Monckton vs The House of Lords

I've written to the HoL also enquiring an explanation of Monckton's reasoning, though any reply will no doubt be from a clerk who HM Government have "told the enquiry clerks to deny they (the hereditaries) were members". The implicit missing word in that quoted phrase from Monckton is "falsely".

I really have no interest in these fairytale titles with their fetish for exquisitely obscure placenames, and the Wattbutts are free to bow and scrape and otherwise demean themselves and spit in Thomas Paine's eye, but I am interested in whether the good Visocunt has perjured himself by knowingly making a false claim to membership of the UK legislature at some point.

I seem to remember Monckton in one US senate or congress comittee sitting greeting them by saying something that he brought 'fraternal' greetings from the UK Parliament. Now was he doing that as a UK citizen who elects representatives to the House of Commons like everyone else or was he doing this by virtue of being a Viscount or was he trying to put across that he was an official member blah blah of the House of Lords (BTW Monckton is a citizen, as I just checked my UK passport which says 'citizen' just like my Australian passport which also says 'citizen'. Being a british subject may also still exist but I would've thought only in relation to the UK crown and not to the UK authorities).

I don't know if anyone knows where this senate or congress address by Monckton can be dug up from.

Anyway as I've posted on other threads on this blog, don't let us forget that Monckton's grandfather received his hereditary peerage from the UK government when Christopher was five years old and this would've been one of the last hereditary peerages handed out.

Ooops! I've just rechecked my Australian passport and it doesn't say 'citizen, just 'Nationality, Australian'..... bastards!

Stick this on a fish and engage Monckton in a fish slap dance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10660130

The Monty Python version (Monckton is the one that falls into the canal):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhJQp-q1Y1s

We could start a campaign to have someone like John Haughton appointed as a life peer...... or to really wind up the deniers, have Phil Jones appointed as a life peer, for services to science and climate. Now I remember Casper weinberger getting an honorary knighthood so while we're at it lets widen this peerage thingy out and try and get James Hansen an honorary knighthood along with Phil Jone's life peerage. It would be real fun watching the reaction from the denialiti.

Oh Paul,

The first time I saw the fish dance as a ten year old I cried and hicupped with laughter. After that episode my mother forbade me from watching Monty Pyhton unless I had my asthma inhaler to hand. Its funny how over the past few months Monty Python sketches have been used to so aptly to describe the ravings of the denialati.

What is the importance of discussing Monckton's title? If he had no title, would that mean he his opinion would not be heard, and considered?

Monckton has never said his title grants him a higher opinion, or a supreme power. Usually he'll refer to his Thatcher days, or that the position of his family allows for the time, eduction, resources, and contacts to pursue his advocacy.

I heard his speech in the United States where an American politician asked questions about his title. Monckton was humble and only asserted he had the right to be called Viscount, etc. He gave zero indication that his title gave him any authority; it was just proper use.

Jeremy C - The US address. Its on YouTube, I believe.

Honestly, him saying such a thing is very tongue-&-cheek. His comments are usually littered with historical references; in some cases, worded (in my opinion) for his amusement.

I'm similarly inclined, in speech. So is Dennis Miller. Don't read into that which is made in polite comdey.

I really don't care if he thinks he's the Galactic Overlord. By styling himself the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley he just makes himself all the more ridiculous. Hell, I would even encourage him. And he should hook up with the Baron Pemberton of Throckmorton while he's at it.

Joan the point is, as itemised at [Scholars and Rogues](http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/07/15/monckton-attempts-intimidat…) that it's but one part of a pattern of deception that this character habitually employs, and the purpose of deception by definition is to gain unfair advantage.

So Joan,

If Monckton's greeting is only a jolly jape whats the point of doing this in front of a US governement committee? And why does he go to such lengths to assert his peerage and status of it to the point of conflating truth if not outright lying and in such a pompous manner?

However if this behaviour is just a jolly jape as you assert then doesn't he realise people take it seriously and if indeed he is a humble man then you would think he modify his behaviour accordingly.

Another thing, you mentioned was about him being an adviser in No 10. This doesn't mean he advised Margaret Thatcher directly does it? People keep announcing him on stage as a former science advisor to Thatcher and he doesn't correct them but nowwhere can I find evidence that he was a science adviser as his postion at No 10 was as an adviser on education policy. You do have to ask yourself why would a chemistry graduate who studied under a nobel prize winner in science take advice on science from a callow journalism graduate.

Does anyone still remember this gem?

> Whoever it is is [who edited Wikipedia was] clearly rather sensitive about M[onckton] not getting a seat in the Lords elections: the anon added the bold bit to this sentence:

> > Monckton was an unsuccessful candidate for a Conservative seat in the House of Lords in a March 2007 [[by-election]] caused by the death of [[Charles Stourton, 26th Baron Mowbray|Lord Mowbray and Stourton]]. Not being a Freemason, he received no votes in the election

Yeh, & we're all members of the House of Commons

Joan:

If this is just a sly joke by the loud lord, why the pink potillus or porticullis or whatever. Sounds like a sex toy doesn't it?

while it's amusing to poke fun at what obviously is a hot button issue for this man, there is so much more one could focus on that's more to the point. he grossly misrepresents the science at every opportunity with a patter that would encourage alaskans to buy ice. i would not care at all if he were to peddle his personal views of climate change on some street corner somewhere but he ends up before american legislators, many of them unschooled in the sciences, and performs his babble dazzle as an "expert". that, i find unforgivable, so i would be much happier if instead of focusing on side issues like this one, rather have his dubious credibility as a scientist -or interpretor of science- so thoroughly debunked that he becomes the laughing stock of the world!

Obviously, whether Monckton is really a member of the House of Lords is completely irrelevant to his *cough* *chuckle* 'arguments' about climate change. Does this mean we should just ignore the issue? Hell no!

Clearly, Monckton himself cares a lot about whether he is a member of the House of Lords; he himself has made an issue of it, what with the Pretty Pink Powerpoint Portcullis and these arguments about the 1999 legislation being ineffectual.

That he is quite obviously not a member of the House of Lords, and yet persists in these increasingly desperate and laughable attempts to persuade people that he is, tells us a lot. Primo, it is a handy demonstration of his tendency to lie and obfuscate when he doesn't like the truth. Secundo, it's an exceedingly good way to illustrate how the man is managing to reach dizzying new heights of pompous buffoonery.

Tertio, as H.L. Mencken said, a horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms. And if he continues to give us so much comedy material every time we poke him with a stick, why should we not enjoy the show while we're waiting for him to produce at least one substantive reply to the many existing smackdowns of his 'scientific' arguments?

Perhaps it's worth a reminder that this issue has come up again because of Monckton's question to John Abraham about whether he was incorrectly using the title "Professor".

Monckton seeks to make a distinction between âmembershipâ of the House of Lords and the right to âsitâ. He claims the former while accepting that he has no right to sit and therefore no right to participate in or vote on the deliberations of the House of Lords.

However, Sec. 1 of the House of Lords Act 1999 is very specific and very clear in stating that âno-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerageâ.

Monckton has only one claim to be a member of the House of Lords and that is because he is a hereditary peer. The 1999 Act specifically disallows that claim. End of story.

As others have pointed out, Moncktonâs claim to membership of the House of Lords, while spurious, has no bearing on the equally spurious claims he makes on global warming and climate change.

I also couldn't care less if he considers himself Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, King Chris, Darth Christopher, Admiral Monckton or Caesar Christopher or any other name.

What matters is the fact is he has no scholarly background in the subject of climatology. No qualifications, no research papers, nothing. And yet he regularly trots out in his lectures and articles complaints about how his opponents are not climatologists and therefore their views should be dismissed? The hypocrisy is magnificent.

What matters is that he's a notorious liar and a bully. He must continue to be firmly labelled as such so that his lies, of whatever nature, are given a wide berth, and his attempts to intimidate are seen for the impotent acts of a bully.

You've all seen his response to a reasonable and scholarly critique on his nonsensical claims. This is not the behavior of an honorable man, it isn't how reasonable people react to scholarly disagreements. The man who calls himself Lord Monckton is a fantasist who will deliberately and maliciously ruin reputations just to get his way. He must therefore be held to account for his lies.

re:#16 JennieL
Be careful, we have at least one point that says over-use of Latin can be bad for one's through processes.

re Professor, etc:

In the post that gained me membership in the "threatened by Monckton" circle, @ DeSmogBlog, he included:

""Dr." Mashey is now himself under investigation for circulating his complaint publicly, in a form in which which inter alia he breaches doctor-patient confidentiality. For this reason, please remove all links to "Dr." Mashey's document.

One realizes that the news that the scientific "consensus" no longer believes in climate alarm (if it ever did) is unwelcome in certain political circles. But the science is the science.

Perhaps it would be better if "Dr." Mashey were to write a peer-reviewed rebuttal of Mr. Schulte's paper, rather than interfering in an unlawful manner on the blogosphere, which is not the best place for serious scientific discourse."

My answers appeared later in that thread. The Viscount appears to have a repeated problem with earned credentials in comparison with inherited ones. I'm still keen to find out what one has to do to interfere unlawfully with the blogosphere, but alas, no investigator has ever showed up to tell me.

The reaction at Watts is completely polarised. Some of them are sickened by the way he makes such an issue of being a Lord (right up to referring to himself in the third person as "His Lordship), and others believe the title bestows him with secret magical powers that make him superior over us commoners.

Personally, I don't recognise titles. If Monckton is supposed to be a member of the nobility, he's not acting very noble.

The whole House of Lords thing... actually the whole Monckton thing in general... is just some momentary light entertainment to take our minds off more serious matters. It's what we do during recess.

John Mashey @21:

Yes, gratuituous Latin bombast should be used with extreme care. It could be that, for the data point in question, the disordered thought processes preceded the onanistic abuse of Latin, but one can never be too cautious when the potential outcome is so horrifying.

Your link to the 2008 DeSmog post was highly entertaining. What with the blathering about "Dr" there, and the present head-asplodey about whether Abraham can use the title "Professor," it's evident that Monckton really does have a problem with titles that are earned by hard work and genuine intellectual contributions.

If he actually had any argumentative stones, this episode would show that he was gleefully launching them from a trebuchet in the living room of his glass Manor. However, these 'salvos' remind me of nothing so much as that scene from the original Star Wars, when they're all stuck in the garbage disposal on the Death Star and Han tries to shoot the walls, only to have the shot ricochet around and nearly kill them all.

gratuituous

Uh, that gratuitous 'u' in my previous 'gratuitous' was a highly sophisticated joke, one which simultaneously demonstrates my vastly superior breeding and my extreme humbleness concerning same.

...Something to do with Latin, you know...

(hmph).

Jennie, you forgot "... something, something, Dark Side"

!

"The Viscount appears to have a repeated problem with earned credentials in comparison with inherited ones. "

Could we use "inbred" there instead of "inherited"? Long-term nobility were notorious for that sort of thing.

Wow,

"Could we use "inbred" there instead of "inherited"? Long-term nobility were notorious for that sort of thing."

Don't forget Monckton's gradnfather was handed his perage when young Christopher was 5 years old so no long term nobility there. No information on inbreeding.

"No information on inbreeding."

Except behaviour...

...Monckton's grandfather was handed his peerage when young Christopher was 5 years old...

Yes, it pays to remember that Mr Monckton was born a 'commoner', like the rest of us.

I would love to speak with him face to face and ask why I should defer to his title, as we both started our lives from the same square on the board - he a commoner, and I a commoner.

If he deigned to throw his classics degree at me, I could counter with my degree in science, thence to a postgraduate diploma and subsequently a Master's, and on to a PhD.

And in the end all of his (and everyone else's) dingly danglies are irrelevant compared with the body of work, that withstands scrutiny, that he has produced to refute mainstream climatology.

Exactly where is that body of work?

Growing up in a country with strong local nationalist movements, it was interesting to see that the kids of parents who had immigrated from other parts of the country were always the most ardent nationalists. They would join movements and be at the forefront of any rallies in support of independence. They needed to appear extreme and fervent in order to win the respect of their friends, and make up for the fact that their surname was in the language of the overlord or oppressor. One sees a similar pattern of behaviour in new converts to a religion.

When I see Monckton's behaviour, and especially the way he addresses those he percieves as his inferiors, it always makes me think of that. He seems to have to be more posh and stiff-upper-lipped than everyone else to make up for the fact he is only new nobility... it belies a certain sense of insecurity. As one finds ultimately at the root of most bullies, I suppose...

Monckton:

I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise.

Oh come off it. If you say "I am a member of the House Of Lords" you know perfectly well that any reasonable listener will take that to mean "I sit and vote in the House Of Lords", because that's what "member of the House of Lords" means.

2 Jeremy,

Here's the [PDF version](http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090325/testimony_monckton.p…)

There can be no doubt that he pretended to represent the UK Parliament, and in his case it can only mean the House of Lords.

But TrueScpetic @33, when Monckton wrote

I BRING fraternal greetings from the Mother of Parliaments to the Congress of your âathletic democracyâ.

what he clearly meant was

I BRING fraternal greetings from the Mother of Parliaments in which I do not have the right to sit or vote to the Congress of your âathletic democracyâ.

and he never suggested otherwise.

some sceptics are trying to dismiss this issue of whether or not monckton is a lord as irrelevant as it doesnt bear on the science. but if monckton is capable of obfuscating the simple question of whether or not he is a member of the house of lords with rhetorical tricks, you'd have to wonder at the possible capabilities of obfuscating the science in a similar manner.

should be simple should it not? he either is or is not a member of the house. the widespread disagreement and confusion over this simple issue of human definition reflects the utter pointlessness of expecting "blog science" to advance understanding of any complex scientific topic

21 John,

... interfering in an unlawful manner on the blogosphere

One of my favourite examples of unwitting humour from the pompous potty one.

34 RobH,

:) Clearly my comprehension of English cannot match that of the classically educated nobility. ;)

I'll repeat once again that the Munchkin is only the Third Viscount Monckton. His grandfather, the first, was awarded the title in 1957 by (I think) Eden's government. He seems to have been an honourable and decent man.

35 someone,

That is not the only example outside science where he has been dishonest. He edited his Wikipedia entry to falsely claim that The Guardian had paid him £50k in damages because of an article by [George Monbiot](http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/10/03/did-lord-monckton-fabricate-…).

No doubt about it: this twerp is a serial liar.

re: #24
re: cause and effect
Indeed, this is hard to tell.

I have a friend who attended boarding school with the Viscount, who says the currently-observed traits were already in evidence. I do not know offhand whether Latin came before, after, or during this period.

I just think he's a political opportunist who jumped on a bandwagon. I don't think he's stupid at all, and has now managed to become deputy leader of an exteme rightwing UK political party which, in my view, is only on a slightly more respectable step above the BNP. It's not about what he says but how often his name gets said. Notice how he starts every talk with the strict proviso that nobody take his word for anything and nobody should believe him, which is a great get-out clause. A classic political snake oil salesman.

> Notice how he starts every talk with the strict proviso that nobody take his word for anything and nobody should believe him

Ah, yes. I think the correct response to

"You must not believe anything I say."

is simply this:

"I do not believe anything you say."

If you want more examples of TVMOB being pompous his comments to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority consultation are hilarious.

http://www.gla.gov.uk/embedded_object.asp?id=1013154

[frank said:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)
"Ah, yes. I think the correct response to

'You must not believe anything I say.'

"is simply this":

'I do not believe anything you say.'

"because, sir, you are already a world-renowned, proven fr@ud and liar except of course to the bottom feeding rednecks who flock around excremental examples of humanity such as demagogues Alex Jones and Anthony Watts, who think the sun shines ex your well financed, flatulently speaking arse" (pardon my latin), being the logical extension of that sentence.

The "Mother of Parliaments" comment is in some ways the most telling and gets to the heart of what Monkton thinks he is defending and the threat that climate change represents to him. He is steeped in a revisionist, triumphalist history of British imperialism, in which the man born of class could stride the world his empire commanded. Even as the empire has long gone, climate change, like post-colonialism or feminism for him, is another challenge to the very foundations of that imperialist ontology. When the world is dominated and exploited, it eventually responds and resists, and he can't abide the idea. So he draws upon the symbolic power empire once represented to try and discredit it. And fails. The human affairs of empires and colonies are one thing, the earth and its systems are another entirely.

I notice that HM Government does not address him as Lord Viscount Monckton, Third Viscunt of Brenchly. Ooops, that should be Third Viscount of Brenchly.

The Telegraph obituary (reproduced here) suggests that a large streak of eccentricity runs in the family. Hunting guinea pigs in Kent? Sounds like fun...

45 Gareth,

The 1st Viscount seemed to be decent bloke, someone as worthy of a title as most at the time.

@42

Monckton clearly just likes to be listened to.....at length.

Deniers must be his wet dream come true.

Further to [TrueSceptic's observations at #38](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) about Monckton's dishonesty, I would add that [Monckton's claim that he had to sell his home to pay the Eternity prize](http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Aristocrat-admits-tale-of-lost.3340…) appears to satisfy the [definition of fraud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud).

As Wikipedia says:

"Common law fraud has nine elements:

1. a representation of an existing fact;
2. its materiality;
3. its falsity;
4. the speaker's knowledge of its falsity;
5. the speaker's intent that it shall be acted upon by the plaintiff;
6. plaintiff's ignorance of its falsity;
7. plaintiff's reliance on the truth of the representation;
8. plaintiff's right to rely upon it; and
9. consequent damages suffered by plaintiff."

This would thus appear to render the man a fraudster. I wonder what would have happened if someone had chosen to test the matter in court on the basis that they had bought the puzzle believing that Monckton had indeed sold his house to pay out the prize...

Mark #44 - very nicely put and I'm sure you are right. It is also, in a more general sense, true of some of the more intelligent of the deniers. They won't give up the whole domination of the world thing without a hell of a fight.

From Monckton's father's bio:

"his manifesto for election to the House supported the muzzling of cats to stop the torture of mice.

On settling in his 15th-century home near Maidstone, he established a chapel in the old milking parlour and became a parish councillor.

He was colonel of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers and honorary colonel of the Kent and Sharpshooters Yeomanry Squadron as well as president of the Anglo-Belgian Union and of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies.

Monckton bought an automated mini-digger to excavate Stone Age and Roman artefacts and used his dowsing talents to discover several wells on the farm, where he would relax his military standards of smartness and wander round sporting baler twine around his waist."

The first and last bits of industrious eccentricity wouldn't go amiss around here.

**Update:** Anthony Watts [censors responses to Monckton's claim that he really is a member of the House of Lords](http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/the-monckton-files-wuwt-cant-…).

LOL Coenhite, I'll store that one under Brent's classic "AGW is a fra*d because none of you have a sense of humour."

Supporting a manifesto calling for the muzzling of cats might certainly be described as eccentric, but I don't think I'd call it industrious. It's not as if he roamed the alleys and attics of England personally fitting feline muzzles, now is it?

One can see the value of industriousness in the service of eccentricity. Of course, it's better to put more work into your Monster Raving Loony Party costume, because otherwise you just look lame. But as Monckton shows, industriousness in the service of screaming malevolent batshit insanity isn't really so great, because you end up being exposed to the entire world as a self-important delusional bully.

Some baler twine and a muzzle for you Jennie.

RE #45, you gotta love how the denialists scream suppression of Da Debate - yet without any hint of irony wipe out the bits of inconvenient truth, such as this one.

"A personal crusade against lord Monckton"? So he's now beyond criticism then?

Christopher Monckton and other deniers get far more press coverage than they deserve. Journalistic false balance has caused the public to be confused on climate change â the greatest threat to humanity this century. Worse, these deniers have used mainstream media to attack climate science and the scientists who pursue the truth. Let us now turn the tables.

Monckton has been exposed by Dr. John Abraham and instead of hiding his tail and whimpering away, Monckton has gone on the offensive by attacking Dr. Abraham and asking his followers to essentially âemail bombâ Dr. Abrahamâs university president. We need to alert the media to this story.

