politics

Godwin’s Law Alert: Monckton cries “Goebbelian”

378 Comments

As some of you know, I frown on blog visitors labeling “those who with whom they disagree” Goebbelian. As others know, when I become aware of a Nazi allusion spewed forth by any major player in the climate-wars triggers a post at “The Blackboard”. It is a rule: a promise to myself.

Following my rule, today I am forced to comment on this June 4 article written by no other than Christopher Monckton.

It begins:

One of the numerous Goebbelian propaganda artifices deployed by the now-retreating climate extremist movement has been the careful avoidance of any debate with anyone on the skeptical side of the case who happens to know anything about climate science or economics.

In principle, my promise to myself could permit me to end the blog post here. Being who I am, I cannot do so. Monckton also wrote:

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

Actually, it appears John Abraham’s title is not “lecturer” but “Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering”; here’s a link to the cached version of his web page. I take exception someone labeling University of St. Thomas a “Bible college”; like Georgetown or Notre Dame, it is a Catholic University.

Also, applying the definition of “rebuttal”, John’s 83 minute youtube video is a rebuttal.

For those who would like to decide whether the rebuttal is successful or unsuccessful, the full presentation is available on YouTube. The first installment is provided below:

Later chapters are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8,9 and 10. Readers familiar with some of my previous blog posts about Monckton (1, 2, 3 and what the heck things tagged ‘monckton’) will no doubt know that my favorite section is Part 4, which contains the Moncktonized version of “The IPCC Projections”. (I noted the Monckton-version of the IPCC projections did not appear at Heartland.)

My favorite part!

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

Colored text mine!

I found what appears to be an image of Dr. John Abraham on the web and will show it along side Monckton.

Oh. The irony it burns! (I’ve emailed Dr. Abraham to verify this is his image so we can more confidently assess whether or not he resembles an over cooked prawn. Perhaps someone in Minn. can find some female undergraduates at St. Thomas who can rank both Monckton and Abraham on a scale of 1-10 scale with 10 being “blazing hot” and 1 being “ugly no matter how much beer I drink.” )

As for the “nasal and irritatingly matey tone”, perhaps Monckton developed an aversion to the local “nasal and irritatingly matey tone” of Midwesterners when he heard JeffId and me chit-chatting across the table from him at Heartland? Yep. That’s the way we sound. Chicagoans tend toward the more nasally version of the accent; Minnesotan’s tend toward the more matey version. If Abraham Lincoln was still around, he might well also share John Abraham’s “nasal and irritatingly matey tone”; don’t let the writing fool you.

Other people’s favorites might include this:

Here’s the thing. All of the sciences are becoming increasingly specialized. So most scientists — the snake-like Abraham and, a fortiori, the accident-prone Monbiot among them — have no more expertise in predicting or even understanding the strange behavior of the complex, non-linear, chaotic object that is the Earth’s climate than the man on the Clapham omnibus.

It is true that science is specialized. But, either Monckton is singularly uninformed about which group of people deal with “non-linear, chaotic objects”, or he is assuming his reading audience is uninformed. “Wanna know why I think this?”

John Abraham’s speciality is fluid mechanics. While this notion might shock, shock, shock, Monckton, chaos happens to be a topic of great interest to those who specialize in fluid mechanics. The reason fluid mechanicians are interested in chaos is that the Navier-Stokes equations which govern the motion of Newtonian fluids are non-linear and can exhibit chaos. That said, some people still prefer to just say they are interested in turbulence.

Does John Abraham take the “chaos” point of view in his research? I don’t know. I didn’t rush out and download all his papers to see if he does. But anyone working in fluid mechanics or heat transfer who earned their Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering after 1980– particularly those who concentrated in the “thermal fluids” aspect, will have been exposed to the notion of chaos and anyone who earned their MS in Mechanical Engineering after… oh… 1950 will have learned something about the unpredictability of individual trajectories in non-linear systems, like, for example, air or water flowing in pipes or ducts. (My estimate of 1950 is based on a transition to engineering science based curricula, and I’m triggering off the date of the Moody diagram and also WWII.)

What does the wall of words in the paragraph above translate into? John Abraham’s expertise lands him in a field that quite specifically deals with complex, non-linear, chaotic objects!

But, maybe Abraham’s expertise doesn’t count because Monckton called John “snake-like”?

I can’t help wonder how Monckton diagnosed Abraham’s resemblance to a snake. I also can’t help noticing that trying to rebut Abraham’s argument by calling his “snake-like” is ad hominem. That is: it is suggesting Abraham’s is wrong because that the man Abraham exhibits some vile characteristic– in this case being “snake-like”. As far as I can tell, in his rebuttal, the “snake-like” Abraham’s refrained from suggesting Monckton is wrong because he looks like a prawn or is snake-like. (It’s a bit ironic to note that resorting to ad hominem might have detracted from the “matey” part of Abraham’s “nasal and irritatingly matey tone”.)

But enough about this!
I’m only 1/2 way through page 1 of the four page the Monckton article, and I see the word count exceeds 1000. Obviously, I’m going to have to cut this short. Additional arguments on page 1 appear to include:

  1. Abraham is wrong now because Monbiot was once wrong about something.
  2. Abraham is wrong because he says everything Monckton says is wrong.
  3. Abraham is wrong because he permitted 8 months to lapse before putting together his 83 minute youtube video.
  4. Abraham is wrong because he didn’t ever contact Monckton to permit him to clarify which references Monckton was alluding to in his very public presentation and let him clarify his very public arguments in private email.

Of course, none of those points make Abraham wrong. Now, I’m going to have to plow through the next 3 pages of Monckton’s article and see if I think he manages to rebut any substantive point made by Abraham. I invite you to do so as well. To read what Monckton wrote visit PJ media; Abraham’s youtube video starts here.

Now, let the comment-fest begin! No ad homs please. And remember: We like matey comments around here. If you can type “in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone”, please do so!

Update: Monckton’s video appears to be this:

378 thoughts on “Godwin’s Law Alert: Monckton cries “Goebbelian””

  3. Lucia:
    My head hurts after reading your epic post. Why would I want to read 4 pages of Christopher Monckton, or watch 83 minutes of some Mechanical Engineer holding forth on chaos, or anything else?

    After you absorb all the stuff from Monckton and Abraham, perhaps you can give us a two paragraph synopsis of the situation.

    I trust you as a detached observer, I think.

  4. OK Lucia,
    .
    I listened to Abraham’s presentation. Two things are obvious:
    .
    1. Monckton is an easy target.
    2. Abraham’s presentation is at least consistent: his is the POV of an extreme CAGW advocate. But he pretends (dishonestly, I think) to be an “honest broker”, while he is clearly nothing of the sort. He presentation is tilted, his analysis of the science is non-critical and without nuance, and he is factually wrong on a number of key points (for example, he says that Hansen attributed ~100% of glacial/interglacial temperature changes to CO2 and methane).
    .
    I was not terribly impressed (and more than a bit put off) by professor Abraham’s presentation. But then again, I am even less impressed by Monckton.

  5. It’s always struck me as bizarre that the master of the ad hominem, Monckton, should get so agitated about it when he thinks someone else resorts to it (he’s often wrong)! He also seems quite ready to use Nazi allusions too (here and in Copenhagen iirc).

  6. SteveF–
    I find myself wishing Abraham had a PDF version including transcript and slides from 83 minute you tube presentation. I find written documents easier to assess. Likewise, I would like a pdf version of Monckton’s presentation. Access to both would make it much easier to comment on the specifics in an even handed ways.

    I know that looking at the later 3 pages of Moncton’s defense, one section responds to the accusation that Monckton’s figures don’t even agree with themselves. If true, that would hardly be unprecedented. I’ve seen major disagreements between Monckton’s figures in at least 1 SPPI document. Did Abraham find the specific disagreements that bug me? I don’t know.

    I figured I would defer reading pages 2-3 of Monckton’s article until after my work out. When I do that, I’ll click to Abraham’s youtube video. If Abramham responds to my email, I’ll ask for a transcript or written script. Who knows? He may have one.

  7. Phil,
    Wordpress permits me to “tag” posts. I try to remember to tag appropriate points with godwins-law. If you visit that link, you’ll find Monckton well represented in those posts. You’ll also find some guilty parties on “the other side”.

  8. bob: Why would I want to read 4 pages of Christopher Monckton, or watch 83 minutes of some Mechanical Engineer holding forth on chaos, or anything else?

    Here it is in a nutshell:
    Monckton has been held up as the superior intellect in challenging AGW science. And I have never understood that… A close examination (not even all that detailed) show big discrepancies, errors, and clearly show intentional mis-representation of the facts and data by Lord Monckton. Yet he has been selected to testify in Congress numerous times, and over and over people claim him “winning” debates. See the earlier posts on this site regarding the debate with Tim Lambert (of the Deltoid website). Yet every time I have dug down into his analysis or debate claims, I have found easily debunked mis-representation of facts, particularly scientific papers.
    .
    In the same way, unpublished papers and statements by Dr. Easterbrook, Mr. Watts and d’Aleo, Mr. Goddard, Dr. Plimer, and many other skeptical “experts” that are pushed by certain internet sites, also show interpretations of data and scientific papers that have been substantially debunked. But Monckton’s work stands out, both in volume and mendacity, as particularly egregious examples of clear cut bias and methodical propaganda.
    .
    The Abraham tape goes systematically through Monckton’s public papers, statements, allegations, and interpretations, and compares the statements with the original research and data. The result refutes virtually all of Monckton’s key assertions. In many cases, Abraham stopped far short of what a more knowledgeable critic could have found wrong with Monckton’s work; but nevertheless, the sum total of the mistakes, errors, and outright fabrications by Monckton as revealed in the Abraham tape is staggering.
    .
    Most skeptics (such as Senator Inhoff and other key Republican politicians) have worked to publicize and use Monckton’s efforts in policy debates, and this current expose on Monckton seriously undermines their credibility.

  9. Question 1: if Monckton isn’t a skeptic, then what is he? Be careful not to lose any Karma points!
    .
    Excellent point by Paul K2. Question 2: Why has Monckton been allowed to testify in Congress?

  11. Neven,

    Question 2: Why has Monckton been allowed to testify in Congress?

    Allowed? That’s a weird question. You must not be American. 🙂

    Congressman and Senators decide who they wish to invite to testify. They perpetually invite all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.

  12. Didn’t I say ‘showman’ is -3 Karma points? Well, if it isn’t, it should be!
    .
    Lucia, seriously now, do we need showmen in a debate over a serious things such as AGW? And should we let the showmen hide behind the term ‘skeptic’?
    .
    Edit: hold on, I’m tired and not thinking straight. Let me be more direct. Lucia, do you agree with me that Monckton should not be labelled as a ‘skeptic’?
    .
    To continue another point raised by Paul K2: Monckton publishes through SPPI. So does Anthony Watts. Besides, Monckton has often been hailed on WUWT as some sort of hero. So what is Anthony Watts? Also a showman? What is WUWT? A blog for show business news?
    .

    Congressman and Senators decide who they wish to invite to testify.

    .
    What does this say about the congressmen and senators?

  13. Re: bob (Jun 5 11:16),
    Actually, I’m not sure there is enough information presented by either side to be able to decides many important questions. Abraham makes a lot of criticisms. Some are substantive and bang on; some strike me as nitpicky and possibly not quite right. Some criticisms amount to point of view, and some… well.. I can’t really say.

    The reason I sometimes can’t really say is I do not have access to a transcript of what Monckton actually said, and I’m not going to hunt down a youtube video of the presentation Monckton made at Bethel college to figure out things like “Did Monckton convey the underlying source of his SPPI temperature graph to his audience in a way that they might understand what it really is or means?” , “Given what Moncton was saying, does it really matter that on one graph he shows UAH data, and on another his SPPI merged data?”

    Trying to pin things down from video requires watching until you get to the key bit, stopping the video and playing back. Monckton — like Gore– is very scripted. Both often say things that can be defended as “true” by their supporters but which I think convey distorted notions of what we anticipate or what is known about climate change.

    If nothing else, Monckton is slick. Monckton’s reply is to engage Abraham on the nit-picky issues — like whether Monckton sourced his data sufficiently well. It’s easy to make Abraham appear to look like he’s focusing on nit-picky minutae with that because Abraham sort of is. If the data labeled NOAA/NCDC really cam from NOAA/NCDC, does it really matter that Moncton did not provide a full citation in teensy-beensy type at the bottom of his slide but only wrote NOAA/NCDC? Would not sourcing that data be a distortion? Or is this abbreviated citation the sort of what people often expect on power point view graphs?

    Heck, I saw Michael Schlessinger of UofI give a presentation at Argonne and his viewgraphs didn’t put a full reference in peer-review journal format for every snippet of information on every single view graph. He invited people to request them. So, why in the world would I expect Monckton to include references in 9pt front at the bottom of each and every view graph?

    But now lets turn to the problem with Moncktons response: Monckton avoids mentioning the points where Abraham lands real blows.

    Like me (and many others) Abraham notes that Monckton’s version of “The IPCC projections” does not match the text of the IPCC report. Moreover, one version of Monckton’s “The IPCC Projections” do not agree with another version. So, it is true that Monckton’s figures do not agree with themselves in this regard. This is a serious lapse, and is not a nit-pick.

    Monckton doesn’t engage this. If Abraham got him on other points, Monckton sure-as-shooting isn’t going to bring those up in his rebuttal. He’s going to focus his readers attention on the nit-picky stuff.

    Now turning to Abraham? Listening to his rebuttal, do we get a truly balanced view of what the science tells us? I don’t think so. It’s clear SteveF doesn’t think so, and I can understand why.

    So, am I going to referre between Monckton and Abraham? Nope.

    But I am going to say that Abraham does not look like an overcooked prawn, I’m not giving Monckton a free pass to call Catholic Universities “bible colleges”, slam our wonderfully nasal midwestern accents or throw out Nazi allusions willy-nilly!

  14. Re: Neven (Jun 5 13:50),

    Lucia, seriously now, do we need showmen in a debate over a serious things such as AGW?

    What’s need got to do with it? Gore is also a showman. That makes at least two.

    Lucia, do you agree with me that Monckton should not be labelled as a ’skeptic’?

    If you don’t want to call him a skeptic, you don’t have to. The word seems to be used to mean a huge range of seemingly mutually inconsistent things, so who am I to say?

    I don’t like being called a “skeptic” because I believe warming is occurring and many people interpret the term to mean a person who does not believe warming is occuring.

  15. Oh, those googly eyes,
    Monckton’s the man on the stage.
    Poor prawn strut and play.
    =============

  16. Lucia: Now turning to Abraham? Listening to his rebuttal, do we get a truly balanced view of what the science tells us? I don’t think so. It’s clear SteveF doesn’t think so, and I can understand why.
    So, am I going to referre between Monckton and Abraham? Nope.

    Admirable attempt to seize the high ground Lucia, and depict this as an argument between Abraham and Monckton. But that isn’t the case. If you review the tape, you can see that Abraham went to the scientists who published the data and analysis being “mis-used” by Monckton. This isn’t a debate between Monckton and Abraham; this a debate between Monckton and a whole host of scientists over analyses in their fields of expertise!
    .
    In order to believe Monckton, you would have to believe that all those scientists are lying about their own work! I find it highly unlikely that this many scientists would participate in that kind of massive deception.
    .
    No matter how you try to qualify it, the work by Abraham severely damages Monckton’s credibility; and by extension, the opportunists who tried to use Monckton to push their political agenda.

  17. PaulK2–
    It’s not as if every single thing Abraham write is simply responses from scientists to emails he sent them. Some of the nit-picky stuff is Abraham himself. It looks like at least some of the stuff is inteprepretation. Mockton criticises Gore — we don’t know precisely what Monckton said. However, I and quite a few others, Gore does tend to provide less than balanced protrayals of the state of climate and what people have reported. Abraham looks at stuff in the IPCC shows us that if you find the most extreme statement in the IPCC you can justify statements containing numbers. But that doesn’t really show that Gore isn’t misrepresenting. It just shows that the numbers come from somewhere– one might still misrepresent what message the IPCC conveyed with them.

    When Abraham does stuff like this, it is, to some extent Abraham against Monckton.

    No matter how you try to qualify it, the work by Abraham severely damages Monckton’s credibility;

    Well… Monckton isn’t credible. I agree with that. I thought that before Abraham made his video.

  18. I don’t like being called a “skeptic” because I believe warming is occurring and many people interpret the term to mean a person who does not believe warming is occuring.

    .
    People interpret the term that way because it has been hijacked by people who are not skeptics, who are the exact opposite of the definition of ‘skeptic’ (like Monckton, Morano, Easterbrook and Watts, to name a few). That’s the whole problem!
    .
    When it comes to the scientific aspects of the consequences of AGW (catastrophic or less so) you are IMO a genuine skeptic, Lucia. But you don’t want to be called that way because others disingenuously pose themselves as skeptics and misuse the aura of the term to spread FUD. That can’t be right, can it?
    .
    It’s like creationists calling themselves biologists and geologists and then the real biologists and geologists say they don’t want to be called that way because they don’t want to be associated with the anti-scientific creationists. What should we call the real biologists and geologists?!
    .
    The karma-point-people who are definitely not skeptics need to have a name of their own (at least that we can agree on on this blog) so people can more easily discern between them and genuine skeptics, period.

  19. Neven–
    What you are describing is the way of English. It’s evolved over time; it continues to evolve. I am willing to get in semantic debates about what words mean based on what the dictionary says and how people use them. I am not going to try to insist that I get to decide how words should be used. Lots of people try to do that. It irritates me. The ph.d. linguists at language log make fun of the people who try to do that occasionally writing entries on grammar or language peeveology.

    I enjoy reading the linguists at language log and do not plan to join the vast groups of people they make fun of for exhibiting excess peeve-o-logy.

    karma-point-people

    I like this. Very good. 🙂

  20. Lucia. Ever thought of giving Monckton a fair hearing, without mentioning his affliction etc? No?

    And leave out the “God Squad” protests. The Commies have had plenty of go’s at the alleged creationist skeptics.

    By the way, if you really believe the world was created in six days and on the seventh god rested, I have a bridge to sell you, and I’ll even say it in “Chicagoan”.

  21. Re: gIVE AND tAKE (Jun 5 15:48),

    Lucia. Ever thought of giving Monckton a fair hearing, without mentioning his affliction etc? No?

    Which affliction? Do you mean his tendency to call people name? Or suggest they look like prawns?

    And leave out the “God Squad” protests. The Commies have had plenty of go’s at the alleged creationist skeptics

    I am a culturally Catholic atheist. It’s pretty rare for someone to suggest I am making a “God Squad protest.

    That said, are you referring to my not liking a Catholic University be called a “Bible college”? It’s not a Bible college, or a seminary or even a ham sandwich. If Monckton wants to repeatedly call it something, he should say “University of St. Thomas” or “a Catholic University”.

    By the way, if you really believe the world was created in six days and on the seventh god rested, I have a bridge to sell you, and I’ll even say it in “Chicagoan”.

    As an atheist, I don’t believe the world was created by god. As Roman Catholics, my parents, and most nuns and priests I know do not adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible. Few believe the world was literally created in 6 days and on the 7th day god rested.

    If you want to find people who do believe that, it’s best not to seek them at Catholic Universities!

  22. So let me see if I have got this right…We can’t point out when people are lying repeatedly to make their statements true, without it being a Nazi illusion, if we happen to use Goebbels as short-hand for this concept?

    The reason that comparing to Hitler and Nazis is looked down upon is that it is meant to suggest the person is evil and hateful in the most hyperbolic way. When you say someone is Goebbelian it doesn’t mean they are generically a Nazi, it means they are pathological liars and repeat their untruths to establish them as the facts.

    That being said, one might suggest that Monckton is wrong on the points being disputed, but many are going well over the line to attribute deliberate misrepresentation to him instead of just a failure to understand certain points. That’s unreasonable, considering that his background is not in the field he is delving into.

    Additionally, I think Monckton believes that as soon as someone engages in personal attacks, he is compelled to insult them in turn. I believe this may be an aristocrat thing.

  23. Andrew_FL– The rule is, if a prominent person in climate-wars uses a Nazi allusion as a shortcut, and I learn of it, I write a blog post about it. Each reader, including you, can judge what they think of the episode. (I don’t know if this will affect the rate at which Monckton makes such allusions. For all I know, he will think “Terrific! If I use Nazi allusions, I’ll get blog coverage!”)

    That’s unreasonable, considering that his background is not in the field he is delving into.

    On the other hand, Monckton is presenting his notions to Congress, and making world tours presenting these notions. Some this isn’t quite like someone just standing by the water cooler saying silly, wrong or over – the- top things. But if your point is it would be wise for people to simply point out Monckton exaggerates and sometimes says silly or incorrect things without advancing theories about his motives: I agree with you.

    Additionally, I think Monckton believes that as soon as someone engages in personal attacks, he is compelled to insult them in turn. I believe this may be an aristocrat thing.

    I haven’t listened to the entire 83 minutes if “Abraham v. Monckton”; I listened to about 1/3rd. I didn’t notice many personal attacks by Abraham (That is, I don’t see anything personal unless you define simply saying someone’s argument is wrong is personal. I would consider “snake-like” or “looks like a prawn” to be personal.)

    Did you find any personal attacks? If so, could you point us to the precise segment and possible the time stamp when Abraham makes a personal attack?

  25. gIVE AND tAKE (Jun 5 16:24),
    1) How many handles do you use at blogs?
    2) The fact that the Catholic Bible exists does not turn University of St. John into either a “Bible college” or a “seminary”. Don’t be silly.
    3) I am familiar with the Catholic Bible. I like the story of Judith; there’s nothing like a lustful guy drinking until he passes out and then getting his head whacked off by a sexy vixen!

  26. lucia (Comment#44765)-“Did you find any personal attacks? If so, could you point us to the precise segment and possible the time stamp when Abraham makes a personal attack?”

    I haven’t actually watched the video, but to be clear, I should have said that I think Monckton only needs to believe he was attacked on a personal level.

    Obviously Ad Hominem is not a legitimate argumentative style, and it isn’t exactly proper behavior. But if my theory about English aristocrats is correct, it might explain his tendency to say that his opponents have engaged in ad hominem, followed immediately by attacks of his own.

  27. Well, first let me stick up for the Viscount before I attempt to stick it to him. Have you perhaps considered that he made an unfortunate slip of the pen and meant to label his critic Gerbilian? Given his tendency to associate opponents with animals lower on the food chain, I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

    For those who haven’t been keeping score, our friend from the United Kingdom is a journalist who was drafted into service for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, shortly after the Discoic Era, geologically speaking.

    Thatcher’s twin passions were breaking the grip of the unions on the British economy (especially the coal miners) and promoting the expansion of nuclear power.

    Our special friend Viscount Monckton suggested to the Prime Minister in 1986 that she investigate the possibility of global warming as a rallying point to achieve both ends–and so it came to pass. Thatcher persuaded British Petroleum to fund CRU at East Anglia University, she added climate unfriendliness to the long list of supposed sins of the coal miners and their daughters, and staved off the closure of Britain’s existing nuclear facilities.

    Apparently Monckton repents his earlier deeds. Personally, I think we all should thank him for making possible the creation of Billy Elliott, who dances almost as well as Monckton.

  28. Tom,

    Given his tendency to associate opponents with animals lower on the food chain,

    I noticed Monckton was enthusiastically gobbling down crustaceans when he sat across the table from me at Stefani’s. I suspect he was eating shrimp, not prawns. (BTW: I am somewhat allergic to crustaceans and do not eat them.)

    As a reminder, here is a picture of two people who speak with Midwestern accents and two who don’t:

  29. gIVE AND tAKE (Comment#44766)-That the Catholic bible contains the Book of Genesis doesn’t mean that Catholics believe it literally.

  30. In a public debate, Monckton would trounce Abraham. This victory would have nothing to do with facts or the merits of the argument.

  31. Andrew_FL (Comment#44773) June 5th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    gIVE AND tAKE (Comment#44766)-That the Catholic bible contains the Book of Genesis doesn’t mean that Catholics believe it literally.

    What Catholics think the bible means depends largely on what the current leaders in Rome think the Bible can be reasonably expected to say without being in complete contradiction of known science. Therefore, Genesis is allegorical, jesus can raise a man from the dead. The whole history of the universe cannot be manipulated, but resurrection every now and then can be explained by gods superpowers.

