9 thoughts on “And who is this “Lord” Monckton you ask?”

1. I became aware of this main only relatively recently; in face I got my first good look at the guy when he was on morning TV earlier this year in Aust, debating climate science and it was following this that I became incredibly interested in (and rather concerned by) this strange fellow. DeSmogBlog are on about him quite a bit (and I noticed you’ve included their 2nd debunking video).
   It’s so strange how such a bloke has become the champion of denial. As they state on the debunking video, a denial of AGW is not his only crazy claim to fame, but apparently he’s worked out a number of other problems in medical science; all WITHOUT any scientific training at all.
   The problem as I see it, is that the man is a very good public speaker, knows what the audience wishes to hear (ie. that everything is just fine) and is a shameless self-promoter. It’s certainly a cocktail of conservative creativity.
   A few local scientists from here (I think Barry Brooks, University and Adelaide – also behind the BraveNewClimate blog – was one of them) ended up in debates with him which proved fruitless because of the various lies he weaves, that cannot truly be pulled apart in such a medium. What is most irritating about these debates is that he has somehow gained authority on the subject through association rather than through credentials.
   Countless people have gone to a good deal of evidence to disprove his absurdities, it’s now really up to the general public to make up their minds and us in the science community to continue our work as per usual.
   Tim

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2. I became aware of this man only relatively recently; in fact I got my first good look at the guy when he was on morning TV earlier this year in Aust, debating climate science and it was following this that I became incredibly interested in (and rather concerned by) this strange fellow. DeSmogBlog are on about him quite a bit (and I noticed you’ve included their 2nd debunking video).
   It’s so strange how such a bloke has become the champion of denial. As they state on the debunking video, a denial of AGW is not his only crazy claim to fame, but apparently he’s worked out a number of other problems in medical science; all WITHOUT any scientific training at all.
   The problem as I see it, is that the man is a very good public speaker, knows what the audience wishes to hear (ie. that everything is just fine) and is a shameless self-promoter. It’s certainly a cocktail of conservative creativity.
   A few local scientists from here (Barry Brooks, University and Adelaide – also behind the BraveNewClimate blog – was one of them, I seem to remember) ended up in debates with him which proved fruitless because of the various lies he weaves, that cannot truly be pulled apart in such a medium. What is most irritating about these debates is that he has somehow gained authority on the subject through association rather than through credentials.
   Countless people have gone to a good deal of evidence to disprove his absurdities, it’s now really up to the general public to make up their minds and us in the science community to continue our work as per usual.
   Tim (sorry – mistakes in the first submission – it’s late! :-))

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3. Thanks Tim for the nice analysis. I am equally intrigued by his ascendance. He is so like an evil genius from the movies-life imitates art…

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4. I’ve created a character for my Warm Fuzzy Forecast comics on him named Mr. D. Nial – although in the first appearance of him, he tried to hold a board over his title to change it to Captain. lol.
   One good example of a rebuttal is with Dr. Andrew Glikson, where Monckton first tried to demonstrate Andrew to be wrong and so Glikson replied. It’s found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25813090/Responses-to-Monckton-of-Brenchley-10-1-10
   I believe it’ll all end up blowing up in the republicans’ face however, especially now that a number of scientists are making the point that they are tired of this smear campaign that does nothing to challenge the evidence for climate change and ocean acidification, but rather is a personal attack. The Journal Science has this letter, which is a great start in the right direction. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/689
   Cheers,
   Tim

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5. He recently joined the UK Independence Party as a ‘science’ representative, they have published their science views about Climate Change in their policy documents.

   http://www.ukip.org/

   AFAIK UKIP have not got any seats in parliament in this weeks elections.

   You can download their environment policy, which has the usual climate danial stuff in it:
   http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/418-energy-environment-ukip-policy-2009

   In short their climate change policies are:

   Repeal the Climate Change Act, and close the Climate Change Department

   Halt all UK contributions to the IPCC and to the UN Framework Convention

   Halt all UK contributions to any EU climate-change policy, including carbon emissions trading

   Freeze all state funding for scientific research into ‘global warming’

   Repeal such EU directives as the Large Combustion Plant Directive, the Renewables Directive and Bio Fuel Directive

   Ban ‘Global Warming’ propaganda in schools.

   Basically they are anti-science

   Info about the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive can be found here:
   http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/air/airquality/eu-int/eu-directives/lcpd/

   They want to get rid of a directive that lifts the ban on some serious pollutants, not just CO2, but also sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates.

   “These pollutants are major contributors to acid deposition, which acidifies soils and freshwater bodies, damages plants and aquatic habitats, and corrodes building materials.”

   So there you go, Monckton is a member of a political party that likes killing fish and plants.

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6. In my previous post I meant to say:

   “They (ukip) want to get rid of a directive which puts a ban on some serious pollutants, not just CO2, but also sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates.”