I have assembled a list of 57 media contacts in the hopes that my readers will follow my lead and send letters asking for an investigation of Monckton and his attack on Abraham. I have placed mailto links that will make it easy to send letters to several contacts at once with a single click.

In the thread comments, please suggest other contacts in the US and from abroad. This blog thread can then be used in the future to alert the media to denialist activity.

http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/turn-the-tables-on-monckton/

I find it baffling that someone who is so keen to emphasise the dangers and injustices inherent in allowing unelected elites to govern* is so desperate for people to believe he is a member of an unelected legislative chamber.

As always great post.

* see his nonsense talks about copenhagen instituting a global communist government

[JennieL](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…), please try not to mention the visceral viscount in the same sentence as the Entirely Honourable Lord David Sutch or his MRLP project in future.
Apart from being an early investor in and bringing to the world's attention the manifold good of both Marshall amplification and guitarist extraordinaire Ritchie Blackmore,["... policies he advocated - reducing the voting age to 18, commercial radio, calling for pubs to be open all day - were to become law long before his death"](http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6825901), in effect seeing more of his policies enacted than most greyer politicos manage after a lifetime on the benches. And who else would have posed the wholly reasonable question [Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/380082.stm)

Most politicians and especially Brainstorm of Brenchley aren't fit to lick his fake leopard skin boots.

I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit...

No wonder he's so irritable (and irritating). I suspect that pretty much anyone who had to stand all the time would be.

I know I would.

Brilliant quote in Bernard J's link about the Eternity Prize. Appearently from the horse's mouth:

"They said, 'Don't you mind being made to look an absolute prat', and I [Monckton] said, 'No - I'm quite used to that'"

You certainly are quite used to that, Monckton. Pity you do seem to mind that Abraham made an utter fool out of you...

Chek@59:

My apologies. The juxtaposition of the Loony Party with the Discount was not meant as an assertion that they were in any way similar, but rather the opposite. I was trying to contrast the MRLP, as an example of harmless and endearing eccentricity, with Monckton's contemptible and quite harmful lunacy. The MRLP has, as you say, been of substantial value to British politics.

In fact, it's occurred to me that Australia could use a Monster Raving Loony Party of its own right now. I guess it's too late for this election, alas.

cohenite @55:

Some baler twine and a muzzle for you Jennie.

Goodness gracious, sir. I don't know what you are suggesting, but I can assure you that I'm not that kind of girl.

cohenite is used to dating farm animals, Jennie - it seems to inhibit socialization.

Heh.

Come on Monckton, on with the court case alrerady!

the faster monckton go to court, the faster the problem resolved

JennieL,

Don't worry about Cohenite, it seems he has a bit of a man crush Monckton and flares up when he can't make anymore excuses for the guys whoppers.

Chris Monckton is like a character written by Terry Pratchett that has escaped into reality.

The point with Monckton remains the same: He'll tell whatever whoppers he thinks he can get away with in front of that audience, so long as he ends up claiming scientists are "bedwetters."

From the view from science, he tells falsehoods. From his view, perhaps, he's just making converts.

The danger is that his "converts" will grant credence and that some godawful fool -- say, Sen. Inhofe -- will get enough power to act on the falsehoods Monckton tells.

It is astonishing, to me, that so many people in so many different areas, catch Monckton telling lies in those areas in which they are expert. John Abraham happens to be rather expert in much of climate science, and comes equipped with library access to track down Monckton's claims in detail, on climate science.

But earlier, others caught him in similar whoppers -- such as a Mormon professor at Brigham Young University, and people familiar with the history of DDT and the EPA, on bizarre claims about DDT and the EPA.

He's a pathological liar, and an addict. He can't help himself.

If not Pratchett, then certainly Christopher Brookmyre.

69, 71,

No, you're both wrong. Monty Python. :)

TS, not hatstand enough: The Goon Show.

I don't know why I did it but over on Jo Nova's site I just warned her not to enthusiastically carry a statement by Nick Griffin of the UK's BNP. For those not familar with the BNP they are a far right organisation that have been caught many times for racism and extremism with their ranks. Put it this way we've all heard how Monckton is involved with the right wing party in the UK, UKIP. The BNP is far, far to the right of UKIP.

The sad thing is that even her followers are warning her about Nick Griffin and all she does is shout "ad hom".

Sorry to be OT.

73 Wow,

I did like the Goons but I can't think which character would be a closer fit than any of the Upper Class Twits or this [Graham Chapman character](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T70-HTlKRXo)

Again sorry to be OT but further to Jo Nova linking enthuiastically to a facist organisation, according to further comments warning her on her site they did the same as her over at WUWT but then pulled it when they realised the BNP weren't no tea party happy clappy party group.

I'm sure Jo Nova will realise and pull it but in the meantime you can go see what she has done [here](http://joannenova.com.au/2010/07/whats-worse-than-bullying-incarceratio…).

Jeremy @74, that's highly amusing and yet very depressing at the same time.

For reference, here's what Jo actually said:

>Griffins [sic] other policies (whatever they are) have nothing to do with climate change eh? Smacks of desperation to throw an ad hom.

>Find me another person who went to that EU committee meeting and was prepared to ask questions and explain what they heard.

Is she actually suggesting that since Griffin is the only one saying what she wants, she's okay quoting him despite who he is and what he represents?

If his actions weren't so detrimental to the future well being of our species, I would totally heart the good Viscount. He's silly in that deliciously self-important kind of way.

Stu

Is she actually suggesting that since Griffin is the only one saying what she wants, she's okay quoting him despite who he is and what he represents?

For me, the point is that if only one person is saying something, you have to ask yourself a simple question:

Does the person in question have a) a brave, principled history of whistleblowing in the public interest to get at the truth, or b) a history of being a lying sack of crap who will say any untruth he/she thinks will win him followers despite how much harm and unrest it causes the rest of the country?

If a), cautiously report the testimony with the expectation that more complete facts may follow shortly. If b) just don't go there at all.

I've just had another look at Jo Nova's site and she has pulled the whole quoting the Nick Griffiths/BNP/facists thing (its 19.22 on Monday evening here in London). Guess even Jo Nova couldn't justify to herself in this case that the end justifys the means.

"Chris Monckton is like a character written by Terry Pratchett that has escaped into reality."

Posted by: dorlomin | July 19, 2010 9:27 AM

LOL Dorlomin I liked that! So what to do with this character?

On the Python theme, if I ever see him I shall have to say "Ni" at him (possibly in Latin - can anyone translate?) until he a) stops hounding John (yep I've listened to the interview too) and b) by way of amendment, brings both John and I a shrubbery. I personally expect edible shrubs such as Rosemary and Thyme - well the latter's not quite a shrub as such but it smells nice. John may well have his own preferences.

Nowwwwww- GO!

Cheers - John

Consistent with Jeremy C's experience, sorta: I found the post with no trouble this morning, and up to 30 minutes ago. But now I'm getting a 404.

In the interim, you may want to look at the issue from a different perspective. Here's the site for the International Academy of Environmental Sciences (who are they? I've never heard of 'em). Here's a link to their testimony at the hearing Jo Nova complained about, looking to me as an obvious translation from Italian.

The testimony looks to be much at odds with Nick Griffin's account, though it smacks of the legal and political naivete of some environment protection activists.

Imposing penalties for polluting and spoiling the environment has at least a thousand-year history in English common law, under the rubric of "nuisance." It's always been illegal, or at least actionable, to stop people from fouling the environment if it harms a neighbor -- even if the action is wholly on land owned by the perpetrator. You may not build a dam to flood your neighbor's land, you may not cut off the stream that supplies your neighbor's water, you may not cut down all the trees on your property if that will provide a nuisance to your neighbor (too much water run-off, fouled water run-off, dislocation of animals, etc.).

Nova isn't much up on environmental law, nor the history of environmental regulation, nor the very conservative origins of the conservation movement in western civilization.

I don't regard that as an excuse.

Too bad the oiks have nixed any repeat of the Twit Olympiad by robbing west London of its only polo ground- the Hurlingham field where the episode was shot was turned over to football hooligans by Laborite decree decades ago

Anyone else notice Anthony Watts has started endorsing British National Party propaganda and demanding less extreme right- wing bloggers answer said propaganda. The post has been removed last night but my google reader shows me:

[quote]Climate Skepticism Could Soon Be a Criminal Offence in UK
Watts Up With That?
Anthony Watts
From BNP News. I wonder if weâll see some of of our nemesis bloggers denounce this? People who are sceptical of climate change could soon be facing criminal charges in the European Court of Justice, British National Party leader and ⦠Continue reading â[/quote]

Quite apart from the fact that I wouldn't trust Nickyboy to tell me the correct time whilst visiting the atomic clock, denialists really do love to play the victim, even when they're shilling for the most powerful corporations on Earth, the poor, would-be persecuted babies.

I don't suppose that anyone archived Colding's post?

> ...and all she does is shout "ad hom".

That's a big part of her persuasion strategy when she ventures out into less protected spaces (such as the ABC forums) - even as she (a) frequently applies it incorrectly, and (b) engages in actual ad hom herself.

Sadly it seems to work on many of her avid supporters, even after (a) and (b) above have been explicitly pointed out.

You can lead to thoughts a supporter, but you can't make them think ;-) ;-)

For reference, Google cache of Watt's and Nova's posts regarding the BNP.

Incidentally, something that might be a bit confusing to many deniers, who often state that Peak Oil is as much of a myth as AGW, could be to learn that Nick Griffin's BNP takes Peak Oil deadly seriously. For example, text within this piece:

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/deadline-2014-convergence-catastrophes-and-w…

Cheers - John

I'm probably alone here (for now), but I say Joanne Nova linking to him and supporting him is a black eye -- for Nick Griffin. :)

Tim says:

"but Monckton is now saying that the ouse(sic) of Lords is lying"

Are you seriously accusing Lord Monckton of dropping his aitches?

Good God, man.

In the ultimate irony, Nova ends her BNP cite with:

"The Era of Enlightment: 1637 - 2010"

92 LS,

This is the current meme in the deniosphere: the Warmists have destroyed science by engaging in a conspiracy to fabricate data, process it to make it even more dishonest, construct models that say whatever they want, subvert the peer review process, and hide all this by taking over the mass media and using ad hominem attacks against the Sceptics, who are of course the only Real Scientists left.

Oh, the f!!!!ing irony!

I see that Nova is using Descartes as the starting point for the AoE. Most would put it a lot later, close to 1800.

Having Descartes as the beginning of the age of reason is rather ironic coming from the denialosphere.

"I think therefore I am" would prove Jo doesn't exist, surely!

"Maverick" scientists http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2958317.htm and the damage that they do.

Slightly OT: It would be nice if the links to WTFWT etc could be in another colour, say peuce or spew-green. My habit of click-and-then-think had me following one of Tim's links straight into WTFWT flatlander territory. I've read enough of their junk to last me several lifetimes already.

Good to see that the university is committed to defending its staff from ridiculous and immature attacks of the kind typical of Monck and mates. More universities need to step up and make it clear that they draw the line at attacks upon a staff member's reputation and/or integrity are unacceptable in the first instance.

There is a yawning chasm between criticism of an academic's argument on the one hand, and yelling from the rooftops that an academic is a criminal fraud on the other hand. The first is reasonable while the second is way out of line, especially without strong evidence to support the allegation. Given the number and kind of enquiries, reviews, commissions and the like, which have investigated and re-investigated numerous climate scientists only to exonerate and re-exonerate them, it is overdue to put the blowtorch upon the accusers and the claims they continue to make about the science and the scientists.

It is no longer 15-luv to the Monck's crew. It's now 15-all - Monck's bullying bluff has been well and truly called. Let's see more of this!

Children,

The sheer volume of posts Lord Monckton, and sceptic bloggers generate of your little claque blog should be ringing major alarm bells for you all. It is a clear indicator of how the discussion is leaning. You lot are clearly scared witless. That is a same response when one is losing the debate.

If truth is on your side, as you clearly believe it is, why are you so clearly losing the debate? It explains why you are so desperate to cling to the slightest slither of hope, like Abraham's flawed rebuttal, or whether Monckton is indeed a Lord, or whether he has the right to claim he is amember of the House of Lord, albeit without the right to sit and vote.

Of course the answer to this question doesn't change the science, but does cast doubt on his credibility. Much like when Hansen comes out in support of the total destruction of civilization as the only way to halt man's influence on the environment. Hansen's private views do not necessarily invalidate his science but it does cast serious doubts as to his motives. They are both loons. Pity Hansen is in a position to actually influence policy.

Regardless of what you might think you are achieving here, you are playing straight into the hands of what you call the denialists. Just like Tim did with his phony Pinker recording. He thought he scored points against Monckton, instead he came across as a silly little ingratious prat. Not because of the content of his message, but because of the dishonesty of the delivery ( which could easily been avoided if he would've labelled his recording as a using an actor's voice)

Still, I do find some of the posts are rather witty. Especially check's Visocunt, and Rattus Norvegicus's Viscunt, even though I never use the "C U Next Tuesday" word myself.

PW "so desperate to cling to the slightest slither of hope"

The faint but siren call of hope I cherish is that some previously unknown intellectual giant is going to tell us that everything is all OK. Some stunning revelation about physics or chemistry or half a dozen other sciences can **prove** that all our concerns are washed away. This is just a blip in some obscure planetary process.

However, until that happens we have to go with what we've got. It just so happens that the things we need to do to deal with the known science are exactly the things we should do to deal with declining oil supplies, and our limited coal and other mineral resources.

adelady,

>"It just so happens that the things we need to to to deal with the known science are exactly the things we need to do to deal with declining oil supplies, and our limited coal and other mineral resources"

How neat. How totally coincidental, I'm sure. It's a crying shame you didn't mention over-population as that is clearly another darling of the "sky is falling" set that so neatly fits your co2 hysteria.

Never mind. Keep on denigrating the denialists as you are at your own peril. Your arguments are old and tired. They failed when they were new. They failed each and every time you have dragged them out since. As they are failing again now.

I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you need to change your approach. You are getting nowhere, as is clearly evident by this this thread, by beating the same old tune and basking in your own reflected glory. Just like one should never laugh at their own jokes, one should never congratulate oneself for their own perceived clearness. Especially when it is a figment of your imagination.

Of course pervious post should've been. Cleverness nor clearness.

E & O.E

Passing Wind | July 20, 2010 8:59 PM:

I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you need to change your approach. You are getting nowhere, as is clearly evident by this this thread, by beating the same old tune and basking in your own reflected glory. Just like one should never laugh at their own jokes, one should never congratulate oneself for their own perceived clearness

Get thee to a mirror...

PW, it's all been seen before.

The hockey stick breakers, the temperature record doubters, the global coolers, the serial science smearing campaigns and the showboating nonentities like Monckton and Watts and Plimer et al.

And you know what? They haven't so much as scratched let alone dented AGW theory, because there ain't anything else that explains events so well.

So I'm sure that you won't mind if your tales of imminent doom and no doubt sincere "advice" achieve slightly less than a gnat pissing on your average brick wall.

@ Passing Wind:

Sir/madam; your "what you guys are doing; it shows you're losers!!!" line of argument is interesting, although one could easily turn it around and say that the sheer volume of posts John Abraham, and AGW bloggers generate on WUWT etc should be ringing major alarm bells for you all. It is a clear indicator of how the discussion is leaning. You lot are clearly scared witless. That is a same response when one is losing the debate etc etc etc.

Touché!

Passing Wind, you are completely deluded.

>Just like Tim did with his phony Pinker recording. He thought he scored points against Monckton, instead he came across as a silly little ingratious prat. Not because of the content of his message, but because of the dishonesty of the delivery ( which could easily been avoided if he would've labelled his recording as a using an actor's voice)

What I find so funny about this is Tim's tactic killed the denialists. It *killed* them stone dead and destroyed Monckton's entire arguement. Now - predictably - denialists are overlooking that and attacking its delivery. Does an actress reading out words written by Rachel Pinker somehow make them untrue? Of course not, but then again, denialists very rarely engage the science. PW doesn't have any argument against Tim, but then again, Monckton says he is a member of the House Of Lords so that's authority enough.

>Of course the answer to this question doesn't change the science, but does cast doubt on his credibility.

No, Tim's credibility remains completely intact. Meanwhile, you have no problem accepting the rantings of a lying Lord with a ficticious Nobel Prize. You are a hypocrite.

(By the way, "ingratious" is not a word.)

>How neat. How totally coincidental, I'm sure. It's a crying shame you didn't mention over-population as that is clearly another darling of the "sky is falling" set that so neatly fits your co2 hysteria.

I see Passing Wind is in total denial that there is any problem at all. These rising temperatures which confirm a 150 year old theory, why, they'll go down on their own. Oil? Minerals? They'll be around forever.

Everything's gonna be okay guys! Monckton told us so! He also told us he's really a member of the House Of Lords after all, so it must be true!

>Still, I do find some of the posts are rather witty. Especially check's Visocunt, and Rattus Norvegicus's Viscunt, even though I never use the "C U Next Tuesday" word myself.

How noble and righteous of you.

The sad thing is, Passing Wind, that when you get out of comment threads of denialist blogs where phrases like "final nail in the coffin!" are flung around with gay abandon you'll find that global warming is indeed a reality, and one which the majority of people accept. The increduouslessness evident in these threads everytime yet another investigation clears scientists of wrongdoing in the "Climategate" saga is evidence these people don't know their arses from a hole in the ground. It's one big echo chamber of stupid.

Sadly, however, your rubbish doesn't echo here.

You can be skeptical about climate science without jumping on the bandwagon of Monctkon. Anybody who does instantly exposes himself as someone who believes personality over science and someone who just hears whatever confirms their political beliefs.

There are two John's here! John, I was here first!

John,

Both camps are awful. But somehow the denialist arguments are winning. Globally, the denialists have brought us down from DEFCON 2 to, say, DEFCON 4.

My guess is the public doesn't much care for your counter-denialist argument. Clearly that is the focus of this site. John Abraham could've made a presentation demonstrating the dangers of global warming, but chose to try and discredit Monckton instead. The alarmists need to work on getting their own argument across in a manner the public can believe. Continuously making outrageous predictions that fail to materialize is not doing the alarmists any favors, is it.

I know the denialists have gotten lots of milage ripping An inconvenient truth tp pieces, so I cannot offer an explanation why the same tactic is backfiring on you.

As far the the various climategate investigations go, to Joe Public they reek of whitewash. None of them looked at the science. None of them looked at the emails. None of them interviewed McIntyre or any of the other denialists relevant to the inquiries. Jones picked his own papers for assessment. UEA was too closely linked to the Russel inquiry. The Oxburgh report had no written terms of reference, no interviews were recorded or transcribed, and the final report was a whopping 5 pages. So whitewash is a true and accurate description regardless of what you might think.

Seems UEA isn't doing so well. See http://www.thegwpf.org/climategate/1262-us-government-halts-funds-for-c…

Passing Wind, you could probably solve your problem by eating fewer beans.

So suddenly now you're backing away from Monckton? Or are you saying it's okay for him to lie as long as he achieves what you think is the greater good?

The public is free to compare the many lies, mistruths and misrepresentations of Monckton and compare them to Abraham's carefully worded and scientifically accurate presentation and make up their own mind. *My* personal guess is that the public doesn't take publicly bullying a university into censorship all the lightly.

Thanks David. I'll consider your suggestion.

I don't believe the climate gate emails proved their was a conspiracy, or that the science was bogus. But I do believe the "nothing to see here" attitude of the inquiries did not help your cause at all.

For the sake of credibility, UEA should've sacked Phil Jones, and Penn State should've censured Mann. At least them UEA might've saved some face, and the public might have some faith in the inquiries. The is absolutely no doubt what so ever that Phil Jones was in breach of FOIA and was not charged only because of a statue of limitations. For this he should've lost his job.

Windy, since when should a University base their HR decisions on the strident demands of the dishonest and uneducated?