  32. This bystander is enjoying this immensely, and I note none of you are speaking with an accent.

    Tom Fuller, you have given us a Monckton motivation; why do you think Al Gore is the way he is? (Rorschach question.)

  34. As someone who lives in the UK it always amuses me to see the way British ‘aristocrats’ are treated outside of the UK. It is really, really weird. Especially when people refer to, say, Monckton as ‘My Lord’, as I witnessed on WUWT.

    Andrew FL, you’re a good poster and I’m not trying to be rude here but your theory is rubbish. Monckton acts as he does because that is his personality. It has nothing to do with his social class.

    Also, and this is directed at nobody in particular, but it’s a classic piece of hypocrisy to object to use of the ‘D’ label on the basis of an asserted link with the Holocaust (a veeery weak argument in my view, but one honestly held) on one hand, and defend the use of “Goebbelian” on the other.

  36. Don B (Comment#44777) June 5th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
    This bystander is enjoying this immensely, and I note none of you are speaking with an accent.

    You haven’t heard Neven talk then. He only writes without one.
    His German authoritarian roots showed, though, as Lucia pointed out.

    “Neven,
    Question 2: Why has Monckton been allowed to testify in Congress?
    Allowed? That’s a weird question. You must not be American.”

    I have a birth certificate with a swastika stamp on it, grew up in Austria, but have lived in the States for 50 years. I spend my summers in Austria now and love to compare the subtle difference in people living with different heritages.

  37. I guess some are arguing that ‘skeptic’ is too positive a term for the Viscount and for WUWT? They want to use some other term which would be more derogatory?

    Of course they are both skeptics. They are skeptical about the view that the AGW hypothesis is correct. Now, you may feel that there is more to be said about their approach than this, and if so by all means say it.

    It seems likely that you are trying to express the difference the Church Fathers reached for when they distinguished between those who

    — had never been exposed to the truth, and died pagan, and would spend eternity in Limbo

    — those who had been exposed to the truth but owing to original sin or stupidity, had not accepted it, and would be punished in a variety of interesting ways, which would fall short of the fate reserved for…

    — those who had known the truth and wilfully rejected it while knowing its truth in the depths of their hearts and understanding, and would be roasted for all eternity as a result.

    It seems like you are placing the Viscount and WUWT in the last category, is that right? Sinners, and leading others into sin. Well, one can see that it is very dreadful. It is indeed, if you are right, a small subset of the skeptics. But I cannot see why being in a small subset of something means one is not it. Dredgers, for instance, are in a very small subset of boats, but they are still boats.

  38. Mark (Comment#44779)-“Also, and this is directed at nobody in particular, but it’s a classic piece of hypocrisy to object to use of the ‘D’ label on the basis of an asserted link with the Holocaust (a veeery weak argument in my view, but one honestly held) on one hand, and defend the use of “Goebbelian” on the other.”

    That the label is meant to evoke Holocaust denial has been stated explicitly by users. However you don’t seem to get that calling someone Goebbelian is NOT saying “You antisemitic mass murdering totalitarian bastard!” it refers to the famous quote “a lie repeated enough becomes true”. Your telling me just because he was a Nazi we can’t also say that similar people are similarly cynical masters of false propaganda without saying they are Nazis? BS.

  39. Hal–
    I already knew Neven wasn’t American, both from his email address and from his IP address.

    But yes, he asked a question that doesn’t make much sense if you understand what’s involved in people appearing before Congress. Most American’s know it’s just a matter of some people in Congress wanting to listen to you and let you yap in front of Congress.

  41. Andrew_FL– It’s possible to come up with ways to say someone is a propagandist without using the word “Goebbelian”. In any case, given the vast amount of name calling on Monckton’s part, it seems a bit of a stretch to imagine that Monckton just accidentally decided to allude to a Nazi.

    Anyway, let’s look at the sentence.
    “One of the numerous Goebbelian propaganda artifices deployed … has been the careful avoidance of any debate with anyone”

    The Goebbelian propaganda technique seems to be to avoid debate. Was avoiding debate one of Goebble’s techniques? Goebble’s techniques are here. I don’t really think anyone in the climate – wars is following Goebble’s play book.

    Look at point 2:
    2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.

    Who could do this? There is no single authority capable of planning, executing or uniting any propaganda campaign.

  43. I listened as far as him talking about the MWP. He said nothing really – he failed to notice that Al Gore showed half of Europe going under do to sea level rise in ICT , he failed to recognise that Polar Bears are capable of swimming 300km as they regularly swim from Greenland to Iceland to attack the sheep flocks.

    It appears his whole argument is ask the author of the paper if he is right and of course the author will say they are right. If you asked the authors of the papers saying that the south pacific islands are being inundated due to rising sea levels they would react similarly despite the latest paper proving them to be totally wrong.

    He also uses the most spurious argument presented by the modellers that being if you take away the CO2 factor the models become inaccurate so therefore it must be CO2 that is causing the warming. How any reputable scientist can put forward that argument amazes me. Because we don’t know what it is it must be this because it appears to fit!

  45. Just remember, when “poking fun” at Monckton’s eyes, that there is a serious underlying, namely Graves Disease.
    About 20-25% of people with Graves’ disease will also suffer from Graves’ ophthalmopathy (a protrusion of one or both eyes), caused by inflammation of the eye muscles by attacking autoantibodies.

  46. Just a reminder that when poking fun at Monckton’s eyes, that there is an underlying cause, namely Graves Disease.
    About 20-25% of people with Graves’ disease will also suffer from Graves’ ophthalmopathy (a protrusion of one or both eyes), caused by inflammation of the eye muscles by attacking autoantibodies.
    Pictures of him as a younger man show an entirely different view.

  47. You haven’t heard Neven talk then. He only writes without one.
    His German authoritarian roots showed, though, as Lucia pointed out.

    .
    Coming awfully close to Godwin there, my dear friend. 😉
    BTW, I’m not German.
    .
    So, Lucia, the conclusion is: the karma-point-people have usurped the term ‘skeptic’, despite the fact that they are the exact opposite of the definition. I would call that a new twist to the story. A sad day for genuine skeptics everywhere.

  48. Something about those two pictures… Monkton looks like he’s getting his first colonoscopy and Abraham looks like he gets them rather often

  49. @Tom Fuller June 5th at 4.47pm

    Monckton did advise Thatcher in the 1980s on economic matters but I believe it was Sir Crispin Tickell who brought global warming to her attention.

    I’d imagine that these two gentlemen would be well pleased to be mistaken for each other 🙂

  50. here is a paragraph the end of the Monckton article:
    .
    I have already initiated the process of having Abraham hauled up before whatever academic panel his Bible college can muster, to answer disciplinary charges of willful academic dishonesty amounting to gross professional misconduct unbecoming a member of his profession.
    .
    the facts of this case, are pretty obvious. Abraham has invested an enormous amount of time, to check what Monckton claims. the vast majority of it, turned out to be false.
    he also has contacted a significant number of Monckton’s sources. as with Pinker in the debate with Tim Lambert, it turns out that most of his sources disagree with his conclusions.
    .
    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/moncktons_mcluhan_moment.php
    .
    stuff simply can t get more wrong, than having your sources disagree with your use of their work. especially if that is not the exception, but rather the rule.
    .
    there is one serious problem here: that we are even discussing the garbage that Monckton is putting out, in comparison with what was presented by Abraham.

  51. Leaving aside the silliness, i am puzzled by why climate scientists seem to refuse categorising the climate as a Chaotic system.

    Can someone explain why?

  52. I have already initiated the process

    .
    I’d like to see some proof of that. Monckton is smart enough to know that would be a foolish move.

  53. basically there is nothing that you need to know about Monckton, beyond this:
    .
    Meanwhile, the information office at the British House of Lords responded to Bickmore’s inquiry about a question that had been dogging him: Why does Monckton, the 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, describe himself as a member of the House of Lords? He’d made the claim to members of the U.S. Congress and also in an April 1 e-mail to Bickmore, where Monckton asserted: “I am a member of the House of Lords, though without the right to sit or vote, and I have never suggested otherwise.”

    The official response on Thursday said: “Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a ‘non-voting’ or ‘honorary’ member.”
    .
    http://www.sltrib.com/ci_14856887
    .
    why people who call themselves “sceptics” would listen to a person like Monckton, is beyond me. and it is a travesty, that the right term to describe Monckton and his followers, will cost “Karma” points on this blog.
    .
    the comparisions to Al Gore, brought up by lucia above, perhaps illustrate the major problem with the climate science debate: al Giore is NOT making any false claims about his political career. he was the vice president of the USA. he has some knowledge about the subject, and basically everything that he says is based on science. (in contrast to what “sceptics” think, AIT is a very good documentary film. it is neither the the main evidence of AGW, nor a scientific article!)
    .
    the comparison, is between a person in the middle, who occassionally makes an error or takes a position that reasonable people can disagree with, and the completely false extreme.
    .
    using the same term for both of them, is a disgrace, lucia.

  54. long post got eaten, so short again:
    .
    all you need to know about Monckton is this: (John Q provided the link in comments on the Monckton article)
    .
    Meanwhile, the information office at the British House of Lords responded to Bickmore’s inquiry about a question that had been dogging him: Why does Monckton, the 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, describe himself as a member of the House of Lords? He’d made the claim to members of the U.S. Congress and also in an April 1 e-mail to Bickmore, where Monckton asserted: “I am a member of the House of Lords, though without the right to sit or vote, and I have never suggested otherwise.”

    The official response on Thursday said: “Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a ‘non-voting’ or ‘honorary’ member.”
    .
    http://www.sltrib.com/ci_14856887
    .
    the comparison between Monckton and Al Gore is plain out stupid.
    .
    it is a travesty, that the word accurately describing Monckton and his followers, will cost Karma points.

  55. the comparison between Monckton and Al Gore is plain out stupid.

    .
    Perhaps not ‘plain out’. My impression is that both use AGW for selfish motives, and not for the common good, as they claim. Gore was smart enough to jump on the bandwagon as one of the first, for financial and political motives. Monckton just loves the attention, is very ideologically driven, and I don’t think it is costing him a lot of money, to put it mildly.
    .
    The difference is that Gore – though perhaps exaggerating here and there for the shock effect – has science on his side, and Monckton has not. Not so long ago Monckton would refute (mind you, not question) the warming and the attribution of mankind’s actions as the cause. Because of the staggering PR success of the constructed -Gates, he can play it safe and concentrate on sensitivity. Anything to delay, delay, delay.

  56. Andrew FL, I think you are being pretty disingenuous there. The discussion is about Monckton’s use not general use. And even in general use, given the option to say ‘propagandist’ instead, to my mind the choice of saying ‘Goebbels’ is… multi-layered to say the least.

  57. Perhaps not ‘plain out’. My impression is that both use AGW for selfish motives, and not for the common good, as they claim.
    .
    sorry Neven, but this impression is plain out wrong.
    .
    wikipedia might not be the best of all sources, but here we go:
    .
    Gore has been involved with the environment since 1976, after joining the United States House of Representatives when he held the “first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming.”[55][56] He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s[57] and was known as one of the Atari Democrats, later called the “Democrats’ Greens, politicians who see issues like clean air, clean water and global warming as the key to future victories for their party.”[30][58]
    .
    the timeline agrees with Al Gore, again. it is a bit too much of a conspiracy theory, that he was abusing the “global warming scare” to gain power in the early 80s…

  58. Perhaps not ‘plain out’. My impression is that both use AGW for selfish motives, and not for the common good, as they claim. Gore was smart enough to jump on the bandwagon as one of the first, for financial and political motives.
    .
    sorry Neven, but your impression is false.
    .
    Gore has been involved with the environment since 1976, after joining the United States House of Representatives when he held the “first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming.”[55][56] He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s[57] and was known as one of the Atari Democrats, later called the “Democrats’ Greens, politicians who see issues like clean air, clean water and global warming as the key to future victories for their party.”[30][58]
    .
    Al Gore did not jump the bandwagon early. he was on it already, before there even was a wagon!
    .
    —————
    .
    ps: lucia, i get a server error about every second time i try to post something. i assume that vital comments (and i am not only speaking about my own) are lost because of those errors. (the back button on firefox leaves me with an empty comment field…)

  59. How about adding “Orwellian” to the proscribed list of words. This could be extended to include the “two minute hate” which comes on when Monckton is involved. And don’t forget that it is bad manners to mock the afflicted. Do they say that in Chicago?

  60. sod, you might be right, but I just don’t trust politicians. If Gore were sincere, he would cut down his energy use drastically.
    .
    And always remember before posting: ctrl+a and ctrl+c are your friends. 🙂

  62. In a serendipitous post Von Storch posts on Lysenkoism.

    Lysenkoism was an extreme case of political perversion of science due to the particular social and political circumstances. The precarious situation of the young socialist state combined with suppression of public criticism made it difficult correct mistaken decisions. But precisely because of the extreme character the case provides useful lessons on how science can be perverted by politics. The nature and interactions of social and intellectual mechanisms that produce irrationality also under more normal circumstances are easier to discern and study.

  63. Mark (Comment#44810)-Not disingenuous at all. From the very beginning, I have defended the general use of the term, because I feel the implication calling it an invocation of Godwin’s law, is that it is not legitimate and always an attempt to call someone a Nazi. Hardly, there are so many more obvious ways to do so. Himmler, Adolf himself, or even just “Nazi!”

    Also, “propagandist” is not an adequate alternative. It doesn’t evoke the idea of repeating a lie till it’s true, in fact, propaganda may be the truth from the very beginning. And it is a longer word. Less mileage per letter by a long shot.

    If I say that the objections to the term are themselves “Orwellian” does that mean I’m accusing you of supporting the murder of twice as many people as the Nazis? So I probably shouldn’t then…

  64. Andrew_FL (Comment#44778) June 5th, 2010 at 6:53 pm

    Thank you bugs for the gratuitous mocking of the faith of my forefathers.

    And the former faith of myself. I gave it up for science, which does not depend on faith. I also escaped being sexually abused. Some of my fellow alter boys apparently not.

  65. maksimovich (Comment#44816) June 6th, 2010 at 4:53 am

    In a serendipitous post Von Storch posts on Lysenkoism.

    What does that have to do with AGW?

  66. Andrew is denying the obvious implications of the term used by Monckton. karma is just great!

  67. Re: sod (Jun 6 04:01),

    ps: lucia, i get a server error about every second time i try to post something. i assume that vital comments (and i am not only speaking about my own) are lost because of those errors. (the back button on firefox leaves me with an empty comment field…)

    Similar things happen to me both when I write comments, and full posts. (When I write edit posts, the changes don’t stick. This is increasing the number of typos beyond the norm.)

    I don’t know how to fix it. I’ll check plugins.

  68. Re: gIVE AND tAKE (Jun 6 04:04),
    Monckton mocked Abraham’s looks. I’ve showed photos of both alongside each other. Monckton is not an attractive man. He has a huge noise, overly large eyes, bushy eyebrows, thinning hair and he is beginning to wrinkle.

    Lots of people are unattractive for a wide variety of reasons associated with the genes they were dealt, fitness, health and age. Posting pictures of that an unattractive person is not “mocking the afflicted”. Posing a side-by-side photo next to a person they complained was as unattractive as an overcooked prawn is fair game. If you don’t want people responding to Monckton’s cracks about other people looks, you should contact Monckton and suggest he might want to not bring the subject up.

  69. Andrew FL, what? Orwellian? Why not just say Sauronian. Or better, Morgothian, which would be the infinity times infinity.

    We’re obviously not going to convince each other on this so we might as well leave it there. Goebbels comparisons might be appropriate on occasion, but not on most occasions. And definitely not on this (Moncktonian) one.

  70. bugs (Comment#44818)-You are some piece of work. Your nothing but a bigot.

    sod (Comment#44820)-Not denying. Just not giving a crap.

  71. Mark, it’s wise to quit while can still break even. Just about any term used to deride an opponent is use inappropriately at times. The vast majority of people saying someone is Orwellian do not mean to suggest someone is a Stalinist mass murderer. The vast majority of people saying someone is “Sauronian” do mean that the person is a downright demonic figure bent on world domination, in addition to those people being nerds.

    Jeez, you’d think I’d called you Lucifer. Now that’s over the line.

  72. Re: Mark (Jun 6 05:53),

    Goebbels comparisons might be appropriate on occasion, but not on most occasions. And definitely not on this (Moncktonian) one.

    Outright discussion of Nazi’s and comparing some people to Nazi’s are sometimes appropriate. Godwin’s law is still triggered. However, if someone compares Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, it’s generally easy enough to just discuss the similarities and differences.

    In contrast, Monckton appears to just throw in those Nazi references as red meat to his fans. Gore and some others advocating action on climate do engage in PR but they aren’t using Goebble’s play book.

  73. Andrew_FL (Comment#44825) June 6th, 2010 at 5:54 am

    bugs (Comment#44818)-You are some piece of work. Your nothing but a bigot

    Why does having a pedophile amongst the altar boys make me a bigot. He was nice enough to tell my mother he left me and my brothers alone.

    As for what is ‘fact’ and what is ‘allegorical’ in the bible for catholics, if it’s not the head of the church in rome, then who is it? That’s what I was taught by the nuns and brothers. The creation story doesn’t literally mean god made the world in seven days, but jesus did literally raise lazarus from the dead. We weren’t asked to use our powers of skepticism to make the decision, it was left to those in charge for the church to make the decision for us. As an ex catholic, how can i be bigoted against myself?

  74. Interesting discussion. 🙂

    Just want to add that nobody’s speaks for me! (Mockton-whatever…never read/heard his speeches or paid any attention to him or anybody else like that (I am a fan of the late great Dr. Michael Crichton-but he is the only “skeptical” speaker (and much much more) I can think of that mattered to me) also you all should be aware that a Catholic priest gave us the Big Bang Theory (and knowing this and reading the comments here is amusing)

    Lucia: “Gore and some others advocating action on climate do engage in PR but they aren’t using Goebble’s play book.”

    Besides Inconvenient Truth, I am guessing you guys never saw Gore’s MTV special aimed at children? It was creepy and very Nazi-like to say the least IMHO. (and you would not be able to change my mind on that opinion either)

  75. Agnosticism
    Beats belief beyond a doubt.
    How does one know naught?
    ============

  76. “We weren’t asked to use our powers of skepticism to make the decision, it was left to those in charge for the church to make the decision for us.”

    BS. Christianity didn’t survive for 3 thousand years because some “church” decided or “made” people believe these things.

    Author Ann Rice of “An Interview with a Vampire” fame wrote a historical/fictional book about Jesus’ life just recently (she was a “recovering Catholic” too ;)) She was compelled to do so she says… and was inspired to explore her religious beliefs all over again after the death of her husband (he had a brain tumor I believe, so it was a slow death). Her husband had lived as a self proclaimed atheist -but his/her /their feelings about God etc changed a bit in those days leading up to his passing…Anyway, the back of this book has all her sources and research credits-very scientific and scholarly like… In a nutshell she writes a very interesting argument/essay about all this “Jesus stuff” and her feelings about it and how she discovered a very interesting unfair bias in the scientific/academic community in regards to it all too…etc. FYI. just thought I’d share.

  77. Loco (Comment#44795) June 5th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
    Just a reminder that when poking fun at Monckton’s eyes, that there is an underlying cause, namely Graves Disease.
    About 20-25% of people with Graves’ disease will also suffer from Graves’ ophthalmopathy (a protrusion of one or both eyes), caused by inflammation of the eye muscles by attacking autoantibodies.
    Pictures of him as a younger man show an entirely different view.

    I’m reminded of the admonition: “People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones”!

  78. It is a curious aspect of the AGW hysteria, that its proponents cannot believe that anyone could be sincere, reasonable, intelligent, informed, have looked carefully at the evidence, and simply not be convinced of the hypothesis.

    This leads them to continually seek some term other than skeptic to characterize unbelievers, and the one they are looking for always has the implication that there is not only skepticism, but that the skepticism is, as it must be, either irrational, in bad faith, uninformed…. etc.

    This is one of the main pieces of social evidence that enables us to classify AGW appropriately. It belongs with other examples of large scale hysterical popular delusions, which are mostly, though not always, financial bubbles. There are also a number of medical ones too. Witchcraft mania was another. The characteristic, throughout history, has been a sort of mass delusion about the facts and about the explanation for them. A curious and interesting recent example was some African country in which large numbers of men apparently became convinced that their penises were being shrunk by witchcraft. Well.

    This is real simple. Its not warming. Sensitivity is not what its asserted to be by AGW. Its not going to warm catastrophically. CO2 rises will have a warming effect, but it will not be amplified by positive feedbacks, but diminished by negative ones, and the result will be negligible warming from that cause. But, global temps and the weather will continue to fluctuate, and will continue to cause hysteria among our species, both when it warms, which will prompt hysterical fears of overheating, and when it cools, which will prompt equally hysterical fears of freezing.

    No, I am not in some kind of weird mental state, and I have looked at the evidence, and this is the conclusion I have come to. No psychological explanations or mechanisms are required. Its just what the balance of probability is, given the evidence. That is all the explanation one needs for why someone would believe it. It is plausible.

  79. Simply delicious!
    Far better than overcooked prawns.

    It is extremely satisfying when there are still people in the climate debate who apply rigorous critiques to all sides. That is what makes your website so refreshing.

  80. Lucia: In any case, given the vast amount of name calling on Monckton’s part, it seems a bit of a stretch to imagine that Monckton just accidentally decided to allude to a Nazi.
    .
    Monckton has been called out on this behavior before. He has had time to think about it. There can be little doubt now that it is quite deliberate.
    .
    Monckton at Copenhagen: “No, no. I’m not going to shake the hand of Hitler Youth. I’m sorry.”

  81. Lucia,
    “I am somewhat allergic to crustaceans and do not eat them.”
    .
    Wow, if that were me, I’m not sure life would be worth living; no shrimp, lobster, or crab? How dreadful! Tell me you can at least eat clams..

  82. Lucia, I have always respected your objective scientific demeanor in the AGW discussion and I believe that you consider yourself a “lukewarmer.” I think that most/many of the technical and non-technical types (like me) agree that GHG’s will cause warming in the range of .5 – 1.5 C and greater evaporation of water vapor into the atmosphere. As I understand it, the question of additional warming beyond that depends on whether the increased water vapor causes positive feedback because water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas, or whether the increased water vapor causes negative feedback through the formation of clouds as is hypothesized by Dr Roy Spencer and others. I am curious, do you think that water vapor is a positive or negative feedback?

  83. Ron–

    There can be little doubt now that it is quite deliberate.

    Other evidence for deliberation:
    1) The Nazi allusion appears in writing as opposed to an impromptu response when surrounded by group of people. (And suggest some personality types might feel crowded and anxious, but I’m aware some personality types LOVE crowded throngs. I suspect Monckton falls in the latter, and I suspect JeffId would suggest I also like crowds.)

    2) The allusion appears in the opening paragraph of his essay which any even the most careless of writers knows gets the most scrutinity and will proof read. (Closing paragraphs get the 2nd most scrutiny, but in this case, the reader would have to click to page 4.)

    3) I think there is plenty of evidence Monckton thinks about the words he writes.

    4) The allusion appears in an essay intended for a widely read online publication, and the author knew it would be displayed prominently. That is: This isnot Monckton writing a comment in a hurry, clicking “Submit” and then saying “Oh, Criminey!” This isn’t someone writing a “tweet” and then regretting the word choice. This isn’t even a celebrity writing a his first post on a recently created blog which he anticipates no one will read and then discovering that people did read it.

    Just to pile on the hilarity, did anyone read the final paragraph?

    Abe, baby, if you present yourself as “a scientist” — as you do throughout your talk — then it is as a scientist that you will be judged, found lamentably wanting, and dismissed. You may like to get your apology and retraction in early: for I am a Christian too, and will respond kindly to timely repentance.

    Those of you who are culturally or religiously Roman Catholic, how does the “for I am a Christian too, and will respond kindly to timely repentance” strike you?

    I went to Catholic school and that closing made me snort coffee out of my nose! I can’t even imagine a priest saying anything that sounds like he is the one who grants absolution. No higher authority than Wikipedia confirms my recollection, saying “Catholics believe that no priest, as an individual man, however pious or learned, has the power to forgive sins apart from God. ”

    I mean…sheesh!

  84. Bugs, I was under the impression that you were being figurative about your “fellow alter boys”. I mean, you can see where maybe I would think you were throwing a nasty stereotype in my face, right?

    If Karl Marx is any indication, the some of most rabid anti-Semites are Jews who rejected their heritage. Being an ex-Catholic should be no obstacle to hating Catholicism.

