes of the forgettable Professor Butterworth, who will carry the torch of truth to coming generations, whether the current establishment likes it or not.
The more of you come to the conference, the more you will send a clear message to academe that the money is about to run out. I have already written to the Universities Funding Council and to the official scrutineering body for universities to invite them to investigate this serious incident of professional misconduct, and to invite them to remove the Provost of the college for failing to reply to correspondence from us. No doubt he was too embarrassed.
They will do nothing, of course. But in the end, if we keep the pressure up, as the ever-widening discrepancy between prediction and observation becomes impossible to conceal, they will eventually realize that money spent on making global warming go away is money entirely wasted, and they will find something else to waste it on.
It will be an excellent conference. Be there or be square!
The conference volume of extended abstracts is available at:
Update: Link expired, here is a direct download link: london-conference-volume (PDF)
Note: While I carry this story on WUWT for informational purposes, that should in no way imply that I endorse the topics of the conference itself or the speakers – Anthony Watts
UPDATE: Professor Butterworth has penned a response here: https://lifeandphysics.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/for-the-record/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
this link works
https://geoethic.com/london-conference-2016/
Thanks Leo
I still find nothing on the Conway Hall site to indicate the event.
…it would generate a great deal of strong feeling…
Good grief, we can’t have that, now can we? But perhaps if enough of this so-generated “strong feeling” were to be bottled and used to heat our homes and power our cars, the carbon foot print of the seminar would be reduced?
(snark)
Their mistake was putting a big fat target on their foreheads from the get-go.
We have to be smarter people!
They should have named the group something innocuous like “Students for Atmospheric Studies” and called the meeting something undecipherable like “The impact of rare atmospheric gasses on rates of change of quantitative thermodynamic measurements.”
Then they should have picked a date for the meeting, and publicly announced it would happen two weeks later than scheduled, and change the meeting date three times. Before anyone caught on, the meeting will have been had.
This is how the Democratic lawmakers in Annapolis, MD ply their dirty craft, so why not take a page from their playbook?
Because it is crooked and immoral?
“… members of the UCL community are expressing concern to me that we are giving a platform to speakers who deny anthropogenic climate change while flying in the face of accepted scientific methods.”
Last I heard the scientific community was expressing 95% confidence in the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Professor Butterworth thinks the 5% of doubt shouldn’t be expressed on University premises.Yet UCL staff members worked on the very IPCC report which admitted a 5% doubt. Should they be sacked?
Two thoughts: 1) Appeals to authority are so scientific; and 2) They had to lie about an already biased survey to get that percentage.
Chris: I read part of your noble friend Matt Ridley’s piece in the GWPF today. I had a great deal of difficulty thinking of him as ‘one of us’. Please, can you persuade him NOT to talk about CO2 as ‘carbon’; NOT to talk about bending the knee to AGW/Climate Change; and NOT to talk about ‘carbon budgets’ as a means of defining the benefits of gas (fracked? I hope) over Nuclear?
As far as I am concerned the hypothesis that the trace gas of miniscule man-made CO2 is causing the globe to fry has NOT been proven. Matt gives comfort to the enemy by playing on their ground. Far better to make them come to your ground to fight. Sounds like you might have achieved this by telling UCL where to get off (I much prefer Steyn’s response to Mann – and that should have been the response to Butterworth) so I hope the conference at Conway Hall is a success. But let there be no talk of ‘Carbon’.
I would go one further. The chances of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming are miniscule.
If we say the CAGW case is not proven, we are admitting that it could possibly happen. We shouldn’t do that.
Ok this might be an entirely American response to a bully; but the words ‘sod off’ are English aren’t they?
So a bully has decided what is right and fair….hmmm…how does that play into his psychology research?
One of my friends refused to rent a university facility to a group. This was before Facebook and Twitter. He received phoned death threats from all over the continent. I would say that he still bears the scars. As far as I can tell, it was the nastiest thing that ever happened to him. Some of these so-called social justice warriors are really really vile. I feel sorry for anyone who becomes their target.
I nominate Butterworth for this years Tommaso Caccini award.
As an alumnus of UCL I am surprised and disappointed. The founder of UCL Jeremy Bentham – whose mummified body is kept on the premises – was a famous rationalist who would not have liked to be linked with this no-platforming nonsense. No science is “settled” for all time, especially when its key predictions are not replicated by what actually happens. Why that has happened to climate science is a legitimate area for serious enquiry. Bad decision, UCL
I see an academic bearing the smouldering torch of ignorance and trying to set fire to piles of books written by famous skeptics.