Passing Wind lies like a rug:

>Just like Tim did with his phony Pinker recording. He thought he scored points against Monckton, instead he came across as a silly little ingratious prat. Not because of the content of his message, but because of the dishonesty of the delivery ( which could easily been avoided if he would've labelled his recording as a using an actor's voice)

I did label the recording with the voice of the speaker -- it was on the slide with the quote that the recording was attached to. But you knew that.

Well John, if you think your side is winning hearts and minds, keep going with the same ol' tired counter-arguments. I think if you sit back and be honnest about it, you realize it's not working. The world was on the brink of mandating change, but then backed down. And I don't see you've turned the argument around yet, or that the inquiries did anything but harm to your cause.

John Abraham's presentation has more holes in than a sieve. Some of it is okay, but most of it is based on straw man arguments, misquotes, and outright fabrication. I'd give it a c- at best.

As far as Monckton goes, well it seems those that listen to Monckton don't listen to your counter claims. Try another tactic.

SteveC, @101. Absolutely spot on.
John @103. Like is said, it's not working for you, is it?

If that is true, Tim, then of course I'll take back. I'll look it up later on and post back.

Fair enough?

Well Tim, I just looked at your video again. I can't read the fine print caveat at the bottom of the slide on my high res monitor and I'll bet nobody else can too. Perhaps those at the conference could readmit, but we can't. It is at the bottom of the PDF copy of your slides linked elsewhere on this site but I doubt any Monckton supports would've gone looking for your slides.

Labelled, but illegible on the video. You didn't actually talk to Pinker, as you implied by using a voice recording. Cheap parlor trick and you know it.

Bray Fart [says](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…):

Regardless of what you might think you are achieving here, you are playing straight into the hands of what you call the denialists. Just like Tim did with his phony Pinker recording. He thought he scored points against Monckton,

You can twist the facts until you are woad-blue in the face, but the fact remains that Tim Lambert indicated to the audience that Pinker's quote was spoken by one P Furst. If you are not aware of this, [here is the slide that was visible to the audience, and to Monckton](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/02/monckton.pdf), as the audio was played during the debate.

Bottom line, Tim completely pwned Monckton.

It's interesting that this sticks so in your craw, and in the craws of your buddies - I note that exactly the same nonsense was trundled out today by Howard C at #245 on [Codling's entertaining thread about Monckton](http://joannenova.com.au/2010/07/abraham-surrenders-to-monckton-uni-of-…).

How it must gall the Denialati that Tim Lambert not only caught Monckton out, but that he did so again with Monckton's cheer squad when they couldn't figure out that Lambert was simply using an openly acknowledged voice-over to make his basic point.

And how many of said cheer squad have apoligised for their jumping of the gun? Of the dozens of complaints about Lambert's apparent skullduggery that I've read, not a one has been retracted.

Poor losers, I'd say.

Ha, go away to feed a toddler and everyone has beaten me to my point. Must remember to refresh before posting...

The point remains though, Bray Fart, that the words spoken were Pinker's exactly words, if not her voice. Had Tim Lambert used a male voice I doubt that the Denialati would have pounced on this so-called "parlour trick", because Monckton would not have looked nearly as silly as he did in assuming that Pinker was male.

If the audience couldn't read the credit acknowledging that Pinker had been voiced over, they should have at least seen that the words on the slide were in quotation marks. And so what if they couldn't figure it out? If Lambert provides Pinker's exact words, and a voice-over to indicate her gender, what has he done wrong? What is the problem in terms of communicating what Pinker said, and what her gender was?

And remember - the voice-over was,/i> acknowledged! How do you think that Tim should have acknowledged the voice-over? With a strip-a-gram?

Really?

Never mind Tim and Monckton's debate. I just checked YouTube and the debate had 1900 viewers for the first of 15 videos, down to 400 for the last 5 of 15. Hardly anyone saw it, so hardly anyone was conned.

Contrast this with Monckton's St Paul lecture with 225,000 hits, plus another 115,000 hits for the update with slides.

So your anti Monckton strategy is working? Surebit is.

Bad smell:

Contrast this with Monckton's St Paul lecture with 225,000 hits, plus another 115,000 hits for the update with slides.

a.k.a. proof by popularity poll.

>[Tim]: Passing Wind lies like a rug [...] I did label the recording with the voice of the speaker -- it was on the slide with the quote that the recording was attached to. But you knew that.

>Windy: *If that is true, Tim, then of course I'll take back. I'll look it up later on and post back.*

Windy you lied, you did no such thing.

>*It is at the bottom of the PDF copy of your slides linked elsewhere on this site but I doubt any Monckton supports would've gone looking for your slides.*

Then you lied about it being illegible. [Its certainly legible](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/02/monckton.pdf#page=[11]), just as a footnote should be.

That reminds me of the time that windy arguged black was white for 20 hours before calling himself out on his original [bogus claim](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/monckton_is_wrong.php#comment-2…).

Getting to be a pattern with you windy.

Ah, I see our breezy troll is back.

Comment by Passing Wind blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]

Comment by Passing Wind blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]

Comment by Passing Wind blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]

Greasemonkey and killfile. Just saying.

Jackoff,

You are colossal distorter and fabricator to suggest I did not go and check the video as I said i would. Tim's footnote is illegible in the video presentation, as I responded, see post @115, which I checked as I said I would. No apology is coming Tim's way because as far as anyone viewing only the video no disclaimer is evident. If Tim wanted to make it totally clear he would've introduced the fake Pinker voices with, "... as re-enacted her by P. Furst".

Specifically, Tim wanted to make the impression that he had actually spoken to Pinker knowing full well that most of the audience would not bother to read the slides in unison with fake Pinker.

BernardJ. There was no place for the voice over. Period. Tim did not talk to Pinker, so unless she sent him a talking email, Tim's parlor trick was poor judgement on his behalf. Wouldn't Tim have egg on his face if she doesn't speak English?

Of course, this is totally acceptable to you, as are whitewashed inquiries.

The thermometers are liars @ 119. Great name, although unlikely to contain any truth. Proof by popularity? No. Perhaps it's a good proxy for how Joe Public see the debate. A quarter of a million plus for Monckton, less than 2000 for Tim.

Try a new approach if you want to succeed.

JennieL @ 121. Go ahead, stick you fingers in your ears and stifle debate as much as you like. These tactic are surely failing. Perhaps someone elsemwill pass this on to you if you have truly kill filed my posts.

Jackoff. You should became a conscientious objector, instead of shooting yourself in the foot all the time. 1/15 1897 views, 2/15 1039 views, 3/15 1503 views, 4/15 1309 views, 5/15 837 views, 6/15 725 views, 7/15 656 views, 8/15 523 views, 9/15 517 views, 10/15 479 views, 11/15 426 views, 12/15 398 views, 13/15 392 views, 14/15 399 views, 15/15 464 views.

ThunderfOOt's far more popular video pair "debunking Lord Monckton parts 1 & 2" scored 12,981 views and 12,722 views. So little it doesn't really matter, does it?

The world has just had the hottest 12 months on record and is fast heading for the hottest calander year on record, and here is a denialist troll arguing that Tim Lambert is wrong because Tim used a female actor and he never bothered to check if she was referenced on the slide.

Passing Wind's argument that it's wrong because she never *said* those words, she only *wrote* them and therefore this makes it misleading is the stupidest thing I've read today, especially considering he's so quick to support Monckton who has nary said an honest word in his entire life and faked almost his entire resume.

The reason you it enrages you and you want to discredit it is because it's the death blow to Monckton's argument. You can't argue that Pinker is incorrectly interpreting her own work. But hey, as you've admitted, you don't care if people are being deliberately misled by Monckton because he agrees with you and it's all for the greater good.

It's okay to admit you're wrong Passing Wind. We won't judge you because you don't think before you speak.

Windy are pathalogically dishonest? Here is what tim wrote:

>*Passing Wind lies like a rug [...] I did label the recording with the voice of the speaker -- it was on the slide with the quote that the recording was attached to.*

Here is what you wrote:

>*If that is true, Tim, then of course I'll take back. I'll look it up later on and post back.*

But no you did no such thing.

Careful your pants on fire windy!

Passing Wind, if this is how we are comparing things, *An Inconveinient Truth* made $50,000,000 at the box office, has been shown on television, released on DVD and been seen in schools and universities all around the world, whereas most people haven't heard of Monckton.

Monckton is a fringe element preaching to the converted.

Your tactics are surely failing, and they failed the first time you used them and they continue to fail everytime you wheel them back out.

Windy apparently doesn't get physics.

Windy confuses physical reality with reality television.

Windy thinks that science is some popular variant of the X-factor, or Dancing With the Stars, or some such artifact of popular culture.

Windy thinks that we can democratically choose a version of reality that suits us and then impose it upon the world.

Let me say that if I could choose such a reality, I would certainly select one where AGW was not included.

I would also choose a reality where peak oil was not an inevitability.

While I am at it, I would also choose a reality where Britney Spears, Lady GaGa, and Sunderland FC had all remained in glorious obscurity.

Unfortunately, the world and the universe is not a construct of human imagination, rather is is the other way round.

The atmospheric physics will continue unchanged regardless of the wishes and needs of me, Windy and everyone else.

Popularity, as endorsed so roundly by Windy, has never been a sound mechanism for divining a scientific 'truth'. Instead scientific understanding and scientific arguments, as practiced by true scientists (and in direct contrast to the practice of those from a humanities or journalistic background) requires an objective and rational analysis of evidence.

Despite all the hot air that he has posted here, and despite his own high opinion of his own achievements, Windy has yet to present any evidence that challenges the prevailing understanding regarding climate change, but instead delivers a constant stream of rhetoric about how the world cannot be thus because he feels it should not be so.

Well, bad luck Windy. The world cars not a jot about you or I, or about what we feel.

Ironically, for the sake of our own futures, we must care very much for the world.

>*Go ahead, stick you fingers in your ears and stifle debate as much as you like..*

lol, your not debateing windy, you're acting the fool! You [lie like a rug](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…), and John absolutely [nails you](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

Keep it up windy!

John,

Look. If you think your side is winning over Joe Public, then just ignore me. That is what I'm trying to tell you lot, but you clearly would rather I piss in your pocket instead. For the non-Australians out there "pissing in your pocket" is a colloquialism sucking up to someone.

Anyway, that's enough free campaign advise for you lot. Tim, feel free to contact me for some fee for service advise. I'm expensive, but at least I'll tell you what you need to hear, not what you'd likento hear.

Oh I see, you're trying to *help* us. I misunderstood you. Here I was thinking you're a worthless troll.

PW why on Earth would anyone want to hear your dishonest ravings?

You compare Tim's Youtube ratings to Monckton's with the implication that indicates public acceptance. And as usual you're comparing apples with oranges.

Monckton is a third rate crazed global socialist plot conspiracy theorist and as such comes in way, way behind David Icke and Alex Jones in that arena. Although there's probably plenty of overlap, I somehow doubt you want to own those figures and what they indicate in PR terms.

Then you moan about the CRU enquiries as if some bureaucrats were meant to assess the validity of the science. No, they weren't. The enquiries were there to investigate the three 'F's complaints - the fixing, fudging and fabricating of data. That's what the scientists were cleared of, as if you didn't know.

The science itself has always been up for challenge by any smart young whippersnapper (I guess that excludes broken down old hobbyist McIntyre) hungry for a Nobel (a real one that is - not a self-awarded Brenchley).

Overall your propensity for strawmen and dishonestly moving your goalposts doesn't exactly make you a desirable asset Windy.

If you think your side is winning over Joe Public, then just ignore me.

The majority of "Joe Public" goes along with the scientific consensus, PW.

Part of the reason for that is because people like John and himThere and Jakerman spend a lot of time pointing out that people like you are full of crap.

113: "John Abraham's presentation has more holes in than a sieve. Some of it is okay, but most of it is based on straw man arguments, misquotes, and outright fabrication. I'd give it a c- at best."

No foolin'?

You'd think Bunk-Tonne could have responded with a refutation which made all these points about Abraham's original presentation, rather than attempting to have the presentation suppressed.

If you were right there would be no need to threaten the University and attempt to have the presentation taken down, would there? The errors you claim to exist should be self-evident, and leaving the presentation up would just be further proof of the errors of his critics.

And, by the way, if you acknowledge that "some of [Abraham's presentation] is okay", doesn't that kinda prove Abraham's point anyway?

113: "John Abraham's presentation has more holes in than a sieve. Some of it is okay, but most of it is based on straw man arguments, misquotes, and outright fabrication. I'd give it a c- at best."

No foolin'?

You'd think Bunk-Tonne could have responded with a refutation which made all these points about Abraham's original presentation, rather than attempting to have the presentation suppressed.

If you were right there would be no need to threaten the University and attempt to have the presentation taken down, would there? The errors you claim to exist should be self-evident, and leaving the presentation up would just be further proof of the errors of his critics.

And, by the way, if you acknowledge that "some of [Abraham's presentation] is okay", doesn't that kinda prove Abraham's point anyway?

@MartinM re caching of Nick Griffith. THANKS!

Already found a use for it!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/20/sustainability-watchd…

Windy sez:

Just like Tim did with his phony Pinker recording. He thought he scored points against Monckton, instead he came across as a silly little ingratious prat. Not because of the content of his message, but because of the dishonesty of the delivery ( which could easily been avoided if he would've labelled his recording as a using an actor's voice)

Really? Is this what you're complaining about? Honestly? Is this what you think ruins Tim's credibility and ultimately proves "our side" is "losing"? You're a Poe, non?

Specifically, Tim wanted to make the impression that he had actually spoken to Pinker knowing full well that most of the audience would not bother to read the slides in unison with fake Pinker.

But.... but... he did speak with Pinker. And by speak, I use the colloquial sense: Tim corresponded with Pinker. Why does it matter, one iota?

Anyway, that's enough free campaign advise for you lot.

I was going to offer to pay you NOT to give anymore advice.

Zibethicus ,

Monckton feels he has been slandered by Abraham because Abraham fabricates much of the argument. He does this by misquoting Monckton, paraphrasing an argument poorly so that any nuance in the argument was lost, and misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors.

I'd say that Abraham presentation just barely proves some points which Monckton could easily address by rephrasing the argument. I'll make an example for you. Monckton should restate his MWP presentation slides to show that many papers show the MWP was warmer than today, but they are mostly local. As in virtually no studies were global, but combine all the local studies for all around the globe, and you can form a global picture. Doing so, Monckton could properly cite Keigwin 1996, and many other local studies.

>*The errors you claim to exist should be self-evident, and leaving the presentation up would just be further proof of the errors of his critics.*

Windy's claims of what is Abraham's errors are are documented. Windy's critique included beauties such as rebuking Abraham for [contacting the authors](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/monckton_is_wrong.php#comment-2…) to get their views on Monckton's claims about their work.

Zibethicus,

I forgot to add that if Abraham would've contacted Monckton he would've sent him a complete list of papers and other data sources. This of course would have nullified much of Abraham's argument.

Seriously, Abraham make some ridiculous claims, such as Monckton confussing citations for authors with regard to the number of IPCC papers supporting catastrophe, not 2500 authors.

>*Monckton should restate his MWP presentation slides to show that many papers show the MWP was warmer than today, but they are mostly local.*

Interesting to see tips from windy on how to use out of date cherry picked data to misrepresent the current weight of evidence. Not a first for the [dishonest windy](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/monckton_is_wrong.php#comment-2…)

>*if Abraham would've contacted Monckton he would've sent him a complete list of papers and other data sources. This of course would have nullified much of Abraham's argument.*

Really? but Abraham critiqued Monckton for not properly referencing data as is proper practice, so having to contact Monckton to get the reference makes Abrahams point.

>*Abraham fabricates much of the argument. He does this by misquoting Monckton, paraphrasing an argument poorly so that any nuance in the argument was lost, and misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors.*

Windy prove that this is not a lie, show us how Abraham misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors, or retract your claim.

> Monckton should restate his MWP presentation slides to show that many papers show the MWP was warmer than today, but they are mostly local.

You're really pissing into the wind here.

Doing so would undermine Monckton's argument, which rests **heavily** on the twin assumptions that (a) the MWP was synchronously global, and (b) that proves that AGW is not a problem. We know the latter does not follow...and we have evidence that strongly suggests the former is not in evidence.

> As in virtually no studies were global, but combine all the local studies for all around the globe, and you can form a global picture.

Monckton can't go **there** either, because he can't show anyone who did a better job of combining the studies to form a global picture than the ones that show that the MWP wasn't synchronously global, wasn't distinctly warmer than today, etc.

> Doing so, Monckton could properly cite Keigwin 1996, and many other local studies.

He could indeed properly cite them; just not **both** properly cite them and use them to support the conclusions he claims to draw from them.

Bad smell:

The thermometers are liars @ 119. Great name, although unlikely to contain any truth.

The thermometers are showing global warming. There is no global warming, isn't there?

Proof by popularity? No. Perhaps it's a good proxy for how Joe Public see the debate.

Yes, Joe Public whiles away his spare time watching Monckton videos. Sure. If you say so.

Passing Wind:

> "I don't believe the climate gate emails proved their was a conspiracy, or that the science was bogus. [...] For the sake of credibility, UEA should've sacked Phil Jones, and Penn State should've censured Mann."

so they're not guilty of anything, but they should be punished for it anyway?

>*You're really pissing into the wind here. Doing so would undermine Monckton's argument*

Lotharsson is correct, but Windy even suggesting that Monckton needs to change what his is saying undermines windy's apologist argument for Monckton.

BTW this is "nuance" that [windy wants](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…). He want's Monckton to misrepresent where the weight of evidence is, but in a manner that is subtlety different to that which Abraham caught Monckton making false statements.

Passing Wind:

> "Contrast this with Monckton's St Paul lecture with 225,000 hits"

> "Perhaps it's a good proxy for how Joe Public see the debate."

i give you [a monkey urinating in it's own mouth](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2mng8VJCbg), with 210k views (thanks, pitchfork!). or a [gorilla engaging in coprophagy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh0OGko3TjA), with 370k views.

>Monckton feels he has been slandered by Abraham because Abraham fabricates much of the argument criticised him and didn't warn him advance, so Monckton couldn't co-ordinate a personal attack at the same time as the publishing of the presentation.

Fixed.

Ligne, my baby has just gone down to sleep but I'm struggling to hold [my laugh in](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)!

I'm sure Windy Hill will try and invoke some form of Godwin's Law for urinating monkeys, but we'll see.

Opened Lunchbox, do you really believe that if Abraham had asked Monckton for his sources and informed him of his intentions that he would have handed over those sources politely, no questions asked?

Or would have Monckton merely have started his email-bomb campaign six months early and tried to stop the release of the presentation in the first place?

I'm going with the latter.

118 PW,

"... so hardly anyone was conned"? Conned by what?

He probably means conned into thinking that's Dr. Pinker speaking instead of an actress, as Windy City believes this piece of evidence (clearly footnoted on the slide) invalidates Lambert's entire argument.

"Monckton feels he has been slandered by Abraham because Abraham fabricates much of the argument. He does this by misquoting Monckton, paraphrasing an argument poorly so that any nuance in the argument was lost"

How much nuance is there in "It's all a communist scam!"?

118 PW,

2000 for Tim? That's for Tim and Monckton.

This tells us nothing more than credulous cretins don't like to see Monckton being shown up for the lying ignoramus he is.

How on Earth you can pick on Tim's little "trick" while ignoring Monckton's massive steaming pile of lies is a mystery. Actually, no, it's no mystery: you are one of the credulous cretins.

152 John,

That is what I suspect but I want him to explain.

Oddly, I didn't notice much of a fuss being made about this at WUWT, etc.

Linge,

Them video s s pure gold, them is. Funny thing is I was going to suggest to jackoff, that watching the deltoid clowns is more fun than going to the zoo to watch moneys thrown shit at the crowd. Then you post these classics. For that, I'll happily send $5 to your non-environmental charity of choice.

Shit, I nearly laughed so hard I almost spat my tampon out.