  85. SteveF
    I am curious, do you think that water vapor is a positive or negative feedback?
    I don’t know. But also, are you asking about water vapor or clouds? Some clouds contain liquid water, some contain ice. So, this is a different question. I also don’t know the net effect of clouds. Their cloud elevation, thickness and amounts of ice and liquid water could affect the feedback. I think clouds are still sub-grid in models, so that makes it difficult to be sure any model gets anything right, and it makes it difficult for people to really, totally, completely pin down the feedback for clouds. If there is a question, it’s there.

    I think if we consider the definition of “water vapor feedback” limited to the radiative properties of water in the form of vapor, that feed back is almost certainly positive.

  86. Is it a coincidence that religion becomes the focus of the thread … on a Sunday? Just askin’.

  87. lucia (Comment#44842),
    I think you were answering Chuck L. I just wanted to know if you can eat clams.

    BTW, I agree with you about clouds and water vapor. Clouds are such a huge influence on albedo that even a tiny error in the model parameters could make a huge difference, (entering harping mode) which is why I think the best, and maybe only, way to constrain/quantify climate sensitivity is ocean heat accumulation. The models are not likely ever going to do more than meet their creator’s expectations of sensitivity.

  88. SteveF–

    Clams, oysters, snails, and all sorts of molluscs are fine. Also, my shell-fish thing is officially a food sensitivity, not allergy. That is, I get sick, but it’s not hives or anything to do with the response of my immune system as far as we can tell. Nothing happens if I eat just small quantities. Everytime I’ve eaten a full portion– OMG. Not good.

    My sister, who is gluten intolerant and I both agree that a very mild crustacean allergy is at least a convenient one. People don’t go hiding pulverized lobster in other foods to reduce the cost!

  89. Neven (Comment#44745) June 5th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

    “Why has Monckton been allowed to testify in Congress?”

    You must not watch C-Span very often. Congressional hearings are pretty much ‘show trials’. The ‘majority’ invites various witnesses to provide ‘compelling testimony’ for a given policy. The ‘minority’ then invites it’s witnesses to provide compelling testimony against such policy.

    Then there is various cross examination. Depending on one’s view the question’s posed in cross examination give the ‘witness’ an opportunity to either repeat their most compelling points or call into question the validity of the most compelling points.

    If you want to see a group of people particularly well skilled at embellishing the truth(politicians) question another group of people selected primarily due to their skill at embellishing the truth then watch C-Span.

    If you want to see ‘truth and justice’ in action watch Judge Judy.

  90. This is real simple. Its not warming. Sensitivity is not what its asserted to be by AGW. Its not going to warm catastrophically. CO2 rises will have a warming effect, but it will not be amplified by positive feedbacks, but diminished by negative ones, and the result will be negligible warming from that cause.

    funny. michel denies important aspects of main stream climate science. but i can t call him a d*******. on the other hand, the stupid term “AGW hysteria” is allowed here. who among the pro science people posting here, is hysteric? who of us is part of a mass delusion similar to the one about penis shrinkage?

  91. CO2 rises will have a warming effect

    .
    Michel, the whole point is that there is quite a large group who will deny what you say (‘it’s not warming’, CO2 doesn’t have a warming effect’, ‘CO2 rise is not caused by humans’, ‘the effect will be zero, CO2 is plant food’), but they still regard themselves as skeptics. Would you say they are skeptics, according to the definition of that term?
    .
    And then there’s a smaller group who will wilfully try to muddle the debate by fuelling that pseudo-skepticism out of ideological, financial or psychological motives. That’s where Monckton, Watts, Easterbrook and a whole bunch of others come in. Would you say they are skeptics, according to the definition of that term?
    .
    And is the reason that you don’t mind being associated with them (as you unfairly share the same label) because you think they serve a purpose, ie offering some kind of counterweight to alarmist propaganda, or is there some other reason?
    .
    edit: Lucia and Harry, thanks for explaining the American political system. I had forgotten how completely f**ed-up it has become. 😛

  92. Lucia,
    Funny things crustaceans. My wife went through a period of a couple of years where she got violently sick from tropical lobster (“spiny lobster”) but never from cold water lobster. Now neither seem to bother her. Perhaps whatever allergens are involved vary between species and/or individual animals.

  93. You must not watch C-Span very often. Congressional hearings are pretty much ’show trials’. The ‘majority’ invites various witnesses to provide ‘compelling testimony’ for a given policy. The ‘minority’ then invites it’s witnesses to provide compelling testimony against such policy.
    .
    i really hate this “all do the same” approach. it is just not true.
    .
    on the topic of climate change, the democrats invite scientists. while the republicans invite all kind of think tank spoofs they can find.
    .
    there simply isn t anyone important in the pro-AGW camp, who is even vaguely similar to Monckton. and he isn t the worse “sceptic” (ehm) out there.

  94. You must not watch C-Span very often. Congressional hearings are pretty much ’show trials’. The ‘majority’ invites various witnesses to provide ‘compelling testimony’ for a given policy. The ‘minority’ then invites it’s witnesses to provide compelling testimony against such policy.
    .
    i really hate the “all do the same” approach. it is just not true.
    the pro-AGW side invites real scientists. the other side invites all kinds of think tank spoofs.
    .
    there simply isn t anyone important, who is similar to Monckton on the pro-AGW side. and Monckton isn t even the worst “sceptic”. (bizarre use of the term)

  95. sod,
    “who among the pro science people posting here, is hysteric?”
    A legal change in your middle name to “AGW hysteric” might be suitable.

  96. Sod–
    I try to avoid adding any words to Spam Karma. I added the ‘d’ words because they were being used as labels (which is bad), were being used repeatedly and triggered endless back and forth bickering over the use of the label. That debate is boring.

    “AGW hysteria” is not a label. A google search of my site suggest that prior to today, the term “AGW hysteria” appears exactly once: in ‘Howard (Comment#39161)’ well down in the comments on this post: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/proferounsimplify-clarifies-sort-of/ It’s use did not trigger an eruption of debate over whether or not the use of the term “AGW hysteria” was an offensive denigrating label &etc.

    I’m not really going to explain the precise standard for putting words in SpamKarma, but the compound term “AGW hysteria” does not even come close to qualifying.

  97. SteveF

    Perhaps whatever allergens are involved vary between species and/or individual animals.

    Perhaps. But when one breaks out into a sweat, and feels like they’ve contracted the flu, and only recover after having the food exit orally, it happens every time one eats a crustacean, it seems wise to avoid the food. It’s actually not that difficult because from what I’ve read, sometimes just getting the flu after eating something will cause food aversion in people, and I have developed an aversion to crustaceans. I can’t really bring my self to eat imitation crab at this point!

  98. Re: sod (Jun 6 10:12),

    who among the pro science people posting here, is hysteric?

    Well… to answer that question, we’re going to have to quiz all the women you sod considers “pro science” to discover if they’ve had hysterectomies. I’ll let you do that.

  99. Lucia,
    “and I have developed an aversion to crustaceans”
    Sounds like the case of young birds eating Monarch Butterflies… exactly once. You could do a double blind study to sort it out… of course, if the aversion is strong enough, you may get sick if you think you could be eating crab, even if you are not, so the whole experiment might be very unpleasant. Better to stick with mollusks.

  100. “In contrast, Monckton appears to just throw in those Nazi references as red meat to his fans. Gore and some others advocating action on climate do engage in PR but they aren’t using Goebble’s play book.”
    .
    John Abraham uses the word “denier”. Do you deny that labelling skeptics “deniers” hinting to the Holocaust isn’t subject to Godwin’s law?
    .
    PS I luve shrimp salad.

  101. hys·ter·ic (h-strk)
    n.
    1. A person suffering from hysteria.
    .
    I think sod used the word correctly.

  102. Many of the pseudo-skeptics (I’ll use this less offensive word, though ‘deni**ists’ is more descriptive) are suffering from hysteria as well, the one mostly associated with extreme conspiracy theory viewpoints.

  103. Al Gore started it all…
    Article : JUNE 14, 2006 6:38 A.M.
    “Al Gore’s Horror Theater”
    http://article.nationalreview.com/282754/al-gores-horror-theater/jonah-goldberg

    The people who supported Galileo were given labels and nick names too. So the behavior/tactic is as old as the hills. Gire also started all the “Bush hate” too IMHO. What’s sad is all the silly people eating it up like candy and sharing it.

    Reasonable people know that the scientific method would be a joke without skeptical analysis.

    Then there’s “Global Warming” becoming known as “Climate Change”.

    Gee how’d that happen and why?

  104. Since this thread obviously is about debating style rather than about the scientific debate as such, I have to add that I am a bit astonished about your attack on Monckton, Lucia. Monckton is perhaps the most attacked person in this debacle after Al Gore. And you do not make things better by making an attack against the person who is attacked.

    Monckton is extremely intelligent and well spoken proponent of the sceptics. That does not mean that we all have to agree with him about everything. But he has that talent for debate (written and oral) which most citizens of other nations (with an inferior educational system) must envy him. I admit that his only weakness is the ad hominem attacks on his attackers. But that’s because he is a sensitive person, Lucia. 🙂 The British way of dealing with such things is to keep a stiff-upper-lip and make understatements. But not everybody can be a cool-cat like you, Lucia, and make the more subtle ad hominem by not saying so but simply by publishing pictures. That’s a nasty way of doing it. But, on the other hand it might get you some scores among the AGW:ers.

  105. Neven:

    Monckton:

    I have already initiated the process

    .
    I’d like to see some proof of that. Monckton is smart enough to know that would be a foolish move.

    .
    I, on the other hand, am fairly sure that Monckton sent an angry email to the college president demanding all sorts of things. Of course, if Abrams repents, Monckton may respond kindly. 😆

  106. Monckton is extremely intelligent and well spoken proponent of the sceptics. That does not mean that we all have to agree with him about everything. But he has that talent for debate (written and oral) which most citizens of other nations (with an inferior educational system) must envy him.
    .
    this is plain out false. a person making the false claim about his membership in the house of lords is neither intelligent, nor well spoken.
    .
    he is liked by the pseudo-sceptics, because he is constantly making up stuff, that fits their false believes.

  107. Monckton is extremely intelligent and well spoken proponent of the sceptics. That does not mean that we all have to agree with him about everything. But he has that talent for debate (written and oral) which most citizens of other nations (with an inferior educational system) must envy him.
    .
    this is plain out false, again. Monckton made the false claim, of being a member of the house of lords. he is not.
    he is neither intelligent, nor well spoken. and his ad-hom attacks are not his only weakness either.
    .
    he is liked by other people who deny scientific facts, because he constantly makes up stuff, which fits their false believes.
    .
    That’s a nasty way of doing it. But, on the other hand it might get you some scores among the AGW:ers.
    .
    i am sorry, but it doesn t. disagreeing with Monckton is not special. every person with a basic level of intelligence and knowledge of the subject will disagree with him, basically all the time.
    .
    i was deeply shocked by lucia’s silence after the Heartland conference. dozens of presentations by Monckton, Easterbrook and co, and lucia was there and not a word of criticism on her blog.
    .
    while the original blog post is ok, in comments lucia brought up false comparison to Al Gore. no, i am not pleased. and this is not “balanced” reporting.

  108. Then there’s “Global Warming” becoming known as “Climate Change”. Gee how’d that happen and why?

    .
    Well, liza, this one might surprise you, but here’s a short movie explaining how it came about. Start watching from 1.23.

  110. Neven, why would that surprise me?
    Cce, thanks. “less frightening”. Says a lot. 😉

  111. sod (Comment#44866) June 6th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
    Oh sheesh. All one has to do, for example is read the explanation of the lag in the ice core data between c02 and temp over at Real Climate (an old thread that my husband and HIS PEERS laughed their butts off at when they read it) or go and read the latest couple of posts over at Climate Audit to see what false claims really truly are!

  112. sod (Comment#44866)-You might not think Monckton is “extremely intelligent” (although he is quite savvy in Mathematics, creating the Eternity Puzzle) but I really hardly think anyone would suggest he isn’t well spoken. The man has a mastery of the Queen’s English which is to be envied, feared, or admired, and his delivery is frightening to be on the wrong end of as well.

    To say that the man is not well spoken is the most ridiculous criticism you could make. But I suppose you think that the Teleprompter in Chief is a good speaker…

  113. The idea that this debate is one about science is quite silly.
    This is a debate about politics, economics and values.

    One can completely accept the IPCC WG1 science yet reject the notion that carbon control as a viable policy option.

    I wish the AGW hysterics would stop using science as a club to push their own political ideology on others. There are many legimate “responses” to the stated problem.

  114. Oh sheesh. All one has to do, for example is read the explanation of the lag in the ice core data between c02 and temp over at Real Climate (an old thread that my husband and HIS PEERS laughed their butts off at when they read it) or go and read the latest couple of posts over at Climate Audit to see what false claims really truly are!
    .
    sorry, but CA latest posts are all about the CRU “event”.
    .
    http://climateaudit.org/
    .
    you will seriously struggle to find anything that is even remotely scientific on the current front page of posts.
    .
    The man has a mastery of the Queen’s English which is to be envied, feared, or admired, and his delivery is frightening to be on the wrong end of as well.

    To say that the man is not well spoken is the most ridiculous criticism you could make.
    .
    i am sorry, but your believes are confusing your perception. Monckton is a clown. and the content of speeches does matter, believe me!

  115. liza (Comment#44870): an old thread that my husband and HIS PEERS laughed their butts off at when they read it
    .
    I think we saw a fine example of your husband’s ability to think about/discuss this subject rationally over here.
    .
    Of course, if that was your comment and not his, he has my apologies for the assumption.

  116. Tim,

    Please explain how anyone who accepts the science of WG1 could conclude that the problem can be solved without controlling carbon.

  117. cce,

    Look at the difference between what I said:
    “reject the notion that carbon control as a viable policy option”

    and what you asked:
    “conclude that the problem can be solved without controlling carbon.”

    I said nothing about a “problem” because WG1 does not identify any “problem”. All it does is explain how human activities are leading to climate change. Climate change is not a “problem” in itself. To find the arguments for it being a problem one has to look at WG2. To find arguments that carbon control is a viable option you have to look to WG3.

    Even then, the argument for carbon control presumes that it is a technically viable option – a topic that was not even discussed by the IPCC.

  118. I said nothing about a “problem” because WG1 does not identify any “problem”. All it does is explain how human activities are leading to climate change. Climate change is not a “problem” in itself. To find the arguments for it being a problem one has to look at WG2. To find arguments that carbon control is a viable option you have to look to WG3.
    .
    complete nonsense. a short look at the tables on page 8 or 13.
    .
    http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
    .
    warming that includes 3°C in basically all scenarios is a problem. you will not deny that, i hope?

  119. sod (Comment#44874)-“i am sorry, but your believes are confusing your perception. Monckton is a clown. and the content of speeches does matter, believe me!”

    Pot, meet kettle. Seriously, if you can’t separate out the issue of whether he is right or wrong, someone you hate or like, and whether he is a good speaker, you are the one whose perceptions are clouded by your beliefs. Not once in this thread have I defended or even commented on Monckton’s arguments themselves.

  120. Re: SteveF (Jun 6 10:48),

    I think sod used the word correctly.

    Actually, I agree.

    It’s just that it probably impossible for us all to agree whether or not any individual is suffering from hysteria. The usage is broad having busted out of the bounds of pure clinical definition long ago. So, I gave a snarky answer. 🙂

    Re: Ingemar (Jun 6 11:20),
    Criticizing someone is not the same as attacking him. I think it is ridiculous for people to suggest that criticism is impermissible by mislabeling criticism as an “attack”.

    If the British way is toward understatement, Monckton must be a cultural outlier.

    In any case, I think anyone advancing the argument that Monckton, who certainly attacks others– hurling ad homs, making (often hilareous) threats about pursuing justice by doing things like complaining to ones boss or and basically insulting people should be shielded from criticisms by anyone at all. If the guy is going to proactively do the verbal equivalent of mounting his horse, and trying to run people through with his lance, he ought to expect that people are going to point lances back at him.

    Sod

    i was deeply shocked by lucia’s silence after the Heartland conference. dozens of presentations by Monckton, Easterbrook and co, and lucia was there and not a word of criticism on her blog.

    Be as shocked as you like.

    I didn’t attend Easterbrook’s presentation. That in and of itself would have made it difficult to write a blog post about it.

    Even if I had attended, I have discovered I find it difficult to compose fair written presentations of oral presentations. This is true even if I have copies of the viewgraphs and a video. Re-winding and re-watching the video to assure myself I have accurately characterized precisely what was said required to compliment or criticize is just not worth the time. If you want someone to attend and summarize individual presentations, you are either going to have to do it yourself, or someone who is willing to do that and possible pay them for their time. If you are shocked people won’t just take on this job you want done because you wish them to do so, then… well.. just be shocked!

    FWIW, I periodically found Monckton’s discussion so irritating that I got up, went to the ladies room, checked my mascara and then stood by the door talking to a state legislator from Wisconsin. He asked me things like “What is a Viscount and how did this guy get to be one anyway?”. I said, told him it was a hereditary title, and he’d inherited it from his dad. I also told him that during my youth, I’d read vast numbers of Victorian romance novels, and Viscount seems to be something more elevated than Baron, but I was pretty sure it was lower than Duke. We both agreed that if Monckton had no title, no one would pay any attention to him at all.

    A little later, I went back to my table and ate dessert. I mentioned to someone that near the end, I was expecting Monckton to suggest we sing the Star Spangled Banner, and that person laughed and said, “Yeah!”

    Many, though not all, at the meeting were Monckton fans.

    As for your insistence grousing about a comparison between Gore and Monckton, I take pretty much Neven’s position. Making a comparison is not saying they are exactly the same in all ways. The two men share some features. If you don’t like people to point that out, and want to grouse, go ahead. But your expressing shock or grousing isn’t going to change the fact that many, many people perceive both as sharing some features.

    Andrew_FL– Monckton is an engaging speaker. Abraham even says so in his video.

  121. Tim,

    Please look at AR4 WG1 SPM table 2, table 3, figure 6, and figure 7. You don’t need WG2 and WG3 to inform you that this a problem.

  122. Andrew_FL–
    It also occurs to me that one of the reasons Monckton may have found Abrahams nasal matey tone irritating is that he suspects he’s finally come across someone who could wipe the floor clean with him.

    Consider this:

    “Lincoln has a high-pitched, penetrating and not too pleasant voice; Douglas had a resonant, bass voice, so that he was called a ‘lion-voiced orator.'”

    (http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=134&CRLI=190 )

    Remember the Lincoln-Douglass debates propelled the unknown Lincoln from obscurity to winning the Republican nomination for president. That nasal voice may irritate the Brits, but it doesn’t irritate everyone.

    If Abraham wants to take the time and practice, and if he’d good on his feet, he might actually be able to take on Monckton in live debates. I suspect Abraham won’t because his university position precludes going on major tours of the sort undertaken by Monckton and Gore.

  124. sod ,

    warming that includes 3°C in basically all scenarios is a problem. you will not deny that, i hope?

    Where is your evidence that a 3degC warming is a problem?

    That is the problem with AGW hysterics. They assume that change must be bad.

  125. Lucia: “If the British way is toward understatement, Monckton must be a cultural outlier.”

    Exactly! Hence my interpretation that M. is a sensitive (un-British emotional?) person. Sorry if I was unclear.

  126. Ron Broberg (Comment#44875) June 6th, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    That was my comment. Please show me what part of that conversation I was referring to ( do you even know?) that wasn’t bs. I think that topic shed light on a whole bunch of assumptions!

    And btw Carrick and I may have different opinions, but I hope he knows I don’t feel anything negative about him or his character or his IQ. AND even Carrick steps up and says something when sod posts some bs thing as well. I don’t see you doing that.

    (And the lag explanation thread on RC was funny and my husband can debate you on the details of it, and any of the AGW stuff for that matter at any time!!)

  127. Where is your evidence that a 3degC warming is a problem?

    .
    Not a problem whatsoever, Tim! We’ll all be lying on the beach having a wonderful time. In fact, I’m hoping for a 6 degree C rise!

  128. Lucia wrote : I noted the Monckton-version of the IPCC projections did not appear at Heartland.

    Lucia, actually the Monckton-version appears at 6’20″” in the presentation Hans Labohm gave at the 4th Heartland Conference. the video can be found at : http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4

    Of course Hans Labohm has long be known not to care about the science nor about presenting facts he knows to be incorrect.

    In the same Heartland presentation he also presents the deeply flawed Joe d’Aleo 1998-2008 graph which supposedly “proves” there’s no correlation between CO2-levels and global temperatures. A thing Labohm keeps using in articles & presentations, claiming nowhere in history there was a correlation between the two. Even though Labohm is fully aware this is untrue, as this post shows : http://jules-klimaat.blogspot.com/2009/03/labohm-again-sigh.html

    The fact such people are allowed to speak on the Heartland Conference imho clearly demonstrates Heartland doesn’t care about the science.

  129. Neven,

    Your sarcasm proves my point: AGW hysteria is not a rational reaction to the scientific evidence. It is irrational reaction based on prejudice and preconceptions.

    Humans live in every possible climate on the planet. It is completely irrational to assume that a poleward shift in climate zones would create problems that humans could not handle.

  130. liza:That was my comment. Please show me what part of that conversation I was referring to ( do you even know?) that wasn’t bs.
    .
    Then he (and you) have my apologies for my assumption and am glad to have that cleared up. As to what part of the conversation – I don’t know, and it wasn’t clear to me, and it seemed out of character for most of your comments on this board – thus my suspicion it wasn’t even you. 🙂

  131. Jules (Comment#44889) June 6th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
    I can’t comment on the speeches but I’d like you to show us the correlation any where in the geological record!… but to save time let’s say, how about in the last million years? Fair enough?
    Show us you care. 😉

  132. Ron Broberg (Comment#44891) June 6th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
    Thanks.:) I am allergic to bs like lucia is to lobsters and shrimp. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t sound like me? lol ;))

  133. Re: Jules (Jun 6 14:20),
    Sorry– I mean they did not appear during Monckton’s presentation. (Or if they did, they must have done so while I was fixing my mascara. I didn’t watch the whole thing.)
    Re: Ingemar (Jun 6 14:09),

    M. is a sensitive (un-British emotional?) person.

    Sensitive and emotional aren’t quite the same thing. Sensitive usually means ones feelings are easily hurt. This may or may not apply to all people described as emotional. Some emotional people don’t get their feeling hurt easily, but do get angry for all sorts of reasons.

  135. Tim, your lack of imagination proves my point: karma-point-people think they can force reality to submit to the power of their D-K genius.
    .
    A 3 degree C rise in average global temperature is not about you stepping onto your lawn, looking at the garden thermometer and going: Hey, it’s 3 degrees C warmer than it used to be! Where’s my ice tea?
    .
    A 3 degree C rise signifies a huge addition of energy to the climate system, amplifying weather extremes of all sorts. If you want evidence, look at the recent heat waves in Australia, 100 year flooding events in the US and Europe that are becoming 10 year flooding events, Arctic summer sea ice melting.
    .
    And so…
    .

    It is completely irrational to assume that a poleward shift in climate zones would create problems that humans could not handle.

    .
    Sure, humans can handle a whole lot of things, for me the question whether humanity will survive CAGW – if it would happen – is irrelevant at this point. The question is more: Can society as it is right now cope with the consequences of a 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 degree C rise in average global temperature? Especially if we take the holistic view and add all those other problems (peaking of oil and other resources, ocean acidification and pollution, ecosystems that provide clean air and water under more and more stress, financial bubbles which are just starting to burst, etc) to the cocktail. Can society handle that?

  136. AR4 WG1 demonstrates that we are radically and irreversibly (on any human timescale) changing the environment that, on a business as usual path, would rival an-ice-age-in-reverse compressed into a century (and worse after that). A cost benefit analysis is not required to establish this as a problem, only common sense. Such analyses are, however, useful for setting the proper price for a negative externality such as emissions of greenhouse gases.

    BTW, if you want “hysterics” look no further than predictions of economic armageddon, to the exclusion of all actual analysis, if a price on carbon is established in the US. Transforming the global environment is shrugged off as “alarmism” while cap-and-trade or carbon taxes are socialist plots that will destroy the economy and bring an end to freedom.

