By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Lancet, once a respected medico-scientific journal and now just another me-too mouthpiece for theusual suspects, ran an editorial this week on climate change – on which subject it has neither expertise nor a missio canonica to pronounce. Here is a letter to the editor in response:
Sir, – Your notion of a “climate crisis” (editorial, December 2), though fashionable among the classe politique, is misplaced. That notion sprang from an elementary error of physics perpetrated in the 1980s by climate scientists who had borrowed feedback formulism from control theory, another branch of physics, without quite understanding it. Interdisciplinary compartmentalization delayed its identification until now.
After correcting the error, anthropogenic global warming will be only one-third of current midrange projections, well within natural variability and net-beneficial to life and health. CO2 fertilization (for CO2 is plant food) has assisted in steadily increasing crop yields – this year’s global harvest has set yet another record – and in improving drought resistance (Hao et al., 2014) and greening the planet.
Your suggestion that warmer worldwide weather has caused net loss of life, particularly among the world’s fast-declining population of poor people, is fashionable but misplaced. Cold is a bigger killer than warmth. Research conducted three years ago for the European Commission found that, for this reason, even if there were 5.4 C° global warming from 2020-2080, there would be 100,000 more Europeans than with no warming at all.
However, now that nearly all major banks – citing “global warming” as their pretext – refuse to lend to developing countries for coal-fired electricity (dates from which they decided to abandon the poor are below), a billion people lack the capacity to turn on a 60 W lightbulb for just four hours a day (the International Energy Agency’s scarcely generous definition of “access to electricity”).
According to the WHO, 4 million annually die of particulate pollution from smoke in cooking fires because they lack domestic electrical power and, for the same lack, 500,000 women die in childbirth. These are just two of the many causes of death from lack of access to electricity that kill tens of millions annually. The chief reason why so many cannot turn on a light is not global warming but misconceived policies intended to address what is in reality a non-problem.
More than 90% of all new greenhouse-gas emissions (BP Annual Review of Energy, 2019) are in nations exempt from the Paris agreement, which, after correction of the error of physics, is in any event supererogatory.
You have said China must do more, but China – though it has its own space programme and continues to occupy Tibet by military force – is exempt from Paris on the ground that it is a “developing country”. It is not required to forswear its sins of emission.
Your advocacy of “low-carbon diets” is fashionable but misplaced. Like it or not, we have evolved over 2 million years to eat meat, which can provide all necessary energy, nutrients and vitamins. Yet ill-informed official guidelines on both sides of the Atlantic recommend low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. Those recommendations have demonstrably been the chief cause of the surge in obesity and diabetes in both the UK and the USA. They were abandoned by court order a decade ago in Sweden at the instance of a brave doctor whom the medical authorities had attempted to prosecute because she cured all her diabetes patients by ignoring the guidelines and recommending a high-fat, low-carb diet.
Your advocacy of “renewable” energy is fashionable but misplaced. Using 14th-century technology to address a 21st-century non-problem would be silly enough in itself. What is worse, however, is that “renewables” have not only quadrupled the price of electricity but have also added to CO2 emissions. The chief reason for this apparent paradox is that the more windmills and solar panels are connected to the grid the more grossly-inefficient, CO2-emitting spinning reserve must be maintained in the often vain hope of preventing blackouts when the wind stops or the night falls.
Besides, the trillions that have been squandered on fashionable but misguided attempts to abate greenhouse-gas emissions have made no difference at all. The radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases has increased in a fashion very close to a straight line (the dotted line above) for 40 years.
With respect, The Lancet should study more science and economics, however unfashionable, and peddle less totalitarian politics, however fashionable and profitable – and deadly.
Yours faithfully,
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Da Lord knocks it outa the park once again. And let’s see if the presstitutes in this “professional” journal have the moral courage even to respond, much less to acquiesce to real science.
He does not call himself Lord (as you can see above), because he isn’t one – so why do you call him Lord?
Alexander knows better than Matt, who should sick to the topic.
There are many ways of being lordly. Which do you practice?
@ur momisugly Matt;
You know, a little Google could have saved you much embarrassment. Christopher Monckton is the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, an hereditary peerage. The proper form of address for a viscount is “Lord”. Is there enough room in your little pea-brain to absorb that fact?
Careful – if you Lancet, you might wind up with Green stuff.
In response to Mr Snook, I’m planning to send the Prime Minister a letter before claim in judicial review, on the ground that, particularly given the vast economic damage caused by the Chinese curse, the ludicrous economy-destroying proposals that he has been issuing are irrational and consequently ultra vires the Government. I shall be asking him to get his fave climate “scientists” to produce a considered reply to our paper demonstrating that the climate scam is rooted in a huge scientific error, by which the feedback response to direct warming by the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases has been overstated by 3200%. This 33-fold exaggeration – our lockdown project was to quantify it – leads to a tripling of equilibrium climate sensitivity. Divide all predictions by 3 and you end up with too little global warming to matter – well within natural variability. I look forward to their answer. If they don’t give a reasoned answer, they lose the case.