Now back to Tim's little parlor trick.

Of course it doesn't invalidate his argument, but it cheapens and devalues it too the point that your opponents switch off. If you don't see that you are only being dishonest. It was so cheap only the sycophants in this claque would applaud it.

PW, I disagree because Tim's 'parlour trick' has to be seen in the context of Monckton spouting all that made up guff about Pinker as if he had some special relationship.

When Tim's recording of her exact words showed that old Monkers didn't even know that Dr. Pinker was female, it effectively and totally blew all that pretentious pontificating out of the water, in addition to correcting the science.

And that's what you don't like.

2 Jeremy,
Here's the PDF version
There can be no doubt that he pretended to represent the UK Parliament, and in his case it can only mean the House of Lords.

Thanks for this pdf version

Classical Gas,

>Passing Wind lies like a rug [...] I did label the recording with the voice of the speaker -- it was on the slide with the quote that the recording was attached to.

>If that is true, Tim, then of course I'll take back. I'll look it up later on and post back.

You were wrong. We're still waiting for you to "take back" (sic).

You are a clown. This is hilarious when you remember Tim was debating someone who claims to be a member of parliament and to have won a Nobel Prize. I notice you don't have a lot to say about that.

Chek,

> ...has to be seen in the context of....

Too complicated an argument, chek. Might fly on this blog, but out there it came off as an underhanded stunt. And here I'm only referring to playing back part of Monckton's presentation ( what's wrong with quoting him), and exposing Pinker as a woman. Monckton should have been aware of this. It should've cost him dearly, except the good Lord is always so gratious he plays it down as a simple error.

Then we find out that Tim faked Pinkers voice to give the impression he had actually spoken to her. Yes I know that the slides are labelled should anyone be bothered downloading them and I'll accept the slides were probably readable by the audience, but not by the video audience.

I didn't attend the debate or any of Monckton's presentations. I watched the debate on YouTube. To me, Tim came across as a prat for cheap hijack, and later for the fake voice. Pretty poor choice that would get Tim laughed out of any academic debate. This one wasn't.

Bray Fart.

I'm curious...

If Tim Lambert had recorded Pinker, and she if she had sounded exactly the same as Furst, and if the only difference then was that the bottom line of slide 11, as it current appears, was absent...

...then how does the fact of Lambert's point change? What material difference to the debate would this have made?

As I said, I'm just curious...

Ah, I see that it is Spray Fart now...

Anyway, I'm curious - again.

If no-one knew of Pinker's voice being recorded by Furst, prior to hearing/seeing/reading the interview, how does this render Tim's device "cheap"? As many here have pointed out, it made only two substantive points and no other: that Pinker was female, and what she communicated to Lambert.

When people found out afterward that Pinker was voiced-over, why should their response to the communication of her words, and of her gender, be in any way changed?

Why is this a "cheap trick", rather than a simple device to make several significant points in a time-constrained forum?

And how do you figure that Lambert "faked" Pinker's voice, when he made no effort to conceal the process? Honesty, if folk are not paying enough attention to the slides to read what is in front of them, why should they be so mollycoddled that they are given the same "authorised by..., spoken by..." message that appears at the end of every Australian political advertisement?!

Odin-on-a-stick, you're a precious boy.

Golden Showers,

Two questions:

1. Do you believe Tim misinterpreted Dr. Pinker's own words? Y/N. If Y, then how?

2. What's your stand on Monckton's self-awarded Nobel Prize? You remain devestatingly silent on this issue.

[Windy said:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) "but out there it came off as an underhanded stunt".

Out where, exactly?
Apart from within your own rhetorical invention, of course.

Windy! Windy!

Tell me. Was Monckton misrepresenting Dr Pinker by going on and on about 'him' and calling 'him a 'satellite nerd' without actually bothering to find out anything about her?

As to it being a cheap trick I seem to remember Cohenite conceding it was good ( I think I'm right) and don't forget our Anthony has a man crush on Chris-born-a-commoner.

To me, Tim came across as a prat for cheap hijack, and later for the fake voice. Pretty poor choice that would get Tim laughed out of any academic debate.

shorter wind:

to me, Mother Theresa came over like a prat...

and the academic world would NEVER laugh about Monckton getting the most basic facts about Pinker wrong. never ever!

Surely no one is surprised by Windy's denialist dishonesty.

Focus on the science blowing Monckton's snake-oil rubbish out of the water, or that Pinkers words were read out? Naturally the former rates barely a whisper.

I second Chek at 157. That's exactly what the parlor trick did. Furthermore it became the most talked about incident of the debate...which wasn't good for Monckton.

I've seen brighter skeptics recently on forums distancing themselves from Monckton, which can only be because of the frequent embarrassing incidents like pinker, the house of lords stuff and his handling of abrahams. Skeptics are happy to throw their own under the bus when the need arises. Monckton is rapidly becoming damaged goods as a lot of skeptics are distancing themselves from him. Didn't even Watt's say he had "no bone in this fight?" or something like that with regard to Monckton vs Abrahams? Hardly a ringing endorsement. The way Monckton handles stuff is possibly too unpredictable for a lot of skeptics and therefore unreliable. He's entertaining, yet as a result makes some real howlers of defenses and weird claims.

Passing Wind has got it backwards. Skeptics writing blog posts trying to defend monckton are achieving the opposite by constantly highlighting these incidents in the minds of their readership and therefore subconsciously making monckton less reliable in their minds.

I also think Passing Wind is also incorrect to think monckton influences Joe Public. The hits you see on youtube are probably due to the converted as part of pass-it-on websites. Monckton is preaching to those already decided. Joe public likely hasn't heard of him. I doubt anyone I know has heard of him.

>*I disagree because Tim's 'parlour trick' has to be seen [..]*

Except it wasn't a trick. It was Pinker's words idenfied on the slide as read from an email.

Don't let Windy lead you down the his dishonest path distraction.

Windy has lied numerous times. But this is inevitable as windy's defense of Monckton's requires distraction from the points of substance with concocted false claims that require his continued lying to attempt to make them stick.

I particularly liked the way windy is giving monckton tips on how to [decieve his audience](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

But on [another charge](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…), windy is still running scared. Windy claims without supporting evidence (no surprises) that:

>>*Abraham fabricates much of the argument. He does this by misquoting Monckton, paraphrasing an argument poorly so that any nuance in the argument was lost, and misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors.*

>Windy prove that this is not a lie, show us how Abraham misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors, or retract your claim.

Windy what are we to deduce from your failure to substantiate your claim?

John @ 163. Tone it down mate. Keep your Urolagnia in your bedroom, or where ever you choose to practice it.

BernieJay @ 161 and 162. Ask yourself this. If Monckton used the same device (as you prefer to call it), would you be as generous? I doubt it.

Jeremy C @ 165. Yes. Monckton was wrong to imply or claim any special knowledge about Pinker when he clearly didn't bother to know find out if she was Arthur or Martha. The first 2 hits returned on Google scholar show only RT Pinker, but the documents clearly state Rachel Pinker.

So Monckton made a rather fundamental gender error which could could easily have avoided had he left out the "computer nerd" slide and comments.

Michael @ 167:

>Focus on the science blowing Monckton's snake-oil rubbish out of the water, or that Pinkers words were read out? Naturally the former rates barely a whisper.

Now what I find interesting about Tim's Pinker slides, parlor trick aside, is that Pinker doesn't say Monckton is misrepresenting her or that he is wrong, only that there is a misunderstanding. Her language is too vague.

>"These two numbers cannot be compared at their face value. To the best of my understanding this is the source of the misunderstanding.â

... as quoted elsewhere

>âPeople tend to use the concept of âForcingâ kind of âfreelyâ. There are many
concepts of forcing in use, such as aerosol forcing, cloud forcing, which can be related to shortwave or long wave or both (as defined above). Since the energy from the sun is the major driver of the climate system, and since clouds are the major modulators of how much of this energy reaches the surface, people tend to label this effect as âcloud forcingâ (which is not the same as the formal definition). I believe that one of the issues pointed out in your communication is related to the use of the âcloud forcingâ concept. Indeed, this is not the official definition of âcloud forcingâ; however, if we give Christopher Monckton the benefit of doubt and assume that he meant âthe impact of clouds on the surface shortwave radiationâ than it can pass.â

Also, [Paul J. Crutzen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_J._Crutzen) makes essentially the same claim as Monckton:

>[The corresponding increase in solar radiation by 0.10% per year since 1983 to 2001 (Pinker et al., 2005) contributed to the observed global warming during the past decade](http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=t1vn75m458373h63&si…)

And Crutzen is most definitely not a denier. So perhaps the **misunderstanding** Pinker refers to is not quite the total negation Tim portrays. Perhaps Tim could publish the email exchange in full, if he hasn't already done so elsewhere.

Mishchenko et al., 2007, in *Long-Term Satellite Record Reveals Likely Recent Aerosol Trend* also cite the same Pinker paper

>[This recent trend mirrors the concurrent global increase in solar radiation fluxes at Earth's surface and may have contributed to recent changes in surface climate.](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5818/1543)

Wind et al., 2005, in *From Dimming to Brightening: Decadal Changes in Solar Radiation at Earth's Surface* cite Pinker as well:

>[Variations in solar radiation incident at Earth's surface profoundly affect the human and terrestrial environment. A decline in solar radiation at land surfaces has become apparent in many observational records up to 1990, a phenomenon known as global dimming. Newly available surface observations from 1990 to the present, primarily from the Northern Hemisphere, show that the dimming did not persist into the 1990s. Instead, a widespread brightening has been observed since the late 1980s. This reversal is reconcilable with changes in cloudiness and atmospheric transmission and may substantially affect surface climate, the hydrological cycle, glaciers, and ecosystems.](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5723/847)

Denij @ 168 and chek @ 157. Tim's parlor trick only scored points with his supporters and further alienated Monckton's supporters. If Tim was hoping to convert some denialist, his trick failed him. Pity.

jackoff @ anywhere: Talk to the hand. I have wiped the floor with you over this many times. Get over it and "move forward"

I think you guys are confusing [Pissing Wind](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) the poe with [Passing Wind](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) the denier.

Passing Gas,

Both Crutzen and Wind were referring to an increase of solar irradiance at the surface of the earth caused by our (the industrialized west) cleanup of sulphate emissions. This is what the whole global dimming/brightening kerfuffle is about. This cleanup of part of our mess was necessitated by the problems with acid rain which were discovered in the 1970's and 1980's. Do you think we should have just lived with the well documented health and ecological effects of atmospheric sulphate emissions?

Next.

Windy what are we to deduce from your [failure to](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) substantiate your serious allegations?

>windy is still running scared. Windy claims without supporting evidence (no surprises) that:

>>*Abraham fabricates much of the argument. He does this by misquoting Monckton, paraphrasing an argument poorly so that any nuance in the argument was lost, and misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors.*

>Windy prove that this is not a lie, show us how Abraham misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors, or retract your claim.

I think what we must deduce is pretty obvious.

>*Talk to the hand. I have wiped the floor with you over this many times. Get over it and "move forward"*

I'm always more impressed by those who say they "wiped the floor" with someone rather than the alternative of [demonstrating it](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/monckton_is_wrong.php#comment-2…).

;)

Very humorous windy!

Seems like Tim's dirty little parlor trick managed to stooge more than one of Tim's claque.

[John:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>R Pinker's thesis on this (the recording of this TL cleverly played back)

... and again, and much more damning :
>On the other hand TL had spoken to Prof Rachel Pinker on the phone, illustrating on slide and repeating on recording what she had said

[Lotharsson:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>Pinker speaks [recording] - you can't compare these two numbers in the way Monckton does; the IPCC did it right.

[...and again:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>and the soundbite from Pinker was an absolutely priceless riposte.

[John Cross:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>but it was brilliant to have a video clip of Pinker refuting Monckton's interpretation of Linker!

[... and again](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)

>I could hear Pinker very well

[Fran Barlow:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>That's why one of Tim's best moments was his sound byte from Pinker, which put Monckton off his game and caused him to fumble in front of the crowd.

[Ian Musgrave:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>Tim successfully gets Monckton on the Pinker paper, clever use of Moncktons' own words and Pinkers' own words (although Monckton recovers well in the final comments).

[Michael:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>Fantastic with the Pinker video - stopped at least one of Monckton's lies dead in its' tracks.

[ilajd:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>The attempt to use audio from Monckton's previous lectures and Pinker's audio failed due to audio feedback and was barely audible. And Powerpoint 101 states "avoid large chunks of text" no one read the slides!

See. **Powerpoint 101. NOBODY reads the slides**

It certainly looks like all these people were fooled by Tim into believing it was actually Pinker speaking, that Tim spoke with her and recorded the conversation.

jackoff @ 174: You so delusional you can't see that you have lost the argument so you keep repeating the same old line.

Please go away and let the grown up talk.

>*you can't see that you have lost the argument so you keep repeating the same old line.*

What argument windy? You just threw around unsupported allegations that you have since failed to support despite [continued prompting](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

Though I'll admit you have been the source of [such fun](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)!

A poe?

Oh no!

Rattus Norvegicus @ 173

Crutzen said:
>The corresponding increase in solar radiation by 0.10% per year since 1983 to 2001 (Pinker et al., 2005) contributed to the observed global warming during the past decade

Can't be any clearer than that. Unless you are claiming Crutzen is lying. I think it's a safe bet that Crutzen knows more about the climate and what Pinker's paper is about than you, Tim, and I do.

[John @ 152](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)
>He probably means conned into thinking that's Dr. Pinker speaking instead of an actress, as Windy City believes this piece of evidence (clearly footnoted on the slide) invalidates Lambert's entire argument.

What a load of crap! Have you forgotten your own words, have we John.

[John:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>R Pinker's thesis on this (the recording of this TL cleverly played back)

... and again, and much more damning :
>On the other hand TL had spoken to Prof Rachel Pinker on the phone, illustrating on slide and repeating on recording what she had said

Looks like you **clearly** thought Tim had spoken with Pinker. Get your facts straight next time. Especially when you are the original source.

Damn, this is enjoyable.

Windy still running away from the points of substance has taken refuge is the non-issue of whether some people assumed Tim contacted Pinker by phone or email.

I guess windy will be arguing with a stone before he addresses are [real issue](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)!

So, you've answered one question Classical Gas. You believe Dr. Pinker misinterpreted her own paper. You are a clown.

But what do you think about your idol Monckton awarding himself a Nobel Prize?

>*Unless you are claiming Crutzen is lying.*

Unless windy is caliming he has stopped beating his wife its obious that windy is either incompetent or purposely misreprsenting claims rather than deal with the substance.

Passing Wind claims authorship of Martin Wilds's paper

>Wind et al., 2005, in From Dimming to Brightening: Decadal Changes in Solar Radiation at Earth's Surface cite Pinker as well:

Can you figure out the difference between what the scientists say (that brightening might have contributed to warming) to Monckton claiming that the brightening proves that sensitivity is much lower than scientists think.

Here's [Martin Wild](http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011470.shtml) (my emphasis):

>The decadal changes in SSR found in the dimming/brightening literature are at first sight often unrealistically large from a radiative forcing viewpoint, as, e.g., presented by IPCC [2007]. Therein, radiative forcings altering solar radiation between preindustrial (year 1750) and present day are on the order of minus 1-2 W mâ2 on a global average, while some of the surface-based estimates show similar or larger changes already within a decade (Tables 1-3). Indeed, under the assumption of a climate sensitivity of 0.5-1°C per W mâ2 radiative forcing as suggested by current climate models, a change of several W mâ2 decadeâ1 as inferred from surface observations would imply enormous decadal variations in surface temperature which are not observed. However, one should be aware that the radiative forcing concept as used in the IPCC reports applies to changes at the tropopause, which cannot be directly compared to changes at the surface. Scattering and absorbing processes in the atmosphere are additive with respect to their effects on SSR at the surface, but may be opposed at the tropopause. Scattering aerosols enhance the reflectance of solar radiation back to space and reduce the solar flux to the surface. Absorbing aerosols also reduce the solar flux to the surface, but at the same time may reduce the reflectance back to space, opposed to the effects from scattering aerosols at the tropopause. Therefore, surface changes can expected to be larger than tropopause changes, and consequently are also not necessarily representative for (tropopause) radiative forcing estimates (this would only be valid in a purely scattering atmosphere). **SSR change estimates based on surface observations should therefore not be used to challenge the IPCC radiative forcings** [Liepert et al., 2007], even if these SSR changes would be free of biases from upscaling the surface point observations to global numbers.

Passing Wind:

Crutzen said:

The corresponding increase in solar radiation by 0.10% per year since 1983 to 2001 (Pinker et al., 2005) contributed to the observed global warming during the past decade

So what, pray tell, stopped the world from cooling down from 1950 to 1980 while the solar radiation was decreasing from the aerosols from the post-war industrial boom?

Tim,

I had another viewing of your debate, and have a few observations;

Another objection I have with your cheap stunt is the emphasis your actor adds trying to score points for you. Does the original email contain any added emphasis, or did you add them yourself?

You claim the entire Pinker email exchange will be posted on your blog. Would you kindly provide a link to same.

I would like to digest your email exchange before responding to your previous question.

Dear Passing Wind
Just to let you know that a whole range of palaeoclimate reconstructions all point to higher climate sensitivity than even IPCC suggests. For Monckton to argue for low sensitivity, means he would have to explain how glaciations occurred (which he can't). Like most deniers, he/you want to have their cake and eat it.

137: "Zibethicus ,

Monckton feels he has been slandered by Abraham because Abraham fabricates much of the argument. He does this by misquoting Monckton, paraphrasing an argument poorly so that any nuance in the argument was lost, and misrepresenting Monckton's view to various authors."

(end quote)

Question - have you actually read Abraham's presentation in full?

Here: http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

I invite you to demonstrate specific instances to support your claims here. Not your personal opinion/s.

"I'd say that Abraham presentation just barely proves some points which Monckton could easily address by rephrasing the argument."

Of course you're aware that Prof Abraham claims that he actually contacted the authors of papers which Monckton cited, and that the authors themselves said that Monckton was misrepresenting their work?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jun/03/monckton-us-clim…

In one last, and particularly glaring example, Monckton referred to a 2004 statement by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which stated that solar activity has caused today's warming and that global warming will end soon.

The president of the IAU division on the sun and heliosphere told me that there is no such position of the IAU and that I should pass this information on to whomever "might have used the IAU name to claim otherwise".

(end quote)

"I'll make an example for you. Monckton should restate his MWP presentation slides to show that many papers show the MWP was warmer than today, but they are mostly local. As in virtually no studies were global, but combine all the local studies for all around the globe, and you can form a global picture. Doing so, Monckton could properly cite Keigwin 1996, and many other local studies."

I'm struggling to understand just what you are trying to say here. Are you claiming that the MWP was in fact a global phenomena?

Passing Wind,

You are coming across as a condescending bully.

So Monckton made a rather fundamental gender error which could could easily have avoided had he left out the "computer nerd" slide and comments.

wind is making a valid point here. basically all the Monckton errors could be avoided, if he didn t make slides or comments.

in this rescpect, wind is very similar to Monckton.

as other have asked already:

what is your point on Pinker?

having another person read the mail invalidates the content? is a worse error than not even knowing her gender?

that Pinker thinks that Monckton just misunderstood her? that he is using a very strange definition, while interpreting her work?

again:
what is your point on Pinker?

Another objection I have with your cheap stunt is the emphasis your actor adds trying to score points for you. Does the original email contain any added emphasis, or did you add them yourself?

you are an idiot. Monckton completely misrepresented her position. Punker herself said so.

trying to focus on "emphasis" added by the reading is a classic splinter-beam-eye story.

please go away and din t come back, before you have added some substance to the garbage you are writing.

sorry, multiple typos. my fault. sorry.

Zibethicus:

I'll put it to you like this. Abraham writes to some authors paraphrasing Monckton's argument such that the only response available is negative. In other words, Abraham has gone fishing. Not once does he so much as provide the authors with a link to Monckton's lecture, or in any way whatsoever attempt to identify the lecture in question.