  137. “to the exclusion of all actual analysis”
    Gov Arnold paid for one here in California, conducted by Cal State Sacramento I believe. Liberal school too. It predicted a economic disaster for our state (on top of the one already going on!) and the conclusion was kept a secret until a radio talk show brought it to light for us lowly citizens! Going to cost us at least a million jobs it said (on top of a 12 percent unemployment rate we already have)

    I guess hysterics depends on what you care about!

  138. Lucia has Moncktonitis. That can be the only explanation for someone who travels to a conference and doesn’t list to a speaker, (“I periodically found Monckton’s discussion so irritating that I got up, went to the ladies room, checked my mascara and then stood by the door talking to a state legislator from Wisconsin.”), but then finds it appropriate to blog about his unfortunate affliction. Strange that someone who likes to appear “well balanced” becomes so undone. I take it you didn’t say hello, and exchange phone numbers.

    Also, Monckton is English, there is a world of difference between the constituent nations of Britain, it is impossible to generalise personality characteristics.

    Lastly, Monckton is one of “over seven hundred peers who hold titles that may be inherited. Formerly, most of them were entitled to sit in House of Lords, but since the House of Lords Act 1999 only ninety-two are permitted to do so.”

    “The House of Lords Act 1999 (1999 c. 34) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was given Royal Assent on 11 November 1999.[3] It was a major constitutional enactment that greatly reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats; the Act removed such a right. However, as part of a compromise, the Act did permit ninety-two hereditaries to remain in the House on an interim basis. Another ten hereditaries were created life peers to be able to remain in the House.[5]

    The Act decreased the membership of the House from 1,330 (October 1999) to 669 (March 2000).”

    Monckton is one of the 669, so he is quite correct to say he is a member of the House of Lords, but is not able to sit at the House.

    Quite why all of the above is of such interest I don’t know, but suspect the usual reason being an unwillingness to engage Monckton in debate that leaves only deflection and diversion as a tactic.

  139. There’s quite a few people from both corners just making stuff up here in this discussion about who is the bigger liar. Just some…

    Tom Fuller suggesting that Thatcher saved the nuclear industry in the UK is nonsense. She actually left them open to market forces and hence no more power stations were built. No existing stations were ever threatened. Journalistic fail! And as much as I hated Thatcher she was right about the miners – they were extortionists who striked themselves out of a job. All she did was prepare herself for their inevitable anti-democratic challenge. Monkton played zero part in the CO2 scare – he was brought in quite recently in by Nigel Lawson who did know the nuclear greenwashing background to it. As far as we know until that point monckton had been a tacit believer.

    Andrew_FL suggesting that Obama isn’t a good orator just because he uses a teleprompter is hilarious. Especially compared with the really poor speaker that Obama succeeded . That Bush graduated from both Harvard and Yale says to me a great deal about the US education system, whether Catholic or not.

    Lucia trying to pretend that Navier Stokes can be reasonably used in climate models is a hoot. We struggle to get it working correctly for far simpler things – like plain old river flow for example. She knows that full well. As does Nick Stokes. These climate models are merely a mathematic framework around abject guesswork in order to fool the less aware. The idea that we can model natural variation and hence rule out it’s part in the very slight warming, should not have fooled anyone involved with science. That it did is really, really depressing. That so many ostensibly clever people can imagine that a 0.6K/century trend can be happily extrapolated to 3-6 K the next century is even more depressing.

    However the bottom line is that anyone like Abraham or the realclimate.org scientists who defend AIT is not doing science or the global warning cause any favours. It was gross exaggeration from start to finish. Any real scientist would have the guts to acknowledge that. And i speak as somebody who thinks Gore often makes a lot of sense. It was propaganda pure and simple. Gore even said so. So Goebellian is entirely appropriate.

    And yes Monkton lies. All politicians do, and conservative politicians do so more than most. But he is substantively correct about the rather more blatant lies in AIT. Any scintist should knw that and it doesn’t matter whether they are climate scientists or not. Too many scientists seem to believe in the “good lie”. Well I don’t (and if mathematic modelers like Conneley or Schmidt are/were scientists then so am I). Scientists should stick to the truth as far as we know it and leave the dishonesty to politicians and journalists. For God’s sake leave us something sacred!

  140. Neven,
    .
    ” Especially if we take the holistic view and add all those other problems (peaking of oil and other resources, ocean acidification and pollution, ecosystems that provide clean air and water under more and more stress, financial bubbles which are just starting to burst, etc) to the cocktail. Can society handle that?”
    .
    Holistic view? I find it very odd that you lump all these issues together, when they are either tenuously or not at all connected. But yes, if humanity is relatively wealthy, it can easily handle all what you list and much more. The important issue for me is if governments will actively work to diminish wealth, as it currently fashionable among “progressives” (an Orwellian usage of a word if there ever was one), and so make your laundry list of potential problems, as well as many others you do not list, more difficult to deal with effectively.
    .
    I ask you to honestly compare the well-being of humanity today with the well-being of 20, 50, or 100 years ago, or any any earlier period. Humanity’s situation is clearly improving by any rational measure, and the rate of that improvement has accelerated dramatically over my lifetime, not slowed. For some people to run about constantly saying that humanity will soon be doomed to terrible catastrophes, unless we actively improverish ourselves immediately, is so disconnected from reality and so disconnected from history as to be comical, save for the negative influence these profits of doom have on the political process in developed nations.
    .
    It is all just 1960’s Club of Rome predictions writ large. And in case you forget, these predictions included: famine, horrible wars, complete depletion of many resources, a drastic decline of human population and even of civilization itself…. before the year 2000. None of those predictions were right, and none of the current profits of doom are right either. Please take a deep breath and get a grip on it man.

  141. Monckton is one of the 669, so he is quite correct to say he is a member of the House of Lords, but is not able to sit at the House.
    .
    he is not. the information office at the British House of Lords gave this response:
    .
    The official response on Thursday said: “Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a ‘non-voting’ or ‘honorary’ member.”
    .
    “is not and has never been a Member” is not that difficult to understand, is it?

  142. Wow, a secret report made public by a talk show host!

    I don’t know about that, but there’s this one:

    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-green-law-20100519,0,3203279,print.story

    “The landmark global warming law, which is being enforced in phases, could put the state’s businesses at a competitive disadvantage unless other states and the federal government come up with similar plans, the study by the nonpartisan agency said.”

    So we all have to get behind a national plan. Probably not the conclusion shared by the talk show host.

    The CBO, EPA, and EIA have all done reports on the Waxman-Markey bill, and they all find moderate costs on the order of 50 cents per day. None of them include the benefits of mitigating global warming.

  143. Wow, a secret report made public by a talk show host!

    I don’t know about that, but there’s this one:

    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-green-law-20100519,0,3203279,print.story

    “The landmark global warming law, which is being enforced in phases, could put the state’s businesses at a competitive disadvantage unless other states and the federal government come up with similar plans, the study by the nonpartisan agency said.”

    So we all have to get behind a national plan. Probably not the conclusion shared by the talk show host.

    The CBO, EPA, and EIA have done reports on the Waxman-Markey bill, and they all find moderate costs on the order of 50 cents per day. None of them include the benefits of mitigating global warming.

  144. Re: gIVE AND tAKE (Jun 6 15:31),

    That can be the only explanation for someone who travels to a conference and doesn’t list to a speaker, (“I periodically found Monckton’s discussion so irritating that I got up, went to the ladies room, checked my mascara and then stood by the door talking to a state legislator from Wisconsin.”),

    Do you have any idea how long the talk was? Also, he was preceded by other speaker who I found more interesting. You might also notice that the state legislator from Wisconsin had also left his seat.

    On people engaging Monckton– I’ve always said it would be wise for someone to engage him. I’m not going to be the one though. For one thing, I don’t care to do travel the circuit doing it.

    I suspect the reason no one engages him is that all the money for presentations is being sucked out of the system by Gore and he doesn’t want to engage Monckton. As long as this situation persists, few, will engage Monckton in debate.

    Re: JamesG (Jun 6 15:31)

    Lucia trying to pretend that Navier Stokes can be reasonably used in climate models is a hoot.

    I never suggested any such thing.

  145. Neven (Comment#44896)-“a huge addition of energy to the climate system, amplifying weather extremes of all sorts. If you want evidence, look at the recent heat waves in Australia, 100 year flooding events in the US and Europe that are becoming 10 year flooding events, Arctic summer sea ice melting.”

    Shame on you Neven, attributing individual weather events to AGW. Most AGW advocates would not go that far. But let’s look for a second at the idea AGW is causing increases in flood frequency. Consider Europe, starting with Spain:

    Benito, G., Rico, M., Sanchez-Moya, Y., Sopena, A., Thorndycraft, V.R. and Barriendos, M. 2010. The impact of late Holocene climatic variability and land use change on the flood hydrology of the Guadalentin River, southeast Spain. Global and Planetary Change 70: 53-63.

    They found that floods were an order of magnitude more frequent during the Little Ice Age than the MWP.

    Hannaford, J. and Marsh, T.J. 2008. High-flow and flood trends in a network of undisturbed catchments in the UK. International Journal of Climatology 28: 1325-1338.

    The longest records available in the UK “provide little compelling evidence for long-term (>50 year) trends but show evidence of pronounced multi-decadal fluctuations.”

    Cyberski, J., Grzes, M., Gutry-Korycka, M., Nachlik, E. and Kundzewicz, Z.W. 2006. History of floods on the River Vistula. Journal des Sciences Hydrologiques 51: 799-817.

    In Poland they found “a decreasing frequency of snowmelt and ice-jam floods in the warming climate over much of the Vistula basin.”

    Sheffer, N.A., Rico, M., Enzel, Y., Benito, G. and Grodek, T. 2008. The palaeoflood record of the Gardon River, France: A comparison with the extreme 2002 flood event. Geomorphology 98: 71-83.

    “at least five floods of a larger magnitude than the 2002 flood occurred over the last 500 years,” all “during the Little Ice Age.” “the Little Ice Age has been related to increased flood frequency in France (Guilbert, 1994; Coeur, 2003; Sheffer, 2003; Sheffer et al., 2003a,b; Sheffer, 2005), and in Spain (Benito et al., 1996; Barriendos and Martin Vide, 1998; Benito et al., 2003; Thorndycraft and Benito, 2006a,b).” I won’t bother to list all these sense I might get redundant.

    Burger, K., Seidel, J., Glasser, R., Sudhaus, D., Dostal, P. and Mayer, H. 2007. Extreme floods of the 19th century in southwest Germany. La Houille Blanche: 10.1051/lhb:2007008.

    The biggest floods were clustered in the 19th century.

    Llasat, M.-C., Barriendos, M., Barrera, A. and Rigo, T. 2005. Floods in Catalonia (NE Spain) since the 14th century. Climatological and meteorological aspects from historical documentary sources and old instrumental records. Journal of Hydrology 313: 32-47.

    “an increase of flood events for the periods 1580-1620, 1760-1800 and 1830-1870,” nearly three times as many catastrophic floods in the 14th through the 19th century as the twentieth.

    Mudelsee, M., Borngen, M., Tetzlaff, G. and Grunewald, U. 2004. Extreme floods in central Europe over the past 500 years: Role of cyclone pathway “Zugstrasse Vb.” Journal of Geophysical Research 109: 10.1029/2004JD005034.

    “no significant trends in summer flood risk in the twentieth century,” but “significant downward trends in winter flood risk during the twentieth century,” “a response to regional warming.”

    Nesje, A., Dahl, S.O., Matthews, J.A. and Berrisford, M.S. 2001. A ~ 4500-yr record of river floods obtained from a sediment core in Lake Atnsjoen, eastern Norway. Journal of Paleolimnology 25: 329-342.

    “a period of little flood activity around the Medieval period (AD 1000-1400)” “a period of the most extensive flood activity in the Atnsjoen catchment…post-Medieval climate deterioration characterized by lower air temperature, thicker and more long-lasting snow cover, and more frequent storms associated with the ‘Little Ice Age’.”

    Pirazzoli, P.A. 2000. Surges, atmospheric pressure and wind change and flooding probability on the Atlantic coast of France. Oceanologica Acta 23: 643-661.

    the number of atmospheric depressions and strong surge winds “are becoming less frequent…ongoing trends of climate variability show a decrease in the frequency and hence the gravity of coastal flooding”

    Over on my side of the Atlantic:

    Cunderlik, J.M. and Ouarda, T.B.M.J. 2009. Trends in the timing and magnitude of floods in Canada. Journal of Hydrology 375: 471-480.

    Trends in the magnitude of floods “had negative signs, suggesting that the magnitude of the annual maximum floods has been decreasing over the last three decades”

    Lins, H.F. and Slack, J.R. 1999. Streamflow trends in the United States. Geophysical Research Letters 26: 227-230.

    There was no shortage of increases in the low flows, meaning more available water, but few if any increases in high flows, associated with flooding. “wetter, but less extreme”

    Conclusions of increased flooding depend on looking at rivers which have been dammed, redirected, locked, used for drainage, and so on.

  146. Geez louise, Monckton has become the Sarah Palin of Climate.
    He drives the other side to irrational rants.
    Next thing you know Al Gore will move next door to him….hey
    wait a minute!

  147. JamesG-“blah blah blah Bush is stupid blah blah blah” What ever makes you feel intelligent yourself. Have you seen when Obama goes off prompter? It’s depressing. But yeah, since we have got the Goebbelian media repeating over and over Bush is stupid, it becomes true. Right.

  148. Very entertaining Sunday reading… far more interesting than the LA Times.

    Common sense might suggest we simply ignore all of the speculations from extremist gasbags on both sides of the aisle and focus instead on science that we can test, measure, observe and verify. Common sense is not really all that common.

  149. Yeah, D. King. The consensus side is so obsessed with Monckton, Al Gore has placed full page ads challenging Monckton to debate!

    Or maybe you have it backwards.

  150. Lucia
    Monkton was correct to say that :
    “most scientists — the snake-like Abraham and, a fortiori, the accident-prone Monbiot among them — have no more expertise in predicting or even understanding the strange behavior of the complex, non-linear, chaotic object that is the Earth’s climate than the man on the Clapham omnibus”

    You know it, Nick knows it and Gavin knows it – Navier Stokes and chaotic turbulence notwithstanding. When people say the models are improving, they really mean the models are a tiny bit less inadequate for policy. If Abraham is more aware of fluid flow modeling than most (I’m certainly not persuaded of that judging by his arm-waving commentary), he should actually be even more skeptical of models than Monkton is. The ad-homs were not nice but I’d bet if you suggested to Monckton he should apologize for it then he would. We all say/write things we regret, especially when trying (and failing) to be funny. He was likely also annoyed at just how rankly obtuse academics can be in this debate. But if you put out a harsh and needlessly unfair critique you probably deserve some counter-attacks.

  151. SteveF, for a portion of the global population the material situation has improved, but this level can never be attained by all 7 billion individuals, unless we go and take resources from other planets. Nevertheless, practically everyone is striving to reach that material wealth, that American Dream, because it has become the be all and end all of our culture. So something’s got to give sooner or later.
    .
    Wealth doesn’t mean anything if it cannot be realized in a sustainable way, and it’s quite obvious (to me) that much of our Western wealth is unsustainable. Besides, what is wealth? Ever increasing consumption? How much wealth is enough? I don’t want my house built on sand and then try to keep it from collapsing by constantly repeating that everything is fine. Sooner or later, reality overtakes illusion.
    .
    But back to Monckton. Monckton wouldn’t be the ‘excellent’ speaker he is if he would have to tell the truth instead of distorting and misleading. In my opinion he’s a cheap demagogue who is mainly interested in Monckton.

  154. Shame on you Neven, attributing individual weather events to AGW.

    .
    My dear Andrew, I was attributing a collection of weather events to AGW, as a tentative foretaste of what’s to expect in a world that is on average 3 degrees C hotter. Do you really think everything will stay the same when that happens? You want to bet and see what happens? You’re betting with my child’s future. I can’t allow that.

  155. Andre_FL
    I’ll say one thing for Bush – he’s a far better environmentalist than Gore. But get real – I’ve seen Bush mangle the English language while Obama is easily the best presidential orator for a very long time. Sorry Andrew, to ignore that is real denial I’m afraid, prompter or not. Heck i know it’s embarrassing but failure to be honest about that undermines everything else you might say. I don’t even have to demonstrate anything about Bush2 – his own words, condemning himself, are public record. The entire world was amazed that the US could elect such a buffoon – but to do it twice! I bet even you were embarrassed to vote for him. Admit it.

    Honestly; Reagan, Quayle, Bush2, Palin. It’s quite clear the GOP actually prefers vacant smilers, presumably because the real politicians – ie the ones that actually turn up for work now and again – need a compliant character to sign the cheques and be the scapegoat.

  156. cce (Comment#44910)
    June 6th, 2010 at 4:10 pm

    “The consensus side…”

    Funny!

  157. Neven (Comment#44912),
    “for a portion of the global population the material situation has improved,”
    No, it has dramatically improved for nearly all, and continues today to improve, with the greatest rate of improvement for those in developing countries.
    .
    “but this level can never be attained by all 7 billion individuals, unless we go and take resources from other planets. ”
    Pure Mathusian nonsense. The real limits have almost nothing to do with material availability, wealth is mostly limited limited by availability of energy, but more importantly by knowledge. Japan’s material resources are virtually non-existant, yet japan is very wealthy.
    .
    “because it has become the be all and end all of our culture”
    No, because being wealthy improves quality of life, health and lifespan. Stop trying to tell people how to live their lives.
    .
    “Wealth doesn’t mean anything if it cannot be realized in a sustainable way, and it’s quite obvious (to me) that much of our Western wealth is unsustainable.”
    More Malthusian nonsense (see Club of Rome predictions, or read Malthus if you are in the mood for a real hoot). Wealth comes from from available energy and the knowledge to ues that energy productively.
    .
    “Besides, what is wealth? Ever increasing consumption? How much wealth is enough? I don’t want my house built on sand and then try to keep it from collapsing by constantly repeating that everything is fine. Sooner or later, reality overtakes illusion.”
    .
    Why do you think you have the right to force your priorities on everyone else? If you want to be be poor, then go for it, I wish you well. Just don’t tell everyone else they need to be poor.
    .
    “Monckton wouldn’t be the ‘excellent’ speaker he is if he would have to tell the truth instead of distorting and misleading.”
    Monckton is nothing but a political performer, like many well known politicians. That he distorts factual information is neither surprising nor interesting. OTOH, that so may climate scientists tilt and distort “the science” to promote political goals is the real shocker.

  158. JamesG (Comment#44916)-I’m 19 so I never voted for Bush, or any Presidential candidate for that matter. But I wouldn’t have been embarrassed. That you think that just appealling to Bush being stupid as obvious testifies to how well the Goebbelian techniques work.

    You’re just ridiculously brainwashed. The fact that you are so willing to elevate Obama to such a hyperbolic pedestal shows where you come from. The man’s talent is for reading vacuous crap off a little screen. And without the screen, he can’t even put the crap together coherently.

    But yeah, Bush is stupid. Obama is a genius.

  159. Why do you think you have the right to force your priorities on everyone else?

    .
    Actually, SteveF, it is you who is forcing his priorities on everyone else by blindly worshipping the god of limitless material wealth and by stubbornly refusing to think for even one minute about the potential consequences of your actions.
    .
    All you see is the outside, but eventually even the outside will force you to open your eyes. Or you might get lucky, but then the prospect will be passed on to your progeny.

  160. Oh no not the “my childs future” argument. There should be an equivalent to Godwins rule for that. (And another one for the seriously useless “overflowing bathtub” analogy).

    Nobody seems to think that their children will be annoyed by this massive debt we’re handing them, or at banning something that was found to be largely benign and thereby causing huge misery – like DDT for example. They will thank us however for researching alternatives within proper budgetary constraints, taking into account real risk assessments (rather than total guesswork) and returns on investment. And they’ll thank us not to burn our energy bridges until we’ve crossed the energy gap.

  161. Andrew
    I said he was a good orator not a great intellectual and finally you admitted he has talent in that regard, whether reading or not. Actually i’ve seen him in face-to-face interviews and he is still very good. But then most politicians are. Bush was actually quite rare in being extremely bad. And by the way Obama writes those speeches too.

    I see you are falling back on the lefty media defense. Funny how the lefty’s complain it works the other way: Clinton being impeached over a s*x act but Bush/Cheney lying to commit war and getting away with it.

    I’d have been impressed with Obama if he’d sorted out health care, avoided stimulating greedy bankers with money that didn’t even exist, taken the troops home, brought Goldman Sachs, Haliburton and all the other crony-capitalists and war-profiteers to account and prosecuted Bush and Cheney for one of their many transgressions of the law. So far it seems just like business as usual. It could have been Jeb Bush in power for all the difference it made.

  163. Energy gap, massive debt, AGW…
    .
    But I thought we were so wealthy?
    .
    Could these problems have the same root cause? How can we solve them if we don’t tackle the root cause?
    .
    JamesG, excuse me for caring about the future of my child and her generation. Do you have any kids yourself?

  164. Andrew FL, I didn’t know you were 19. You’re a pretty smart guy for your age, and I don’t mean that in a sarcastic way.

  165. Geez I never know how to respond to compliments, I always feel like an obnoxious jerk…I have been told I am smart, yes. I’m not particularly impressed with myself, though. After all I surely have better things to do than engage in internet arguments. And yet here I am…

  166. Neven,
    “Actually, SteveF, it is you who is forcing his priorities on everyone else by blindly worshipping the god of limitless material wealth and by stubbornly refusing to think for even one minute about the potential consequences of your actions.”

    Utter rubbish. I force my priorities on nobody. And by the way, I worship no God of any kind, of material wealth or otherwise. I think about the potential consequences of my actions frequently, and not only for “one minute”. I simply don’t think about those consequences using a value system that I think is wrongheaded. So if you want to be poor, go right ahead. It is your choice, I will not try to stop you.

  169. Neven says,

    The question is more: Can society as it is right now cope with the consequences of a 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 degree C rise in average global temperature?

    You are right. That is the question and there is absolutely nothing in the IPCC WG1 report that answers it. The fact is we have no idea what the consequences will be nor what will be required to adapt. But we do know one thing with absolute certainty: wealthy societies with access to cheap energy sources will always be better able to adapt than poorer societies faced with expensive energy.

    For that reason economic growth and cheap energy should be the primary focus of any policy designed to deal with the hypothetical risks identified by the IPCC. Carbon control limits economic growth and increases the cost of energy which means it is a policy that cannot be justified given the uncertainties.

  170. Tim: But we do know one thing with absolute certainty: wealthy societies with access to cheap energy sources will always be better able to adapt than poorer societies faced with expensive energy.
    .
    I, a man whom you have categorized as a hysteric through my acceptance of the fundamental principals of AGW, completely agree with this statement. Of course, due to you petty name calling, I feel no desire to add my voice to yours despite a certain congruence of economic philosophies.

  171. Ron Broberg,

    I don’t see anything in my posts that suggests that I called anyone a ‘hysteric’ for simply accepting the science as stated by the IPCC WG1. If anything, I made it clear that accepting the science and one’s view on the policy responses are two completely different matters.

    In any case, I will avoid emotion laden adjectives in the future.

  172. Re: gIVE AND tAKE (Jun 6 15:31),
    “Monckton is one of the 669”
    Wrong. There are 92 hereditary peers and 587 life peers in the House of Lords. M of B is not a life peer and not one of the 92. In fact he stood for election for membership in 2007 (election by members of the H of L – 75 of those 92 are elected thus) and didn’t get a single vote.

  174. Tim (Comment#44934) June 6th, 2010 at 6:26 pm

    You are right. That is the question and there is absolutely nothing in the IPCC WG1 report that answers it. The fact is we have no idea what the consequences will be nor what will be required to adapt. But we do know one thing with absolute certainty: wealthy societies with access to cheap energy sources will always be better able to adapt than poorer societies faced with expensive energy.

    It’s about a lot more than just us, it’s about all the species who cohabit this planet with us. They don’t have a concept of wealth, and being able to use cheap energy to adapt.

  175. bugs,

    It’s about a lot more than just us, it’s about all the species who cohabit this planet with us. They don’t have a concept of wealth, and being able to use cheap energy to adapt.

    Sorry to be blunt but so what? Change is the way of nature. Those that can adapt survive. Those that cannot become fossils. The only question that matters is what species do humans need in order to ensure the ecosystem continues to function as we need it to function.

    I realize that the need to preserve species for the sake of preserving species is equivalent to a religious belief for many but not everyone shares that belief. This is an example of the values debate when I said the real debate was a question of politics, economics and values – not science as many seem to think.