Politely put, and snippy and snooty enough to make even me happy. Elegant, to say the least.
Keep it up, Big Guy!
I totally agree! Thank you, m’Lord.
What we have to “fear” is cold.
What that means, they may just feal it in the Alpine regions:
https://www.wetteronline.de/wetterticker/0a400e2c-db29-4c67-8818-34cb8f7cdefd
https://www.wetteronline.de/wetterticker/76218830-1e74-4bc8-9ec9-00009d446612
Christopher,
At “misplaced” they threw your letter in the blue bin…..
At least they recycled…
Thank you for this timely article.
The third figure lists about thirty banks, some in purple, some in red.
What’s the difference between “red banks” and “purple banks”?
The image is of a slide I use in my talks: it is easier to see the names of the individual banks if their colors are alternated.
In the mid 70’s I was a co author on a paper that was published in Lancet. I was particularly proud of that publication. I have been following the decline of many journals and the buy in of AGW by many publications. Sad
I used to read “Science News” weekly, but had to cancel my subscription due to this and other issues.
Then I had to stop reading Scientific American. Same problem.
Thank God for Wattsupwiththat. I can stay pretty current without having my intelligence insulted.
Is this the same Lancet that was forced to retract their Mehra et al. paper last summer because it denied the benefits HCQ with phony fraudulent data? Their quackery (and that of other vicious scientrash con artists) likely resulted in the deaths of a million people or more. Hey Lancet, your crackpot political agenda is showing. Put a bag over your head.
Editorial, December 2
Because of The Lancet and other political hacks, HQL was not used widely in the UK, EU and the US. It has helped keep deaths/per/million population to the lowest levels in the World in India, Cameroon and Nigeria, where it has been used since the first outbreak of the Wuhan/China flu. But, hey,
let’s follow the (pseudo)science. “They lied and tens of thousands died. “
Is this the link to the Lancet article https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32579-4/fulltext or is it the report mentioned in the article that you are responding to?
The Lancet should stick to their own knitting and expertise, if they still have any. Virtue-signalling to follow the crowd only displays ignorance of the facts.
Dear Christopher,
My compliments replacing the Global warming postulate with pustule; a word Hercule Poirot might have used while investigating a crime. Thank you
Dear Lord Monkton of Berkley,
My most sincere respect for this very well written answer to a very bad paper that, as a MD, I never thought could find it’s way to what I thought was the most serious medical journal in the world, at least until the publication of the disgraceful Mehra et al. paper, that made me think their editorial board should have taken a holiday. Clearly they are still of for tea.
I enjoyed the ‘sin of emission’ line particularly.
Lord M,
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ × 1,000,000
Brilliant, as usual.
Thank you !!!!!
Many thanks to Mr Garrett for his kind rating.
👍. Me, too.
Now that’s a nugget worth including in my file of quotes, factoids & smart remarks.
They’re doctors. They’re doctors, right? This means they’ve graduated from medical school, endured a cruelly arduous apprenticeship as medical residents, and have acquired a wide knowledge of how to diagnose and treat human ailments. How doe this qualify them to pass judgement on the accuracy of predictions about climate change? Do they also write articles on the law or engineering? Give tips on interior decorating?
Ian, if we follow your line of reasoning, Moncockton is not qualified to make any pronouncement on climate. He’s been trained in the classics, and journalism, but not in science.
Yes
But shouldn’t medical journals focus on…medical “stuff”.
Journals have a bullpen of peer/pal reviewers out in the world, I do such things for IEEE Transactions at times, but by definition the Lancet peer reviewers would not have the background the vet this sort of thing.
Why not have the cast of Sesame Street review and publish it instead?
Or the Marx brothers?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/hl2lShU6zD0?hl=en
Video is blocked by BBC.
Brilliant letter but I don’t think they will have the professional integrity and honesty to publish the letter.
Moderately Cross is probably right. Though the editors will not necessarily be any the wiser after receiving my letter, at least they will be better informed.
It does make you wonder who they think the final audience is for climate claptrap published in the Lancet.
Do they expect Doctors to swallow it and then give their patients a stern talking to about the dangers of global warming when they came in to see the Doctor about prostate problems or pregnancy issues?
But there aren’t many lay people who read the Lancet. My first guess is they just hope the general MSM will print stories like “Look even your Doctor believes in cAGW, so you must do what the government/greens tell you.” I think most people are able to see this as a bit pathetic.
