Science « JoNova

Viscount Monckton answers Megan Clement of “Conversation”

Christopher Monckton

Answers by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

to questions by Megan Clement of “Conversation”

30 June 2011

All of the questions and answers herein must be reproduced in full: otherwise none of my answers may be disseminated in any form, in whole or in part.

…

* * *

…

Q. I’m mainly interested in your reaction to the petition that’s been going round in Western Australia urging Notre Dame to cancel your visit. Is this an issue of free speech?

I understand that the petition makes the following assertions, to which I shall respond seriatim:

Primo, I am alleged to have circulated “widely discredited fictions about climate change” and to have distorted the research of countless scientists.

Please specify three instances in which I am thought to have circulated “widely discredited fictions about climate change”, with a clear citation in each instance of my ipsissima verba, and provide evidence, in the form of at least five peer-reviewed refutations […]

Terrified of Monckton! GetUP don’t want anyone to hear him speak

Menzies House are reporting that GetUP are so scared that some Australians might hear Christopher Monckton speak, that they had a campaign to get the Brisbane Broncos football club to break their contract and cancel the “Climate of Freedom” speeches by Monckton in Brisbane.

GetUP are a virtual arm of the Labor Party, being funded by Unions*. They’ve already removed the “idea” where someone boasted they’d axed the Bronco’s deal. (Did anyone save a screen image? Pass it on 🙂 )

They are desperate! They know they have no answer to what Monckton has to say, and that Monckton convinces people everywhere he goes, so their only option is smears, slurs and banning him. GetUP have become ShutUP.

We don’t ask to silence them. We know if people hear both sides of the story they’ll make up their own minds, and we look forward to that happening.

Their plan will backfire, and could prove a media bonanza for us. Right now, scores of people are phoning the club to express their disappointment that the Broncos turned out to be spineless puppies, obeying their masters, caving in to “pressure” and not standing up for Australians.

We can take some easy actions.

[…]

David Archibald’s Speech: Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians

David Archibald

Rally 1st July 2011

We can thank the global warmers for one thing. Their claim that the sky is falling got people like me to investigate. What I found was that global warming is exactly wrong. Instead of warming, our planet is cooling as solar activity weakens.

The heating effect of carbon dioxide is minuscule. It is lost in the noise of the climate system. That is why the temperature of the planet today is exactly the same as it was thirty years ago. On top of all that, the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere is dangerously low. All living things would be better off if we had more of it in the atmosphere.

You have not been told that before because the global warmers have corrupted all the institutions that are meant to serve us. The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the universities, have all sold their souls, and sold the Australian People down the river. Those institutions we once respected are now venal and not to be trusted.

Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians. If they believe in global warming, they are easily deluded fools.

That leads me to a useful […]

University witchdoctors speak out, and the frightened are fleeing!

What are they so afraid of?

It’s all become a media frenzy. Who would have thought that holding an opinion about climate sensitivity due to a trace gas could become a reason to mark someone as an untouchable heretic? Venues are being canceled (and new venues arranged), the media are hunting in packs, and the university witchdoctors are coming out to show how neolithic (but politically correct) their reasoning is.

And they think they are so civilized.

They are stone age tribes with smartphones.

University Witchdoctors — collapse under the hypocrisy of their own reasoning

Academics want climate sceptic’s Lecture cancelled! is the headline on the front page of The West Australian.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s serious. We can no longer stand by and watch as once great institutions embarrass themselves with childlike efforts to silence dissent.

Natalie Latter, a PhD Student at UWA, wrote a letter, endorsed by a few other academic types (who ought to have saved her and themselves from such an embarrassing mistake):

“Lord Monckton propounds widely discredited fictions about climate change and misrepresents the research of countless scientists,” says the letter. “With zero peer-reviewed publications, he has declared […]

Government wants help to think of a reason to have a carbon tax: will pay $$$

Shouldn’t the government know what the benefits and costs of the carbon tax are before they make it into law? This is looking awfully like a case of “policy first, justifications later”.