  176. The Act decreased the membership of the House from 1,330 (October 1999) to 669 (March 2000).”
    Monckton is one of the 669, so he is quite correct to say he is a member of the House of Lords, but is not able to sit at the House.
    Quite why all of the above is of such interest I don’t know, but suspect the usual reason being an unwillingness to engage Monckton in debate that leaves only deflection and diversion as a tactic.

    Why it’s of interest is that Monckton is a pompous, lying twit who passed himself of as a member of the House of Lords on several occasions including a letter to two US senators: “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, 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”
    The House of Lords information office has confirmed that Monckton is not, and never has been a Member of the House of Lords.
    As well as his delusions of grandeur he has a propensity for vigorous ad hominem attacks on anyone who criticizes his presentations and frequently attempts to get them fired (or bluffs about doing so).
    Why anyone would wish to associate with such a character is beyond me!

  177. Tim,

    How about this. Rather than forcing the world and everyone and everything on it into a state that hasn’t existed in millions of years, pseudo libertarians can take their own advice and adapt to a 50 cent per household per day tax. Or, if that is too steep a challenge for John Gault’s devoted and industrious followers, they can go build an underwater utupia free of the constraints of equity and physics and leave the rest of us to enjoy our forests, coral reefs, and solid food.

  178. cce,
    .
    It really depends on what is going to be done with that 50 cents. I don’t think anyone would pay that if they believe the money was just going to flushed down the toilet.
    .
    If the money was a straight tax that went to fund R&D and grid improvements then I could support it. If it was part of some scheme to funnel money to uneconomic power production, carbon traders or third world hucksters then I would oppose it.
    .
    The fundemental problem I see is the lack of real alternatives to burning fossil fuels. I do not believe this problem will be solved anytime soon and that it is foolhardy create any policy that assumes that these alternatives will become viable simply because the government snaps it fingers. For this reason, I do not want to see money wasted when that money could be spent on other things that would actually do something useful.

  179. cce,
    .
    BTW – There is nothing stopping you or like minded individuals from donating your own funds to these causes. Why do you insist on forcing people to pay even if they believe the funds would be wasted?

  180. This is my first and probably last post here. I am not familiar with the Monckton presentation that John Abraham is debunking but I am familiar with the “CO2 report” that appears on the SPPI web site.

    I ran the first Abraham video but decided not to waste my time on the others as the first one was such an obvious attack on straw men.

    Taking “Slide 1” of Abraham’s rebuttal, the April 2010 “CO2 Report” by the SPPI is at odds on most points:

    1. The world is not warming. FALSE
    SPPI says the world is warming and cooling; see pages 12 through 14.

    2. Sea levels are not rising. FALSE
    SPPI says levels are rising; see page 15.

    3. Ice is not melting. FALSE
    SPPI says Arctic ice is melting and forming; see pages 16 through 18. Antarctic sea ice is actually growing; see page 19. For global trends see page 20.

    4. Polar bears are not threatened. TRUE
    This may be linked to #3 above.

    5. Ocean not heating. FALSE
    SPPI acknowledges that the oceans are heating and cooling; see page 36.

    6. No ocean acidification. FALSE
    SPPI acknowledges that ocean pH is changing; see pages 34 through 37.

    Did John Abraham think that nobody would take the trouble to find out what the SPPI/Monckton position was?

    There are plenty of reasons to challenge Monckton’s views but Abraham completely misses the mark.

  181. 1. The world is not warming. FALSE
    SPPI says the world is warming and cooling; see pages 12 through 14.
    .
    the report explicitly says: “For almost nine years, the trend in global temperatures has been falling. The IPCC’s predicted equilibrium warming path (pink region) bears no relation to the global cooling that has been observed in the 21st century to date.” page 14. (april 2010 report)
    .
    Abraham does reply to a talk given by Monckton. you can t simply check a different document.
    .

  182. 3) I am familiar with the Catholic Bible. I like the story of Judith; there’s nothing like a lustful guy drinking until he passes out and then getting his head whacked off by a sexy vixen

    been there. but escaped with my head

  183. “My dear Andrew, I was attributing a collection of weather events to AGW, as a tentative foretaste of what’s to expect in a world that is on average 3 degrees C hotter. Do you really think everything will stay the same when that happens? You want to bet and see what happens? You’re betting with my child’s future. I can’t allow that.”

    This is the usual crazy invocation of the Precautionary Principle, a mode of argument which, when it becomes usual in a movement, marks the movement as being one of the great popular delusions aka madnesses of crowds which we have known from history.

    Exactly the same argument could be applied withe equal plausibility to the danger of the world becoming cooler by 3 degrees, and freezing my children.

    It is not going to get 3 degrees warmer because of our CO2 emissions!

    “Michel, the whole point is that there is quite a large group who will deny what you say (‘it’s not warming’, CO2 doesn’t have a warming effect’, ‘CO2 rise is not caused by humans’, ‘the effect will be zero, CO2 is plant food’), but they still regard themselves as skeptics. Would you say they are skeptics, according to the definition of that term?”

    Sure they are skeptics. They may be other things too. Being a member of a subset does not mean one is not a member of the set. In fact, it implies that one is.
    .
    “And then there’s a smaller group who will wilfully try to muddle the debate by fuelling that pseudo-skepticism out of ideological, financial or psychological motives. That’s where Monckton, Watts, Easterbrook and a whole bunch of others come in. Would you say they are skeptics, according to the definition of that term?”

    Sure they are skeptics. And other things too.
    .
    “And is the reason that you don’t mind being associated with them (as you unfairly share the same label) because you think they serve a purpose, ie offering some kind of counterweight to alarmist propaganda, or is there some other reason?”

    I don’t care what other people think, I care about what I think.

  184. sod, I do not know what ‘climate science’ thinks. I do know what many climate scientists think, and am aware that I differ from them.

    So what? That is what we do, we look at the evidence and make up our minds based on it. I similarly doubt that saturated fats consumption drives cholesterol levels, and also that cholesterol levels drive heart attacks. A point of view which used to be contrary to what ‘medical science’ or at least most medical scientists thought, but which the recent results from Framingham, make increasingly mainstream. Mainstream enough for Business Week.

    What exactly is the problem? Why do we need some special expression, which purports to diagnose a sort of psycho therapeutic ailment, to characterize people who differ from us on some scientific issue? Why cannot it not be simply that they think differently on the weight of the evidence? And that is all the explanation we need. They evaluate the evidence differently. They are not in some kind of special mental state which explains their opinions. The evidence explains their opinions.

    Of course, its because you think the science is settled and the evidence conclusive, that is why you think you need to refer to some psychological state to explain disbelief. That is just, in logical terms, begging the question.

    To see this, ask yourself whether it is possible to be skeptical, and in one of these terrible states, of the view that the earth is flat. Yet there are people who think it flat.

  185. Lucia,
    Do you not know that ‘Lecturer’ in the UK means the same thing as ‘Associate Professor’ in the US?

  186. Exactly the same argument could be applied withe equal plausibility to the danger of the world becoming cooler by 3 degrees, and freezing my children.

    It is not going to get 3 degrees warmer because of our CO2 emissions!
    .
    it will get 3°C warmer. that is what the main stream science says. i brought up the 3°C, because someone made the false claim, that WG1 doesn t show any problems. but basically all scenarios include 3°C in the temperature range. and a 3°C increase is a problem.
    .
    when you disagree with basically all experts on a subject, the term “sceptic” becomes a serious stretch. you can NOT be sceptical over the shape of earth. it simply isn t flat.
    .
    Sure they are skeptics. And other things too.
    .
    that is plain out false. a person who can t figure out, that he is not a member of the house of lords, can not be described as a sceptic.

  187. As I am familiar with the issue , I didn’t watch the whole video but went fast 2 times over it .
    Besides I also find that for scientific arguments the written mode is much more efficient than the oral mode .
    That’s why I’d comment more on the form than on the content .
    .
    From this point view if only one thing is sure , it is that Abraham is not , absolutely not a honest broker .
    What he says seems (mostly) right , to be sure one would have to spend time crosschecking Monckton’s statements and Abraham’s comments on Monckton’s statements which may in turn be quotes of somebody else .
    I will not do it because it doesn’t deserve the time spent .
    But on a climate scale going from 0 to 10 where 0 is a CAGWer requesting that we all kneel , repent and obey (Romm is an example) and 10 is a liberal (in European sense) who considers that climate change is no real problem , Abraham is around 3 . Monckton would be around 9 .
    .
    Because of that , it is just an element of a political debate where , as usual , science is a hostage .
    WG1 is an irrelevant strawman . One could agree with some or even most WG1 elements and strongly disagree with everything else especially WG3 .
    Good example is N.Lawson , see : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Appeal-Reason-Cool-Global-Warming/dp/071563786X

  188. But on a climate scale going from 0 to 10 where 0 is a CAGWer requesting that we all kneel , repent and obey (Romm is an example) and 10 is a liberal (in European sense) who considers that climate change is no real problem , Abraham is around 3 . Monckton would be around 9 .
    .
    now if we use a scale of 1 to 10 of plausible science results on climate change, with higher numbers representing a bigger impact, the IPCC will be at most around 8. while Monckton is deep in negative numbers.
    .
    there is a immense problem in this whole debate: Monckton just never makes it into the (reasonable) scale!

  189. But on a climate scale going from 0 to 10 where 0 is a CAGWer requesting that we all kneel , repent and obey (Romm is an example) and 10 is a liberal (in European sense) who considers that climate change is no real problem , Abraham is around 3 . Monckton would be around 9 .
    .
    now if we use a scale of 1 to 10 of plausible science results on climate change, with higher numbers representing a bigger impact, the IPCC will be at most around 8. while Monckton is deep in negative numbers.
    .
    there is a immense problem in this whole debate: Monckton just never makes it into the (reasonable) scale!
    .
    the very moment that you even bring up Monckton, you are already wrong.
    .
    Because of that , it is just an element of a political debate where , as usual , science is a hostage .
    .
    this is complete nonsense. Monckton is making false and misleading claims. there is nothing even remotely similar, being done by Abraham.

  190. Re: PaulM (Jun 7 04:09),
    I would expect Monckton to call a lecturer at Oxford a lecturer, and would correctly understand that title and position. However, Monckton’s essay said he was a lecturer at a school in Minnesota, where the term ‘lecturer’ means a different thing. I’m pretty sure Monckton and most his audience know that Minnesota is not in the UK, and Monckton spends sufficient time in the US to know that some of our terms differ from his, and he ought to read someone’s actual title and use the correct one.

  191. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecturer
    Here’s the US usage. Since Abaraham works in Minnesota, saying he is an lecturer at a bible college in the US conveys a dramatically incorrect notion:
    The term “Lecturer” is used in various ways across different US institutions, sometimes causing confusion. On a generic level however, the term broadly denotes one who teaches at a university but is not eligible for tenure, and has no research obligations.

  192. Neven (Comment#44915)-“My dear Andrew, I was attributing a collection of weather events to AGW, as a tentative foretaste of what’s to expect in a world that is on average 3 degrees C hotter. Do you really think everything will stay the same when that happens? You want to bet and see what happens? You’re betting with my child’s future. I can’t allow that.”

    Mt apologies for not noticing this sooner, I was distracted by JamesG’s Bush Derangement Syndrome. It’s a tragic afflication that sadly burdens many. Any who, I don’t personally believe that we can expect 3 degrees C of warming at any time in the near future. But in my post, I never did say that things would “stay the same”, I simply showed that, in a world which has gotten a little less than a degree warmer in a century and a half (not allowing for the records be erroneous of course 😉 ) Floods have not gotten worse. I have researched all weather extremes extensively, with emphasis on the US, and have turned up no evidence that the climate is become more severe in any area. This is the primary focus of my blog, and I’m sure my tiny readership would love to hear you offer how the weather will get worse if the warming just increases in magnitude. I suppose it’s possible, I just find it highly unlikely.

  193. Neven, demonizing carbon, though it may have little to do with climate, will raise the price of energy and diminish everyone’s lives. Why should you be allowed to mess with my childrens’ future in such a manner when you can’t even show the effect of carbon dioxide?
    ==============

  194. Hmmm. Auditing Abraham’s shenanigans seems more productive than criticizing Monckton’s rhetoric.
    ===============

  195. kim (Comment#44962) June 7th, 2010 at 6:51 am

    Neven, demonizing carbon, though it may have little to do with climate, will raise the price of energy and diminish everyone’s lives. Why should you be allowed to mess with my childrens’ future in such a manner when you can’t even show the effect of carbon dioxide?

    CO2 is not being demonized, that’s just what it does, using accepted physics.

  196. Well, using Nazis to tar has become hackneyed, hasn’t it? It would be a shame if the insult became so trite that we let ourselves forget Nazi’s operations.

  197. kim–
    Anyone — including you– who wants to respond to Abraham’s specific issues is welcome to do so. I’m not. I’m not doing it for the same reason I don’t dive into details of other presentations available on youtube.

    One of the reasons I don’t like youtube or movies like AIT as the main method of either presentation or rebuttal is that video makes verifying precisely what was said very time consuming. I don’t want to devote 8 hours to watching and rewinding an 83 minute video, nor do I intend to add another 24 hours finding video of Monckton’s Bethel college presentation, view grapsh etc. to try to figure out if Abraham rebutted Monckton’s precise argument.

    Out of curiosity, does anyone know if Monckton’s Bethel college presentation is available on video? Did Abraham see a link I didn’t see a link to a Monckton youtube nor to his viewgraphs?

    (Abraham’s university site’s web page was off line over the weekend, so I couldn’t check to see if he made a link easily available at his site.)

  198. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10564/05-05-CapAndTrade_Brief.pdf

    The CBO predicts that folks will prefer living off Welfare rather then working for a living under Cap & Tax. Surprise surprise
    CBO predicts Cap & Tax will result in sustained lower wages & inflationary costs. Surprise surprise.

    The American Power Act: A Climate Dud
    http://www.masterresource.org/2010/05/the-american-power-act-a-climate-dud/

    ““The global temperature “savings” of the Kerry-Lieberman bill is astoundingly small—0.043°C (0.077°F) by 2050 and 0.111°C (0.200°F) by 2100. In other words, by century’s end, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% will only result in global temperatures being one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit less than they would otherwise be. That is a scientifically meaningless reduction.”

    Yep. The crazies are running the asylum.

    bugs (Comment#44964) June 7th, 2010 at 7:37 am
    Sheesh. It’s labeled as a pollutant.

    /Too bad plants can’t vote.

  199. BTW sod, this is the “expert” who wrote the “Climate Dud” article.
    http://masterresource.org/?page_id=71/#chip

    Mr. Knappenberger holds an M.S. degree in Environmental Sciences (1990) from the University of Virginia as well as a B.A. degree in Environmental Sciences (1986) from the same institution.

    His over 20 years of experience as a climate researcher have included 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology Office and 13 years with New Hope Environmental Services, Inc. During his career, he has studied such diverse topics as patterns of global warming, causes of global warming, hurricanes, behavior of U.S. temperature and precipitation change, weather/mortality relationships in the United States, Greenland ice melt, diurnal temperature change, weather and agriculture, circulation changes in the eastern United States, snowfall/temperature relationships in Canada, wintertime coastal storm tracks in the eastern United States, and winter weather forecasting techniques.

    From this research, he has authored or co-authored over 20 papers appearing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and numerous others appearing in scientific conference proceedings, professional journals, and the popular press.

  200. Well, no Sod, accepted laboratory physics does not explain what CO2 does in the atmosphere, and there is the problem. We don’t know what it does in the atmosphere.

    And you are being disingenuous if you think CO2 is not being demonized. Hint, it is not through its own actions that CO2 is being demonized.
    =============

  201. liza “The CBO predicts that folks will prefer living off Welfare rather then working for a living under Cap & Tax. Surprise surprise.”

    What’s surprising, liza, is your attempt to spin CBO’s analysis of workers response to Cap & Tax……….When you say “folks will prefer” you really meant “a small percentage of folks might” choose to work fewer hours or not at all, and some of these folks “might” live off welfare, right?

    ” Nearly all workers would choose to remain in the workforce and
    accept those wages. However, a small percentage might
    choose to work fewer hours or not at all, resulting in
    slightly lower total employment than would be the case in
    the absence of the policy. CBO

    http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10564/05-05-CapAndTrade_Brief.pdf

  202. Very entertaining thread. I need to join Lucia and Jeff Id in defending the midwestern accent, particularly of the Chicago variety

  203. Ike (Comment#44972) June 7th, 2010 at 9:50 am
    What’s surprising is you don’t care about lower employment rates at all no matter what the percentage is but you care about a fraction of one degree of temperature.

    the report also said:
    Following the introduction of an emission-reduction program, some people who lost their job in a shrinking industry would have a difficult time finding a new job quickly. SOME WOULD LEAVE THE LABOR FORCE ALTOGETHER.”

    “The increase in prices caused by a tax or cap-and-trade program would cause workers’ real (inflation-adjusted) wages to be lower then they would be otherwise”

    “While the economy was adjusting to the emission-reduction program, A NUMBER OF PEOPLE WOULD LOSE THEIR JOB, and some of those people would FACE PROLONGED HARDSHIP.” ”

    “Some, especially those in communities with limited job opportunities outside of the shrinking industries, WOULD NEED TO RELOCATED TO NEW AREAS WITH BETTER JOB PROSPECTS”
    (Wow whole communities could be wiped out. Sounds like a good idea to you?)

    “Even among those who found a new job relatively quickly, those workers would probably see their earnings decline, even after being reemployed. Moreover, THAT DECLINE IN EARNINGS WOULD PROBABLY PERSIST FOR A LONG TIME.””

    Drink kool-aide much?

  205. I wonder what people would make of my accent. I don’t sound like a lot of the New Yorkers who live around here, and I don’t sound particularly Southern, either. Both my Parents come from up North, but lived there only for a short time. My mother does not seem to have picked up even the slightest hint of my grandmother’s thick Boston accent, and neither of them seem to sound like they are from anywhere in particular at all.

    I’d probably sound like a television anchor, you know “Anchor man tells stories in pleasing Baritone…more on this, at eleven.”

  206. Judith Curry,
    ” I need to join Lucia and Jeff Id in defending the midwestern accent, particularly of the Chicago variety”.
    .
    Well, at least it is better than a Boston accent! 😉

  207. Andrew_FL (Comment#44977),

    Pleople who lose or gain an accent easily are (in my experience) more capable than most of picking up a second language. Tell your mom she should learn Spanish or French!

  208. SteveF (Comment#44981)-She didn’t really “lose” the Boston accent. She lived in Massachusetts only as an infant, so I think she never really “got” it. My Dad lived in NJ for seven years, though. He also lived in Venezuala at some point, and Miami, but his Father, who came here from Spain (he grew up under actual Fascism!) was insistent on the family always speaking English. He can speak some, though. Curiously, my mother’s mother speaks very good French, but never seems to have taught any to her. She got it from her mother, who grew up in Maine/Canada, straddling the Border. My mother took German in school (This was big at the time because all the news and events of the day seemed centered on Berlin) but only remembers some of it.

    I fancy myself a bit of a good imitator of accents, but I have never had the drive to actually try hard enough to learn another language. I took several Spanish classes, but it seemed like every time I moved up a level, I actually knew less than before.

  209. Andrew_FL (Comment#44982),
    Language classes never help. My wife took 7 semesters of German in college, and remembers virtually nothing. You need an immersion type course based entirely on listening/speaking to remember anything long term. And speaking of immersion, it helps to date someone who only speaks the language you are learning!

  210. Pingback: Collide-a-scape » Blog Archive » Collide-a-scape >> Climate Jousters & Jesters

  211. There is no such thing as a midwestern accent. It’s the rest of you who talk funny. Oh, people from wisconsin do not count as midwesterners, since they talk funny. dontcha know.

  212. liza “What’s surprising is you don’t care about lower employment rates at all no matter what the percentage is but you care about a fraction of one degree of temperature.”

    To liza: I merely showed that you didn’t accurately portray the analysis of CBO. If one doesn’t wish to be confronted about spin, one should best avoid spinning.

    A fraction of one degree of temperature wouldn’t cause me concern. A three degree C increase in global average temperature, due to anthropogenic effects, over the next century, causes me concern.

    The economic effects of a carbon tax cause me concern, as well. I think it makes good sense to tax carbon as it may well increase conservation, fuel efficiency efforts, carbon free energy generation development, and likely improved air quality. Ideally, a carbon tax would be offset by a refundable tax credit for families, in a manner which has been proposed for the national sales tax.

    CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activities and such increases have likely caused some warming and will continue to do so. The climate sensitivity is the unknown variable. I submit that it would be wise to avoid doubling CO2, in our atmosphere, given the likelihood of release of additional CO2 from carbon sinks due to higher temperatures.

    That said, I am quite pessimistic that China, India, or other developing countries will reduce GHG emissions and the growth in those economies will mean that efforts by USA, Europe, Oz, and Japan, to reduce emissions will have little long term impact. I suspect that the best long term solutions involve the development of carbon free energy which is competitive in cost with fossil fuels, combined with some types of profitable carbon sequestration.

  213. “PaulM (Comment#44953) June 7th, 2010 at 4:09 am
    Lucia,
    Do you not know that ‘Lecturer’ in the UK means the same thing as ‘Associate Professor’ in the US?”

    and ‘rubber’ means two different things as well. You can bet that Monckton would not ask to borrow my rubber. He’s either insulting or dumb. I got no issue with him being insulting, but if he wants to dish out insults then he better be damn well ready to take some. His work is all theater, bad theater. Worse than the plays that Goebels wrote. I’d compare him to a bug eyed prawn, but PITA might boycott me for being cruel to crustacea.

    On point, his Goebellian metaphor, illuminates his shortcomings more than it illuminates the shortcomings of his opponent.

    People either get the Goebels metaphor or they don’t get it. For those who don’t remember who Goebels was ,the metaphor fails. That perhaps is part of Monckton’s approach. He applies a faux patina of erudition to what he says it the hopes that you will be mezmerized into compliance. He’s a wanna be William F Buckely. For those who do remember who Goebels was, the metaphor also fails.

    Monckton gets an F.

  214. Steve Mosher,
    “I’d compare him to a bug eyed prawn, but PITA might boycott me for being cruel to crustacea.”
    Since I’ve never heard of a prawn that understands English, I’m not sure the comparison could be considered cruel to them. The comparison may be considered cruel to people who like to eat prawns.. 😉

  215. Hey, moshe, he got me when he ended an Australian debate with the concept that encumbering carbon(demonizing it) was going to be necessarily hard on the poor of this, our dear earth.
    =================

  217. Folks: Thanks for all the thoughtful replies to my previous post. bob (Comment#44731) June 5th, 2010 at 11:16 am

    Maybe I will get around to reading Monckton’s stuff and looking at Abraham’s video soon. I really ought to say what I was thinking when I wrote the first post.

    I view both Monckton and Gore as mouths, not scientists. Both tend to exaggerate a bit. In particular Gore is off the enviro-extremist deep end where there is no salvation. Ditto for his primary adviser, Hansen who flits off at a moments notice to testify in defense of environmental terrorists.

    I think Monckton is entertaining, and don’t view his views as anything out of bounds in the AGW debate. Notice that I didn’t say “right”, or “correct” regarding Lord Monckton. As Mann, Briffa, and Jones have demonstrated, you don’t have to have good science to pontificate.

    It was assumed Abraham was a Kool Aide drinker, but maybe I need to watch his video and give him a chance.

    Many times it is futile to engage in an argument between two men. When stuff like this happens, it becomes all about personality and not about science. Maybe Abraham has kept it above that level.

  218. I admit that his only weakness is the ad hominem attacks on his attackers. But that’s because he is a sensitive person …

    No, his other, more consequential weakness is that he gets the science wrong. Repeatedly. And almost never concedes, let alone corrects, his errors.

    That the Republicans could apparently find or pursuade nobody more credible to testify tells us a lot…..

  219. Phil Clarke —
    Monckton is hardly the only person the Republicans have invited to testify. They’ve invited lots of people, and nearly everyone invited to testify to congress accepts.

  220. Lucia – apologies, I should have been more explicit. I specifically meant Monckton was the only Republican witness at the Global Warming/Climategate hearing held a month ago.

    I am British, and so the exact status/process of these hearings is over my head. They may well be as inconsequential as an Oxford Union debate, I don’t know. But I did read that even on that occasion, when one is presumably expected to tell the truth, the whole truth etc, the Viscount once again got his scientific facts wrong!