I really don’t like the word “skeptic” any more.
Skeptic is much better than the word “denier”.
“Skeptical” is an implied qualifier for the word “scientist”. You cannot be a scientists without being skeptical, i.e., a “skeptic”.
I’m a supporter of Chris Monkton and passionate skeptic of CAGW. However I took a look at the program of this conference and its horrible. I’m afraid Butterworth is right that this is fringe science. Discredited ideas about strong forcing of climate by planetary orbits are given prominence. Worse, there is a platform for electric universe quasi-religious nonsense.
Worst of all is the oral presentation by Oliver Manuel, an obsessive thread-bomber and pseudoscientific charlatan. The subject of his scepticism is not CO2 and global warming, but the – apparently flawed – notion that the bright yellow thing in the sky is a sun. Oh no – Dr Manuel corrects this myth for us by explaining that it is instead a “clothed neutron star”. The delusional Oliver has been repeatedly banned from WUWT. Now he is preaching his neutron gospel in this climate anti-conference. This is an appalling misjudgment by tallbloke and the conference committee. It would be less damaging to credibility to headline Rupert Sheldrake and the conscious universe, than Manuel’s wretched drivel.
And the name “New Dawn of Truth” and accompanying logo would make me if I attended feel very uneasy as if I were being lured into a religious cult.
Sorry but count me out, go Butterworth!
The issue with Oliver K. Manuel goes far beyond thread bombing (for which he was banned at WUWT). I’m surprised anyone speaking there would not have noticed this as it has been public knowledge for quite some time.
I’ve added a note to the body of the post stating that carrying this story at WUWT does not equate to my endorsement of the conference topics or the speakers.
What an incendiary revelation!
Surely the organisers of this event cannot allow the current line-up to stand without prompt action. They would be leaving themselves wide open to ridicule – something to be avoided at all costs.
Mr Manuel will not, of course, be attending the conference in person.
As the head posting makes clear, there will be some ideas presented at the conference that are not mainstream, though my own presentation will be mainstream science, as will the presentations of the overwhelming majority of participants. But Professor Moerner, the organizer, and a world authority on sea level, believes that the ever more elaborate intolerant filtering of ideas before they are given a chance to be fairly heard is dangerous, so he has invited some who, though not in the mainstream, should in his opinion be given the chance to have their ideas tested before an eminent academic audience.
I think it likely that some of these ideas, on being exposed to a properly qualified audience giving them a fair hearing for the first time, will be finally disposed of as being unacceptably bad. Others, perhaps not. But most of us will be presenting science that fully respects the scientific method, and on this topic to do such a thing in the England of today, which possesses the most scientifically illiterate establishment since the Middle Ages, takes more than a little courage.
All he seems to do is thread bomb is own blog as well. I won’t post the link, people can find it if they want.
it’s too late, luc- the damage is done.
hotwhopper won’t have to spin this one at all.
but it could be worse – somebody might try to peddle excuses.
i fear the rule of holes is about to get shredded.
Thanks Anthony. I should clarify that several of the presentations are first class, but some really should not have been included. There must be rigorous scrutiny of all climate theories, CO2 or otherwise. Perhaps a better name for the conference would have been “The good, the bad and the ugly” /sarc
It’s important that the papers presented should be first class, but excluding the ones we don’t agree with is getting into dangerous territory. That’s what the other side does. Don’t we believe in freedom of ideas and debate? If someone presents something that is flawed, then the questions after the presentation will expose the problems. We should be open to any ideas. It’s science.
Richard – you write:
“If someone presents something that is flawed, then the questions after the presentation will expose the problems. We should be open to any ideas. It’s science”
Well, lots of people have exposed the flaws in previous presentations by all the speakers at this conference…
In the interests of open ideas and science, here are just 2 examples:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Nils-Axel-Morner-wrong-about-sea-level-rise.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/simply-wrong-solheim-hansen-88.html
and if you are going to have a pop at the source, I can find other citations of the problems – I merely pick a source with short summary of the issues
Monckton of Brenchley August 1, 2016 at 10:21 pm
Mr Manuel will not, of course, be attending the conference in person.
… Professor Moerner, the organizer, and a world authority on sea level, believes that the ever more elaborate intolerant filtering of ideas before they are given a chance to be fairly heard is dangerous, ….
Precisely. We put up – somewhat – with obsessives like Dr. Manuel because even a stopped clock is sometimes right.
Is Gill Sans banned too?
wow.
butterworth has reason.
i fell for monckton’s line cuz of his good rep.
thanks, ptolemy2, for disabusing me of that false notion.