First they promised they won’t do it. Then they do it, and they ask for even more of our money so they can pay PR hacks (introduced to us as scientists and economists) to tell us how fabulous their unwanted plan is — after all, the Climate Change Commission has no purpose other than to advertise the Carbon Tax. Then there’s a $12 million advertising program. But wait, there’s more…

Amazingly, there are now $250,000 grants (how many?*) from the Department of Climate Change to anyone who can persuade the public to accept the carbon tax!

If the government had thought this through, they’d already know why they wanted to bring in the tax. (Or maybe they did think it through, but are afraid to tell us the real reasons?)

As it is, they’re only bringing in the tax because 12% of the voters voted one green member into the House of Reps, and it was the price paid to keep Gillard in power. But for most Australians […]

Skeptoid – like a skeptic but not quite

…

Here’s a new sign of the times.

Almost no one has gone from skeptic to believer on global warming. The conversion flow is nearly all one-way traffic. But on the Skeptoid site, author Craig Good is a “convert” of a sort, and I have to give him credit for writing the most sensible advice yet for believers of man-made global warming (see below).

But before anyone gets too excited, the two key questions here are: how much of a skeptic was he, and what did it take to change his mind? Answer, not much and not much.

This is not a big believer-awakening-moment of the Mark Lynas type, or another Judith Curry sort of conversion. Both of those were active, involved and outspoken in the climate debate. Craig Good’s entire skeptical position can be summed up in a few paragraphs, so yes, he qualifies as a skeptic, of the gut-hunch-it’s-wrong-but-haven’t-read-a-single-skeptical-paper-type skeptic.

If there are grades of skeptic from 1 to 10, he was only a 2.

So here’s the flash of insight, that’s never been seen before from alarmist circles

This is great stuff (if blindingly obvious):

To my friends on the Left: Do you want […]

Monckton stirs the pot with a cheap shot, and the media obediently perform

By now every person in the climate debate knows that Monckton used a swastika on a slide in LA.

UPDATE: By the time I wrote this, Monckton had already been roundly condemned for his unnecessary hyperbole, and unreservedly apologized. I couldn’t see much point in joining in the chorus. Yes, I agree, he did the wrong thing. The ends doesn’t justify the means. We can hardly complain about namecalling, if we do it too. I’m just trying to add perspective on the magnitude of the crime. People are suggesting we exile the man for — as far as I can tell — one clumsy joke and one very poor choice of slide.

None of this would be necessary if the media had reported information from both sides of the story.

I groaned when I saw it. The fascist comment has been used many times before (and Garnaut is advocating ad hoc extensive government control over business). The Nazi swastika, though, is a new low in rhetorical excess. Definitely not one I would have used, and I’m glad Monckton has apologized so quickly, and won’t be using it again — it’s a cheap shot.

This is […]

Oreskes’ clumsy, venomous smear campaign: busted

Naomi Oreskes

The great Fred Singer takes the time to explain why Naomi Oreskes is a scientifically inept and a poor historian. Her famous claim of a scientific consensus based on 900 papers missed more than 11,000 that should have been included. Her grasp of science is so poor she isn’t familiar with the pH scale, thinks Beryllium is a heavy metal, mistakenly assumes that CO2 is trapped in the troposphere, and climate models can predict forest fires and floods. Embarrassingly, Oreskes doesn’t understand the difference between reactive oxygen and radioactive oxygen.

Armed with cherry picked distortions she sets about maliciously impugning upstanding senior scientists with distinguished records in science, and years of service. Unlike a professional historian she hasn’t even interviewed any of them to find out if the information she promoted was correct. Sadly Singer is the only one still with us to point out the flaws.

Years from now when their contributions are still recognized, Oreskes will be but a footnote in history classes of how poor research and largely baseless innuendo were used to serve a groupthink meme and feed a hate campaign against some of our best and brightest. No humility. No respect. No […]

Peer review denial and the abuse of science

“Climate denial and the abuse of peer review“

Can someone get Stephan Lewandowsky his medication? His new marketing message is that “deniers” don’t do peer review papers. There’s a curious case of acute-peer-review-blindness (APRB) occurring. It doesn’t matter that there are literally thousands of pages of skeptical information on the web, quoting hundreds of peer reviewed papers, by people far more qualified than a cognitive-psychologist, yet he won’t even admit they exist.