  222. Phil– I don’t know anything about Oxford Union debates!
    I wouldn’t say that appearing before Congress is consequential.
    In principle, members of congress are inviting people with the intention of becoming better informed. It’s also evident that any committee member who invites you knows darn well that the press will cover these things. So, being invited will make you more visible, what you say is likely to be read by more people than if you did not present to Congress and of course, you can also describe yourself as having been invited to present to Congress. Since the committee members are politicians, this affects who might be invited.

    Quite a few people are invited for almost purely political reasons. But hey, Congress is political!

  223. Phil Clarke,

    Hey are you the Phil who used to work at NETRHA stats dept?

  224. Hey are you the Phil who used to work at NETRHA stats dept?

    Nope. Never heard of it. I am a freelance software developer with a humble Physics degree, self taught in climate science FWIW, and lurker and occasional poster on the climate blogs. Phil Clarke is my real name.

  225. Phil Clarke (Comment#44995)-Until recently it was very rare that the minority would only be allowed to call a single witness with the majority getting several. Instead of being bothered by Monckton being one of them, it makes more sense to be alarmed that they only get one. Can’t long before the Minority is stripped of the right to call witnesses at all. And it seems that you would be happy with that, so long as Monckton doesn’t get called anymore.

  226. Phil Clarke (Comment#44995)
    “I am British, and so the exact status/process of these hearings is over my head. They may well be as inconsequential as an Oxford Union debate”
    Actually, I think Congressional hearings are usually considerably less important, and much less informative, than any Oxfor Union debate. The party in the majority (at this time, the Democrats) calls all the shots. They can (and do) make it miserable for both the minority members and any “witnesses” the minority might select. In almost every case, the decision (aka final vote) of the committee on every “question” being investigated is already known before the hearings take place. It is the worst possible kind of political theater. Much worse that the British PM taking questions in Parliament.
    .
    On very rare occasion (on subjects that are new and where the political parties have not already settled on their “position”) the process serves a purpose, but my guess is that can be not more than a few percent of all hearings.

  227. Of course they are both skeptics. They are skeptical about the view that the AGW hypothesis is correct.

    I disagree. The hallmark of a skeptic is the ability to be skeptical of data that VALIDATES your point of view. Anyone with the brainpower of a monkey is skeptical of information that conflicts with our pre-existing beliefs. The deniers (and that is precisely what they deserved to be called) are not even remotely related to real skeptics.

  228. Phil Clarke (Comment#44995)-Until recently it was very rare that the minority would only be allowed to call a single witness with the majority getting several. Instead of being bothered by Monckton being one of them, it makes more sense to be alarmed that they only get one.
    .
    i don t know, why anyone would bring on Monckton at all. but bringing him on, as your sole witness, is plain out insanity.
    .
    the “sceptic” king is naked.

  229. Chad (Comment#45002)
    Woa.. have you not heard that Lucia’s Karma filter now includes words like d***ers? You must have great positive Karma to have gotten that one past the filter… but watch out, your Karma get’s reduced when you use that word.

  230. sod (Comment#45003)-I expected nothing less from the rabid anti-war left winger…Who cares if the Republicans are being told they don’t have a right to more than one witness. If they pick someone I don’t like, they deserve to be marginalized in a way unprecedented in recent history!

  231. Chad
    “The hallmark of a skeptic is the ability to be skeptical of data that VALIDATES your point of view. Anyone with the brainpower of a monkey is skeptical of information that conflicts with our pre-existing beliefs.”
    Fair enough. I hope you hold everyone to the same standard: Briffa and the Yamal dirty dozen, Mann and strip-bark pines, Trenberth and “the ‘missing heat’ must be in the ocean”, Santer et al and “there is no conflict between the tropospheric temperature data and the model projections”, etc, etc.

  232. SteveF– I did have to go check to make sure SpamKarma subtracted the 5 pts. Chad had good enough karma for the post to get through! (SpamKarma looks at all sorts of stuff. I don’t know why some visitors have better karma than others.)

  235. SteveF–
    I don’t know. The plugin was written and initially made avaialble here: http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/

    He wrote a bunch of modules that are supposed to diagnose symptoms of spam. If you post too fast– could be spam (-x karma points). If you post too slow– could be spam (-x karma points). Too many links? It also inserts a javascript query, and if your browse fills that out, you are probably not a robot.

    A few checks are personal. So, it checks to see if you have posted before. It especially likes people who have posted, but not toooo recently. It also likes people who put url that they added before into the url list. So, Chad probably looks great.

  236. I’m gunna suggest “Consensus Critic” and “Consensus Supporter”
    as rather un offensive descriptive labels. except some alarmists are critics as well. crap.

  238. Andrew_FL (Comment#44996) June 7th, 2010 at 3:26 pm

    ya. it is kinda true. ( I kinda sorta have a linguistics degree as well, course work done but 3 degrees was one too many )

  239. “I merely showed that you didn’t accurately portray the analysis of CBO.”

    Ike (Comment#44987) June 7th, 2010 at 11:59 am
    Oh please. I gave everybody the link to the whole thing and didn’t “portray” a thing. I copied and posted text from it. That’s not spin! Maybe what it says is jolting and you didn’t like it?
    Wake up! 😉

    (I am glad the rest of what you said was at least reasonable)

  240. steven mosher (Comment#45011)
    June 7th, 2010 at 4:15 pm

    Steve,
    “Consensus Supporter”
    Redundant and delusional!
    U2 Dave

  241. I hereby give my entire hoard of quatloos to anybody who managed to listen to Abraham’s entire talk. I think I lasted 3 minutes before my head hit the desk and I was sound asleep. Oh thank gaia, that I am not a student forced to sit through his lectures several times a week.

  242. liza (Comment#44967) “The CBO predicts that folks will prefer living off Welfare rather then working for a living under Cap & Tax. Surprise surprise”

    Ike“I merely showed that you didn’t accurately portray the analysis of CBO.”

    liza (Comment#45014) Oh please. I gave everybody the link to the whole thing and didn’t “portray” a thing.

    liza ” I copied and posted text from it. That’s not spin!

    Sure, liza, CBO says that Cap and Tax will make folks prefer welfare to work………I have trouble finding that particular quote. Maybe you can help.

    liza “Maybe what it says is jolting and you didn’t like it?”

    One would assume that jobs involved in the fossil fuel industry, from mining/drilling to distribution will be lost if we reduce fossil fuel use……If that’s a concern for you, perhaps you should lobby for decreased energy efficiency in transportation, heating, cooling, lighting, and industrial processes so that even more jobs will be created, due to the increased demand for oil, coal, and natural gas.

    Drill, baby, drill eh?

  243. Gary P (Comment#45016) June 7th, 2010 at 6:42 pm

    I hereby give my entire hoard of quatloos to anybody who managed to listen to Abraham’s entire talk. I think I lasted 3 minutes before my head hit the desk and I was sound asleep. Oh thank gaia, that I am not a student forced to sit through his lectures several times a week.
    .
    yes, all those boring facts. it is much better to listen to Monckton, who doesn t include a single fact most of the time.
    .
    the criticism is bizarre: Abraham is right, Monckton is wrong. why not start with this fact?

  244. Tom Fuller and I agree that the fight against global warming is a proxy war on the poor.
    .
    you agree on something, that is false, of course.
    .
    cap and trade is one of the few ideas, that will automatically help the poor, while the major burden is carried by the rich.

  245. Share a table with the guy it’s all laughs and giggles. Back to your blog and out with the long knives.

  246. The burden of increased energy prices falls on end users. Why Sod thinks that the rich constitute end users of energy, but the poor don’t, is beyond me.

    And yes, energy prices will go up with C&T that’s the entire point. This hurts people with the need for energy and incomes barely sufficient to get it. last time I checked, those people were poor. The rich will suffer but they’ll survive. Isn’t that what proponents of progressive income taxes always say? But C&T is even worse than that, it offers an immense opportunity for exploitation, ripe for money making schemes by Wall Street (last time I checked “the rich”) at the expense of everyone else.

    I can’t believe that Sod thinks what is essentially a regressive tax, is good for the poor and bad for the rich.

    Hey you know what’s good for everyone? ECONOMIC GROWTH.

  247. The burden of increased energy prices falls on end users. Why Sod thinks that the rich constitute end users of energy, but the poor don’t, is beyond me.

    Sod, like most carbon mitigation enthusiasts (CMEs), lack basic knowledge of economics. I find that ironic given the amount of time he lectures others on their (alleged) ignorance of science.

  248. Tim (Comment#45022) June 8th, 2010 at 1:50 am

    The burden of increased energy prices falls on end users. Why Sod thinks that the rich constitute end users of energy, but the poor don’t, is beyond me.

    Sod, like most carbon mitigation enthusiasts (CMEs), lack basic knowledge of economics. I find that ironic given the amount of time he lectures others on their (alleged) ignorance of science.

    I don’t think anyone is an enthusiast for carbon mitigation. You can be an enthusiast about many things, art, work, life. Carbon mitigation is something that has been forced on us, by our own actions. (This is the age of taking responsbility for your own actions, isn’t it?)

    Science trumps economics every time. There is no amount of money you can spend to change a law of physics.

  249. I don’t think anyone is an enthusiast for carbon mitigation.

    Anyone who claims that carbon mitigation is ‘pain free’ and will only affect those nasty ‘rich people’ is an enthusiast.

    Science trumps economics every time. There is no amount of money you can spend to change a law of physics.

    There is no amount of money that can suspend the laws of economics: i.e. “increased energy costs lead to job losses” or “government subsidies kill jobs”.

  250. There is no amount of money that can suspend the laws of economics: i.e. “increased energy costs lead to job losses” or “government subsidies kill jobs”.

    I didn’t say there were no laws of economics that don’t hold up, I just pointed out the laws of science always win in a competition. As for your examples, there will be no economic solution to the end of cheap oil.

    It is interesting that economics will be able to cope magnificently with AGW, but any attempt to use it to prevent AGW will be a complete disaster.

  251. Well, most of you seem to want to redefine the word ‘skeptic’, a process which is not going to be terribly helpful.

    Let us ask ourselves: can you be a skeptic about AGW? Or is that simply impossible. If you doubt it, or are convinced of its falsity, does that disqualify you from being called a skeptic?

    Can you be a skeptic about various topics if you are in the grip of various kinds of moral turpitude, like working in the oil industry, being a computer programmer, living in sin, being a Republican Party member? Or when you do some or all of these things, are you then disqualified from being able to be called a skeptic?

    It seems real simple to me, the word as used in the English language does allow it to apply to those who disbelieve something on what appear to them rational grounds, regardless of the truth or falsity of the thing itself, and regardless of what other states of being they may or may not be in.

    The concept, as defined above, is so useful that were we to change the meaning of the word ‘skeptic’ to mean something else, we’d just have to invent a new one to replace it. What would be the point of that?

  252. michel (Comment#45026) June 8th, 2010 at 2:36 am

    Well, most of you seem to want to redefine the word ’skeptic’, a process which is not going to be terribly helpful.

    Let us ask ourselves: can you be a skeptic about AGW? Or is that simply impossible. If you doubt it, or are convinced of its falsity, does that disqualify you from being called a skeptic?

    I am a skeptic. The first I heard of it I thought it was just another one of those regular beat ups in the press. Then I looked at the evidence for (comprehensive and well founded, with a physical basis), and against (an assortment of mutually contradicting claims and poor science). AGW won.

  253. It was interesting to note when that scientist bloke – I forget his name – went on WUWT apres Judith Curry, and said he was a (generic scientific) sceptic, many commentators rejected his claim on the basis that he considered AGW to be true. In other words, for many, being ‘sceptical’ in the context of this debate is, by definition, to disbelieve AGW positions.

  254. Heh, I love it: ‘that scientist bloke-I forget his name-‘. Ah, Michael, dear Michael; not with a bang, with a whimper.

    Sod, Copenhagen collapsed because the poor figured out the war was against them.
    ===========

  255. For a short politico/economic explanation of Australia’s current position, Anthony on Andrew Bolt’s blog wrote along these lines:””He told us he’d stop the boats, but we did not think he meant the bulk ore carriers”.

  256. Re: Molon Labe (Jun 8 00:17),

    Share a table with the guy it’s all laughs and giggles. Back to your blog and out with the long knives.

    Actually, at the PJ media dinner, I told people I’d criticized Monckton at my blog for his inaccuracies. Monckton was siting right there. He insists I misunderstand his graph. I told him I did not, it was wrong. I wasn’t going to get in a shouting match in a restaurant, but I say the say thing here as there.

  257. IKE says: “Sure, liza, CBO says that Cap and Tax will make folks prefer welfare to work………I have trouble finding that particular quote. Maybe you can help.
    One would assume that jobs involved in the fossil fuel industry, from mining/drilling to distribution will be lost if we reduce fossil fuel use……If that’s a concern for you, perhaps you should lobby for decreased energy efficiency in transportation, heating, cooling, lighting, and industrial processes so that even more jobs will be created, due to the increased demand for oil, coal, and natural gas.Drill, baby, drill eh?”

    Sheesh. Yes I am just a knuckle head like Sarah Palin right?
    The bill is called “”Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act.”” The report says:

    ” In addition, industries that use those forms of energy intensively, either directly or indirectly through other inputs, (or these fellow human beings you chose not to care for above) would also probably experience declines; an example is the transportation industry, which relies on petroleum products and on equipment made from metals (such as steel and aluminum) that require substantial amounts of energy to produce.”

    Aluminum and steel. Are you against those too? Tell us exactly what will replace those things and the kinds of jobs people who produce those things can do instead.

    In fact…Name one “clean energy job” that isn’t already filled right now (with people who had to go to school for it, not just pretend on the internet they know stuff)?

    Or…Name just one “new” clean energy job that all those people are going to do instead that doesn’t already exist. For that matter explain to me what the “power” in American Power means.

    Here’s the paragraph you seem to want to ignore:

    “However, following the introduction of an emission-reduction program, some people who lost their job in a shrinking industry would have a difficult time finding a new job quickly. Some would leave the labor force altogether.
    For many of those who lost their job in a shrinking industry, finding a new job would require substantial effort, flexibility, and time. Some would need to learn how to search effectively for a new job. Some would need to acquire new skills more suited to the job opportunities available to them. Some, especially those in communities with limited job opportunities outside of the shrinking industries, would need to relocate to new areas with bet␣ ter job prospects.
    Even among those who found a new job relatively quickly, many would probably discover that the knowledge they acquired in the old job did not translate perfectly to the new one. Those workers would probably see their earnings decline, even after being reemployed. Moreover, that decline in earnings would probably persist for a long time. For example, for men who lost a job as a result of a mass layoff during the 1982 recession, earnings 15 to 20 years later were still about 20 percent lower on average than they were for similar men who did not lose their job.”

    So if not welfare like I said, what or whom is going to support these people who need time,”flexibility”, relocation and new knowledge for another job? Magic Unicorns?

    For that matter if all those “drill baby drill” you don’t like folks lose their jobs and healthcare benefits; how is the government going to sustain itself> because all those people aren’t going to have any wages to tax?

    It goes on (I can’t believe I have to cut and paste this stuff for you because you refuse to see it!)

    …industries (such as the automobile industry) whose products use fossil fuels could also see shifts in demand, with corresponding changes in employment. (Bail out baby bail out!)

    …Other than energy producers, industries that would probably have lower employment in 2025 as a result of an emission reduction program currently employ more than 30 million people, so a small percentage decline in employment would, in total, affect many more people than the larger percentage declines in the energy sector…
    …chemicals, rubber, and plastics; nonmetallic mineral products; transportation services; other machinery, equipment, and manufactures; textiles; and fabricated metals would in each case decline… blah blah likely percent this likely percent that..

    (What I am reading (me the knuckle head) is that nobody has a clue at all (per usual) what all this legislation and it’s costs to the citizens (that will not stop “global warming” anyway) will do to our nation or our economy already burdened after or if it is implemented.) ( Doesn’t even mention what the costs of goods and energy going up is going to do people. That’s a whole other research project)

  258. > Anyone who claims that carbon mitigation is ‘pain free’ and will only affect those nasty ‘rich people’ is an enthusiast.

    Then Roger Junior and his Hartwell collegues are enthusiasts, unless we construe any kind of profitable work as painful.

    I really like the throwing of a positive ad hominem. It is so pain free. Saying that economic growth profits everyone is so genuinely insightful, ya know. See? Too easy.

  259. I knew someone would have a go at my laconic Kiwi delivery.

    We are an understated nation, you know. Not much given to needless talk. We prefer shearing sheep, playing rugby, and clearing the north-west paddock of the encroaching bush; our backs bent stoically against the billowing southerly, while our women-folk clean the muskets down at the cow shed.

    The bloke’s name was Walt Meier.

  260. liza (Comment#45032)

    You make a number of reasonable points regarding the negative impact of a carbon tax on our economy and millions of workers. The main problem with your analysis is that it is totally one-sided.

    I’m an American so let me focus my comments and analysis of the impact of our dependence on fossil fuels on Americans.

    The air pollution from oil and coal combustion causes, directly, thousands, if not 10’s of thousands of deaths per year.

    The impact of oil price shocks has contributed to at least 3 recessions in the Post WWII period, leading to reduced employment, reduced standards of living for millions of families, some temporarily, some permanently.

    One could easily argue that $100’s of billions have been added to American DOD expenditures, in recent decades, as “we” need to protect our foreign oil supply, due to our dependence.

    The environmental impact of coal mining and oil drilling has had a negative impact on our quality of life and has real economic costs, as well. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the problems from the BP leak?

    I submit that even if the Climate sensitivity to increased CO2 and other GHG’s is low, it makes sense to tax carbon and encourage increased energy efficiency, conservation, and carbon free energy generation. If Climate sensitivity to increased CO2 is at the higher end of estimates, that just places more weight on the already tipped scales of decision.

    There’s no good time to change. Change is disruptive, it costs money, and it usually hurts more people in the short term than it helps. Actions have costs and benefits, as does inaction. In my opinion, (knucklehead that I am) the costs of our fossil fuel dependence significantly outweigh the benefits.

  261. I can’t believe that Sod thinks what is essentially a regressive tax, is good for the poor and bad for the rich.
    .
    i was talking about countries (obviously). cap and trade automatically benefits poor countries. americans simply will not build dams to protect Bangladesh, while New Orleans is still in danger of being flooded (and New York, btw).
    mitigation doesn t work, and would not work, even IF it was 10 times cheaper. (it is not.)
    .
    you might be surprised, but i would tax financial transaction and remove subsidies for fossile fuels.
    .
    Hey you know what’s good for everyone? ECONOMIC GROWTH.
    .
    good for everyone, eh? have you seen some pictures from the gulf lately?

  262. Sod, like most carbon mitigation enthusiasts (CMEs), lack basic knowledge of economics. I find that ironic given the amount of time he lectures others on their (alleged) ignorance of science.
    .
    my understanding of macroeconomics is quite fine. i received some training on that subject.
    .
    it is pretty funny, to get lectured on the subject after the financial crisis and while looking at the oil spill. i don t think that the negative effect of uncontrolled market forces can get any more obvious.
    .
    but to move slightly back to topic, whom should we give control of things these days?
    .
    to Al Gore, who will completely ruin the world again, as he did while he was Vice President of the USA?
    .
    or to Lord Monckton, who will improve everything, as his brilliant work looked at by Abraham shows. Monckton will do a wonderful job, unless his imaginary membership at the house of Lords keeps him from saving the world from the evil climate scientists!

  263. There is no amount of money that can suspend the laws of economics: i.e. “increased energy costs lead to job losses” or “government subsidies kill jobs”.
    .
    this is false on so many levels.
    .
    switching from energy intensive to labour intensive production will not cost, but create jobs. this is so obvious, even you should understand that.
    .
    subsidies are interesting. of course, in total numbers, fossil fuels get MORE SUBSIDIES than alternative energy basically everywhere on the world. (and let us not even talk about nuclear.)
    so following your logic, fossil fuels support by the government is killing jobs!
    .
    http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants

  264. “I’d criticized Monckton at my blog for his inaccuracies.”

    Lucia,

    If only you had the courage to criticise Big Al’s, that would be significant. 😉

    Andrew

  265. Ike (Comment#45035) June 8th, 2010 at 6:47 am
    My husband is a working environmental geologist/environmental scientist- state certified too(he also was an EPA regulator) so I am not “blind” to all the impacts on the environment in fact I know a heck of a lot about it; I know facts not spin too. My very own lively hood is a result of people “cleaning up the environment”. My husband (and my father) are also both disabled veterans of the military. I don’t think I would say we need to “protect our foreign oil” but ok, I know what you mean. (Thank goodness for our own oil during WWII and since there are huge oil reserves in this country that haven’t been used on land!… maybe we wouldn’t have this problem in the gulf if they were and the “impacts” are next to nothing on land!-but whatever…there are gulf courses in Santa Barbara with oil seeping out of the grass onto everyone shoes.!)

    The government already has spent billions of tax money and it WASTES tons of money too in the “name of all this” alternative energy need. California…sheesh. Environmentalists (and Democrats) won’t even let anyone put up solar panels in the desert…then there is nuclear…take Yucca Mountain…most expensive and researched place on the whole planet and no one will support it; first thing the new POTUS did was put an end to that; you want to talk about spin!

    I dont believe you need to tax people any more or at all for these “problems” to be solved; in fact I believe the exact opposite should happen.

  268. “The air pollution from oil and coal combustion causes, directly, thousands, if not 10’s of thousands of deaths per year.”

    Yeah the “scientist” who worked for the Clean Air Board here in California claimed all that too and legislation was drafted and based on his “research”. Turns out the guy is a complete fraud and got his degree from an online fake university. The folks in Sacramento didn’t care about that and still love his regulation ideas. Fake but accurate!

  269. Andrew–
    Gore doesn’t generally make stuff out of whole cloth. What he does is pick the most extreme points and present them in a tone that suggests there are people’s best estimate. He also sometimes gets the art department to use photo-shop to create distortion. I am perfectly willing to comment on those as they occur– but I’m not pulling up sins from 5 years ago to blog about today. This is a blog, and I’m pretty much commenting on topics of the day.

    Monckton also picks extreme points to present as mainstream when he can. But then sometimes throws in totally made up stuff— like the Moncktonized version of the IPCC graphs.

    When Monckton does this, people will post direct questions asking me if those are correct, and I will answer that the are not. Those posts appear in the time frame when Monckton is presenting this nonesense, not years, or even months later.

    If Gore starts spewing Nazi allusions tomorrow, or decides to rebutt Monckton by re-adjusting Moncktons graphs to not match what Monckton said, I’ll certainly criticize him for that.

  270. “Gore doesn’t generally make stuff out of whole cloth.”

    Lucia,

    Big Al doesn’t have to make stuff out of whole cloth for you to criticize him. He just has to be wrong. 😉

    Andrew

  271. Andrew_KY–
    I didn’t say he has to make stuff up out of whole cloth. Anyway, I do criticize him. I criticized him in my most recent blog comment.

  272. The government already has spent billions of tax money and it WASTES tons of money too in the “name of all this” alternative energy need.
    .
    liza, you are extremely uninformed.
    .
    there is an interesting new report out, from a rather conservative german economic institute:
    .
    http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/institut-fuer-wirtschaftsforschung-ausstieg-aus-kohle-und-atom-sinnvoll;2596696
    .
    unfortunately, not all of their weekly reports are translated into english.
    .
    but their most important requests are simple: no building of new coal plants. out of nuclear energy, in the long run. no reduction of the subsidies for alternative energy.
    .
    but perhaps the Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung does not understand economics….

  273. Lucia,
    I wish the same amount of energy that is used by skeptics in fisking Monckton was used to fisk the garbage of CAGW.
    If even a small part of that energy was spent in reviewing and critiquing what the degreed, published and powerful leaders of CAGW say on a regular basis as is spent on Monckton, it would be very productive.
    But instead, here we are.

  274. hunter–
    There is plenty criticism of Gore out there. Google “Gore AGW”:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=Gore+AGW&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

    I skip lots of silly things both men say or do. But when Monckton pulls an obvious, undeniable Nazi card in public, and I learn of it while the story is not stale (i.e. in less than about a month) I will blog about this.
    The same rule applied to Gore. If you notice Gore making Nazi allusions in a current story, let me know. I’ll be happy to run the story. Whoever pulls these Nazis card more often gets mentioned more often.