Mr Monckton is one of the organizers of this event for those who don’t know.
Professor Butterworth has no reason for threatening his academic colleague other than a totalitarian desire to suppress scientific research on the climate question with which his paymasters disagree.
The great majority of the presentations at the conference will be mainstream science, but Professor Moerner is not as intolerant of free speech as the true-believers. He will allow a small number of alternative voices to be heard. By doing so, he is demonstrating that, on our side of the debate, academic freedom still thrives. That freedom has always included the freedom to put forward bad hypotheses. Some of those hypotheses will die a well-deserved death at the London conference, but at least those offering them will have know that they have had a fair hearing from a learned audience of open minds.
Like it or not, that is how science should be done. If even the sceptical side of the debate will not give a platform to new ideas, good or bad, what hope is there for a restoration of the scientific method? That method works not by rejecting uncongenial hypotheses a priori, but by letting them be heard and then, and only then, dismissing them if they are found wanting.
What exactly was the threat again? Can you quote that bit?
Monckton said: “That method works not by rejecting uncongenial hypotheses a priori, but by letting them be heard and then, and only then, dismissing them if they are found wanting.”
Well, if you end up having to remove Manuel from the lineup, I can fill his spot with my report on the physical properties of unicorns and their effect on climate.
“I would encourage you to think about moving the event to a different venue, not on UCL premises.””
i honestly do not understand how this can be characterized as
“threatening his academic colleague ”
as for the motive ‘a totalitarian desire to suppress scientific research on the climate question with which his paymasters disagree.”
that is not self evident nor is evidence adduced in the the jeremiad to support the attribution of this intention.
regardless, intentions are not a legitimate basis for any claim of damage and there certainly appears to be ample valid justification for wanting to avoid association with the event.
it looks like somebody failed to perform due diligence.
the proper thing is to acknowledge the error and rectify it.
(to deny or persist in error is a separate error and may be worse than the original error.)
ask macgregor about his goat. reputation is what you make it.
this is just how it looks to me, without full knowledge of the matter. i’m not prosecuting a case; but everybody forms a judgement. anybody with a system of values does that.
The question of academic interference still remains. Would Butterworth ban showings of “An Inconvienient Truth” on campus, or worse, an appearance by Al Gore himself who can inform us of the benefits of geothermal heat since the interior of the earth is several million degrees “hot”?
Academic freedom applies even if you think the ideas are preposterous.
If people are going to challenge the standard model of CAGW then they need to have a science based approach
Posting articles on every theory which contradicts that standard model is not good enough – you have to eliminate the contradictory, plain impossible and frankly nutty. They can’t all be right.
when there’s (for example) a Steve Goddard posting nonsense, you need to point it out…
You need not to associate with fringe, non-mainstream or (as I call it) made up science.
Mockton’s credibility has gone down another notch – and his rather over emotional response to venue change doesn’t help.
That’s a more reasonable wording of things than I could manage for this situation.
At present I am writing a paper on the philosophy of science. I am taking pointy-headed theories about a flat Earth, about alien gods building the Great Pyramid and about the climate as illustrations of what I call extramural or off-the-wall hypotheses that flourish precisely because small minds reject them a priori without ever troubling to argue against their nionsense.
No doubt Griff will say, Oh, look at Monckton, he’s examining flat-earth theories now. His credibility has gone down another notch.
But it is precisely because bad ideas have been driven underground by rejection a priori rather than by pointing out their fatal defects that so many people, in what is supposed to be an age of science, will believe six impossible things before breakfast, creating an environment of goofiness in which ludicrous ideas such as global warming extremism can flourish because we have got out of the habit of bothering to listen to nonsense and then oppose it.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
“But it is precisely because bad ideas have been driven underground by rejection a priori rather than by pointing out their fatal defects that so many people, in what is supposed to be an age of science, will believe six impossible things before breakfast, creating an environment of goofiness in which ludicrous ideas such as global warming extremism can flourish because we have got out of the habit of bothering to listen to nonsense and then oppose it.”
Amen
I confess that your current theories do seem to me to be the equivalent of flat earth theories….
In that like ‘flat earthers’ you are driven first by conviction/belief that the world works in a particular way, then set out to prove it so, rather than proceeding from observation.
Griff:
We do need a science based approach. However, the standard model is not an example of one.
“If people are going to challenge the standard model of CAGW then they need to have a science based approach”
Child, you wouldn’t recognise a science-based approach if it scuttled under your noisome, slimy bridge, leapt up, and sank its teeth into your snout.