My second guess is to ask the question: “So who is paying the Lancet to print this?” While advertorials are not officially allowed at places like the BBC and, hopefully, still not the Lancet, it is not uncommon these days for someone to employed as an “external consultant/contractor”. It is rather easier for such people to accept bribes without being caught or disciplined.
A decade or two ago, the AMA floated a proposal to have family doctor’s question parents as to whether there was a gun in the house, with instructions to both record this information in the patients records and to give the patients a stern lecture on the dangers of guns.
Thanks, Christopher. That was a treat to read.
Regards,
Bob
Many thanks, Bob!
Any way a wider distribution? Copy all broadsheet editors?
A classic Chris.
Thank you. The point I make out almost daily on the BBC facebook climate alarmist page. Known as BBC scientific something or other tosh.
Whilst the smug, western industrial west sits on it’s duff and refuses to allow true developing nations to emerge from poverty, several million people a year die from entirely preventable conditions.
The west has the cure, cheap, reliable, fossil fuel derived electricity, but is insanely wanting to move to expensive, unreliable, dirty renewables, which are anything but renewable in the sense they imagine.
And how TF do we get rid of Boris and his operating hand, Princess Nut Nut!
And as loyal as I have been to the Conservative party, I will seek out Nigel Farage as my next candidate for PM.
He has a pragmatic, Maggie like approach to true Conservatism, rather than the Totalitarian Boris lockdown and Climate Industrial Revolution of the current Conservative cabal.
I believed them redeemable with a decent majority, but they are reprehensible, anti democracy, and have used their majority to browbeat the British public instead of allying with them when the most amazing opportunity presented itself.
There is no going back. I’m jumping ship for Farage.
In response to HotScot, unfortunately Farage has decided to go along with the global warming claptrap. But I shall be leaning on Boris. I have a method of making sure he pays attention to our result showing that the whole climate scam was based on an elementary scientific error.
Chris
I don’t imagine for a moment Boris is intelligent enough to understand a word of the science.
Going down Professor Michael Kelly’s route might bear more fruit as it’s straightforward for me to understand.
He calculated around the same time as I did (not that I imagine I am in the same league, or any league for that matter) that the cost of converting every house in the UK with a heat pump, insulation, ventilation, D/Glazing etc. was around £100,000, or around £3Tn.
Simple enough exercise, I got quotes to do exactly that for my small, 3 bedroom, end terrace Victorian Listed Building then multiplied it by the number of dwellings in the country.
I didn’t, of course, include the cost of the nice new Electric Vehicle I will be forced to buy come 2030, nor the modifications to the street (I am one of the 40% with no off street parking in the UK) where every one will need to be rewired from the brand new sub station to the nearest lamp post, for me, or in other cases, up to the consumer unit in the house so we can charge our EV’s overnight. Nor did I include the cost to the grid, with all those shiny new sub stations and cabling.
But what Michael Kelly did also point out was the cost to the planet and mankind. Apart from establishing that the UK has about one third of the manpower to accomplish all this work, he made the following observations in one of his essays:
“If we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, and assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials:
• 207,900 tonnes of cobalt – just under twice the annual global production;
• 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate – three quarters of the world’s production;
• at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium – nearly the entire world production of neodymium;
• 2,362,500 tonnes of copper – more than half the world’s production in 2018.
And this is just for the UK. It is estimated that the manufacturing capacity for EV batteries would have to increase more than 500-fold if we want the whole world to be transported by electric vehicles. The vast increases in the supply of the materials described above would go far beyond known reserves.
Awra best Chris.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Good New Year.
Wonderful letter, Lord Monckton. The pen—well, its Web-equivalent—is indeed mightier than any figurative sword that AGW/CAGW alarmists may carry. The strength lies in evidence-based truth.
And thank you for my word-for-the-day: “supererogatory”. Had to look up its meaning in an on-line dictionary, and I don’t recall ever before having seen it in print or having heard it spoken. 🙂
Monkers, (I hope you don’t mind me referring to you by a familiar sobriquet) when, and at what would you expect the Annual GHG Index to peak? Beause I guess even you don’t want it to keep rising indefinitely.
Why not?
We have a long way to go to get to the point when earth was a lush paradise covered with massive herds of massive animals.
You’re the one who thinks CO2 is bad, no need to project such fantasies upon others
In response to Loydo, Professor Happer’s calculations show that, for all practical purposes, CO2 concentration is already close to effective saturation. In theory, adding more CO2 will always cause some warming, but Professor Happer – perhaps the world’s foremost radiation physicist – thinks the effect is all but spent. So there is really very little reason to want to interfere.
My own team’s research suggests that global warming has been exaggerated approximately threefold in the models, which are running very hot compared with reality. That means that, even with the unabated emissions that we can expect given that 90% of the world is exempt from Paris, there will not be enough global warming to worry about.
How does that square with: “The radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases has increased in a fashion very close to a straight line (the dotted line above) for 40 years.”?
