By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The ever-wonderful Joanne Nova has been in touch from Australia. She has brilliantly redesigned the front page of Nature. It was so well done that when I saw it my first instinct was that it was genuine, and I went straight on to the web to find more details of Nature’s story on “Blacklisted scientists you must ignore”.
Satirizing Nature’s Blacklist from Jo Nova
Meanwhile, one of the many eminent scientists on the widely-circulated Nature Communications hate-list has sent me a copy of his own complaint to that “learned” journal. He writes:
“On 13 August 2019, three UC Merced faculty, AM Peterson, EM Vincent and AL Westerling, published a paper in Nature Communications. The paper refers to ‘climate contrarians’, a pejorative term. Your university put out a press release, referring to ‘deniers’, a term referencing those who question the historical validity of the Holocaust.
“I do not doubt that the Holocaust happened. I was one of the first to show that climate change is real and human-made. I have contributed to several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and I have advised climate policy formation and design in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the United States of America.
“I was therefore surprised that your colleagues labelled me a ‘contrarian’ and a ‘denier’.
“The authors, employees of UC Merced, (a) collected data about me without my permission; and (b) disseminated said data without anonymization.
“I also believe that (c) the use of pejorative terms violated your code of ethics.
“I hereby raise a complaint about (a), (b) and (c).”
In a further email, the complainant points out, most helpfully, that the collection of data about anyone without permission and the dissemination of that data without anonymization are offences under the Data Protection Act 2018. I shall certainly make good use of that information, for Nature Communications is published in London, though the publisher is headquartered in Berlin.
The complainant explains that the 2018 Act implements the Directive of our unelected SU masters on General Data Protection and that, therefore, German has an Act similar to the British legislation.
We now have a lawyer advising us, so that, in the event that Nature Communications and the “University” of California at Merced fail to reply substantively or at all to our letters of complaint, the police and other authorities will be informed and the suits for fraud, libel, breach of right of privacy and breach of data protection law will be lodged.
On rereading the outrageously libellous press release touting the purported “study” and issued by the “University”, I have written to the author of the press release, with a copy to the Chancellor ad interim, as follows:
Madame,
Notice of intended prosecution: Fraud and libel by you
My attention has been drawn to a fraudulent, libellous press release written and widely circulated by you, and posted by you under your name on the website of the “University” of California at Merced. The press release was circulated by you to the following among others: The Straits Times, Yahoo.com, French newswire, Newsweek, Hurriyet (Turkey), The World News Net, msn.com, Spacedaily.com, japantoday.com, flipboardcom, the Brussels Times, Malaysia News, Today (Lithuania), thenews.com, Egyptindependent.com, desmog.co.uk, The Daily Star (Liberia), The Business Times, Agence France Presse, Foodevolution.com, phys.org, 24matins.uk, jen.jiji.com, The Youth Times, goldrushcam.com, Cosmos Magazine, Yahoo News Australia, etc., etc., etc.
In the offending press release, you have described me and many other climate researchers who disagree with you on the question of global warming, and whose names were listed in the material linked to the press release, as “climate change deniers”. This term, with its deliberate and malicious overtone of pejorative comparison with Holocaust denial, is repeated at least five times in your press release – an indication of the extent and depth of your malice.
You also describe us as people who “dismiss climate change”, have a “legitimacy they haven’t earned” and “lack scientific training”, as “a relative handful of non-experts”, as “not scientists”, as having “very thin credentials”, as “not in the same league with top scientists, as “not even in the league of the average career climate scientist”, as “spreading misinformation” or “amplified misinformation” (the latter term being prominent and in color in a large, emboldened subheading, and then repeated later in the text), as “not accepting the results of climate science”, as having “biased judgments … even when faced with documented facts”, as prone to “political cues, ideological biases, cultural worldviews and even personal weather experiences”, as saying “climate change doesn’t exist”, as advancing “not a credible argument or a means of balancing”, as guilty of “false balance” and “disinformation”, as “climate contrarians”, as guilty of “acute misrepresentation of information aimed at misleading the public for political gain” and of “widespread disinformation efforts”, as implicitly involved in “a well-financed propaganda campaign on behalf of conservative fossil fuel interests”, as “non-experts presiding over scientific discourse”, and as “counterpoints to legitimate, experienced and disciplined climate scientists” who are “given a measure of credibility they do not deserve”.