Stick to Cook the (failed) cartoonist and Loopy Lew Lewandowsky’s UnSkeptical NonScience, that’s about your level.
@Phil Salmon:
“I should clarify that several of the presentations are first class, but some really should not have been included. There must be rigorous scrutiny of all climate theories, CO2 or otherwise. ”
I’m sorry but that is nothing more than a form of censorship.
We’ve all been to conferences that have outliers. I’m going to one next week and there are a few lectures and discussions that I don’t feel belong in this particular conference–but that is my opinion. I may choose to not attend those, but I don’t rate my willingness to go based upon the few lectures and discussions I won’t be attending anyway. There are also some questionable speakers that have been known to be absolutely wrong–but they are there as well and have a platform upon which they can expand on their wrongness if they so desire. This conference being held in a free society means I can choose to not listen to them and move on with my day of activities. Or I can choose to listen to them and congratulate myself on how right I am and how wrong they are…the point is I have an opportunity to do either because they are allowed to be there.
Blanket censorship like what you describe is a slippery slope.
Mockton’s credibility has gone up yet another notch for encouraging new or wacky ideas to be scrutinized; that’s how science advances.
The word “skeptic” implies that we’re uneducated and unlettered with no bearing or value.
I believe we need a new name.
I can’t imagine any valid reason for that implication. What evidence do you have for it? The first definition is “a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.” No definition of skeptic implies lack of education in any way.
I don’t think so. It is a good name, an accurate name. (So good, in fact, that the alarmists have tried to appropriate it for themselves.)
The “Other Side”, increasingly desperate — in the PR & Mktg Wars — to portray *Us* in the most -ve light, will seize on anything to advantage their cause. If I were on of *Them*, I’d seize on “Skeptic” so as to portray it in THE MOST PEJORATIVE TERMS, as in “Skeptics = Neanderthals”
No surprise that *they* have presented *us* as ‘uneducated and unlettered with no bearing or value’.
The best response I can think of — after a coupla glasses of wine! — is: For every finger you point at us, 3 fingers are pointing at you!
Reinforced by the quality of WUWT opinion, I reckon we have nothing but good to bring to the debate, and let;’s fly “SKEPTIC!” RIGHT IN THEIR FACES until reason prevails.
I always considered myself a “climate realist”. When data of sufficient quality to not need “adjustments” and of long enough duration (if they start now that will be one hundred years after I’m gone! – and I plan on living for a good while yet.) that all the natural ocean cycles can be fully characterized, then I will believe what the data tells me. What we have now is conjecture and political power plays clothed in a thin veneer of sciency-sounding gibberish.
The Lord is right to include these fringe elements after all that’s what we are to the likes of Mann and co .
Hold your conference, make your presentation and win the arguments. Not by shutting down opposite views but by placing the facts before the world and letting them speak louder than any baying mob. You’re winning Lord M.
I love it when you name names.
Butterworth deserves an Astronomy lesson on climate change driven by the planetary ordering of solar activity, but sadly Mörner, Scafetta, and Tattersall et al have nothing empirical or definitive to offer.
Don’t underestimate the scientific credentials of such giants as Professor Moerner. And don’t be intolerant of implausible-sounding ideas a priori. Tharpt is the hallmark of the small mind.
“And don’t be intolerant of implausible-sounding ideas a priori.”
Very presumptive, being my field I have given their work intense scrutiny.
“Don’t underestimate the scientific credentials of such giants as Professor Moerner.”
Well pardon me your Lordship, but I grew up with a Mother who often had more common sense and reason than the credentialed giant of my Father who was head of UK guided weapons in the 1960’s, he loved theorising, but observations always trump theories.
So lets have a look at Mörner’s theory:
“By about 2030-2040, the Sun will experience a new grand solar minimum. This is evident from multiple studies of quite different characteristics: the phasing of sunspot cycles, the cyclic observations of North Atlantic behaviour over the past millennium..”
http://file.scirp.org/pdf/NS_2015111916552083.pdf
Well blow me down, he simply failed to notice that the AMO was warm during the last solar minimum in the late 1800’s, the Gleissberg Minimum. You see, during solar minima, negative North Atlantic Oscillation states increase, and that can only mean a warm AMO. So Mörner has the phase relationship between the AMO and solar activity the complete reverse of what is observed.
The error arises from the assumption that a smaller sunspot cycle in the 1970’s was related to the 1970’s surface cooling. When the rational explanation is that stronger solar wind forced a positive North Atlantic Oscillation regime, driving a cold a AMO and Arctic, and increased La Nina, and that also explains the AMO and Arctic warming since the mid 1990’s, i.e. since the solar wind has weakened.