If what you’re saying is true; “all but spent”, why hasn’t it shown any sign of ‘flattening’?
I was hoping to get a response from Chris, but he seems to have gone quiet on the question.
Leckner and Eggert showed BY ACTUAL MEASUREMENT that CO2 energy absorption tapers off at about 280ppm
Again, we have the situation of people assuming that radiation controls the atmosphere.
It doesn’t
Atmospheric energy is controlled by bulk energy transfer due to pressure differences.
These FAR outweigh any tiny theoretical forcing by internal radiation fluxes.
That is why NO-ONE has ever actually measured any warming due to atmospheric CO2
Not much “tapering off” here.
?w=611&ssl=1
I believe breathing starts to get difficult if CO2 concentrations start to get about 40,000PPM, so we probably shouldn’t let it get that high.
Short of that, why not let it continue to increase, it has so little impact on the climate that it can’t be measured, and plants love the stuff.
“…breathing starts to get difficult if CO2 concentrations start to get about 40,000PPM”
In the current pandemic, has anyone queried the effect of re-absorbing one’s own exhaled C02 when having to wear a mask all day (i.e. at work)? Since oxygen is crucial to healthy brain function, wouldn’t deprivation of it have some deleterious effect?
alexei, the answer to your question is relatively simple. An above-normal level of CO2 that is absorbed in a person’s bloodstream will automatically trigger an increase in breathing that will increase breathing rate.
“If CO2 levels increase, the respiratory center( medulla and pons) is stimulated to increase the rate and depth of breathing. This increases the rate of CO2 removal and returns concentrations to normal resting levels.”
— source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/nemcc-ap/chapter/the-process-of-breathing/#:~:text=CO2%20levels%20are%20the%20main,concentrations%20to%20normal%20resting%20levels.
“Inhaled air is by volume 78% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen and small amounts of other gases including argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, and hydrogen.
“The gas exhaled is 4% to 5% by volume of carbon dioxide, about a 100 fold increase over the inhaled amount. The volume of oxygen is reduced by a small amount, 4% to 5%, compared to the oxygen inhaled. The typical composition is:
5.0–6.3% water vapor
79% nitrogen [17]
13.6–16.0% oxygen
4.0–5.3% carbon dioxide
1% argon
. . .”
—source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing#:~:text=The%20gas%20exhaled%20is%204,5.0%E2%80%936.3%25%20water%20vapor
So, re-breathing a single breath of exhaled air will still mean an intake of at least 13.6% O2 and at most 5.3% CO2 . . . meaning there will still be much more oxygen intake than CO2 intake.
The leakage through and around a porous face mask, with each inhalation and exhalation of a person’s breath, guarantees that most of any given inhalation will be fresh air at the normal levels of O2 and CO2. The inhalation of the very slight volume of previously-exhaled (residual) air resulting from wearing a loose-fitting mask with porous fabric will, at most, cause a very slight—perhaps unnoticeable—increase in the respiration rate of the person wearing such mask.
Wearing such a mask does NOT cause deprivation of oxygen.
You seem to fail to account for saturated masks. Nursing home personnel must remove masks frequently to allow oxygen inhalation.
James . . . uhhh, what is the gas volume of a “saturated mask” compared to the lung volume associated with an average person’s inhalation (aka lung “tidal volume”), which is about 500 ml?
I did not fail to account for such . . . I just totally ignored it as being insignificant.
Apollo 13 CO2 measurements are available from NASA archives, converted from partial pressures.
Symptoms did appear around that level. They managed to clear it.
Someone measured the CO2 ppm in a busy office at 5000ppm, so people are used to it.
Submarine crews train at high CO2 ppm routinely.
Masks might increase CO2 and room levels should be taken into account. Regular airing is required in schools.
Great letter Lord Monckton. Now if the Lancet could only read. Has any CC prediction ever come true? They want to help people live better. Then help them improve their living standards. Electricity, better housing, safer food, just to start. The lancet has no place being misguided politicians.
Great eloquent and entertaining response.
I especially liked the part on the cost of climate change measures in terms of human suffering. Too many believers think that there is no downside in case they’re wrong.
Is there a document or video wherein we can find more of this, to share with the occasional misguided do-gooder?
Millions dying in the 3rd world due to climate change POLICY.
Eventually we will have to set up a Crimes Against Humanity trial in a poor African country where all these people will have to answer for all this needless death.
BoJo is the British PM, does he really need a lesson in the downsides of colonialism and imperialism?
Try The Great Global Warming Swindle
If VW gets in touch, I shall send him a brief outlining the results of my team’s latest research. I shall hope to write about it here shortly.
Thank you, that’s very kind. I’ll try to figure out how.
Most progressives have been conditioned to believe that there is no downside to government spending and government regulations.
So why not max out both.