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7. I like this interview by Ben Cubby where he pins Monckton down on the Nobel prize lie.

   http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/national-times/why-climate-change-is-a-scam-1069515.html

   Or how the APS added a disclaimer to Moncktons paper he submitted:

   http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

   Where they said:

   The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review, since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.” , /blockquote>

   That infuriated him, haha.

   Also a couple of good interviews during the week on ABC radio national discussing the Republican opposition to AGW.

   http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2887301.htm

   Topic: Speakers consider the links between ideology, politics, policy and climate science. With Noami Oreskes, William Freudenburg & Stephen Schneider.

   Some excerpts:

   Naomi Oreskes: ” I started my career in the mining industry where everybody was a Republican, and my most important mentor in my career was a former advisor to the first President Bush. So this really isn’t about whether or not you have Republican friends or whether you can sit down and have a beer with a Republican, it’s about the way in which there’s been systematic misrepresentation of the science and the leadership of the Republican Party has refused to distance itself from that misrepresentation and in fact has participated in it.

   For eight years we saw the Bush administration participate in that misrepresentation, sanction the distortion of scientific reports coming out of government agencies

   And this.

   Stephen Schneider: ” I talked about the terrible transfer of this from a bipartisan issue to a partisan issue. So who are the two best environmental presidents in modern history? Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, both of them Republicans. The EPA, Council of Environmental Quality, very, very good people in it, they were excellent. My first White House testimony was 1974 in the Nixon administration and they wanted to know. And back in those days the conservatives understood that there was no word much more conservative than ‘conservation’. They were applying that principle as a conscience principle to nature at the same time that they were applying it to society. I thought that was fine, even if I had disagreements about what I thought public expenditures should be, any testimonies I ever gave in the 1970s, they were cordial and respectful, it was fine.

   The first hostile one was 1981, in fact it was Al Gore’s first hearing on this stuff, when the Reagan administration cut the budget on climate research on impacts on ideological grounds, which we knew because the dentist he put in to destroy the DOE named Edwards from South Carolina, whispered to his deputy and he happened to have a guy from the NSF behind him who told me and I told the whole world that he said, ‘What are we funding environmentalist and social scientists for? Didn’t we have a mandate from the president to get rid of those guys?’

   So what happened was the whole issue transformed one of conservation and arguing about fiscal responsibility and best way to pay and how do you balance, which is fair, legitimate and must have all parties, to one of ‘if it’s the collective footprint of individual corporate national activities, then the way to solve it has to be at scales that are higher than just local or national governance, therefore it’s leading to world government, a destruction of our model, and therefore we’d better not allow that problem in because if we agree that it’s real, then we’re going to figure out solutions that are at a scale we don’t want to touch’. I did not make this up, I heard from some friends of mine inside the administration that this was a conscious strategy. And it’s been there ever since. And it’s really very, very, very sad.

   Then there was this one a month before with Naomi Oreskes, Riley Dunlap,William Freudenburg & Stephen Schneider.

   http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2859986.htm

   Topic: Climate change scepticism – its sources and strategies.Some excerpts.

   Riley Dunlap: ” We’ve jumped up to 64 books espousing some version of climate change denial since 2000. Several of these books are bestsellers. On Amazon, you find them in Borders, Barnes & Noble, Hastings, they’re carried by the Conservative Book Club, they reach a large audience. Now, the key issue; how many of these books are linked to conservative think-tanks? It turns out to be 78%. What you see here originally almost all were. I’m going to give you some insight into where these come from…. Conservative think-tanks, obviously with corporate support that we’ll hear about, have greatly amplified the work of contrarian scientists. They’ve recently been joined by conservative media, Limbaugh, Fox, conservative politicians, Inhofe, most Republicans these days with the exception of Lindsey Graham, and especially the blogosphere in waging an all-out war in climate change science. We can add undermining climate change policy to the policy impacts that we started out with of conservative think-tanks. Thank you very much.

   And this:

   William Freudenburg: “Some of his other research that you didn’t hear about, an earlier study he did with Jacques and Freeman, found 141 books expressing scepticism about anything environmental. And in that earlier study, 92% of the books were from conservative think-tanks. And this is not by any subtle way of doing the math, either the author worked for it, they published it, or both. In essence, there would not be a so-called scepticism literature if it were not for the work of some well funded, hard working, skilled in PR, conservative think-tanks.

   Very interesting.

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8. Everyone needs to watch these videos. This “Lord” is hilarious. It doesn’t seem real that he is actually taken seriously. He honestly seems like a Monty Python character. Vacuus ullus nuto sit preposterous. (That’s Latin for: Without any doubt, he is preposterous ;). Thanks for shedding the light John.

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9. Cheers for that Ville,
   Reminds me a lot of when I used to follow the actions of various religious groups in the US that were against the teaching of evolution. That was funny, while people like Monckton indeed threaten the planet while urging a return to ignorance.
   I was heavily focused on air quality for a part of my career and from what I saw locally, there is no way Monckton deserves any merit in his quest. It’s nothing but insanity and belongs in the same basket as his various medical break-through’s.

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