Abraham's technique is dishonest and his results are bogus. Don't you think Abraham should've provided a link to Monckton's lecture so the authors could determine for themselves if their work was being cited in context?

Also, Abraham refuses to show what question he asked each author, but he has no hesitation showing the authors response, or part of it. How do I know this? I wrote to Abraham and asked for a copy of the emails he sent. Abraham has not responded, but the webmaster at skepticalscience.com managed to get the Keigwin email and post it on his site.

Did you look up the IAU website to see what was discussed at the conference Monckton mentions? Didn't think so. Neither did Abraham. He contact the president and he claimed they don't do statements. But did Monckton actually claim the IAU put out an official statement, or that this was the outcome of a conference they held? In other words, the IAU might not do press releases, but conference can draw conclusions. Or are you suggesting conferences are held were nothing takes place?

Regarding the MWP. There seems to be quite a lot of local studies that report a warm MWP. Combined, that may make a case for a global MWP. I'd Need to look closer at it. Huang et al, 1996' and later (don't have pub years handy just now) are some of the few global studies. There may be others. Huang does show a marm MWP that coincides with Keigwin's timeframe. However, Huang has backed away from his earlier position the the MWP was warmer than today, to it now being slightly cooler than today. There is a bit more subtlety to it, but you'd need to read Huang to see for yourself.

It never ceases to amaze me how the MWP is dismissed because few studies show it was global, and it's thrown out by a northern hemisphere only study, Mann et al., 1998, and 1999.

At any rate, Monckton was making the point that the IPCC TAR disappeared the MWP and replaced it with a single paper, while a great many papers showed the existence of the MWP. His mistake was to claim papers reporting a local or regional MWP were, in fact, reporting a global phenomena. Even for Monckton, this was clearly taking things too far. It was also unnecessary should he taken the approach I suggested earlier.

I'll put it to you like this. Abraham writes to some authors paraphrasing Monckton's argument such that the only response available is negative. In other words, Abraham has gone fishing. Not once does he so much as provide the authors with a link to Monckton's lecture, or in any way whatsoever attempt to identify the lecture in question.

you need to PROOF your allegations!

basically all your posts are "what if" scenarios.

total lack of substance!

Regarding the MWP. There seems to be quite a lot of local studies that report a warm MWP. Combined, that may make a case for a global MWP. I'd Need to look closer at it

the simple truth is, that a MWP in the 8th century and one in the 11th century at different places on earth do NOT add up to a global MWP.

no need to look further. Loehle did an analysis, that threw out basically all proxies, that do NOT show a MWP.

his graph can be found here:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/loehle_fig3.JPG

it ends in 1935. adding the temperature increase since 1935, shows us, that temperatures today are WARMER than during the "MWP".

case closed.

sod,

>You need to PROOF your allegations.

You do too. Sorry sod. I shouldn't poke fun because I'm dyslexic too. Did you hear the one about dyslexic agnostic? Had a t-shirt printed that asked, "IS THERE A DOG?"

The proof is in Abraham presentation. Why not take a closer look and you will notice he does not show his emails, or partial replies. Search skepticalscience.com for the Keigwin text.

You will note that Abraham does not provide Keigwin with any information that Keigwin could use to locate Monckton's lecture. He just paraphrases Monckton.

Like I said, Abraham goes fishing.

186

"Tim,

I had another viewing of your debate, and have a few observations;

Another objection I have with your cheap stunt is the emphasis your actor adds trying to score points for you."

(end quote)

Further question - if you think that's a "cheap stunt", what does a false claim of having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize amount to?

Gracious, veracious dignity within one's (ahem!) 'peer group'?

Zibethicus:

Monckton's Nobel prize is claimed tongue in cheek, as he maks clear. But this has nothing to do with the science, does it.

Another way of looking at it is, why did Tim act dishonestly by adding emphasis to Pinker, and by not saying the voice was a "reconstruction". See my post @ 180 to see how poster John thought Tim had actually recorded Pinker. Many other posters on this blog got sucked in too. I posted about this earlier today, but Tim has withheld the post.

One dishonest representation does not cancel another. If Tim was so right, why the silly subterfuge?

Not to mention that during their debate Monckton does not mention Pinker's gender. Tim is trying to score points for something Monckton said at an earlier date. What a prat. Just as well for Tim that Monckton mentioned Pinker. The PDF with Pinker's comments that Tim has here somewhere gives the impression that Monckton's Pinker errors are a matter of semantic error rather than error of fact.

Hi Pissing Wand, what's your opinion of your hero Monckton's alleged Nobel Prize?

By the way I never said Tim had a phone conversation with Pinker. You are wrong again. Here I am at #124 stating that the words were *written* and not spoken.

Retract your assertion immediately.

Finally:

>Monckton's Nobel prize is claimed tongue in cheek, as he maks clear. But this has nothing to do with the science, does it.

This is, not surprisingly, wrong but you live in Denial Land.

The following is taken from his own bio on his own website:

>His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.

Where is the irony there? It's presented as straight fact, as is this statement:

>He has lectured at university physics departments on the quantification of climate sensitivity, on which he is widely recognized as an expert, and his limpid analysis of the climate-feedback factor was published on the famous climate blog of Roger Pielke, Sr.

More irony perhaps?

Windy's got all the moves of the dishonest denier.

First, the problem was that someone read out Pinkers words. But realising that this was too pathetic even for a dishonest denier, Windy moves the goalposts for a new version - Tim fabricated 'emphasis' in the reading of Pinkers words.

Monckton can lie, misconstrue, mis-understand, and mis-represent the science and scientists, and the Windy's will be barely perturbed while remaining fixated on how, somehow, anyhow, reading a quote from a scientist is 'phony' and a "cheap parlour trick".

Exactly Michael. Pissing Wand is obsessed with personality over science. He can't seperate them. Monckton is right because he *sounds* like an authority, and he's an apologist for Monckton's continued lying and bullying because the moment he admits Monckton has made a mistake, no matter how small, is the moment he will have to start questioning Monckton's science.

It's a lot easier for him to nitpick on small points than look at the big picture - that Monckton is simply wrong.

Passing Gas,

Really? Here is a chart of TSI since late 1978. Now do the math. Value at height of sunspot cycle is ~1364 w/m2. Value at lowest depth ~1361.5 w/m2. Largest change is about .18%. It rather looks like the mean TSI value declined slightly between 1980 and 2005.

Next.

John,

But Moncky did cure the common cold......maybe he's got climate similarly sorted.

> Tim is trying to score points for something Monckton said at an earlier date. What a prat.

No, a prat would be someone complaining about a splinter in Tim's (or Abraham's) eye and ignoring the veritable forest of logs in Monckton's.

> ...basically all the Monckton errors could be avoided, if he didn t make slides or comments.

``

That about sums it up.

202 Rattus,

I think this is about the insolation reaching the ground, not at TOA. This is where clouds and aerosols come in, of course.

Anyone can look at TSI [here](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod) or [smoothed version here](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/mean:12) and see the trend, but I don't think it's relevant.

197: "Zibethicus:

Monckton's Nobel prize is claimed tongue in cheek, as he maks clear. But this has nothing to do with the science, does it."

Oh, I rather think it /does/. Given that Monckton is constantly accusing his opponents of all sorts of sordid malfeasance, a blatantly false inflation of his own credentials becomes a directly relevant issue in his campaign against science.

Further:

198: "The following is taken from his own bio on his own website:

>His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.

Where is the irony there? It's presented as straight fact, as is this statement:

(end quote)

And, in fact:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/nobleman-is-no-nobel-man-20100…

Nobleman is no Nobel man
NICK O'MALLEY AND LEESHA MCKENNY
January 26, 2010

Christopher Walter, the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, has conceded that his claim to have won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 was a joke.

Lord Monckton, a prominent climate sceptic, is on a sponsored speaking tour to undermine support for carbon emissions cuts. Quizzed about his alleged Nobel status by the Herald yesterday, the British peer said ''it was a joke, a joke'' and never meant to be taken seriously.

The jocular admission was made several hours after he had said with a straight face on the Alan Jones radio program that he had been awarded the Nobel - a claim Jones did not question.

Lord Monckton is apparently yet to let his colleagues at the conservative US think tank the Science and Public Policy Institute in on the gag. Last night the Nobel award was still proudly ascribed to Lord Monckton, the think tank's chief policy adviser, on its website.

(end quotes)

It seems to me that you are strenuously trying to defend the indefensible. If I were you, I'd quietly abandon this thread before I sank myself still further, by association...

Isn't it interesting that PW is exhibiting such classic denialist behaviour? He makes false claims, is shown to be doing so, and refuses to apologise, so he's an incorrigible liar.

He calls Tim a "prat" for using a nice little stunt to show up Monckton's ignorance and misrepresentation displayed at a previous talk. Well, Windy, you are the prat for thinking that what someone has said before (a number of times) is somehow out of bounds.

And you are a credulous cretin for attacking one minor and irrelevant (it doesn't matter if the voice was Pinker's or not) point and ignore the fact that every part of Monckton's presentations is a stunt where lies are told, graphs are faked, and science is misrepresented.

TrueSceptic,

Yes, that was my original claim, but Solid Fart seems to be arguing that it is an actual increase in TSI over the period which is responsible for the warming, not global brightening. Of course it is pretty hard to tell what ol' Gassy is arguing.

Further 197: "Another way of looking at it is, why did Tim act dishonestly by adding emphasis to Pinker, and by not saying the voice was a "reconstruction"."

As far as I can understand you, you don't seem to be advancing the claim that Mr Lambert actually misquoted Pinker. You therefore give me the impression of a person who is strenuously clutching at an extremely slender straw, with every sign of desperation. In fact, if I've got this right, you are now objecting to what you claim to be an incorrect /emphasis/ in the reading, which as I vaguely recall it was clearly labelled as such on the slide.

It honestly seems to me that this is a total, or at the very very worst, a virtual non-issue and at the very most extreme a mere matter of judgement regarding the form of a presentation.

It is certainly not a matter of fact, which makes it enormously different from a false self-awarded Nobel Peace Prize, doesn't it now?

...not to mention a self-imposed logo-almost-indistinguishable-from-that-of-the-House-of-Lords-but-not-authorised-by-same-prominently-displayed-on-all-slides...

...I wonder what you'd classify /that/ as in the Cabinet of Pomposities? That's the sort of thing that /I'd/ call a "silly subterfuge", if not something rather stronger...

208 Rattus,

Thanks, but I really don't want to reread all his drivel.

Anyone who *does* claim an increase in actual TSI over the last 30 (or even 50) years is really just incompetent or dishonest beyond belief.

I do not know who the lawyer is who wrote his opinion about Letters Patent and the House of Lords Act 1999. That said I now know he knows very little about Great Britain's constitution, which is both written and unwritten. For the past 350 years this country has been most fortunate in that immediately after Oliver Cromwell's civil war, they reject out of hand Republicanism and put Charles 11 onto the throne thereby creating what Plato said was the finest form of government i.e. Government by a Constitutional Monarchy. We should not forget that Plato was also correct when he said that all democracies would end in tyranny and indeed we have many examples of this in history. The first Peers of our realm did not have Letters Patents issued to them, their Peerages were created by a writ of summons issued by the Crown. This is no longer the case and in today's world Peerages whether they be hereditary or for Life are created by Letters Patent, which are issued by the Crown under Common Law. A newly made Life peer having received their Letters Patent is then served with a writ of summons to attend the Chamber of the House of Lords, where upon the presentation of his or her Letters patent to the Lord High Chancellor of England and Wales swears an Oath of allegiance to the Crown. From that moment the Peer becomes a Counsellor to the Crown for the rest of their natural Life and the only way a Peer of the Realm can cease to carry out their duties is either by death or a specific Act of Parliament revoking their Letter Patent. The fact is that the House of Lords Act 1999, which is an attack on the hereditary principle, whether it be for a Peerage, profession or trade, did not give the Labour Government the Constitutional nor Lawful authority to prevent a single Peer of the realm, whether they be hereditary of Life Peers from continuing to carry out their duties as Counsellors to the Crown. The idea of having an elected second chamber, while are still governed by our Constitutional Monarch, would clearly lead to anarchy, for the simple reason that if we had two chambers with equal legislative powers they would inevitably be on a collision course if they disagreed on a particular piece of legislation. Nevertheless, even thought the Labour government used exactly the same tactics that were used to destroy the French, German and more recently the Russian Monarchies and our politicians who are in favour of being part of a federalist Europe, are resting their hopes on being able to turn this country into a Republic immediately after the death of our Most Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11. May I suggest that you forget about attacking the hereditary Peers and ask yourself do you want your own heirs to be able to enjoy the hard fought for liberties you have benefited from and enjoyed or do you want to be part of a communist Federal Europe, with no individual liberty?

Thomas Matthew, are you Christopher Monctkon (IP: 95.145.99.96)?

Hereditary legislature = liberty and freedom? Wow, I never knew.

woah, Charles 11th? when did that happen?

[Chris said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) "Hereditary legislature = liberty and freedom? Wow, I never knew".

I suppose that to Monckton & Matthew the great Reform Acts (1832 & 1867) are early examples of communist subversion.

Otherwise, "Matthew"'s screed must be one of the most pompous, self-serving flights of fancy I've ever seen, yet interestingly does not dispute (though attempts to imply) that Monckton's false claim to membership of the House of Lord's is nothing but the most disgusting snobbery.

I fear old Chissyboy has forgotten he was born a commoner and owes his not-at-all-evident nobility to a relative's facilitating yet another frequent and sordid case of the Crown getting the horn.

211 Thomas,

The House of Lords itself says that Monckton is not a member. End of story.

I really don't care that some random fossil would like to take us all back to the Middle Ages when we commoners had no real rights and no say in how we were governed.

I just had a long conversation with a tree stump on the merits of a carbon tax versus an emissions trading scheme. It was about 12.63 times more interesting that trying to speak with Windy.

Oh wait... I said speak when referring to a blog comment. Is that a dishonest palour trick?

> His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate.

Furthermore on that claim and how it relates to Monckton's integrity, IIRC an actual scientist had already pointed out the sea-level typo before Monckton did. Nevertheless Monckton (a) tries to take the credit - with the implication that it would not have been corrected save for his efforts, and (b) appears to promote the idea that it was a deliberate (politically motivated?) overstatement (which is laughable given that the column in which the offending typo appeared clearly did not add up to the total at the bottom).

>*May I suggest that you forget about attacking the hereditary Peers and ask yourself do you want your own heirs to be able to enjoy the hard fought for liberties you have benefited from and enjoyed or do you want to be part of a communist Federal Europe, with no individual liberty?*

AKA Thomas Mathew (who spouts the amazingly similar words to the potty Monckton), you havn't supported either claim that Tim is attacking hereditary Peers (he actually showing up Monckton's furphies), nor that putting a price on carbon is a communist plot. Far from being communist it is a rational market mechanism to sustain society and bring forward important innovation.

Mark me down to 'be part of a communist Federal Europe', please, if that dense screed is anything to go by!

john @ 198
>By the way I never said Tim had a phone conversation with Pinker. You are wrong again.

Yes you did, or your evil twin **John** did. Seems one of you is lying! Me thinks perhaps you are a sock puppet, and are too stupid to use a pseudonym

John @ 102 wrote:
>There are two **John's here! John** [my emphasis], I was here first!

So I don't give a stuff which **John** said it. As far as I'm concerned if you are idiot enough to **knowingly** post using the same handle as someone else, you better be prepared to take their lumps as well. Damn fool.

[John @ 340 wrote:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)

>**R Pinker's thesis on this (the recording of this TL cleverly played back)**

... and again in the same comment, and much more damning :

>**On the other hand TL had spoken to Prof Rachel Pinker on the phone, illustrating on slide and repeating on recording what she had said**

Looks like **John** clearly thought Tim had spoken with Pinker, and that the slide illustrated that he did. Get your facts straight next time, **John**.

Perhaps a small word of advise, because I wouldn't like to have to humiliate you again like this, change your handle.

Damn fool.

Don't feel bad, John. You were the only poster on the claque to get sucked in by Tim's parlor trick. Lotharsson did too.

[Lotharsson:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>Pinker speaks [recording] - you can't compare these two numbers in the way Monckton does; the IPCC did it right.

[...and again:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>and the soundbite from Pinker was an absolutely priceless riposte.

No hint that Pinker's voice was faked. "Pinker speaks [recording]". You can't be much clearer than that!

So I don't give a stuff which John said it. As far as I'm concerned if you are idiot enough to knowingly post using the same handle as someone else, you better be prepared to take their lumps as well. Damn fool.

What's sauce for the goose... Go ahead folks; beat 'us' up!

Don't feel bad, John and Lotharsson. You were the only posters on the claque to get sucked in by Tim's parlor trick. John Cross did too.

[John Cross:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>but it was brilliant to have a video clip of Pinker refuting Monckton's interpretation of Linker!

[... and again](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)

>I could hear Pinker very well

Again, clear as you like. It was pinker, not a recording.

Given windy's continued refuge in non-issues, its interesting to note the way [windy's projection](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) gives a window into his practice.

Don't feel bad, John, Lotharsson, and John Cross. You were the only posters on the claque to get sucked in by Tim's parlor trick. Fran Barlow did too.

Fran Barlow:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>That's why one of Tim's best moments was his sound byte from Pinker, which put Monckton off his game and caused him to fumble in front of the crowd.

Again, clear as you like. It was pinker, not a recording.

Don't feel bad, John, Lotharsson, John Cross and Fran Barlow. You were the only posters on the claque to get sucked in by Tim's parlor trick. Michael did too.

[Michael:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>Fantastic with the Pinker video - stopped at least one of Monckton's lies dead in its' tracks.

The fake Pinker video, that is.

Windy so many quotations yet [not a signle one](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) to back you on an issue of substance.

Don't feel bad, John, Lotharsson, John Cross, Fran Barlow, and Michael. You were **not** (opps. missing from above posts) the only posters on the claque to get sucked in by Tim's parlor trick. ilajd did too.

[ilajd:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php#commen…)
>The attempt to use audio from Monckton's previous lectures and Pinker's audio failed due to audio feedback and was barely audible. And Powerpoint 101 states "avoid large chunks of text" no one read the slides!

I thought the audio was just fine. But he did think it was audio of Pinker. I particularly like his audio and powerpoint double-whammy: **Powerpoint 101. NOBODY reads the slides**.

Did you get that Tim. Nobody reads the slides. If you want the audience to know something, tell them. But you knew this. Which is exactly why you did not tell them.

You are as deceitful as you claim lord Monckton to be.

It certainly looks like all these loyal followers were fooled by Tim into believing it was actually Pinker speaking, that Tim spoke with her and recorded the conversation.

BTW, congratulations Tim on the debate, having Pinker's words read aloud enhanced the presentation. In the short period avaliable in the debate format reading key extracts put Pinke's points across strongly and clearly.

>*You are as deceitful as [...]*

Does getting called deceitful by windy enhance your credibility with respect to honesty in sane circles? Well perhaps at least in this case.

Passing Wind, I hope your realise that you are a real assest in the global warming communications war. I think you should ramp it up a notch and get your message out to a really wide population!

I wonder - why would Passing Wind be more concerned by people being sucked-in by Tim's factual Pinker "parlour trick" than it was concerned by Monckton's misleadingly non-factual reference to Pinker?

Passing Wind doesn't want people mis-led, does it?

That wasn't me you idiot.

Retract immediately.

>*Passing Wind doesn't want people mis-led, does it?*

Surprisingly, [it seems like he does!](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)

Passing Wind, I hope your realise that you are a real asset in the global warming communications war. I think you should ramp it up a notch and get your message out to a really wide population!

Yep, PW is certainly a tremendous asset to his opponents; what we're getting here is textbook weak dissonance becoming sillier with every repetition!