By this letter I give notice that, subject to anything you may say within the next seven days, I propose to report you for fraud to the prosecuting authorities in the United Kingdom, where your press release has been widely circulated, in the United States, where you perpetrated your fraud, and internationally to Interpol. I wrote yesterday to the Chancellor of your institution, drawing his attention to the lies and misrepresentations in your press release and inviting him to withdraw it. I now make the same request to you, for we hold you personally no less responsible than the Chancellor of your “university” for the words you have written.
You should be aware that, following a letter from me yesterday to Nature Communications, the “learned” journal in which the “peer-reviewed” “research” “study” that is the subject of your press release was published, that journal has removed all reference to the offending purported “study” from its homepage and has added to the page containing the purported “study” a paragraph indicating that it is investigating “a number of criticisms related to this work”, and has removed altogether the list of names of the alleged “deniers”, including my name. A facsimile of that paragraph, from the journal’s website, is below:
I should be grateful if you would forthwith arrange for the prominent link from the “university’s” homepage to the offending press release to be removed, and for the press release either to be removed or amended to take not of the fact that the editors of the journal in which the offending purported “study” was published are investigating our criticisms of it.
I should also be grateful if, within seven days, you would publish on the website of your “university” an apology, retraction and undertaking not to repeat the libels, giving it prominence no less than that which you gave to the offending press release, and circulating it no less widely. Otherwise, you will be reported as an accomplice to this elaborate conspiracy to defraud, as mentioned above, and I may without further notice issue proceedings for libel.
A copy of this letter goes to the chancellor ad interim, who has not yet replied to my letter to him. I should warn you – and him – that the courts regard failure to reply to a letter before action such as this as reprehensible.
Yours faithfully,
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Glad to see you threatening legal action in the US as well as the UK.
The prospect of defending themselves on two continents should get their attention!
Lord Monckton, thank you standing up to the enviro-nazis. If they get their way, the cost of electricity will skyrocket and the mass of people on society’s fringe will suffer needlessly. Many will die. Needlessly.
This is always the end result of unbridled leftism – mass misery and mass death. The injection of leftist ideology into science will ultimately result in the wholesale slaughter of millions, perhaps billions, unless said ideology is not exposed and vociferously opposed. I firmly believe this is the whole point of climate change alarmism – to reduce the human population to “sustainable” levels and rid the earth of “deplorables” – like me.
Um…the cost of electricity in many places has long since skyrocketed.
The fact that in many places it has gone down is proof that the increase is 100% attributable to climate alarmist and the attendant taxation, fraud, and insanity, which has accompanied it.
I think it is about time that this scam of AGW (which it undoubtedly is) is political not scientific. If it was scientific then logical argument, not name-calling, would be the way to settle the issue. I think the way forward to put AGW in the same bed as global cooling in the 1970’s and vaccination causing brain damage to children is to crowd-fund a full and independent investigation. I don’t know how or if it could be done but what is factual is that the means of combating ‘climate change’ using archaic, unpredictable and unreliable methods of energy production to my mind is the evidence that it is political. If it is not what is the matter with nuclear power from thorium? The technology has existed since he 1940’s it is clean, safe (a thorium reactor cannot go critical) and will produce cheap and reliable energy. Relying on power from the wind blowing from the right direction at the right speed and/or the sun shining and the ‘right’ phase of the moon appears to me to place the western powers in the same situation as the third-world; poor, hungry and miserable.
The alarmist zealots are fearful even of scientists who are dead for the “skeptics” hate list contains several names of people who are no longer with us. Sue them if you possibly can Lord Monckton in a court of law since a “court of science” does not exist. I am from the business world and if public company officials and employees behaved like these guys they would end up in jail.
To be succinct:
Lawsuit. Discovery. All emails between all parties involved in this publication.
The results might be most interesting.
“I was one of the first to show that climate change is real and human-made. I have contributed to several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and I have advised climate policy formation and design in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the United States of America.”
So, the “scientist” complaining about being labeled a contrarian is actually a Warmunist!
That quote surprised me. Other than Urban Heat what contribution has mankind made to Climate Change?