As for the 2030-2040 date for a new grand solar minimum, it makes no sense from the normal periodicity of solar minima, let alone that we have already entered a solar minimum, and it is obviously based on his misunderstanding of what drives a cold North Atlantic.
I think backslapping due to credentials is the hallmark of the small mind.
‘That is the hallmark of the small mind’. Hear, hear. Sadly, there are many small minds on this site.
I love this Shakespeare quote (from King Lear)
I am sorry that I will not be able to attend this excellent conference.
By the way I think you made a spelling mistake: “Nothing but regurgitated pap from IPCC”.
I think it should be cr@p
“I am sorry that I will not be able to attend this excellent conference.”
But if you don’t go, how will you learn about the electric universe, and how our sun is a clothed neutron star, and a bunch of other brilliant ideas that are just too “new” to be accepted!
I was interested in that last one. Apparently the sun’s rocky mantle is hiding a neutron star
according to a “keynote speaker”. Not to mention the fact that looking at the presentations
there appears to be multiple contradictory explanations of climate variability, El Niño etc.
El Niño is apparently cause by either changes in the length of the day of the order of milliseconds
or by lunar gravitational pulses.
If you wanted to gather together a group of fools to make climate sceptics look bad you would have to look hard to find a better bunch.
Geronimo displays the true-believer’s lamentable ignorance of mainstream planetary physics in imagining that small variations in the Earth’s rate of rotation cannot have major effects on climate. After all, an alteration of 1 part in 10,000 in the atmospheric composition is supposed to make the planet fry. He may care to read any standard textbook on sea level, or on chaos theory.
Bowling alley would have been jolly good! More lively. Better facilities. Beers and nibbles. And Bowling Physics! 😀
Ref.
http://www.real-world-physics-problems.com/physics-of-bowling.html
I worry what else Prof Butternut tries to silence at a ?
Skeptic is just another name for those that believe in the scientific method .
Butternut tries to use his little perch and unnamed reference to others as a means to discourage legitimate discussion by people who are not afraid to acknowledge the complex uncertainties within a developing branch of science .
Better to be part of a ” rather fringe group ” than being a close minded chicken shit academic .
It’s becoming bleeding obvious everywhere when you fill Sandstones with weak minds-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/work/easier-access-to-university-has-devalued-degrees-created-huge-debt-and-made-some-feel-like-failures/news-story/fab0ca689eb920620d9b047fb5d64cb4
And, what exactly was the threat from UCL? Can’t seem to find that bit in Moncktons rant. Who was threatened, and with what?
The threat was to cancel his speaking engagement, because they weren’t going to give charlatans a platform.
Don’t whine. The threat is quite clear in Butterworth’s disreputable email. As others here have pointed out, in other jurisdictions he would have been found guilty of hate speech.
“As others here have pointed out, in other jurisdictions he would have been found guilty of hate speech.”
Lol, that was one guy, who didn’t even get the web address of the organization he belongs to right.
Regardless, if there was a threat made, you should be able to explain what consequences the person was threatened with. Should only take a couple of words to explain.
” in other jurisdictions he would have been found guilty of hate speech”
omfg – are you freakin serial?
so that lavender image is the terrible swift sword of the social justice worrier?
fatuous! fatuous! fatuous!
gonna cry about ‘fatuous shaming’ next?
the hole you dug is past 6 ft deep now and more than adequate.
gonna add caitlyn to the roster of speakers next? or are you subtly nanogressing the gender fluid explanation of global worming?
david icke? shouldn’t you shame a university into supporting a convention of reptilian climate change scientists?
how about lobsang rampa?
ooh! you gotta get carlos castaneda – he’s got a real degree, even.
this has now gone beyond farce into indefensible regions of character definition.
epic fail.
[???? Perhaps others can figure this one out. .mod]
Academia and much of government at every level is choke full of Pinocchios and there is nothing that can be done about it.
However it came to be doesn’t matter much now.
The lying pigs have taken over too many things.
To John Knight … WELL argued, sir! [Your responses to Duncan and Harmsworth]
Thank you Stephan . . almost missed your generous words down here ; )
“over-priced 13th-century solutions to an overstated 21st-century non-problem?”
Nice description. Of course, windmills are far more ancient than 13th Century (Hero of Alexandria, Middle East) but vertical windmills do seem to have come into operation around the 12th or 13th Centuries.
Odd. I have just checked the programme for September. No mention of this conference.
https://conwayhall.org.uk/events/2016-09/