If the Pinker quote had been invented he might have a point, but 'emphasis' is a pretty flimsy hook on which to hang an argument; other than that this comes across as increasingly churlish resentment at an idol having been out-maneuvered. Particularly ironic coming from someone defending theatrics such as CM's 'nobel prize'!

>*That wasn't me you idiot. Retract immediately.*

Windy [doesn't do corrections](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…), his shtick is [unsupported](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) allegations.

>You are as deceitful as you claim lord Monckton to be.

Hilarious.

I can't believe this thread has gone on so long because Pissing Wand can't admit he was wrong.

What can I say Jakerman, he knows what Pinker meant better than Pinker herself so it comes as no surprise that he knows what I really mean.

When I said that Pinker wrote to Tim all the way back up at 124 I really must have meant the exact opposite.

John, windy's claims are becoming increasingly meaningless, enjoy the ride!

"Windy doesn't do corrections, his shtick is unsupported demonstrably falsified allegations."

Fixed.

His real "shtick", seems to be an overwhelming need to save face which contradictorily leads him to pull the self-destruct lever.
Nothing you can't see played out on a thousand other message boards, though.

Since none of you are capable of logically following an argument, I will summarize it for you.

1. Tim uses an actor reading mined Pinker quotes and chooses not to inform the audience that it's not actually Pinker speaking because he knows that most people will not read the fine-print on his slide. He knows that he will later on upload the audio and video, and Joe Public will be conned into thinking he actually had a conversation with Pinker that he recorded.

2. Tim's actor adds emphasis to certain key phases so as to further distort the meaning of Pinker's quote-mined statements in an attempt further deceive Joe Public.

3. Tim tries, and monumentally fails, to embarrass Monckton for getting Pinker's gender wrong. Only Monckton makes no mention of Pinker's gender during his debate with Lambert, so Lambert resorts to using a recording of some earlier speech. Naturally, this ploy fails colossally as it comes across like a creepy little prat in an ill-fitting suit trying to score cheap ad hominem points.

The fake Pinker parlor trick and gender error that wasn't, alienated everyone except Tim's stanchest supporters. His grubby little parlor trick took your cause backwards. Tim was extremely lucky that Monckton didn't turn on him as Monckton was well aware of Tim's dirty laundry, such as Tim's stalking of Tim Blair.

If you want to counter someone that is misrepresenting something, you can't do it by misrepresenting the argument yourself. You have to be cleaner than they are.

Monckton is by far the more polished speaker. Trying to ambush someone that comes across as extremely polite, well spoken and informed, and always gracious (even in defeat), can only end with the attacker looking like a cheap little prick.

In summary, Tim chose to use Pinker in order to discredit Monckton for misunderstanding and distorting Pinker's findings and for getting her gender wrong. It was the wrong strategy. He alienated the audience so they did not hear his message. Which is a pity because Tim's explanation (starting with the cloud feedback explanation) of where Monckton got it wrong is well presented. Take out the issues raised by the first 3 points in the posting, and you would have fared so much better. Who knows, you might have picked up a few converts as well, or maybe even won the debate.

Never mind. There's not much chance anyone is going to invite you to rematch anytime soon.

>[Tim]: Passing Wind lies like a rug [...] I did label the recording with the voice of the speaker -- it was on the slide with the quote that the recording was attached to. But you knew that.

>Windy: If that is true, Tim, then of course I'll take back. I'll look it up later on and post back.

Basic honour would dictate that Pissing Wand admit he made a mistake, and that Tim did label the slide.

Basic honour would also dictate that Pissing Wand admit I did not make the statements in the other thread and issue an apology.

Yes, I know none of this will happen but I like pushing his buttons to see how he tries to weasel out of this one.

I'll bet PW "wins" all his arguments with his mother. God pitty any partner he might have when he grows up.

>colossally as it comes across like a creepy little prat in an ill-fitting suit

Enjoy your ban.

Windy in his own words:

>*you can't see that you have lost the argument so you keep repeating the same old line.*

And,

>*can only end with the attacker looking like a cheap little prick.*

Shorter windy summary:

The deniers that stacked the debate audience weren't interested in the substance of the debate, or the fact that Monckton is a liar.

How silly of me to forget this blog is for Tim's sycophants only. :)

Dissenting views not welcome here.

>*The deniers that stacked the debate audience weren't interested in the substance of the debate, or the fact that Monckton is a liar.*

Yet they were smaked betweent he eyes with the undeniable fact that Monckton bullshited on about how he knew pinker situation and motive, but was caught out on this claim by getting a simple fact like Pinker's geneder wrong.

Even deniers not iterested in the substance, can get shocked into reality. At least until they reover their denialism and start whining about pinkers words being read aloud.

But that's the thing about deniers, in the long run nothing changes their mind.

"someone [who] comes across as extremely polite, well spoken and informed, and always gracious (even in defeat), can only end with the attacker looking like a cheap little prick."?

What, extremely polite, well-spoken, informed, and always gracious as in the following? -

John Abraham, a lecturer in fluid mechanics at a Bible college in Minnesota, has recently issued â and widely disseminated â a hilariously mendacious 83-minute attempted rebuttal of a speech I delivered about the climate last October in St. Paul, Minnesota.

So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abrahamâs artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face â he looks like an overcooked prawn), that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies...

Why has it taken Abraham so long to cobble together his ramblings?

The answer â and, as I shall show, it is the right one â is that his deliberately dishonest personal attack on my integrity and reputation is an ingenious fiction. He knows it, and he has therefore had to go to some elaborate and time-consuming lengths to do his inept and socially inadequate best to conceal the steps he has taken to hide the truth and make his nonsense look plausible...

Just about every one of the 115 slides presented by Abraham in his shoddy little piece of lavishly funded venom contains serious, serial, material errors, exaggerations, or downright lies.

All I have been able to do here is to give you some flavor of how unscientific, inaccurate, and deliberately mendacious Abraham is. He is not only an ignoramus, but a cheat and a liar.

And he has spent a lot of someoneâs money preparing and peddling his lies.[Emphases added]

I, Passing wind, acknowledge that I am a prat and a fool for not being able to distinguish myself from at least [two](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) [others](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) with the same pseudonym.

I also acknowledge that I have completely missed the fact the Monckton was egregiously ill-informed not only about about Pinker's gender, but about the import of her work - to the extent that he completeley misrepresented her work. I acknowledge that Tim Lambert did not misrepresent her science, and did in fact correct the record as it had been contaminated by Monckton's ignorance.

I further acknowledge that I am an ideologue, and that the fundamental scientific truth of the matter interests me not one whit. I acknowledge that the manner in which Tim Lambert communicated his direct exchange with Pinker is irrelevant to the substantive matters of the science, and that had Pinker been talking about the price of eggs in China, I would not have cared one iota that her remarks were voiced over by another, for the sake of making a point about the egg market and about her correct gender.

Yes, for all of the above and much, much more, I acknowledge that I am a fool.

So help me Sky Fairy.

Monckton is a Nobel Laureate and a member of the House Of Lords and polite and gracious and therefore is never wrong about anything.

Tim is a grubby smear artist who dares to use "science" and "facts" to discredit the Good Lord who is clearly right because he has such a nice accent and he sounds like he knows what he talking about. Also he is a member of the House Of Lords so ruling us commoners is his God-given right.

Windy writes:

>*Dissenting views not welcome here.*

Thanks for making it clear what you believe constitutes a so called ["skeptic's" view](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

Jon with no h,

>What, extremely polite, well-spoken, informed, and always gracious as in the following?

let's not forget the regrettable (for Monckton - for the rest of us it's pretty amusing) Godwin he committed at COP15.

Will Passing Wind not acknowledge that all the things he accuses Tim of, Monckton himself is plainly guilty of?

BTW windy, let us know if you find a home where [your type of approach](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) is welcome.

Dear Tim,

your argument about Monckton's status as a member of the House of Lords/HoL is based on the HoL Act 1999. I would
recommend to have a look at the real facts at the homepage
of the House of Lords at
http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/about-lords/history/.
The history of the developments after 1999 can easily be veryfied at
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-information-office/House%20of%….

As fas as I can see, the political situation since 1999 is, that the House of Commons/HoC (mainly the socialists under Blair and later on under Brown) tried to get the House of Lords/HoL under their control and the House of Lords refused to that massively. The dissolution of the HoL by the HoC stopped in 2004, but HoC tried to put own life peers into HoL (obviously with the agenda to change the political majorities in the HoL in it's favor) and after that, the political power of HoL was trunked stepwise by HoC since 2004. The main reform was done in HoC in 2007 concluding that a bicameral system should be continued with 80% (or 100%) elected Lords and all hereditary Lords removed from the chamber (such as Monckton). But this was not law but opinion making of HoC. HoL voted against that issue even one day later and if someone would have read the numbers, he/she would have recognised, that this election was made by 482 Lords (!). This points out, that the older 92-lords-figure from the House of Lords Act in 1999 is way to old. Tim, you should not use obviously obsolete numbers but you should to simple Google search before you write something that has nothing to do with reality.

By the way, one may recognize, that between 1999 and 2007 a system was established to replace deceased hereditary Lords in By-elections (where Monckton was as well candidate as elective Lord ... but he wasn't elected until now! This can easily be verified using the HoL-Homepage-Search-Engine: just put Monckton into it!). The fight of existence between HoC and HoL is still in full manner at the moment despite the fact that conservatives have the majority in the HoC.

To make it absolutely clear: nobody should be using the 92 Lords-number as a real basis because lot's of things changed after 1999, that are not on the radar of either Monckton-Fans or Monckton-Critiques, despite the fact, that those developments are public and can be found within seconds. As far as I can see, in hundreds of blogs around the world thousands of commentators attacking Monckton's status as a Lord have simply no idea about the real issue ... but they have a clear opinion, of course!
Isn't it ironic that a german liberal democrat has to
teach an australian blogger community about their own issues in their political commonwealth system? Well, we germans are not well known for irony: so keep it short - shame on you, guys!

Conclusion: Monckton is a hereditary Lord. Not every Lord, who has a Letters Patent is automatically a member of the House of Lords (although this issue is highly controversial because of constitutional issues). But a Lord is still a Lord and for this reason every Lord (even when he was so naive to send in his Letter Patent to the HoL staff in the past) has the right to vote for a seat in the HoL or may be elected by other Lords in By-elections for deceased Lords. So Monckton is an elective Lord, but (at the moment) not a voting member of the House of Lords.

Google helps everybody..... but one should use it.

Greetings, Upjohn

Upjohn,

Thanks kindly for helping to enlighten this matter. In particular, I thank you because I believed that Monckton was indeed tell a "porky pie". Thank you for correcting me.

I guess I owe his Lordship an apology.

So Monckton is an elective Lord, but (at the moment) not a voting member of the House of Lords.

what are you talking about?

Monckton claims to be a member of the house of lords. that claim is false.

http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/lords/

i am "elective" to the German Bundestag. but (at the moment) i am not a VOTING member of the German parliament.

Thanks kindly for helping to enlighten this matter. In particular, I thank you because I believed that Monckton was indeed tell a "porky pie". Thank you for correcting me.

Passing Wind is a true sceptic. a random denialist comes along, makes a false claim, and PW swallows it with line, hook and sinker.

wonderful!

hey, why don t you find Monckton's name on that list from the house of lords?

and why not give us the list of the "non-voting" MEMBERS of the house of lords?

Upjohn writes:

>*This points out, that the older 92-lords-figure from the House of Lords Act in 1999 is way to old. Tim, you should not use obviously obsolete numbers but you should to simple Google search before you write something that has nothing to do with reality.*

The quote citing 92 lords is from Monckton. Google is only your friend if reading is also your friend.

Upjohn,

it might help if you understood what you were trying to set straight. [Moncktion claims to be](http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Moncktons_letter_to_Snowe_Rockefeller…) a member of the the "Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature". That is [a voting member](http://www.google.com.au/search?q=define%3A+legislature&rls=com.microso…) as legislating is [law making](http://www.google.com.au/search?q=define%3A+legislating&rls=com.microso…).

stu catzo:

I didn't say I was better than Tim. I can be nasty piece of work too. I'm not trying to save the world from global warming like Tim is.

sod.

A quick search at the UK parliament website contains all the facts you need to know. Monckton is EXACTLY what he claims to be. He is entitled to everything a voting member is entitled to, except cannot vote.

He may also sit in and take part in any debate.

Tim hasn't done his homework carefully enough before going off half cocked.

jackoffman,

Look out. Shifting goal posts!

So windy can now retract the [only admission of error he made](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…). Which ironically (but not surprisingly given his strike rate) was another [error](http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/lords/#M).

Upjohn,

I distintly remember someone writing to the House of Lords and asking specifically if Monckton is a member. The answer was: "Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a ânon-votingâ or âhonoraryâ member".

I think that pretty much settles the matter, don't you think?

Besides your argument is a strawman - no-one is arguing that Monckton is _not_ a Lord, but that he's not a member of the _House of Lords_. The fact that he can be elected to the HoL is totally irrelevant - _I_ can be elected to the House of Commons, but that does not make me a member. In the last by-election in June 2010 Monckton again received no votes.

>*Tim hasn't done his homework carefully enough before going off half cocked.*

Don't worry windy, no one expected your to make sense of [the facts](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

Carry on with your usual errors of projection.

H/T [sod](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

pwned!

PW can it get more wrong than when even the error you admit to [is in error](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)?

Windy @ 228
"on't feel bad, John, Lotharsson, John Cross and Fran Barlow. You were the only posters on the claque to get sucked in by Tim's parlor trick. Michael did too."

I love the smell of desperation in the morning!

> No hint that Pinker's voice was faked.

Indeed, because I was *listening* to the audio feed and could not see the slides.

And it *still* is a completely insignificant issue, despite your continued whining about it, because they **were** Pinker's words.

A tale of two correspondents -

Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter[Exxon], should take the unusual step of calling upon you as members of the Upper House of the United States legislature either to withdraw what you have written or resign your sinecures. [empahsis added]

CM letter to Senators John D Rockerfeller and to Olympia Snowe, calling upon them to apologise to Exxon or resign, December 2006.

The House of Lords to Barry Bickmore, as follows -

From: House Of Lords Information Office

Date: April 8, 2010 4:47:24 AM MDT

To: Barry Bickmore [Address Removed]

Subject: RE: Lord Monckton of Brenchley - Parliament website feedback

Thank you for your email.

Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a ânon-votingâ or âhonoraryâ member. [Emphasis added]

Christopher Monktonâs father, the 2nd Viscount Monckton, was a Member of the Lords until 1999. The House of Lords Act 1999 ended the automatic link between the holding of a hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords, and the 2nd Lord Monckton ceased to be a member of the House at that point.

Christopher Monckton is the 3rd Viscount Monckton and inherited the title following his fatherâs death in 2006. He has never sat in the House.
...

For more information about the Membership of the House of Lords and the House of Lord Act 1999 please visit the following link to the parliament website:

http://www.parliament.uk/faq/lords_legislation.cfm - leg6

We hope this information is of use.

Information Office

House of Lords

London SW1A 0PW

020 7219 3107

jon @272,

but is the actual font used by the House Of Lords???

I demand that you reveal if this is the actual font used or is this another phony parlour trick, ala Tim 'Fraudster' Lambert?

Windy darling,

I think you have claimed here that Chris-born-a-commoner never used the word 'he' wrt to Dr Pinker in the debate with Tim. I hope I haven't got that wrong.

In the debate during the time that C-b-a-c has his slide up entitled, 'The bottome Line' he uses "he" once wrt to Pinker and then during Tim's section following that Tim plays a tape recording of C-b-a-c at another address, in melbourne, going on about how, "he" Dr Pinker is a satellite nerd with the words helpfully transcribed by Tom onto a slide.

Apologies if other people have already pointed this out.

Michael @ 273,

Simple answer to your enquiry would be to ring the inner London number listed at the bottom of Jon's post and if they answer "information Office" you know you are on the right track then ask them what font they use but more pertinently whiel you have them on the phone ask them if they sent the letter and to read it out to you over the phone so you can check the wording. If that still isn't good enough go to the Information Office itself and ask politely if you can sight the original email etc.

Jeremy C, that's not the issue and you know it.

The issue is that 'jon' has tried to pass his font off as the original, just like Lambert did with Pinker. Clearly there should be a footnote indicated that this is not the original font. I'm sure PW will back me up on this.

As if the House of Lords would use Arial, or is that, uurgh, Times New Roman.

Michael,

When did Jon say it was the same font, shurley its the words dat count?

You are having a joke aren't you....?

...one could also ask them if this apparently corroborative website that appears to confirm the contact details and them really being the HoL info office etc. is real, or whether they've just been told to say that. But, hang on, they can't say that, can they? The cunning devils...

I've got it - you could ask in they haven't been told not to say that, and whatever they do say, you go through the other door. Or something. Tricky...

And don't forget to ask if they specify serif or sans serif fonts in their CSS, and from which families - that'll be telling... but that would be telling, wouldn't it? Stymied again!...

As far as I can see, Upjohn #247 has explained that monckton is not a member of the house of lords, and never has been. The fact that their screed is full of poor english, partisan claims with no basis in fact and a general lack of knowledge of the constitutional history of the UK is more something to laugh about.

The House of Lords produces The Grey Book, which is the definitive list of all members. The current version is available [here](http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-information-office/whowhatlord…).

Monckton is not listed as a member.

Passing Wind:

... the UK parliament website contains all the facts you need to know.

Indeed it does, sir (or madam), indeed it does. They even have a [page](http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/lords/) which is quite useful for finding out if someone is a Member of the House of Lords, it is called 'Lists of Members of the House of Lords'.

Mysteriously Lord Monckton's name does not appear, but perhaps you could advise them of their error.

Passing Wind, given the two lists above, please can you explain how, in your own words, this is the case:

"Monckton is EXACTLY what he claims to be. He is entitled to everything a voting member is entitled to, except cannot vote. He may also sit in and take part in any debate."

You can also search the contributions to debates each year by any member of the House of Lords [here](http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/lords/by-lord/). Please do let us know when Monckton last appeared in the list.

Blimey! There's 778 Members of the House of Lords, I wasn't aware of that. And again, no Monckton. Now, I try to shun an _ad hominem_ argument (used _correctly_, which most deniers seem to be unable to) as much as the next man, but seeing as Monckton is making such a big issue of it and has continuously falsely claimed membership of a governmental institution, even when faced with refutation by that very institution, then what does that tell us of all his other claims regarding climate, DDT, EU communist plots etc. etc.?

What we need is someone to patiently sift through his claims, contact researchers, institutions and the like and verify the accuracy of all said claims. Oh, wait...

Jeremy C,

It was implied, just as when Lambert tried to give the impression that it was Pinkers voice.

A ficticious voice here, a fabricated font there, this is the thin edge of the wedge. No doubt Mann started with font fraud, and before you know it, a whole MWP had disappeared.

Neither myself nor PW will apologise for holding the blowtorch of honesty to the climate alarmists.

The assaults on Monckton and other high-visibility skeptics (for example, Marc Morano of Climate Depot, Joe D'Aleo of ICECAP, Dr. Willie Soon, Dr. Fred Singer, Anthony Watts and Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi) are further evidence that the global warmists are in full retreat and resorting to slash and burn tactics as they make a desperate last stand to defend their cherished theory from an onslaught of countervailing scientific evidence.
Recently, the so-called "greenhouse effect" has itself come under increasing attack by a phalanx of scientific experts, including Dr. Gerhard Gerlich and Dr. Ralf D. Tscheuschner, professor Nasif Nahle, applied mathematician Claes Johnson, former radio-chemist Alan Siddons, analytical chemist Hans Schreuder, combustion research scientist Martin Hertzberg, and engineer Heinz Thieme.
Last year, 130 skeptical German scientists co-signed an Open Letter of protest to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, asserting, among other things, that a "growing body of evidence shows anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role" in Earth's climate.
The scientists derided global warming as a "pseudo religion," said the "UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility," and dismissed the alarmist warnings of rising CO2, claiming it "had no measurable effect" on temperatures.
The critics of the atmospheric greenhouse effect have been relentless in their attacks. They continue to blast holes in the theory, whose roots go back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896).
As professors Gerlich and Tscheuschner have pointed out in their research paper, "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics":

more here http://www.tinyurl.com.au/e6a

the psych wards will be overflowing with warmers soon

The assaults on Monckton and other high-visibility skeptics (for example, Marc Morano of Climate Depot, Joe D'Aleo of ICECAP, Dr. Willie Soon, Dr. Fred Singer, Anthony Watts and Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi) are further evidence that the global warmists are in full retreat and resorting to slash and burn tactics as they make a desperate last stand to defend their cherished theory from an onslaught of countervailing scientific evidence.

interesting argument. so when we give links, that show that Monckton is NOT a member of the house of lords, we show our desperation?

and it also is our fault, that you have not figured out how to structure your posts?

great!