    If this means Monckton gets criticized more often for his ad homs and Nazi allusions, so be it. You want criticism of Monckton’s tactics to stop– get him to stop the silly tactics.

  275. sod (Comment#45047) June 8th, 2010 at 8:53 am You are extremely annoying. I don’t know what a German report has to do with anything. The US Government in the last 9 yrs (of AGW hype), has spent BILLIONS of dollars already on “alternative energy” research and development.

    Edit add on: Also billions more are allocated to “further our understanding” of climate change too (a science that’s supposed to be settled) sheesh.

  276. Yes who needs to pile on Gore when you have Gavin, Michael, Phil, James…actual scientists whose work is the basis for all the hype of AGW- behaving badly.

    I think you’ve got the whole thing upside down and backwards. It is the AGW crowd that likens global warming as a threat akin to The Holocaust -starting with Al Gore; I provided a link. Al Gore was the first to use the d-word too AND like I said, if you haven’t seen his MTV special that was aired for children you wouldn’t be so big on piling on anyone who compared the tactics the AGW crowd who use the tactics the Nazi’s used. No need for Al Gore to say or do anything “recently” THE DAMAGE IS DONE.

    The Nazi’s orchestrated a horrible thing-got everyone to label and hate a certain group of people! I could go through any climate or global warming blog, and copy and paste comments all day long that you could replace words and labels with the word “Jew” and it would sound like that same hatred and that same labeling. Including comments on Real Climate I was subjected to it the first and only time I tried to comment there! They are supposed to be men of science!

  277. Liza–
    Click the “Godwin’s law” link on each “Godwin’s law” post and you will find I post when people make obvious indisputable allusions to Nazi’s. These involve saying words like “Nazi’s”, mentioning “death trains” or using names like Hitler, Goering, Goebbles, SS.

    If you see people doing anything now I’ll be happy to comment on it. Otherwise, even if you think the damage has been done, no. If you want to write a history about it, do the research, write your own history and publish your book.

    The fact that you can find comments at RC which if you edited to change the words would sound virulently hateful is not something I find worthy of blogging about.

    If your more general point is that you don’t like the comment moderation policy at RC: Fair enough. But a) my policy is that long discussion of moderation policies at other blogs is boring, and so to be avoided and b) the fact that RC might have an obnoxious moderation policy does not mean I cannot criticize Monckton for invoking Nazi allusions as a method of criticizing those with whom he disagrees.

  278. John Abraham’s lecture is nonsense for a large number of reasons. I guess all that we can do here is take them one at a time – since some people actually seem to take his rebuttal of Monkton seriously. Let’s be clear, I’m not saying that Monkton hasn’t made mistakes, and that he hasn’t tried to squeeze more out of his data than he should. But even given that, Abraham’s piece is still a propaganda piece. I’m not going to try to cover everything in one post, so I’ll respond item by item as I have the time.

    First, Abraham seems very fond of taking Monkton’s references and showing that the author did not conclude what Monkton concluded. Sometimes Abraham quotes from the paper, sometimes he writes the author. Then he decides that Monkton was wrong. But, clearly, this is nonsense. Someone can write a paper and draw conclusions that are wholly unsupported by the data in his paper. And someone else can use the data within that paper to support a completely different solution. And for that reason, the use of this method to supposedly “debunk” Monkton is completely dishonest.

    For example. NOAAs David Easterling and Michael Wehner of the Lawerence Berkely National Laboratory came out with a paper that claimed that the current flat trend in temperature had no significance. I used the data that was provided by them in their paper, along with some futher analysis, to show that the current flat trend was in fact significant. In other words, I used their paper to conclude the opposite of what they concluded. But if I referenced their paper to support my view, Abraham would conclude that I was wrong because I didn’t conclude what they concluded. This is clearly nonsense. Here is what I posted on the Easterling, Wehner paper:

    http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2010/01/another-inconvient-truth-for-agw.html

    One more point. In the field of climate science these days, the distribution of research grants seems to be closely tied to AGW alarmism. I have seen many cases where research papers provided data that pointed away from AGW alarmism, only to have the authors add, for no apparent reason other than to protect themselves, that they still believed in AGW and that their paper did not disprove it.

  279. sod (Comment#45047) June 8th, 2010 at 8:53 am You are extremely annoying. I don’t know what a German report has to do with anything. The US Government in the last 9 yrs (of AGW hype), has spent BILLIONS of dollars already on “alternative energy” research and development.
    .
    why not stick to the facts? in 2002-08, the US spent more than two times as much on subsidies of fossil fuels, than on renewable energy.
    .
    http://www.eli.org/pdf/Energy_Subsidies_Black_Not_Green.pdf
    .
    the German report by a conservative economic institute shows you, that economists support a position on energy, that is the complete opposite of what you want.
    .
    but i am not surprised, by your lack of interest in facts….

  280. lucia (Comment#45052) June 8th, 2010 at 9:40 am
    I said the labels and names I read could be replaced with “Jew” and the same hatred/feeling would be there. If you are saying hate isn’t a big part of pushing the global warming movement, especially on blogs then I think you are wrong..

    I wish you would tell us, those of us who find AGW science lacking in standards (to become what it has become) how to describe the PR and indoctrination of our children if we can’t compare it to other sinister times in history; times of the near past, when our parents were alive. What is the proper way to describe it all then? And I am not talking about obscure people (speakers and promoters either) or obscure situations! (There is legislation. Powers given to the EPA. Al Gore’s movie is required viewing in our schools!)

  281. First, Abraham seems very fond of taking Monkton’s references and showing that the author did not conclude what Monkton concluded. Sometimes Abraham quotes from the paper, sometimes he writes the author. Then he decides that Monkton was wrong. But, clearly, this is nonsense. Someone can write a paper and draw conclusions that are wholly unsupported by the data in his paper. And someone else can use the data within that paper to support a completely different solution. And for that reason, the use of this method to supposedly “debunk” Monkton is completely dishonest.
    .
    Tilo, you are wrong. as always.
    .
    Monckton made a very specific claim:
    .
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Abraham-reply-to-Monckton.html#15659
    .
    “……and now here is the truth about the Medieval Warm Period. Here are just a few papers, 8 or 9 of them, out of the papers contributed during the last 20 years by more than 700 scientists, from more than 400 institutions, in more than 40 countries establishing that the Medieval Warm Period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present. That is the scientific consensus if you do science by consensus which the UN says it does. But on the question of the Medieval Warm Period the IPCC refuses to accept the scientific consensus. Instead it uses made up graphs..
    .
    Monckton gives the impression, that there is a scientific “consensus” among those 700 scientists, that the MWP was warmer than today.
    .
    if you make such a statement today, your readers will expect, that those scientists support that position today. and NOT, that you can cherry-pick a passage from one of their older papers, that might be spun to support a position, that they no longer hold today.
    .
    asking them for their position, is the exactly right thing to do, to counter this argument.
    .
    the rest of your post, is conspiracy theory. you are a karma-loser.

  282. “why not stick to the facts? in 2002-08, the US spent more than two times as much on subsidies of fossil fuels, than on renewable energy.”

    Yes, President Obama just gave a billion to South American Oil Companies too. But that has nothing to do with what I said. I said ENOUGH ALREADY -don’t tax the American people anymore about any of it. And you aren’t American according to lucia.

  283. sod (Comment#45056) June 8th, 2010 at 9:59 am
    there are THOUSANDS of scientists that might believe the MWP was warm or warmer then today. The whole argument is BS. It only takes ONE to be right.

  284. liza (Comment#45058) June 8th, 2010 at 10:03 am

    sod (Comment#45056) June 8th, 2010 at 9:59 am
    there are THOUSANDS of scientists that might believe the MWP was warm or warmer then today. The whole argument is BS. It only takes ONE to be right.

    .
    it was not me, who made the claim about 700 scientists. it was Monckton. and he chose to mention a few specific ones. and Abraham checked those, and found them to DISAGREE with Monckton’s claim.
    .
    which part of that do you not understand? are you trying to make the argument, that Monckton might not have misrepresented at least one of them? and that this would make his argument a good one?
    .

  285. Re: liza (Jun 8 09:56),

    how to describe the PR and indoctrination of our children if we can’t compare it to other sinister times in history;

    How? Just describe what they do. If you were describing Nazi Germany, could you not just describe what they did– like build extermination camps? Or are you required to find some other historic group and describe the by saying they were like… hmmm… Visigoths?

    Those with whom you disagree have not actually built extermination camps and are not actually rounding people up to commit genocide.

    I equally deride it when those with whom you disagree liken investigations of Climategate to McCarthyism.

    These metaphors are inaccurate and overblown.

  286. Lucia, I think that’s just being a bit controlling but it’s your blog 🙂 The fact is that the AGW crowd started all the references to the Holocaust first. And hardly any outspoken skeptic of AGW uses any of the same tactics or words. You’ve got one (and that person doesn’t ever influence my mind). I am with hunter!

    BTW I would also liken the AGW movement to the Russian “worship” of science back in the day too.

  287. Apparently sod thinks I and others who object to the “mitigation” proposals on the table, support subsidies for fossil fuels. On the contrary. I am against all subsidies. But guess what? If you eliminate all subsidies, wind, solar, other “alternatives” will still lose. They simply can’t survive without them.

    What the hell do pictures of the Gulf have to do with economic growth? And how does that show that increasing the standard of living for everyone by growing the economy isn’t good for everyone?

  288. Liza–
    Controlling? You asked me how you could do “X” other than using the method you prefer. I suggested a method. If you prefer the method of alluding to Nazi’s, ok. But when someone uses it here, I will criticize it. When Monckton uses it, I will criticize him.

    If you criticize me for not criticizing someone like Gore — who is not currently doing it– I will tell you that’s because he is not currently doing it.

    I don’t see anything controlling about what I am doing.

  289. On to the next problem in Prof. Abraham’s supposed debunking of Monkton. Abraham claims that the 20cm to 50cm projections for sea level rise for the next century do not include ice melt. He claims that this number is for thermal expansion only. His source for this claim is page 409 of IPCC AR4, WG1, Chapter 5. At this point I can only say that Abraham is either reading impaired or that he knows about as much about the subject that he is discussing as you would expect a mechanical engineer to know. I suspect that the second is the case, since he is unable to tell the difference between ice melt and ice discharge.

    He even quotes the relevant IPCC statement.

    “An important uncertainty relates to whether discharge of ice from the ice sheets will continue to increase as a consequence of accelerated ice flow, as has been observed in recent years. This would add to the amount of sea level rise, but quantitative projections of how much it would add cannot be made with confi dence, owing to limited understanding of the relevant processes.”

    The uncertainty that the IPCC is talking about here is the uncertainty of large pieces of ice breaking off the Western Antarctic ice sheet and falling into the sea where it would eventually melt. This kind of contribution is different from the normal melting of ice and ice sheets where the ice simply gets warmer, melts a little at a time, and where the water then flows into the oceans. This is also different from glacier calving and from ice shelve breakup.

    Of course the ice melt is an integral part of the 20 to 50 cm that the IPCC is talking about. It does not just represent thermal expansion as Abraham claims. In fact, reading the information on the page prior to Abraham’s cite would tell him that the current rate – as measured – is only 50% due to thermal expansion. The rest is due to ice melt. So to transfer the measured chart into the projected chart as smoothly as the chart shows, it would require a 50% increase in thermal expansion in order to maintain the rate, and this would have to all happen in the trasition year. Clearly this would be a stupid conclusion.

    http://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/ar4-wg1-chapter5.pdf

    What is not part of the estimate is huge portions of the land based Western Antarctic ice sheet breaking off and sliding into the sea. Of course such actions on the Western Antartic ice sheet are not just uncertain, they are pure conjecture – and so there is no reason to have them in the estimate.

    There is also the claim that some of this kind of action has already been observed. Well, if it has been observed, then it also constitutes a portion of the current sea level change measurement. And it is not in any way dramatic. I should add that what has been observed is the breaking of ice shelves (sheets of ice that extend over the ocean) and the calving of glaciers near the waters edge. There has been no observation of large pieces of land based ice breaking off and bobsleading to the sea.

    So on the basis of some unknown and unexpected event where the majority of the land based ice in the Western Antarctic somehow slides into the ocean, Abraham decides that Gore’s number may be the right one. Absurd!

  290. Tilo Reber (Comment#45069),
    “So on the basis of some unknown and unexpected event where the majority of the land based ice in the Western Antarctic somehow slides into the ocean, Abraham decides that Gore’s number may be the right one. Absurd!”
    .
    Not absurd, just typical distortion/exaggeration/tilting of “the science” to instill fear. His presentation is full of similar stuff.

  291. “The air pollution from oil and coal combustion causes, directly, thousands, if not 10’s of thousands of deaths per year.”

    liza (Comment#45043)
    “Yeah the “scientist” who worked for the Clean Air Board here in California claimed all that too and legislation was drafted and based on his “research”. Turns out the guy is a complete fraud and got his degree from an online fake university. The folks in Sacramento didn’t care about that and still love his regulation ideas. Fake but accurate!”

    Are you suggesting that air pollution doesn’t cause increased morbity and mortality in humans?

    “The analyses on which this report is based estimate that ambient air pollution, in terms of fine particulate air pollution (PM(2.5)), causes about 3% of mortality from cardiopulmonary disease, about 5% of mortality from cancer of the trachea, bronchus, and lung, and about 1% of mortality from acute respiratory infections in children under 5 yr, worldwide.”J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2005 Jul 9-23;68(13-14):1301-7. The global burden of disease due to outdoor air pollution. Cohen AJ, Ross Anderson H, Ostro B, Pandey KD, Krzyzanowski M, Künzli N, Gutschmidt K, Pope A, Romieu I, Samet JM, Smith K.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16024504?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn

  292. Tilo–
    Are you going to post on that at your blog? That would be a useful thing to put in a more prominent place than hidden as comment 2XX here!

  295. Ike,

    Yes, but you are ignoring the massive benefits that the use of coal and oil have brought. Billions of people have prospered through the use of energy , you wouldn’t be able to use your computer as you are if they had not been used. The prosperity of the world is built on energy use and, whilst many are still in dire poverty, it is energy that ensures those numbers are not even greater. World population doubled between the1950s and 1990s with the standard of living of much of those people increasing.

    This was all based on the use of energy. Why do you want to turn the clock back?

  296. Tilo, Abraham is doing a lot of guest posting at Skeptical Science. Why not pop over there and try to engage him. Could be interesting.

  297. Lucia,

    Is there problem where WordPress takes exception to the length of time you take to post a comment?

  298. Dave Andrews–
    I think the spam plugin might care about time. I know it hates comments that take miliseconds between load and post. I don’t know about very long times.

  299. Let’s go on with Abraham supposedly “debunking” Monckton when Monckton claims that the MWP was warmer that today. Dismissing all of Monckton’s charts, Abraham smugly declares “Let’s actually look at the data” at time 1:25 of his third clip. So “the data” is what the IPCC says it is and everything else that has been published on the subject is just garbage according to Abraham. The chart that Abraham presents is a spaghetti graph proxy reconstruction that we are all familiar with.

    Abraham continues to show his lack of familiarity with these kinds of climactic debates by declaring the observations in that graph as being independent observations. But as we all know, most of those spaghetti graph contributions share proxy series between them, and most of them have either the cherry picked Graybill bristlecone data, or the cherry picked Briffa Yamal data, or both.

    Then Abraham goes on to make the classic apples and oranges mistake by comparing proxy data to instrument data. One has to ask, why doesn’t he see that the instrument data shows much hotter temperatures than the proxy data in the current time period. Why doesn’t he see that the majority of the proxy reconstructions do not make it above the zero baseline in the current period while the instrument data is 0.5 C higher. Why doesn’t he ask, if these proxies cannot show modern warming, can we depend on them to show MWP warming? Blind acceptance seems to be his response when he likes what he sees.

    Another fallacy that Abraham seems to entertain is that the first IPCC graph – the one that shows a warmer MWP – was done before 1990. The other graphs were done after 1990. He implies that before 1990 we made mistakes. After 1990 we stopped making mistakes. But really, he gives no reason for why one chart is more accurate than the other, except for the dates. Now I’m willing to accept that we learn and do things better. But simply basing the improvement on when it was done is not enough for me. It’s quite possible that the improvement is that we are now clearer on our objectives and we are much better at cherry picking to get what we want. This may be a good time to bring back the words of one of the proxy creators in the spaghetti graph that Abraham refers to.

    Briffa:
    “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. We don’t have a lot of proxies that come right up to date and those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies ) some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter. For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of years as Mike appears to and I contend that there is strong evidence for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future background variability of our climate.”

    Next, Abraham decides to check out some of Monckton’s sources for the charts that he uses to claim that scientists say it was as warm or warmer in the MWP than today. First he contacts Schweingruber who tells him that he is retired. Schweingruber passes him on to David Frank. Frank then references a work that has nothing to do with the original Esper & Schweingruber chart and claims that it is warmer today. Now I simply don’t see how a different source referencing to a different work can be used to debunk a chart from the Schweingruber original paper that Monckton uses. And I also don’t see any evidence that Frank is comparing contemporary proxy data to medieval proxy data. Most likely, Franks assertions are comparing medieval proxy data to contemporary instrument data.

    The same applies to the other scientists that Abraham contacted. Not a single one of them made the statement, “My contemporary proxy data shows more warmth than my MWP proxy data”. And indeed, the charts that those scientists created, and which Monckton showed, show the MWP as being as warm or warmer. This takes us back to my first post where I asked, if the charts show one thing and the author claims another, what are you going to do.

  300. Hi
    A name like Tilo Reber has to be in a cartoon, what a geat name.

    And what a great thread.

    There is a saying “words don’t have meanings, they have uses” which I think is relevant here.

    It is amazing how Monckton inspires such vigourous discussion, brilliant.

  301. I can’t believe you spent this much time on this subject. Let me know when you get off it , and I’ll rejoin you.

  302. Dave Andrews (Comment#45077) Yes, but you are ignoring the massive benefits that the use of coal and oil have brought.

    I don’t recall denying the benefits of coal and oil. It made good sense for our society to use fossil fuels and we’ll continue using these fuels for decades to come, to some degree. I submit that our quality of life will improve if we consciously and purposely move to alternative means of power generation.

    Cap and Tax (Trade) is one tool that governments may use to encourage carbon free energy generation, as well as increased conservation and efficiency where fossil fuels will be used. My correspondent, liza, pointed out the negative economic impact of such a plan, while ignoring the long term benefits.

    Dave “Why do you want to turn the clock back?”

    Why do want to hold the clock still?

  303. Pingback: Collide-a-scape » Blog Archive » Collide-a-scape >> Climate Buffoonery

  304. Tilo Reber (Comment#45081) June 8th, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    Let’s go on with Abraham supposedly “debunking” Monckton when Monckton claims that the MWP was warmer that today. Dismissing all of Monckton’s charts, Abraham smugly declares “Let’s actually look at the data” at time 1:25 of his third clip. So “the data” is what the IPCC says it is and everything else that has been published on the subject is just garbage according to Abraham. The chart that Abraham presents is a spaghetti graph proxy reconstruction that we are all familiar with.

    Abraham is using the standard science, yes, and, like the temperature record, I think it stands up to scrutiny reasonably well. Much of the sniping that goes on is just that. The Loehle officially approved reconstruction still comes up with much the same story. The problem with Monckton is that he invents and misrepresents most of what he tells people, such as a MWP being warmer than today. What does he base that claim on?

  305. bugs:
    “Abraham is using the standard science, yes, and, like the temperature record, I think it stands up to scrutiny reasonably well.”

    Did you read what I said about the IPCC chart and do you understand it? It contradicts your assertion. Please show me that you understand what I said so that we have a platform to work from.

    “The Loehle officially approved reconstruction still comes up with much the same story.”

    No, it doesn’t.

    “The problem with Monckton is that he invents and misrepresents most of what he tells people,”

    No, he doesn’t. He may stretch his data a little further than I would like, but he is not inventing anything. And his presentation is much closer to the truth than Abraham. Again, have you read what I have said and do you understand it. Have you read Monckton’s response to Abraham and do you understand it. Your assertions seem to indicate that you understand neither. And you have done nothing but make assertions, so there is nothing really for me to talk to. Catch up to both sides of the debate and we can hopefully clarify from there.

    “such as a MWP being warmer than today. What does he base that claim on?”

    There are dozens if not hundreds of pieces of evidence for that assertion. For starters, look through the CO2 Science web site for academic papers about the MWP.

    http://www.co2science.org/

  306. Why doesn’t he see that the majority of the proxy reconstructions do not make it above the zero baseline in the current period while the instrument data is 0.5 C higher. Why doesn’t he ask, if these proxies cannot show modern warming, can we depend on them to show MWP warming?
    .
    Tilo is trying some extremely wild spin again. if proxies do not confirm modern temperature measurement, then you can t use them to make claims about the MWP. you are trying to have your cake, and eat it.
    .
    you want to use the Loehle reconstruction to make a comparison between 1935 and today, even though it ends in 1935. but when you factor in modern warming (Loehle himself does this, in his paper!) the MWP turns out to be COLDER than today.
    .
    Next, Abraham decides to check out some of Monckton’s sources for the charts that he uses to claim that scientists say it was as warm or warmer in the MWP than today. First he contacts Schweingruber who tells him that he is retired. Schweingruber passes him on to David Frank. Frank then references a work that has nothing to do with the original Esper & Schweingruber chart and claims that it is warmer today. Now I simply don’t see how a different source referencing to a different work can be used to debunk a chart from the Schweingruber original paper that Monckton uses. And I also don’t see any evidence that Frank is comparing contemporary proxy data to medieval proxy data. Most likely, Franks assertions are comparing medieval proxy data to contemporary instrument data.
    .
    Monckton made a false claim about a consensus among climate scientists. you are seriously moving the goal post. Monckton did NOT say, there was a consensus among proxies! he spoke about scientists! he was wrong, and the Tilo spin on this is also wrong!
    .
    “……and now here is the truth about the Medieval Warm Period. Here are just a few papers, 8 or 9 of them, out of the papers contributed during the last 20 years by more than 700 scientists, from more than 400 institutions, in more than 40 countries establishing that the Medieval Warm Period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present. That is the scientific consensus if you do science by consensus which the UN says it does. But on the question of the Medieval Warm Period the IPCC refuses to accept the scientific consensus. Instead it uses made up graphs..
    .
    read what he said. don t make up stuff! again: checking what scientists say, is exactly the right thing to do, to check the false Monckton “consensus” claim!
    .
    No, he doesn’t. He may stretch his data a little further than I would like, but he is not inventing anything.
    .
    Tilo Reber at his best. so when Monckton makes the false claim, that he is a member of the house of Lords, he is not inventing something? it is just a little stretch? funny!

  307. Why doesn’t he see that the majority of the proxy reconstructions do not make it above the zero baseline in the current period while the instrument data is 0.5 C higher. Why doesn’t he ask, if these proxies cannot show modern warming, can we depend on them to show MWP warming?
    .
    Tilo is trying some extremely wild spin again. if proxies do not confirm modern temperature measurement, then you can t use them to make claims about the MWP. you are trying to have your cake, and eat it.
    .
    you want to use the Loehle reconstruction to make a comparison between 1935 and today, even though it ends in 1935. but when you factor in modern warming (Loehle himself does this, in his paper!) the MWP turns out to be COLDER than today.
    .
    Next, Abraham decides to check out some of Monckton’s sources for the charts that he uses to claim that scientists say it was as warm or warmer in the MWP than today. First he contacts Schweingruber who tells him that he is retired. Schweingruber passes him on to David Frank. Frank then references a work that has nothing to do with the original Esper & Schweingruber chart and claims that it is warmer today. Now I simply don’t see how a different source referencing to a different work can be used to debunk a chart from the Schweingruber original paper that Monckton uses. And I also don’t see any evidence that Frank is comparing contemporary proxy data to medieval proxy data. Most likely, Franks assertions are comparing medieval proxy data to contemporary instrument data.
    .
    Monckton made a false claim about a consensus among climate scientists. you are seriously moving the goal post. Monckton did NOT say, there was a consensus among proxies! he spoke about scientists! he was wrong, and the Tilo spin on this is also wrong!
    .
    “……and now here is the truth about the Medieval Warm Period. Here are just a few papers, 8 or 9 of them, out of the papers contributed during the last 20 years by more than 700 scientists, from more than 400 institutions, in more than 40 countries establishing that the Medieval Warm Period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present. That is the scientific consensus if you do science by consensus which the UN says it does. But on the question of the Medieval Warm Period the IPCC refuses to accept the scientific consensus. Instead it uses made up graphs..
    .
    read what he said. don t make up stuff! again: checking what scientists say, is exactly the right thing to do, to check the false Monckton “consensus” claim!
    .
    No, he doesn’t. He may stretch his data a little further than I would like, but he is not inventing anything.
    .
    Tilo Reber at his best. so when Monckton makes the false claim, that he is a member of the house of Lords, he is not inventing something? it is just a little stretch? funny!
    .
    PS: CO2 science is perhaps the worst source on the web. please be a little more specific Tilo, and i ll take it apart.