…three UC Merced faculty, AM Peterson, EM Vincent and AL Westerling, aka the “Larry, Curly, and Moe” faculty members…paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard….or maybe the three Monkeys…is turn about fair play?
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/380639813998-0-1/s-l1000.jpg
True comedic artists.
The Three Stooges are too. 🙂
“I was one of the first to show that climate change is real and human-made….”
Climate change occurs always, and the claim it is human made is too vague. Is it 100% human caused, or only 1%? No proof of either claim is demonstrated.
Run-a-way climate science ego…
I don’t know who it was quoted from in the main post, but in what way did they show it?
To be among the first to show that climate change is real, then one would have to be a contemporary of Louis Agassiz wouldn’t he or she? To claim otherwise is to ignore that original work and that of who knows how many geologists between then and now. And no one has produced any demonstration of how large the current changing climate is and what fraction is due to human influences. Most of us are convinced there is some, but could not cite a fraction or plus/minus value.
At breakfast I was speaking with my wife, who had not yet heard of Ms. Thunberg, and the first thing she said in response was, “What terrible exploitation.” She was even more appalled to learn about the Nature article. Many intelligent adults are not tuned into this news, and that probably makes the job of activists easier.
Modern media exploitation of children–a children’s crusade. Carbon offsets–indulgences. Nature’s list of deniers to ignore–lists of banned books. Child climate prophets–Joan of Arc. A week’s worth of climate hysteria news and it becomes indistinguishable from medieval religion. And moreover, if one listens to what issues from the mouths of the adolescent climate activists, it sounds exactly like what comes from the adults.
A full airing of what goes on in climate world each week ought to open people’s eyes.
Wrong thread, dude.
Reading comprehension Dude.
Don’t waste your time and money on a petty defamation lawsuit.
Let’s sue the climate alarmist institutions, the ones who have money and their financial sponsors, under USA Civil RICO. If we win, we get TRIPLE DAMAGES for the billions or trillions of dollars wasted by the US government due to false claims of global warming, wilder weather, etc.
Contact me through my website. We raise the funds by crowd funding, and hire a competent law firm.
This should have been done when I first proposed it – in 2013 or earlier.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/21/salmon-climate-and-accountability/#comment-1349527
[excerpt]
On Accountability:
I wrote this to a friend in the USA one year ago:
I am an engineer, not a lawyer, but to be clear I was thinking of a class action (or similar) lawsuit, rather than an individual lawsuit from yourself or anyone else.
I suggest that there have been many parties that have been damaged by global warming alarmism. Perhaps the most notable are people who have been forced to pay excessive rates for electricity due to CO2-mandated wind and solar power schemes. Would the people of California qualify? Any other states? I suggest the people of Great Britain, Germany and possibly even Ontario would qualify, but the USA is where this lawsuit would do the most good.
There is an interesting field of US law that employs the RICO (anti-racketeering) statutes to provide treble (triple) damages in civil cases. That might be a suitable approach.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Racketeering
This sounds good to me! Please see my comment currently 7th above yours.
Allan, you could add the hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars given to so-called “green” corporations, who not long after went bust (e.g. Solyndra, et al).
(Snipped) +10
The object should rightfully be to prove that there is financial fraud going on with the alarmist claims, and the threats and blacklisting that accompany these claims plays into protecting financial resources.
I’ve seen enough of what amounts to nothing but fraud by people whose sole purpose is financial gain, no matter that it costs other people extensively. With this climate scam that has gone on for so long, the blacklisting of people with opposing views, and denial of their right to publish those opposing views, smacks loudly of financial fraud. Look at how much the various “top” organizations take in, especially the UN’s climate panel.
Always follow the money. ALWAYS. And when money is involved people who want it/get it will do anything, including trying to ruin those with opposing views, period.
ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY.
Mr Macrae raises a most interesting possibility: that of using the RICO statute. Before we go there, I want to do one final piece of scientific research. A team working in parallel with ours has discovered that there is no radiative imbalance in the climate at present, which, given current estimates of net anthropogenic radiative forcing and of observed warming, implies that feedback response is zero or very close thereto.