Now just in case Monckton tries this...... its easy to get into Westminster and bypass the tourist entrance. Last summer I was asked to attend a meeting there so turned up and was pointed to a side entrance. I went through a metal detector etc but no one asked me to produce any evidence that I did indeed have any legitimate business there. Once inside I wandered about fairly lost but people are very helpful, as I guess people get lost in there all the time, and without asking me my business pointed me in the right direction.

The point of this is that Monckton is likely to give a throwaway line about saying when he was last in the commons. Very easy to do as all he has to do is sign up to attend some side meeting etc of which there are lots or go see a friend.

So you can all quote me, "when I was last in Westminster intently listening to the good member draw a point......."

I received my reply from the House of Lords, confirming already what everyone here except the desperate and the transparently inept sophists already knew:
"Dear Charles,
Thank you for your email.
The House of Lords Information Office provides impartial and factual information about the role, work and membership of the House of Lords. It does not offer opinions or enter into debates with enquirers.
The current Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is not a member of the House of Lords and the House of Lords does not recognise the notion of a âmember of the Upper House but without the right to sit or voteâ.
His father, the 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was a member of the House of Lords until the enactment in November 1999 of the House of Lords Act 1999, section 1 of which excluded the vast majority of hereditary peers from membership of the House. The text of the Act can be found online at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1999/ukpga_19990034_en_1
The 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley succeeded to the title in 2006, following his fatherâs death. However, while he holds a hereditary peerage, he is not and has never been a member of the House of Lords.
I hope this helps.
Una Ryan
Information Office
House of Lords
London SW1A 0PW
020 7219 3107

Which makes the statement: "I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise." an outright lie.

Jeremy @ 277,

He implied it, just as Lambert did the voice of Pinker.

Here we see voice fruad and font fabrication. This is the thin edge of the wedge. No doubt Mann started with misrepresenting the odd font, and before you know it, bam!, the whole MWP was gone.

Nothing will stop me and PW appling the blowtorch of disclosure to the warmistas!

Jeremy has a point. how about all the clerks working there? right down to the cleaning man/woman?

or should i call them by their real name: members of the house of lords, without the right to vote

Spotty, you left some other crackpots off your crackpot bingo list. I'm sure Plimer and Carter and Mclean will be deeply hurt.

It appears that sunspot is calling Richard Lindzen a hack. Roy Spencer, too. Pat Michaels most assuredly an idiot. After all, sunspot supports the claims of those scientific greats as Gerlich, Tscheuschner, and Alan Siddons, which directly contradict those of Lindzen, Spencer, and Michaels, who strongly support the greenhouse effect and the relevant equations.

Sunspot, care to tell Lindzen he's a hack? Should I let him know he's considered an idiot by Gerlich, Tscheuschner, Siddons, etc? Oh, and by you of course.

Michael,

You are being desperate.

and as to Sunspot @ 284.

Shame on you! The appeal to authority! Jo Nova would shred you to pieces for such an appeal......Ooops! You're right Sunspot, my mistake, after years of yelling "fraud" when making an appeal to auhority Jo Nova has..... appealed to [authority!](http://joannenova.com.au/2010/07/how-arrogant-art-thy-name-callers/). So go ahead Sunspot you can appeal to authority.

Poor Una Ryan at the Information office for the House of lords. How many times d'you think this poor person has been asked if C-b-a-c is a HoL member

Is Increasing CO2 Even Capable of Causing Warming? There are some very intelligent people out there who claim that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere canât cause warming anyway. They claim things like, âthe atmospheric CO2 absorption bands are already saturatedâ, or something else very technical. [And for those more technically-minded persons, yes, I agree that the effective radiating temperature of the Earth in the infrared is determined by how much sunlight is absorbed by the Earth. But that doesn't mean the lower atmosphere cannot warm from adding more greenhouse gases, because at the same time they also cool the upper atmosphere]. While it is true that most of the CO2-caused warming in the atmosphere was there before humans ever started burning coal and driving SUVs, this is all taken into account by computerized climate models that predict global warming. Adding more âshouldâ cause warming, with the magnitude of that warming being the real question. But Iâm still open to the possibility that a major error has been made on this fundamental point. Stranger things have happened in science before.
Dr Roy Spencer http://www.tinyurl.com.au/e6e

he wrote that page for the warmers, nice title.

>*But Iâm still open to the possibility that a major error has been made on this fundamental point.*

Not much assurance there hey spotty! Reads like we better get on quick smart and take that responsible action we've been putting off for a decade.

To put Spencer's words in perspective [sunshine,](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) I too am still open to the possibility that golden unicorns will soon descend from the heavens and make the world a paradise for all mankind.

Calculating the probability however produces too many zeroes for comfort.

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change included scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders who had reviewed the evidence and affirmed that climate change is natural and normal and that carbon dioxide is not a âpollutant,â among other things.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/e6g

the list goes on and on.

akerz, have you been watching the carbon markets depreciating, most people realize it's a fiction based frord. (yeah, I know, can't use that word here)

And so Sunspot how long have you been unsceptical when drawing up an appeal to authority?

[sunshine said:](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) "the list goes on and on".

It certainly does, but doesn't actually include anybody active in the field of climate. Or as another commenter eloquently put it, "600 other âscientistsâ whose only experience in climatology was apparently limited to learning how to operate an umbrella".

But then you don't discriminate between worthwhile and worthless opinions as is already well known

The Manhatten declaration has been brought up here before. It is yet another dishonest exercise in argument from authority. Astonishing how sunspot recycles the same few hundred contrarians with tenuous claims about relevant qualifications (retired naval captains? vets?), when *tens of thousands* of genuine experts from *every* major scientific body in the world endorse the IPCC assessment.

The Manhatten declaration's criteria for acceptance of signatories is that they are "well-trained in science and technology or climate change-related economics and policy", but not physically present at the conference.

Lest we forget, in at number 482 on the list, a certain Mr G. O. whose name I dare not speak in full, but whose "W" theory of climate change over the past century proved quite a hit on this blog.

Sunspot - you're clutching at straws.

Worse than clutching at straws, he's trotting out a veritable parade of zombie denier talking points. Why ANYONE is still trumpeting the G & T-madness, Dr. Wiliie Soon or, heaven forbid, _Dr. Fred Singer_ (the sell-out scientist of tobacco fame) is completely beyond me...

Jason W,

*Why ANYONE is still trumpeting the G & T-madness, Dr. Wiliie Soon or, heaven forbid, Dr. Fred Singer (the sell-out scientist of tobacco fame) is completely beyond me...*

...because its all they [the denialists] have. Very few of the so-called sceptics are highly respected scientists in any fields of research. Most have puny or non-existant publication records. Many others are shills for right wing think tanks and lobby groups. And sunspot knows it, too. He is using the classic strategy of the denialati: "The best defense is a good offense", otherwise known as the "paradigm shift". The denialists and the anti-environmental lobby of which they are a a part have relied on the same bunch of jokers to spread their gospel of doubt for years. Theyt are also big on petitions - from the OISM 'list' to the Heidelberg Appeal to the Manhatten Declaration and so on. Truth is that few real scientists are in their ranks, hence why their lists are stuffed with anyone and everyone they can scrape up.

Come to think of it, I'm already very afraid of the furor which will surround the release of the IPCC AR5. The PR and crazy will reach fever pitch...

Poor Una Ryan at the Information office for the House of lords. How many times d'you think this poor person has been asked if C-b-a-c is a HoL member

They should have an autoresponse ready by now.

"Come to think of it, I'm already very afraid of the furor which will surround the release of the IPCC AR5. The PR and crazy will reach fever pitch..."

Yeah. Perhaps the CRU hack and its timing was just a practice run for AR5........ not that I'm paranoid about fanatics or anything.

But back to C-b-a-c, a worthy subject.

Given the amount of times the Info office at the HoL has most probably been asked about C-b-a-c's HoL membership I wouldn't be surprised if they soon take out a collective ASBO against all of us.

Jeremy C,

I think with [check's post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) everything relevant has been said on the thread topic. Monckton claims he's a non-sitting and non-voting member of the House of Lords, the House of Lords says there's no such thing and Monckton has never been a member. Making his many claims that he is, at best ignorant and empty, at worst lying and fraudulent.

No greenhouse effect, eh? Next deniers will be doubting the existence of the sun.

are solar blip and breezy whine a tag team? Just it seems that since the latter made a complete ar*e of his Monkton HoL claim he's disappeared to be replaced by arguments that are so limp you wonder if they are actually the victims of the worst drought to hit russia in 130 years.

>...policymakers and business leaders who had reviewed the evidence and affirmed that climate change is natural...

I assume these are similar to the policymakers and "business leaders" who reviewed the evidence and affirmed that undersea drilling was completely safe and nothing would go wrong ever and anyone who thinks otherwise is a crazy alarmist...

Isn't it interesting how when a disaster strikes public anger turns so quickly...

> Next deniers will be doubting the existence of the sun.

when i went home last night, guess what i didn't see? right: that so-called "sun" whose existence we're expected to swallow without question.

it's all communist conspiracy to force us to wear sunscreen.

249 Farty,

No, we just don't like lying, credulous cretins.

Aren't you at all surprised by how your dishonest stupidity has been UNcensored here?

263 Farty,

I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise.

The mendacious munchkin says he lacks the right to sit. Perhaps you should correct him?

285 sunspot,

Nice, but there are better places for brilliant parody. Denial Depot is one of my favourites.

Tim, possible idea for a post - Sensenbrenner's request:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/22/while-cap-and-trade-dies-nasa-gis…

More specifically, his query about whether GISTEMP has been "compromised" by CRU is easily answered: GISTEMP of course does not rely on any CRU data.

This is well known so the interesting part that makes this subject postworthy is the silence from Watts and other skeptics. They are willing to push the story which has misinformation value, but unwilling to point out Sensenbrenner's thinking is wide of the mark which would neutralize it.

Cthulhu,

I pointed this out in a comment on that thread, and at last peek, it was still there.

>*Monckton claims he's a non-sitting and non-voting member of the House of Lords, the House of Lords says there's no such thing and Monckton has never been a member.*

Jason, a brief explanation to be clear so as to minimise the number of people falling for the trick of assuming Monckton is telling the truth when he tries to cover another untruth.

Monckton claimed hes was a *"Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature"*. That is [a law maker](http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define:+legi…). Which he contradicted when scrutinized he later claimed:

>*"I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and **I have never pretended otherwise**.*" [my emphasis added].

He's leading people down different merry path by making new claims about non-voting members.

Good news, Hot Topic's register of support for John Abraham has reached 1000 signees.

The amount of effort taken by certain, er, contributors to this thread to type (paste) great slabs of out-dated tired old contrarian text into this thread smells rather strongly of astroturf to me. Nice & cosy in the boiler-room?

Ohh, poor John Mason.

Windy......

C-b-a-c using "he" for Pinker during the debate with Tim and on other public occasions.

Care to comment.........

...come under increasing attack by a phalanx of scientific experts...

Phalanx? Dude, this is the 21st century. Writing as though it's for an 18th century pamphlet or tract isn't as impressive as you think it is. You write like you're trumping up the impending performance of a troupe of melodramatic thespians.

Come one! Come all! to an experience so sublime that thine own mind be blowne by - in veritas - Truth, such as one hath never known heretofore!

You say we're on the run, but running while laughing is tricky at best.

Pough,

Morlocks just make more noise when they're in the circus ring!

Windy - Poor me indeed LOL! How can anyone be poor when they have fresh mackerel, samphire & chanterelles for tea? By comparison, I have found Astroturf to be somewhat inedible, even with melted cheese, paprika and smoked salmon as a topping! If I were you I'd make my excuses, nip out of the boiler-room and go fishing!

"Next deniers will be doubting the existence of the sun". Now, you call it THE Sun, but how can you prove that the Sun you see one day is the same one you saw the previous day? And how do you know there even is a Sun? Have you ever been there? Have any of your so called peer-reviewed-consensus-hoity-toity scientists ever been there? How do you know it isn't just a big disk in the sky reflecting light from somewhere else? What do you mean "where"? How would I know? Somewhere, you prove that there isn't.

325 David Horton,

I'm jealous. This is just about perfect.

@ DH & TS
Me too.
And - it could give Goddard another bunch of pixels to count.

325 & 326: Don't laugh. Ever heard of the Iron Sun Theory?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-…

No science in Plimer's primer
Michael Ashley

Heaven and Earth By Ian Plimer Connor Court, 503pp, $39.95 ONE of the peculiar things about being an astronomer is that you receive, from time to time, monographs on topics such as "a new theory of the electric universe", or "Einstein was wrong", or "the moon landings were a hoax".

The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.

One such document that arrived last week was Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth. What makes this case unusual is that Plimer is a professor -- of mining geology -- at the University of Adelaide. If the subject were anything less serious than the future habitability of the planet Earth, I wouldn't go to the trouble of writing this review.

(snip)

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite.

It is hard to understate the depth of scientific ignorance that the inclusion of this information demonstrates. It is comparable to a biologist claiming that plants obtain energy from magnetism rather than photosynthesis.

(snip)

Michael Ashley is professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW.

(end quotes)

The more hard-core Deniosaurs have a bit of trouble with this when you bring it up. Especially the Sciosophic Deniosaur, otherwise given to spouting irrelevant formulae. You can offer them a choice between supporting the Iron Sun Theory or admitting that Plimer got it wildly wrong - which then naturally raises the question of what /else/ he's got wrong.

The ensuing squirms and verbal somersaults can be drolly amusing to some observers...

Please give a warning before posting content likely to cause the inhalation of hot beverages.

What scaredy said. We all have delicate mucous membranes and keyboards and screens to protect.

You can offer them a choice between supporting the Iron Sun Theory or admitting that Plimer got it wildly wrong

Are those the only options?

Before passing judgement, I think you should take into consideration my own Saturn is a Giant Aniseed Ball, and You Can Skate Around on its Rings (forthcoming).

#331 - You that Galileo fellow then?

[Zibethicus](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

What is is with mining geologists and the iron sun fable?

Louis Hissink also subscribes to the theory, with the plasma universe thrown in for completeness, and regularly trotted out his notions on Jennifer Marohasy's Bog, when it was functional.

I believe that he sometimes still visits there on the rat's-tooth thread quaintly titled "Postscript", but the new forum for Denialist pseudoscience is Joanne Codling's curiously-named blog, where the numpties seem to give Hissink free rein to dazzle them with his electrickery.

If this phenomenon is common through other corners of the mining geology world, one might be forced to wonder if there is an educational deficiency in their training, or if there is some pecularity within the field that renders them susceptible to this bizarre meme.

Of course, it could be that mining geology is the One True Science, and that the Iron Sunners are able to grasp a Cosmological Revelation that the rest of us run-of-the-mill scientists are simply not equipped to appreciate. Personally, I find the idea of such a paradigm shift appealing, and I would love to see such a fundamental upheaval...

...but somehow I doubt the wisdom of holding my breath waiting for this overturning of science to occur.

I was wondering where the sunspots were hiding, given the hottest year (Jul 2009 to Jun 2010) on record. Turns out, the sunspots are down here providing helpful blog commentary. So much for the "it's the sun" crowd. Well and truly trounced by the empirical evidence.

Out, damn'd spot! Out, I say! [Apologies to Shakespeare.]

328 Zibethicus,

Yes indeed. Oliver K Manuel IIRC. Yes, [see here](http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09).

To be fair to Plimer, IIRC the reason he cited was not to support the iron sun idea explicitely, but that one of Manuel's conclusions that flowed from the ludicrous iron sun idea supported one of Plimer's claims.

So he only implicitely agrees that the sun is made mostly of iron ;-)

Implicitly.

I don't much care if he *agrees* with it upside-down or sideways in wellington boots. If he has a valid scientific point to make he should find some more solid and respectable backing from somewhere. (I hesitate to say anywhere.)

Surely if his ideas are any good, there'd be a more respectable paper somewhere he could refer to for back-up.

To all re the Iron Sun Theory:

I should point out that Dr Manuel is respected in his own field of atomic chemistry and that I am not qualified to criticise his work in that field.

But then, that doesn't stop the Deniosaurs from criticising climate science, and I think that Prof Ashley was trying to make the point that Plimer's 'evidence' has been accumulated from a variety of fairly questionable sources, quite apart from the uses which Pilmer then puts it to.

It's worth remembering, in the field of whacko claims, that Monckton has signal achievements of his own, such as this doozy:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-belie…

There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.

(end quotes)

As far as I know, there is no evidence whatsoever to support this contention beyond one popular alternative history book which is, to put it politely, not supported by mainstream historians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies).

But this, of course, only means that the mainstream historians have joined in the Great Invisible International Communist Climate Change Conspiracy. Apparently the thermometers are in on it too, but that's only to be expected, I suppose. They are marked in /Red/, after all...

And this is the sort of stuff which Deniosaurs will swallow in preference to the painful facts. It would be bitterly funny if it wasn't that they're dragging the rest of us down with them...but perhaps we can all escape to Saturn by flapping our wings and flying off through the luminiferous aether...

333: Of course, it could be that mining geology is the One True Science, and that the Iron Sunners are able to grasp a Cosmological Revelation that the rest of us run-of-the-mill scientists are simply not equipped to appreciate. Personally, I find the idea of such a paradigm shift appealing, and I would love to see such a fundamental upheaval...

(end quote)

I usually invite them to test their theory by flying to the Iron Sun, which is only about forty kilometres away from us in the /true/ interstellar medium, which is actually gelatinous.

You see, the Iron Sun gives off an emanation called F-Rays, which interact with all observational instruments in any part of the spectrum to give results which /falsely/ make things /appear/ to conform to the standard stellar model. (I understand that the distinguished mathematician Lord Christopher Monckton is currently working out the details of F-Ray diffraction, when he can spare the time from his busy schedule.)

You won't be surprised to hear that it's the F-Rays which are responsible for the hoax of global warming, either. They get at the thermometers in the same way.

My proof? The Improved Iron Sun Theory states that F-Rays are by definition, and forever will be, entirely undetectable by any instrument which can ever be devised. The proof is already there. It is only the narrow minds of academic scientists which have prevented this revelation from being accepted.

So I encourage all the Ferro-Solar Deniosaurs to climb to the tallest prominence they can attain, and to begin to flap their leathery wings while calling on the principles of Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem. If their faith is strong enough, they will be caught up into the Great Cosmic Goo and rapidly transported to the Iron Sun, provided they have first armed themselves with a powerful bar magnet.

Once alighted on the Iron Sun (which is cool to the touch, of course, thanks to the F-Rays), all that is needed is a couple of minutes' work with a hand drill, and the first sample of the special solar iron will be ready for a triumphant return to the Earth.

This, of course, is easily accomplished by the simple means of turning the magnet around.

World science will be revolutionised, and the silly theories of Einstein will be seen for the farce they really are. They will be swept into the dustbin of history, along with the Socialist fraud of so-called 'global warming'.

I can't understand why the Ferro-Solar Deniosaurs aren't pressing forward to be the one to obtain the glory for themselves. It ought to be easy enough, after all.

And I expect to be given my travelling expenses as well as a thousand bucks to 'cover my expenses' in presenting this advanced science at the next Heartland convention.