…most climate deniers avoid scrutiny by sidestepping the peer-review process that is fundamental to science, instead posting their material in the internet or writing books.

Dear Stephan, deny this: 900 papers that support skeptics. What is it about these hundreds of papers published in Nature, Science, GRL, PNAS, and Journal of Climate that you find impossible to acknowledge? (And do tell Stephan, if people need to publish peer reviewed material before they venture an opinion on climate science online, how many peer reviewed articles on climate science have you produced?)

Obviously, the real deniers are the people who deny the hundreds of papers with empirical evidence that show the hockey stick is wrong, the world was warmer, the climate changes, and the models are flawed.

9 out of […]

Heading over the waterfall

Here in Australia we are in a eerie twilight world: it’s obvious skepticism is thriving, and plain that those pushing the carbon tax are desperate. Yet this is a train-wreck in action.

The current government popularity is as sunk as sunk can be. On a daily basis, commentators ask how long Gillard will survive, or how the Labor Party could be doomed or posit yet another explanation for “the downfall”. “Change or Die” says party elder, John Faulkner. Yet paradoxically, it is just because the government is so desperate that it can’t “afford” to bury the dead-lemon policy called the Carbon Tax. A weak government is a dangerous one.

It’s like a barking mad virus has run amok

Two weeks from now, the Greens get control of our Senate (possibly for six years), but the House of Representatives is as knife-edge dysfunctional as ever. With legislative seats so closely tied, we’re left with three so-called independents who — in theory — might be talked into voting against the Carbon Tax. In practice, it’s virtually an impossibility. On the day that Tony Abbott delivered his searing budget reply, Windsor was seen to sympathetically put his arm around Gillard’s back and […]

Front line in the climate trenches

The trenches in the climate war tonight have coalesced at Lynas’s blog and at Judith Curry’s. (I did say yesterday it was shaping up to be a Judith-Curry-moment didn’t I?)

The Greenpeace-gate moment is making waves.

It’s in the news: David Derbyshire, Daily Mail, Oliver Wright, The Independent, Lorene Gunter, National Post, (h/t GWPF Benny Peiser)

Stefan Singer, Director for Energy Policy at WWF, has waded into the comments on Lynas’s formerly-quiet site. Bob Ward is also still at it. (Lynas is asking who exactly Bob Ward is — answer, a PR man for the Grantham Institute). Meanwhile the IPCC staff are rushing to reply to questions as written up by Andy Revkin.

The signs are excellent. As Lynas says:

If the ‘deniers’ are the only ones standing up for the integrity of the scientific process, and the independence of the IPCC, then I too am a ‘denier’. Indeed, McIntyre and I have formed an unlikely double-act, posing a series of questions – together with the New York Times’s Andy Revkin – to the IPCC report’s lead author Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, to which he has yet to respond.

What Mark Lynas wrote is apropos — and pointedly […]

Greenpeace-gate breaks and the IPCC is busted. The shock. (Could they really be this dumb?)

What were they thinking? Greenpeace and the IPCC are both bleeding credibility over this one. The silly thing is, if they weren’t so arrogant, they could have hidden this so easily. The obvious conclusion is they are not even trying.

Steve McIntyre discovered that a lead-author on an IPCC report was also a Greenpeace employee, and worse, he reviewed his own work. A recent IPCC report claimed we could get 80% of the world’s energy from renewables was thus founded not on a selective peer reviewed paper written by independent scientists, and not even on a shonky economic “study” issued by a big-government-loving-university, but, gasp, on a Greenpeace sponsored wish-list for world peace. Hello?

The IPCC issued a press release (May 9th) though as usual, with no details or sources at the time. They got the media headlines, then quietly “backed” it up a month later with a 1000 page report they figure no one will read. Certainly, they must be a little surprised that within two days of quietly releasing the tome, it is spreading like fire across the blogosphere, and some of it’s deepest secrets are already out of the bag.