If, therefore, there proves to be sound empirical confirmation of our theoretical conclusion that feedback response to greenhouse gases must be small, then the extremist predictions of future warming are indeed proven wrong, and we can push back quite vigorously via the criminal system against those entities that have fraudulently profiteered from their pretence that “the science is settled” when they have simply been wrong from the outset.
If the paper is inaccurate, why not write to the Editor of the journal and suggest that it be withdrawn immediately?
Because that has worked SO well in the past with alarmist papers.
P. Dean, it is not just inaccurate. It is malicious libel. It is a political screed doxing individuals. It is a violation of privacy laws. Being nice is not an option.
FYI. As a somewhat OC proofreader, here is a minor typo that struck my eye that detracted from the otherwise flawlessly written letter and characteristic prose style:
take not —> take note
“I should be grateful if you would forthwith arrange for the prominent link from the “university’s” homepage to the offending press release to be removed, and for the press release either to be removed or amended to take not of the fact that the editors of the journal in which the offending purported “study” was published are investigating our criticisms of it.”
Oops. I see this was already noted above (M. Broderick Aug, 17, 10:32).
You missed one:
Mark Broderick August 17, 2019 at 10:24 pm
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
“The complainant explains that the 2018 Act implements the Directive of our unelected SU masters on General Data Protection and that, therefore,
German(GermanY) ? has an Act similar to the British legislation.”🙂 Thanks.
Stretching . . .would SU be EU? I’m not familiar with the first abbreviation aside from what I just found on google.
My mistake: it should have read “EU”, not “SU”, though it is a Socialist Union and not a European one.
I am proud to be a contrarian and a denier.
Being a contrarian and not balling in step with the crowd has served me well throughout my life. It gives me time to look at the issues and come to a rational decision. Rarely the crowd turns out to be right but I know what the issues are.
And I deny a lot of things. I deny that the Earth is flat. I deny that the Earth was created only a few thousand years ago. And I deny CAGW (you need all four of exactly those letters, not some watered down version). And I deny them all for the same reason: I know science and none of them are scientific.
“Being a contrarian and not balling in step with the crowd”
You baller you!
I am pissed that I didn’t make the list. Haven’t they read my working paper on the greenhouse gas concentrations derived from ice cores?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3304901
James McCown,
Thank you for posting the link to your paper that assesses ice core data. I strongly concur with the statement in its Conclusions that says,
“Moreover, the issues of gradual bubble closure and gas diffusion through the ice ensures that the data are at best a weighted average of several years’ concentrations. Conducting unit root and cointegration tests with such data almost guarantees spurious results, as we have shown with our Monte Carlo simulations.”
I think your paper merits wider acknowledgement, and I hope my writing this will encourage people to use your link and to assess it for themselves.
Richard
I’ve just looked at the UC Merced website.
It certainly is “woke”.
https://es.ucmerced.edu/news/2019/media-creates-false-balance-climate-science-study-shows
The article in question is a massive appeal to authority. Seeing one of the authors (an assistant Professor, Petersen) specialises in “complexity and models of science”, the whole article might have more credibility if he were to address the variability between climate models and why they appear to universally run too hot.
Scientists who refer to this “inconvenient truth” are obviously contrarians and simply intellectually incapable of appreciating the academic pinnacle of climate science.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that the three authors are in fact true believers, and have no idea of that which they speak, and that which they have written about.
In other words, they have swallowed the entire steaming pile of malarkey, hook, line, and sinker.
I am all in favor of them getting a very sudden, complete, and rude education in the actual facts.
They still performed these actions and contrary to the leftist narrative they are responsible for those actions. What they knew or believed is immaterial. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
Yes, I agree that there is no excuse.
The question I was pondering comes down to more one of, is it possible the authors are malicious by dint of being incredibly gullible, ignorant, and lazy, rather than by dint of being outright liars and/or charlatans?
Also, some of each is a distinct possibility.
Neither excuses any of the offense they have given.
And as well, which is worse, the former or the latter, seems debatable.
Ignorance is no defense, although when it comes to the sentencing phase, disposition often is considered, and sometimes given considerable weight.
And besides for all of that, the underlying scientific and epistemological issues have no bearing on how or why they came to disregard privacy laws, or felt it was their right to commit libel against those with whom they disagree on such issues.