Zibethicus,

You really should show that paragraph in it's full nutter glory:

The UN, echoed by Stern, says the graph isn't important. It is. Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Then, there were no glaciers in the tropical Andes: today they're there. There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.

No glaciers in the tropical Andes? Hmm, tell that to Lonnie Thommpson!

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The Disemvoweller strikes again!

Even after the disemvoweller has passed through PW's comment, what strikes me is how many of these self-appointed climate experts berate climate scientists for their cautious language of probabilities and confidence levels, and yet when these same "experts" put on their economic expert's hat suddenly it's all certainties and imperatives (while equally lacking any evidence).
Funny that.

Looks like scientists are being blacklisted again

It's disappointing to see PW's contributions being censored.

Though I can understand the fear of the warmista's. With PW exposing voice-over fruad and myself uncovering the great font-fabrication scandal here at Deltoid,we are on the cusp of seeing 'concensus' science exposed as the fruad it is.

PW, if you are rading this, I suggets that you and I team up. I could be the Robin to your batman, and together we could form the International Panel of Caped Climate Crusaders.

The IPCCC could uncover scientists deceiving the public with false voice-overs and fabricated fonts. I've no doubt there is a wealth of such nefarious goings-on out there in the 'peer -reviewed' journals.

Ooh, michael. Are girls allowed into this tree-house?

Pleeease. I'm sure I could help with the font thingies and I can make up really good stories.

Oh, was Bray Fart disemvowelled?

I didn't notice - his last post was making no less sense than usual...

345: "we are on the cusp of seeing 'concensus' science exposed as the fruad it is."

Wasn't that supposed to be 'Climategate'?

Michael - I assume that was a deliberate greengrocer's apostrophe in "warmista's"? If not, why not? I mean it would only be those peer reviewed scientists who get apostrophes right - all part of the conspiracy to deceive the ordinary Sarah Palin in the street with so-called correct grammer. Grammir?

If I learned one thing from the Sarah Palin email-hack it was her correct use of apostrophes, something she seems to be better at than many of the "enlightened" lefties of this world.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_email_hack_2008

Michael:

the warmista's

Yet another person in denial that the world is warming.

David @ 339:

Thanks for that tip. I believe that there may be some merit in your suggestion. While some may dismiss this issues as trivialities, how can we trust the opinion of so-called scientists on complex statisitcs and physics when simple grammer eludes them?

The IPCCC will add grammatical incompetence to voice-over fruad and font fabrication, as the most pressing issues to be investigated in so-called 'Climate Change', AKA the scientists gravy-train.

what i want to know is why "scient"ists have stopped doing "science", and are instead being activists for the cause of grammar. it's shameful. and on my tax dollar, no less!

i for one won't rest till i've seen them [punished for all the crimes they haven't committed](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…)

My Poe-meter is going off at Michael's post. No-one else's?

> No-one else's?

Mine has been in spades for some time as I chuckled quietly, but I said nothing hoping it would continue ;-)

Michael writes, apparently with a straight face: *'Climate Change', AKA the scientists gravy-train*

I would rephrase that as, "'Climate Change denial', AKA the pseudo-scientists gravy-train".

There's a lot more money in denial, pal. It is a sure fire way for an obscure scientist with few publications and little standing in his/her field to become a household name.

[JasonW](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…).

Michael caught me once before, so I was awake thing time!

He seems to have collected s few more scalps though, so my humiliation is much lessened, even though it has taken a few months. ;-)

Duh!

...awake thing this time...

Jason it really is too bad that these poe's continue to infest threads like this and squeeze out good honest deniers. If their is no room for them here they'll have too go too Ms Novas blog and then there mind's will be damaged. So behave Michael, or Tim will have to use a special font for poer's. See how much fun you have then, Mr Warmistarer.

If someone's a Poe, then why not respond to them the same way as you would a real idiot?

After all, what's to stop Monckton saying to Abrahams "I was only joshing!" and then asking for the entire screed to be taken down, leaving only Monckton's words unchallenged (because he's "being a poe", therefore you shouldn't answer his points of failure).

So answer a poe's points because SOMEONE will take the unanswered stance as "proof" that the poe's "argument" is correct.

>So answer a poe's points because SOMEONE will take the unanswered stance as "proof" that the poe's "argument" is correct.

Well in that case Michael's posts (and those of other Poes) make excellent idiot detectors.

354 JasonW,
"... complex statisitcs and physics when simple grammer ...".

Poe? Yep.

Seriously, it was disappointing that Passing Wind was disemvowelled - spoilt my fun.

And it should have been "..complex statisitics and physics when simple grammer allude them...".

Nevermind, there really is no shortage of the real thing. The next flock of winged-monkeys is only a web-link away.

363 Michael,

"Phisycs" surely?

"Well in that case Michael's posts (and those of other Poes) make excellent idiot detectors."

Would it not be better to not have an idiot misled in the first place?

After all, either the idiocy is built-in, in which case it's as much YOUR fault for not educating them, or it's willful in which case, there was no need for the Poe, and the Poeism is only going to miseducate others or not change the ones wilfully ignoring the facts.

So, not answering the points as if they were serious can ONLY have bad effects.

Just because your neighbor keeps rusting cars on their lawn doesn't mean you should add another one to their collection to show them up, nor should to ignore it because the groundwater is shared.

Leaving a Poe will infect the information out there.

Don't let it.

Depends on whether you thing they are mistaken or just trolls. PW was a troll, in which case trying to earnestly engage it in serious discussion was just putting fuel on the fire. Trolls generally find having the piss taken out of them less satisfying.

"Depends on whether you thing they are mistaken or just trolls."

My issue is if someone ELSE thinks they are right.

You have to be pretty obvious in your poeism to avoid that (and even Denial Depot still gets referred to as a place to go for the real science...).

Remember what Poe's Law says:

âPoe's Law points out that it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism (or, more generally, any crackpot theory) from the real thing, since they both seem equally insane."

Therefore the same people who are *genuinely* confused about the science.

Remember waay back in Open Thread 51 where lots of people who know better came out with 'huh? that's right, isn't it?' because only a limited set of information was given. I pointed out that there are people who would ONLY have understood a small section of the science and therefore *genuinely* believe there's something to it.

Poes shit on those people and therefore to clear that up you need to treat the claims as genuine *for the people who don't understand the science being mocked*.

For people who know enough, the Poe is poking fun.

For those who don't know enough, the Poe seems to have a point.

It's a disservice to those whose education in science is lacking either through being missed or having been left to atrophy.

TrueSceptic (#315), I'm with you: "sunspot" is a parodist. This becomes even more obvious from looking at his blog.

Fortunately I did that before I threw the Eric Frank Russell quote at him.

Gee you are a nasty lot. Someone disagrees with you and you must hunt him down.
On my recollection of constitutional law, Monckton is a peer of the realm. That makes him a member of the House of Lords but since 1999 not entitled to sit in parliament. He is entitled to use the title and is non entitled to be elected to the House of Commons unless he renounces his peerage.
I think that hereditary peerages are strange, I think insisting on it is petty and I don't believe that anyone's opinion should be given more weight because of a title.
But many do value and jealously guard titles, especially the 5000 or so university professors in Australia.
So I suggest you stick to the merits on Monckton. If you are correct, there is plenty to challenge there.

Wycombe writes:

>*On my recollection of constitutional law*

Wycombe, don't [get fooled](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…) by Monckton's distractions.

BTW challenging Monckton's distrotions of fact is what Abraham did do. I suggest you now also read about [Monckton's response](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/why_is_monckton_afraid_of_a_de…) to that.

Wycombe writes:

>Gee you are a nasty lot.

My goodness!

>On my recollection of constitutional law, Monckton is a peer of the realm. That makes him a member of the House of Lords but since 1999 not entitled to sit in parliament.

Dear Wycombe

The law says he's not a member and the House of Lords says he's not a member. He's not a member.

All the best,

John

[Wycombe said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/monckton_vs_the_house_of_lords…):

Gee you are a nasty lot. Someone disagrees with you and you must hunt him down. On my recollection of constitutional law, Monckton is a peer of the realm. That makes him a member of the House of Lords...

Your recollection is wrong. Monckton is not a member of the House of Lords.

Read this thread again, carefully. It's not actually difficult to find out why Monckton is not a member of the House of Lords.

There's nothing nasty about pointing this fact out. Monckton uses his lie to garner extra credibility, and to make it easier for the credulous to then accept his lies, errors, distortions and misrepresentations about science.

If he weren't such a mendacious torterer of science, he wouldn't be so vehemently criticised.

That's how it is.

Wycombe, I suggest you read up on what membership in the House of Lords entails.

From the House Of Lords Act - 1999:

1 Exclusion of hereditary peers

No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.

3 Removal of disqualifications in relation to the House of Commons

(1) The holder of a hereditary peerage shall not be disqualified by virtue of that peerage forâ

(a) voting at elections to the House of Commons, or

(b) being, or being elected as, a member of that House.

[Since Monckton was on the ballot during the last election](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/apr/20/monckton-mp-gene…) for the constituency of Perth and North Perthshire he would have to have known that he was not a member of the House of Lords since members of that house cannot vote or stand for election to the House of Commons.

(Note: he withdrew his candidacy before the election).

Wycombe:

I don't believe that anyone's opinion should be given more weight because of a title. But many do value and jealously guard titles, especially the 5000 or so university professors in Australia

I'm sure you'll agree that there is not the slightest similarity between a heredity title and an academic title.

Michael's right. Those professors actually have to earn their titles.

Ian F - I think you will find that the constitutional position is a bit more complicated than that. But my point was that it does not matter. I think it is foolish and petty for Monckton to insist on his title in discussions of AGW. But it's not as if he is falsely claiming a PhD in a field relevant to the subject. What he says should be judged on its merits, not on whether he is exaggerating his position in an outdated aristocracy.
The owner of this blog describes himself as a computer scientist at UNSW. That's correct but it would be more accurate to say the he is a lecturer, a fairly junior position in the university hierarchy. But he is clearly a very well informed amateur on climate science, an area of science outside his field.
So, my suggestion is that you get back to playing the issues, not the man.

Wycombe, when you ask the House of Lords, they simply say

>Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a ânon-votingâ or âhonoraryâ member

(see post 272).

That really should be the end of it.

As has already been pointed out, when though the above quote is true, Monckton still tries to use it to gain credibility, and that just ain't right.

Anyway, as for playing the issues, I believe that's what John Abraham actually did, detailing the scientific falsehoods and distortions that Monckton used in his presentation. What did that get him from Monckton? Insulting remarks about his voice and his appearance. Talk about playing the issues...

Wycombe. Monckton is an entitled prophagandist who intends to deceive, and who attempted to intimidate when called out. You are merely an accomplice - if not a sockpuppet for the man...come to think of it your dense style is similar to that of Upjohn and Thomas Matthew. If you behave like a buffoon, we will play you as one.

Wycombe: the issue is that Monckton's continuous defense of a falsehood is such a good example of what he is all about: even in the face of exposing his falsehoods, he continously defends said falsehood. It goes straight to his credibility. All those people who don't understand the technical arguments will have much less trouble seeing that Monckton lies about his own position as a supposed member of the HoL.

@wycombe

> So, my suggestion is that you get back to playing the issues, not the man.

That the man is a profligate dissembler with scant regard for the facts **is** one of the issues.

Look at this chain of events:

Monckton gives a presentation - *one among many* - that plenty of scientists take issue with.

Abraham pores over this one single presentation and points out all the misleading statements, distortions etc.

In response, Monckton hurls abuse and provides the worlds largest Gish gallop of a response, without substantively answering the points put to him.

So, trying to pin him down on one simple claim is proving impossible. Something easily verified and mentioned only in passing like, I don't know, that he bears the title "Lord" but he is not a member of The House of Lords, despite his representations to the contrary. This is trivial stuff, and the truth is easily found by checking the law, the chain of events, the response from the HoL when asked, and Monckton's own actions in standing for election to the HoL and subsequently for a seat in the commons.

And yet what do we have? Yet another mammoth thread *filled* with "useful idiots" who simply will not let it go. Why do you persist in arguing the toss on this one and framing the issue as if it is some sort of Ad Hominem? It is not - it is merely article 1, page 1 of a *massive* list of Monckton's fabrications and distortions. How are we ever supposed to move on to the points of substance if you will not concede such a basic and trivial point as this one? We've been pointing this out for *years* yet it still comes up. This is such trivial stuff and yet *you* waste time defending him, and *he* gets a free pass to dissemble about this pointless non-issue yet again.

Monckton has the hereditory title "Lord" but is not a member of The House of Lords. That is not Ad Hominem - that is clarification. Why would *anybody* genuinely interested in honest debate be arguing against clarity?

OK, Dave H, if you think it's so important.
But I did not start the thread - I came in after 350 or so comments.
I have not read what Monckton said about Abrahams (I'm really not interested) but this blog seems to contain much hurling of abuse at those who question anything.
A pity. There are obviously bright people who could contribute to illuminating debate and discussion if they tried.
RWWombat - who are Upjohn and Thomas Matthew?

@wycombe

> if you think it's so important

> this blog seems to contain much hurling of abuse at those who question anything. A pity.

I don't care for your passive-aggressive musings, and I find this behaviour contradicts your stated desire to concentrated on the "issues" or otherwise elevate the level of discourse.

"So, my suggestion is that you get back to playing the issues, not the man."

The issue is that the man is a habitual liar.

When someone comes along with a talk and doesn't give proper attribution so you can check their statements, you're having to take their word for it.

In which case, whether the man is a habitual liar is rather important.

Additionally, why is the Loony Lord so fixated on being a member of the house of lords if it's so unimportant? Why the fake HoL mark? Why all the "greetings from the upper house of the UK" when he talks?

If it isn't important, why does he do all that?

Wycombe. RTBT

Wycombe, the abuse is hurled at those that 'question everything' again and again and again and again, showing absolutely no ability to learn, and often showing deliberate obfuscation tactics.

You will find few, if any, people hurling abuse at someone coming in saying "I have a question, I'm having trouble to reconcile this and that, and from my own knowledge I would deduce something else. Am I mistaken, how so, and how can I learn the basics, or is there something genuine in my concerns?" (the abuse comes when this person repeats that question time after time, despite being shown why he is wrong).

Unfortunately, the most common entry is "This is all wrong, it's like this not that, climate scientists are morons". That last part is often implied, I should add. The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in some people. You may want to read a thread on WUWT by Herman and Pielke Sr, in which the comments are hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that many seriously mean what they say and truly, honestly believe THEY are right, and that Herman and Pielke Sr are idiots. Something similar on Roy Spencer's blog. The topic? The simple greenhouse effect...

It's these kind of people who invite abuse, because they are incapable of learning, and thus result in enormous frustration. They infest and clutter discussions. There IS no appropriate reply to them, so venting frustrations is to be expected.

Wycombe,

"I have not read what Monckton said about Abrahams (I'm really not interested) but this blog seems to contain much hurling of abuse at those who question anything"

You are concerned about us playing the man but you say above that it doesn't worry you when C-b-a-c does it to Abraham. Now the reason that C-b-a-c is insulting and threatening Abrahams is because, as a scientist, Abrahams critiqued what C-b-a-c says, nay declares, about climate science and the critique is devastating for Monckton's approach to climate science in particular and science in general. Monckton's response is to scream at Abrahams.

What don't you understand or is it that you just don't know what C-b-a-c says about climate science and you haven't read Abraham's critique and then you come on here and criticise us.

OK - it's pretty clear that you don't welcome outsiders so I will find somewhere else where dissent is tolerated.

>OK - it's pretty clear that you don't welcome outsiders [popitosh] so I will find somewhere else where dissent is tolerated [someone uncritically accepts what I say].

I will find somewhere else where dissent is tolerated.

Good for you, wycombe.

Go straight to Andrew Bolt's site, and accuse him of representing the Right-Wing Noise Machine.

Then go to Anthony Watts, and ask why we never see him and John Ratzenberger together at the same time.

OK - it's pretty clear that you don't welcome outsiders so I will find somewhere else where dissent is tolerated.

Mind the door doesn't hit you in the arse on the way out.

> OK - it's pretty clear that you don't welcome outsiders so I will find somewhere else where dissent is tolerated.

Childish passive-aggressive behaviour again. Grow up.

wycombe, you can have your own opinion but not your own facts. I know this might make Deltoid different to those denialist blogs you read where making up facts is part and parcel of the experience.

wycombe said:

>What he (Monckton) says should be judged on its merits, not on whether he is exaggerating his position in an outdated aristocracy.

Indeed and the merit would be??

That is the whole point of Abrahams presentation. Monckton has no merit.

Wycombe said:

>But he is clearly a very well informed amateur on climate science, an area of science outside his field.

If you had watched Tims debate with Monckton, you would know that Tim said he was an amateur in climate science. In fact he stated both he and Monckton were amateurs.

Wycombe said:

>I think that hereditary peerages are strange, I think insisting on it is petty and I don't believe that anyone's opinion should be given more weight because of a title. But many do value and jealously guard titles, especially the 5000 or so university professors in Australia.

The difference is merit.
Lords inherit their position, professors are appointed through merit. When a professor dies or retires, they are replaced by someone else with merit.

Just remembering.

Since Lord is a lower rank than Viscount, surely Chris is asking for demotion when he insists on "Lord Monckton". Therefore he must LIKE demotion.

Well, why not give him one more step and he'll be ecstatic: Plain Old Chris.

What I find most disturbing in those that are so quick to defend Monckton on the grounds of "attack the science, not the man", is that they suffer from this gigantic double standard: Monckton DOES routinely attack scientists personally (anyone saying that he comes across as extremely polite and gracious have a pretty weird idea of what polite and gracious mean), stating quite openly that (at least several) scientists are flat out lying about, distorting or fabricating evidence (and apparently conspiring to make scientific fact out of communist ideology).

If Monckton was in fact interested in the science, he would DO science, and publish peer-reviewed papers or, at the very least, publish letters in legitimate specialized journals. The fact that he only does public talks and debates in front of lay audiences should show anyone that his interest is not science, but PR.

I just finished watching Abraham's presentation (the shorter version), and I fail to see what ticked Monckton and his supporters off so much. There are no ad-hom attacks, just a extremely well substantiated list of points where Monckton has deeply misrepresented the scientific evidence on climate change. If Monckton is going to pretend to be interested in science, well, welcome to "peer-review"!

> ...so I will find somewhere else where dissent is **tolerated** [my emphasis]

As Inigo Montoya said - "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Or Shorter Wycombe: toleration == not expressing disagreement.

I should add that it was very droll of wycombe to claim his/her "dissent" wasn't being tolerated, even as the site administrator allowed him/her to continue to express it...

Monckton has a strategy down pat now for when a scientist does irk him; it's as simple as a) attacking the scientist personally, particularly the calling them a liar and a fraud; b) attacking their institution in order to provoke the institution into either censuring the scientist in some manner, or into establishing an enquiry into the scientist's (alleged fraudulent) activities; c) threatening to take the scientist to court, and if that proves inadequate, actually doing so.

Then there is the matter of how the clown demands retraction of any and all comments the scientist ever made publically (on the matter directly relevent to the topic).

The only appropriate defence against such a gutless wonder is for the university or other research institution to step up to the plate and eyeball Monckton - via the institution's hired counsel. Abraham's institution is one that has done just that. More must follow suit, so to speak :-)

More must follow suit, so to speak :-)

Donald, apparently more is [following suit](http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/monckton-responds-to-my-defe…), so to speak.

I dearly, dearly hope that Mockton actually pulls his sabre out, instead of simply rattling it at John Abraham, and now Scott Mandia.

The only thing that he will skewer is his own foot.

Oh, I see that [John beat me to it](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/07/open_thread_51.php#c2697769).

It looks as if the House may be stirring itself to deal with the discount viscount. Draco dormiens nunquam tittilandus.
http://friendsofginandtonic.org/files/867576d3dfe135ff8dcd26715bd86ac5-…