Let’s be clear about this, Greenpeace […]

Mark the moment! The first renegade science conference

Apart from conferences organized by the Heartland Foundation I don’t recall a skeptic dominated professional conference or science association convention. Skeptics have spoken at many conferences before, but this time the skeptical speakers vastly outnumbered the fans of the IPCC, ten to one. This was an event where — by the sounds of it — it would have been uncool to be an unskeptical scientist (as indeed it ought to be). No prizes for guessing which branch of science could no longer be held down by political correctness.

It’s a sign of the times, the phase shift is coming.

Tom Harris gives a great summary in the Financial Post:

Climate Isn’t Up for Debate

Anyone not already familiar with the stance of geologists towards the global warming scare would have been shocked by the conference at the University of Ottawa at the end of May. In contrast to most environmental science meetings, climate skepticism was widespread among the thousand geoscientists from Canada, the United States and other countries who took part in GAC-MAC 2011 (the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Association of Canada, the Mineralogical Association of Canada, the Society of Economic Geologists […]

Climate helped drive Vikings from Greenland

Qassiarsuk: This is the site of the Viking settlement of 972 and unlike much of Greenland, offers relatively sheltered grazing land for sheep. Photo: John McLean. (Click to see more images of Greenland).

For the first time temperatures over the last 5,600 years have been reassembled from the inhabited area of Greenland. (Other estimates were from ice-cores that are far inland.)

William D’Andrea, the paper’s first author says: “.. we can say there is a definite cooling trend in the region right before the Norse disappear.”

8.2 out of 10 based on 5 ratings […]

Killing people with “concern”? Biofuels led to nearly 200,000 deaths (est) in 2010.

The precautionary principle is exposed again for the insidious mindless posturing that it is.

Biofuel policies push more people into poverty as food prices rise and the poor are forced to spend more of their income on food. In a study published in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Indur Goklany calculated the additional mortality burden of biofuels policies and found that nearly 200,000 people died in 2010 alone, because of efforts to use biofuels to reduce CO2 emissions.

Bad Government is a killer.

“Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries?

Goklany (2011) estimated that the increase in the poverty headcount due to higher biofuel production between 2010 and 2004 implies 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost DALYs in 2010 alone.

He compared this death tally to the WHO figures for deaths attributed to global warming and finds that the biofuels policies are more deadly. (And he is not including any increase in poverty due to other anti-global warming practices).

1. Biofuel policies are retarding humanity’s age-old battle against poverty.

2. Since according to the World Health Organization’s latest estimates, 141,000 deaths and 5.4 million lost DALYs in 2004 could be attributed to global […]

When top scientists take 2 years to publish, it’s time to give up on old “Peer” review

Ladies and Gentlemen this is the front line trench of modern science. If climate science is so important, and there is no time to waste, why does the system try so hard to discourage dissent (because they don’t want to find the truth, only the “correct” answer)?

This paper by Lindzen and Choi was submitted and rejected by GRL in 2009, then rejected twice more by PNAS. (And in part because it needed to meet impossible standards. In the end, it was supposed to include “the kitchen sink” but fit into a sandwich bag — see below). The paper could have been out for discussion in 2009, and while it has improved upon revision, was it worth the two year wait? Those gains could have been made in two months (or two weeks) online.

Even the reviewers understand how significant these results would be if they are right. One admits the new paper shows the models don’t match the observations.

Science needs free and open criticism, and competing theories. If Lindzen’s analysis is revolutionary, but potential wrong, is it so bad to publish those results? He is one of the most eminent researchers in the […]

Monckton Tour Dates

The Australian 2011 Monckton Tour

A Carbon Tax will

BANKRUPT AUSTRALIA

THE SCIENCE DOES NOT JUSTIFY IT

Viscount Christopher Monckton will explain why. Dr David Evans and Jo Nova will accompany him in Sydney and Newcastle

5.5 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]

Study finds global warming over past 400 years was due to increased Solar activity

TODAY June 7th 2011: Phenomenal eruption on the sun (see the bottom of the post for more info).