All I was getting at is that their own personal ignorance of the actual scientific questions and uncertainties, may have never even crossed their minds, such is the extent of the mass hysteria that has arisen within a wide academic and social echo chamber-like bubble.
There is a growing certainty that an awful lot of otherwise able minded people have, in the year 2019, lost a conservable portion of their wits.
To say it more plainly and using a popular vernacular: These folks done gone plumb loco.
Climate science has deteriorated to competing soap box corners in Hyde Park. Facts are no longer relevant, just clickbait accusations. Meanwhile the elite take money from the non-elite after convincing them it’s for their own good.
Lawsuits like this are like throwing sand into the gears of a machine. Slows ’em down, mostly. I think only three things can stop the madness: 1) a wintertime, major power outage that kills a lot of people or 2) a major war or recession that makes energy security or economic realism imperative, or 3) at least 10 years of falling global temperatures and Arctic/glacial ice growth.
The alarmists have to move out of positions of influence before the narratives can be reversed. Gore retire. Politicians retire. CEOs get replaced. Celebrities lose their fans. There are too many egos identified with their activism to have enough Road to Damascus moments to make a difference.
CO2 rising is a given. There should be some serious cognitive dissonance when it becomes clear the “victim” group of non-European cultural are determined to raise their emissions if life qualities need it. But the smart sensitive have an amazing ability to turn their eyes elsewhere (women’s rights, slavery, religious genocide, oceanic plastic pollution). Facts won’t be enough. There will have to be serious pain …. or serious falling temperatures (and the pain that comes with).
Contents of my email from several days ago:
Ms Anderson,
By now your communications are undoubtably clogged with this controversy. Briefly, as a CA taxpayer, why is this study still up? Retraction as prelude to apology is an obvious act to protect my interests. Having some familiarity with the topic and victims let me add a voice to the chorus of those urging to back off. As a taxpayer I would take a very dim view of UCM circling the wagons.
Regards,
[Rob_Dawg]
Xxx, CA
Parody:
UC Merdec Numpty: Hey, Generous Soul!
Generous Soul: What do you want, Mr. Numpty?
UCMN: We’re about to get sued. I figure we can do that thing
again where we stonewall and let it wither and die in the courts.
We need a little contingency set-aside, just in case we lose.
GS: No problem. What’s your exposure?
UCMN: About a million per plaintiff, if we lose.
GS: Got you covered. How many plaintiffs did you say?
UCMN: Three hundred and eighty six.
GS: Three hundred and eighty six? Wait a minute!
What did you do?
UCMN: We published a hit-piece naming 386 deniers–
GS: {dial tone}
There is something here that I think most of us are missing. They included people from their own side in the “Blacklist” and the error got through pal review.
If they can’t ever distinguish their own side from ours why should the public believe their climate data etc.
This may be a way to discredit their credibility. It should be thrown in their face on every occasion, in every forum.
michael
The simple fix to distinguish THEIR side from OUR side would be to require that ALL Climate Alarmists MUST wear a clown costume and wear a Tin Foil Hat while our side dress as we normally do. That way, their ACTUAL appearance would match their VIRTUAL appearance, and everyone would easily be able to distinguish between the two camps…the military created the precedent of uniforms a long time ago.
Einstein fled during the “only German science allowed” era of the brown shirts.
Einstein has a jewish background his fleeing had nothing to do with science, trying to misrepresent facts is bad no matter why it is done.
“We are moving into a new, controlled society worse than old totalitarianism”
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek
https://www.rt.com/news/466738-zizek-google-internet-censorship/
I’m so far down the list it’s embarrassing.
I need to up my game
The paper refers to ‘climate contrarians’, a pejorative term.
I can’t think of a more neutral one that the media can find acceptable. There’s the consensus, and there are the contrarians opposed to the consensus. Calling our side “skeptics” raises fury among warmists and journalists have been persuaded not to use it. This is a battle we can’t win. “Contrarians” is almost as good, and CAN displace “deniers<" so let's settle for three-quarters of a loaf.
‘Contrarian’ suggests disagreeing primarily, if not entirely, for the sake of disagreeing. It is wholly wrong and misrepresents the nature, purpose and substance of the dissent.
How about we learn from a person who suffered from an Authoritarian view of science.
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
GALILEO GALILEI
Very effective. Respect.