Apparently previous studies of the sun-climate connection looked at the equatorial polar magnetic field which produces sun spots, but they did not consider the polar magnetic component of the solar dynamo. The polar fields are less strong than the equatorial fields, but it is claimed that the total magnetic fluxes of both fields are comparable. With proxy data they derive an empirical relation between tropospherical temperatures and solar equatorial and polar magnetic fields. The polar field could contribute about 30% as much as the equatorial field.

The paper, published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics focused on the period 1844-1960 (but extended at least one graph back to 1600) and finds our current warming period is not that different from earlier episodes and that the increase in solar activity in the last 400 years explains the warming, without any need to invoke a man-made enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.

8.2 out of 10 based on 5 ratings […]

To a climate scientist, swearing equals a Death Threat (no wonder these guys can’t predict the weather)

Wait for it, some death threat emails have been released. Number eight is positively sinister with intent (shield your children):

Now several of the abusive emails have been published on a blog by environmental writer Graham Readfearn, after the scientists agreed to release the poison pen letters.

Number Eight:

“If we see you continue, we will get extremely organised and precise against you. We will not do so if you rightfully argue against our points from a science view. But we will if you choose to stray into attacks on us as people or as a movement. The institution and funders that support you will find the attention concerning.”

God forbid, imagine a member of the public imploring a scientist to argue with science instead of slurs. Well I’ll be!

How chilling does it get?

7.5 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]

The Repairman: I’m here to fix your climate

Guest Post by Speedy

“Speedy” in comments on this site has done a better than excellent job of satirizing the satirists (Clarke and Dawe), so I’m reposting one of his comments here for those who missed it. See the bottom of the post for the background on the duo he is satirizing and a youtube of them. Speedy has very much captured their style.

Bryan Dawe, ABC

If the ABC was relevant, Part 32.

(The Repairman)

(SCENE: Front door of BRYAN’s home. Door bell rings. BRYAN answers door. It is JOHN.)

John: G’day. I’m here about the climate.

Bryan: What climate?

John: Your climate. Our climate. THE climate. I’m here to fix it.

Bryan: What’s wrong with it?

John: It’s buggered. Absolutely buggered.

Bryan: No it isn’t. I was using it this morning.

John: What for?

Bryan: For drying the washing out the back.

John: Spoken like a true layperson! What you have just witnessed was not the working of an healthy climate, but a clear manifestation of catastrophic global warming! Scientists warn that if current trends continue, […]

JoNova

Recent Posts

Viscount Monckton answers Megan Clement of “Conversation”

Terrified of Monckton! GetUP don’t want anyone to hear him speak

David Archibald’s Speech: Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians

University witchdoctors speak out, and the frightened are fleeing!

Government wants help to think of a reason to have a carbon tax: will pay $$$

Skeptoid – like a skeptic but not quite

Monckton stirs the pot with a cheap shot, and the media obediently perform

Oreskes’ clumsy, venomous smear campaign: busted

Peer review denial and the abuse of science

Heading over the waterfall

Front line in the climate trenches

Greenpeace-gate breaks and the IPCC is busted. The shock. (Could they really be this dumb?)

Mark the moment! The first renegade science conference

Climate helped drive Vikings from Greenland

Killing people with “concern”? Biofuels led to nearly 200,000 deaths (est) in 2010.

When top scientists take 2 years to publish, it’s time to give up on old “Peer” review

Monckton Tour Dates

Study finds global warming over past 400 years was due to increased Solar activity

To a climate scientist, swearing equals a Death Threat (no wonder these guys can’t predict the weather)

The Repairman: I’m here to fix your climate

JoNova

Find Things

Register for emails

Recent Comments

Statistics

Handbooks

Most commented

Archives

Tags

Categories

Books

Recent Posts

JoNova

Find Things

Register for emails

Recent Comments

Statistics

Handbooks

Most commented

Archives

Tags

Links

Categories

Books