  308. that is plain out false. a person who can t figure out, that he is not a member of the house of lords, can not be described as a sceptic.

    This is wrong, as a matter of fact, about the concept of skepticism in Western society.

    I can, for instance, be guilty of all kinds of fraud in other areas of life, and still be correctly described as a skeptic about the connexion of cholesterol levels with heart disease. I can live in the Hebrides, or Barcelona, it makes no difference. I can be any ethnic group, any height. I can lie about where I was born, how much money I make, how old I am, my educational attainments or marital status, and still be correctly described as a skeptic about the relation between cholesterol and heart disease, if I think that the evidence supports none.

    If I am mentally ill (whatever that means) it is not so clear. Where there is judged to be a general breakdown of cognitive functioning and reasoning, the term is not appropriately used of any particular expression of belief, indeed, at that point we become hesitant about referring to ‘belief’.

    Is what sod is saying something like this: skepticism about AGW is convincing evidence of cognitive malfunction so profound that the usual language describing the normal functioning of the mind no longer applies to one?

    One suspects so. Most cults of this sort end up in coercion of one sort or another of those who decline to accept them, and the last great authoritarian cult in Eastern Europe, Soviet Communism, did indeed classify dissidents as mentally ill, incarcerate them, and apply psychoactive drugs to them. It was obvious to them really. To doubt the truth of Marxism-Leninism could not be described as skepticism, it was a form of mental illness.

  309. lucia (Comment#45068) June 8th, 2010 at 11:37 am
    Liza–
    Controlling? You asked me how you could do “X” other than using the method you prefer. I suggested a method. If you prefer the method of alluding to Nazi’s, ok. But when someone uses it here, I will criticize it. When Monckton uses it, I will criticize him.

    Lucia, Did I use the wrong words again? I like you a lot and I appreciate your blog whole heartedly. I enjoy turning up the heat and the freedom to get things off my chest here too. I thank you! I am understanding where you are coming from. Me, I just tend to try to listen to people rather then criticize them for what words they use, or how they say it; what accent they have, or how they look etc. Not saying you do that – I don’t usually worry about that stuff only sometimes I do. Wouldn’t it be nice if climate scientists asked their critics “what other method would you prefer us use?” and really care to know the answer? lol

    Ike’s last comment to me:
    “Are you suggesting that air pollution doesn’t cause increased morbity and mortality in humans?”

    I have no clue how you got only that impression. I have no idea one way or the other or what your paper concludes because I haven’t read stuff like that much. I know people used to ride horses to get around and burn wood in there homes to stay warm. I have no idea what the increase in mortality rate was for those two things either. All I did was share the fact that legislation from the clean air board in California was based on a paper written by a guy who claimed to have a PHD from a cal state university when he did not. The powers that be found this out before the vote yet they voted on the legislation.

    michel (Comment#45218) June 9th, 2010 at 1:52 am
    your whole comment and this:
    “To doubt the truth of Marxism-Leninism could not be described as skepticism, it was a form of mental illness.”
    That’s what I meant when I brought up Russia and the “worship” of science before . Thank you. You said it much better then I. (which isn’t hard! hee hee)

    sod:
    “PS: CO2 science is perhaps the worst source on the web. please be a little more specific Tilo, and i ll take it apart.”

    I don’t like some of the stuff Google does, or who is on their board of directors either; but they still provide links I can read when I search; that have nothing to do with Google; scientific papers even. Tilo is suggesting you go to C02 science and look a series of links and lists they’ve complied to get you to read published papers about the MWP.
    I am seeing you just don’t want to look. wah wah.

  310. Lucia:

    If you believe that you, Mosher, Fuller, (Pielke Jr??), Watts and anyone else of a similar affiliation, holds the center of the climate debate…let me help you dispel that notion. You do not.

    There is a thing called rhetoric. You do not dissect it (unless you want to study it to learn it), you only judge whether it was useful. Monckton knows how to use it well. Everybody is free to use rhetoric – it is not a crime.

    Calling out Monckton for his ‘hyperbole in the debate of global warming’ is in itself , an oxymoron. Global warming ‘science’ consists of every possible scientific howler and hyperbole couched in pseudo-academic jargon and smeared over by citations. Scientific publication, is rhetoric by other means. It does not belong to a higher family of logic.

    One can cite a paper to support a conclusion which the original author/s themselves did not reach. It is a thing called ‘original thinking’. You may be ‘wrong’, but not merely because you cited a paper for to your purposes.

    Thank you

  311. Re: Shub Niggurath (Jun 9 05:38),
    I don’t think I, or anyone on the list you provide holds the center of the climate debate.
    I”m not sure why you addressed your comment to me. It seems disconnected from anything I have said. I criticized Monckton for using Nazi allusions, constantly resorting to ad hominems when debating and suggesting people who he doesn’t like look like overcooked prawns.

    Even if I am not the center of the climate debate, I have a right to point features of the rhetoric of people who have a wide audience and criticize it.

  312. Dear Lucia
    Thanks for your reply.

    Goebbels was widely known for his propaganda techniques. The CAGW movement uses many propaganda elements (by virtue of its top-down information dissemination structure, and other reasons). Monckton’s characterization of the CAGW movement as Goebbellsian was to highlight this aspect and to point out the lack of ‘debate’.

    Not to draw Nazi allusions and thereby discredit his ‘debating’ opponent.

    By implying that bringing in Goebbels into the picture, Monckton has made Nazi allusions, is a misstep. Goebbels was a Nazi no doubt, but when people say Goebbelian or Goebbelsian, they do not imply ‘Nazi’, they are usually implying ‘propaganda’.

    Goodwin’s law therefore stands invoked against you. 😉

    Regards

  313. Shub Niggurath (Jun 9 05:38)
    I enjoyed reading your blog post.
    “It looks as though the nuts are taking a knife to stick it to the fudgies” lol 🙂

    If I keep trying to say, as an American, that famous people and public schools are systematically trying to instruct children to accept an ideological doctrine (offering no alternative point of view what so ever ) why does it even matter what I call these schools or people after all that? I’ll tell you what I think. I think that a majority (of people in real life) don’t give a hoot about what I call them.

  314. Re: Shub Niggurath (Jun 9 06:10),
    Shug your interpretation of Monckton’s motive for making a Nazi allusion does not turn it into ” not a Nazi allusion”. Monckton has a bad habit of often making Nazi allusions. I realize some people’s vocabularies are limited making them unable to think of more specifically descriptive adjectives. If this is the reason Monckton keeps picking such inappropriate adjectives and nouns, maybe he should broaden his vocabulary.

    ..they do not imply ‘Nazi’, they are usually implying ‘propaganda’.

    Oh? Gobellian doesn’t imply “Nazi”?

    I think saying “propaganda” is the most direct way to communicate the idea that something is “propaganda”. In any case, Monckton said “Goebbelian propaganda”; the adjective presumably distinguishes propaganda of the Goebbelian sort from the newsreels footage the Americans made during WWII. The newsreels would constitute our American sort of propaganda. I think the adjective “Goebbelian” is meant to allude to the Nazi, Goebbles

  315. I can, for instance, be guilty of all kinds of fraud in other areas of life, and still be correctly described as a skeptic about the connexion of cholesterol levels with heart disease. I can live in the Hebrides, or Barcelona, it makes no difference. I can be any ethnic group, any height. I can lie about where I was born, how much money I make, how old I am, my educational attainments or marital status, and still be correctly described as a skeptic about the relation between cholesterol and heart disease, if I think that the evidence supports none.
    .
    you got this one wrong. if you are sceptic of AGW, feel free to call yourself a “sceptic of AGW”. but this is not, what “sceptics” are doing.
    .
    they pretend to be free thinkers and sceptics in all fields. and that is simply not true.
    .
    and if you claim to be a sceptic of AGW, but base this on false assumptions about physical properties of CO2, you are not sceptic either. you are a d*******.

  316. I don’t like some of the stuff Google does, or who is on their board of directors either; but they still provide links I can read when I search; that have nothing to do with Google; scientific papers even. Tilo is suggesting you go to C02 science and look a series of links and lists they’ve complied to get you to read published papers about the MWP.
    I am seeing you just don’t want to look. wah wah.
    .
    of course, you are wrong again liza. i have taken much too many looks at co2science already. the site does NOT provide links. neither does it provide the abstracts of the papers. instead co2science relies on “sum ups” of the papers, which (as with the Monckton sum ups) are misrepresenting the article that they are based on. and/or the position of the author of tat article.
    .
    my offer still stands. you provide a couple of real links to co2science articles, and i will check them.
    bring them on.

  317. One can cite a paper to support a conclusion which the original author/s themselves did not reach. It is a thing called ‘original thinking’. You may be ‘wrong’, but not merely because you cited a paper for to your purposes.
    .
    this simply is not what happened. Monckton made a very specific claim: he claims a consensus among scientists, about the MWP being 0.5°C or more warmer than today.
    .
    you cannot find such a consensus, if the scientists tell you, that they do not share this believe.

  318. sod (Comment#45316) June 9th, 2010 at 7:58 am,

    here’s the first link. ( I dug through the garbage for you). How many papers should I/they provide to show a consensus?

    http://idn.ceos.org/portals/Metadata.do?Portal=ceos&KeywordPath=%5BLocation%3A+Location_Category%3D%27CONTINENT%27%2C+Location_Type%3D%27AFRICA%27%2C+Location_Subregion1%3D%27SOUTHERN+AFRICA%27%2C+Location_Subregion2%3D%27SOUTH+AFRICA%27%5D&OrigMetadataNode=GCMD&EntryId=NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2005-034&MetadataView=Full&MetadataType=0&lbnode=mdlb1

    Here’s the same subject and link that was on co2science:
    http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/regions/africa.php\
    Under the papers catagorized “Africa”

    Here’s the main link you could try yourself and it would take you a long time to go through them all:
    http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

    Maybe a consensus exists about the MWP and these people of science who belong to it and had no clue they did except knowing/reading their peers, had no agenda what so ever, no political ideology and didn’t have a clue that they needed a propaganda machine to show “how real” it is.

  321. Sorry Lucia,

    I should have been clearer.

    There is a very interesting debate going on about ‘Natural warming’ on tAV. It’s actually about Roy Spencers recent thread (on his own site and WUWT) on whether or not the late 20th century warming trend can be explained by natural climatic variability (specifcally ocean cycles like the PDO/AMO/SOI/ENSO) or do we need to invoke CO2 as the IPCC has done to explain this ‘unprecedented’ warming trend.

    Poor Eric is taking somewhat of a pasting because at the moment he is somewhat out numbered (plus to be honest he’s not very good at presenting his case). I think this is unfair as any ‘fight’ should be a ‘fair fight’ numbers wise as far as I’m concerned.

    I know some people who post comments on threads here like Zeke, Nick Stokes, sod etc think there is some merit in the IPCC case, so I thought I’d try and even up the numbers a bit by posting a request for support for Eric Steig here. Hope you don’t mind? I’m not trying to steer away traffic from you excellent blog honest!

    In regards to the ‘good Viscount’, I am in full agreement with you that ‘ad homs’ and in particular attempts to slur someones character through ‘guilt by association’ have no place in any rational debate.

  322. Lucia: This type of rhetoric seems to me to be another example of Godwin’s Law albeit without the term Nazi:
    “Unfortunately, we couldn’t deliver at Copenhagen; and if we can’t deliver at Cancun… it will be unfortunate, it will be tragic, it will be a holocaust.”
    Remarks by the incoming head of the UN climate convention ,
    Christiana Figueres .

    Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10276225.stm
    I get tired of holocaust usage. I know a person who went through it. This insults him.

  323. jack mosevich–
    It absolutely does hit the Godwin’s law alarm. Now I have to see if that story is less than 1 month!

  324. Lucia: Whoops: I quoted the wrong person making the statement but you made the correct attribution in you new post. Thanks

  325. here’s the first link. ( I dug through the garbage for you). How many papers should I/they provide to show a consensus?

    http://idn.ceos.org/portals/Me…..node=mdlb1

    Here’s the same subject and link that was on co2science:
    http://www.co2science.org/data…..africa.php\
    Under the papers catagorized “Africa”

    Maybe a consensus exists about the MWP and these people of science who belong to it and had no clue they did except knowing/reading their peers, had no agenda what so ever, no political ideology and didn’t have a clue that they needed a propaganda machine to show “how real” it is.
    .
    nice pick. lead author of the paper is Karin Holmgren.

    .
    with the paper showing temperature 1000 years ago (“MWP”) 2.5°C higher than today, one would assume, that Karin is deep in the sceptic camp.
    .
    but Karin was also a coauthor of Moberg 2005.
    .
    which came to this conclusion:
    .
    We find no evidence for any earlier periods in the last two
    millennia with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period—in
    agreement with previous similar studies1
    .
    http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/MobergEtAl2005.pdf
    .
    so when we would ask her, whether she is part of the “MWP was much warmer than today” consensus, we would expect her to answer with a NO.
    .
    but perhaps , as you claimed in your post, she simply doesn t know that she is part of the consensus. or will you use the usual conspiracy theory?

  326. Oh? Gobellian doesn’t imply “Nazi”?

    Goebbelsian does not automatically imply Nazi.

    We need to be clear about this, especially in the light of invoking Goodwin’s Law.

    Goebbelsian propaganda specifically refers to a few things, amongst which for example is, to carry a vehement attack on your opponents accusing them of attacking you, when it is in fact you who is attacking them.

    This happens frequently in CAGW debates.

    You can step into RealClimate for a taste of this: all you have to do ask a simple question, let us say about the MWP and pretty soon you will facing down accusations of ‘destroying the planet’.

    How can we learn from WWII history if we practice this peculiar form of reductionism whereby discussing any detail about pre-WWII Germany means that you are referring to ‘Nazi’ – which is a bad thing and we do not need to go any further?

    Liza:
    Thanks for your kind words. I have another long story cooking.

  327. KevinUK (Comment#45375)-I, Jeff, and several others have already said that Eric’s point is basically correct. I’ve seen noone that refuted it.

    And you’ll note that I, arch-denier that I am, raised the same point Steig makes in the very first comment on Roy’s original post:

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/06/warming-in-last-50-years-predicted-by-natural-climate-cycles/#comments

    I don’t really think that Steig needs any help from people whose only talent is flinging invective. Nick Stokes’ services are also not necessary as far as I can tell. He’s got skeptics agreeing with his point already.

  328. Andrew_FL

    “I don’t really think that Steig needs any help from people whose only talent is flinging invective.”

    Pray tell! Who exactly are you referring to when you make this statement?

    I disagree with you in regard to Nick Stokes. Sadly from personal experience I have found Nick to be an apologist for Michael Mann and in my book that means he’ll have to try a lot harder before I listen to anything he has to say.

    Having said that I think Nick, Zeke and in particularly Chad (who’s threads on the errors inherent in all the different methods used for ‘anomalising’ temperature measurements e.g. RSM, CAM etc are excellent!) have done some excellent work in constructing their own independent MGST anomaly indices.

    I personally have never doubted that CO2 plays a role in warming our planet (IMO this is the case for the vast majority of CAGW skeptics like myself). And I’ve most definitely never doubted that our planet has warmed over the last 150 years or so. It’s what has the caused the majority of this warming that I’m skeptical about.

    In fact I was surprised to find in the early days of CA when bender conducted a poll that I was close to the top of the list of those who thought CO2 (and other GHG gases – water vapour excepted) has a significant effect on climate (that makes me at least a lukewarmer right?). What I am skeptical of is that it’s effects on climate will be sufficient to cause catastrophic global warming in the future. I believe that the earth will warm as a consequence of our GHG emissions but that the rate of warming and the level of warming (when eventually our GHG emissions level off) will be modest (i.e. it will not be catastrophic and there will be no tipping points) and that the level of warming will be overall beneficial to life on our planet. Again I think this is the opinion of the vast majority of CAGW skeptics like myself.

  329. Lucia, you may want to look at Monckton’s web site now http://climatecooling.blogspot.com/2010/06/preliminary-response-to-john-abraham.html . The “prawn attack” has been removed, and some of the other venomous language. I am going to check to see if the Wayback Engine caught a copy for posterity. Some of the more feral anti-AGW commenters on youtube have now taken to using Monbiot’s response to the prawn quote from Monckton, and the fact that “Monckton never said it” (i.e. it is missing from Monckton’s blog) as “proof” that all people believing in AGW are liars. Another interesting point is that Monckton’s web site now shows a June 10 date on the blog entry. So if you are an AGW lying conspirator, you are one who also owns a time machine, as you commented about Monckton’s 10 June blog entry on June 5!

  330. OK I found that the URL I was using was not the original source (duh!), but found something else interesting, SPPI blocks indexing of its web site, which means no copy of their information is preserved by the Wayback Machine. “We’re sorry, access to http://sppiblog.org/news/a-preliminary-response-to-john-abraham-the-extremists-join-the-climate-debate-at-last-2 has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.” You’d have to think SPPI would be proud to be shown by history to have been making the correct predictions all along (if only those AGW scientists would have listened, we’d all be living in a greenhouse of plenty now!).

    Anyway, it is obvious that we are still dealing with AGW conspirators with time machines that have left in place paradoxes like your comments about a blog entry that does not exist in this timeline.

    Cue closing theme for Doctor Who.

  331. Steig doesn’t need any help. He stated his explanation, it made sense to me, then several people argued completely past his point, misunderstanding and misrepresenting it, and even bringing up the ‘trace gas’ ignorance. As he said in one of his posts, how can you argue with people who aren’t even on the same page.

  332. bugs,

    The important question as always is just exactly which page is the right page and which page is the wrong page. And who ultimately decides which page is the right page and which page is the wrong page? Please don”t say the IPCC or the ‘consensus of scientists’ as there is no place for consensus in real science. How many times in past history as the consensus opinion been shown to be wrong?

    Now surely it’s not quite as black and white as you are making out? There is lots of common ground between ‘warmists’ and ‘skeptics’ and I’d so the size of area of the common ground is getting larger by the day, so there must be situations where both parties are presumably on the same page? I don’t think that just because the opinions of different parties differ, then they should never debate and so try to resolve their differences. No, if debate is quashed or one party refuse to debate with the other until they are both on what each perceives to be ‘the right page’ then there will be NO further progress made in the science.

  333. sod (Comment#45411) June 9th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
    Ugh.

    The first link I provided off site directly to Karin’s African paper is wrong. I copied and pasted the wrong link and it’s some other paper entirely. So I know you didn’t look or read that at all.

    you say:
    “:but Karin was also a coauthor of Moberg 2005.
    .which came to this conclusion:
    .We find no evidence for any earlier periods in the last two
    millennia with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period—in
    agreement with previous similar studies1
    .http://stephenschneider.stanfo…..Al2005.pdf
    .
    so when we would ask her, whether she is part of the “MWP was much warmer than today” consensus, we would expect her to answer with a NO.:”

    You don’t know that that for sure. Depends on the scope. where or what area the study you linked was conducted and what places/proxy/ data they are comparing to each other when they say “similar”. The conclusion you pasted for me doesn’t say. The first paper was one kind of data and one place on the planet-from Africa I believe. I will have to read the paper you linked to see what you are assuming on the fly in your head without looking. Also depends on the dates of the papers too. Maybe Karin changed her mind. Maybe she would say “I don’t know” if we asked her about the MWP being warmer.

    Have to look for a direct link to the first paper again online and also read the paper you linked. I don’t have a lot of time today for that or to argue this but I am pretty sure, since I have to figure this all out myself, your mind is made up (because you certainly don’t want to know for sure; otherwise you would have found all this out before commenting back to me too) (The funny thing here is that to me you are not so different from what you think of co2science as a source of correct/precise unbiased information!)

  335. Re: Indulis Bernsteins (Jun 10 02:50),

    Lucia, you may want to look at Monckton’s web site now http://climatecooling.blogspot…..raham.html . The “prawn attack” has been removed,…

    The prawn attack is still avialable at Pajamas Media. Monckton doesn’t control their web page. I’d be both surprised and disappointed if PJ Media edited published content unless there was very good reason. (I’m trying to imagine what “very good reason” would be, but it’s not “the author later regrets having resorted to arguing by saying ‘those with whom he disagrees look like overcooked prawns’.)

  336. Re: Indulis Bernsteins (Jun 10 02:50),

    Another interesting point is that Monckton’s web site now shows a June 10 date on the blog entry.

    It seems to say June 7 today. Maybe on reading the criticism, he edited the PJ media article before posting it at his blogspot blog ?

    Anyway, if you need proof he said it, link back to the PJ media article, which may be the first appearance.

  337. It is interesting to compare the two versions, the “Pajamas Media” one and the “Global cooling” one.

    ” Goebbelian propaganda ” has gone
    “Bible college” has become “college”
    “nasal and irritatingly matey tone” has gone
    the “overcooked prawn” has gone
    “snake-like” has gone
    “Daily Kommissar” has become “Guardian”
    “puir wee Moonbat ” has become “Monbiot”

    Though I’m glad to see the correct English use of ‘lecturer’ remains 🙂

    It seems a reasonable supposition that his blog post on June 7 was influenced by Lucia’s comments here on June 5.

    I only listened to the first 8 minutes of Abraham’s tedious rambling, waiting patiently for the first ‘rebuttal’, which turned out to be a blatant misrepresentation of what Monckton had said about sea-level rise, confusing total rise with ice-melt-driven rise.

  338. PaulM

    I only listened to the first 8 minutes of Abraham’s tedious rambling, waiting patiently for the first ‘rebuttal’, which turned out to be a blatant misrepresentation of what Monckton had said about sea-level rise, confusing total rise with ice-melt-driven rise.

    I can understand why you listned to only the first 8 minutes.

    As I said before, adjudicating is difficult because
    a) a person has to watch the Abraham video until we get to something that might possibly be a major point of fact,
    b) then find the video of the Monckton presentation oneself
    c) then one has to find the portion of the video where Monckton makes the claim Abraham is rebutting.

    None of this is easy.

    I have not found a link to any video at Abraham’s page which links Abraham’s presentation : http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/jpabraham/ I don’t any link to the materials showing presentation Abraham’s was working from. I also can’t quickly find it in the 83 minute presentation (though maybe it’s there somewhere.)

    Even if Abraham doesn’t ordinarily cite youtube videos, failing to cite the video has to be some sort of citational-lapse.

    Also, in some fields, citation encourages giving page numbers for journal articles and even the specific page in a book where one might find things. Given the number of times Abraham complains about Monckton’s poor citing practices, it might have been nice if Abraham told the reader the minute stamp on the youtube video where we could find what Monckton said.)

    Mind you, relative to substance, complaining about citation is nit-picky. But if Abrahams was going to spend a lot of time complaining about Monckton’s citational deficiencies, it might have been useful for him to make it easy for viewers to find the actual presentation he was critiquing!

    On Monckton’s part, it might have been wise for him to just say he was going to respond to the first 10 minutes, and then show why those first 10 minutes weren’t quite right. He could have then said that in his opinion, the remaining 73 minutes were similar.

    But, of course, Monckton didn’t do that. He had to go on about Abraham looking like a prawn and complain about the guys mid-western accent!

  339. You don’t know that that for sure. Depends on the scope. where or what area the study you linked was conducted and what places/proxy/ data they are comparing to each other when they say “similar”. The conclusion you pasted for me doesn’t say. The first paper was one kind of data and one place on the planet-from Africa I believe. I will have to read the paper you linked to see what you are assuming on the fly in your head without looking. Also depends on the dates of the papers too. Maybe Karin changed her mind. Maybe she would say “I don’t know” if we asked her about the MWP being warmer.
    .
    you link again: ( the paper is from 2001)
    .
    http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_coldaircave.php
    .
    my link again: (the paper is from 2005)
    .
    http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/MobergEtAl2005.pdf
    .
    and the quote again: (page 617)
    .
    We find no evidence for any earlier periods in the last two
    millennia with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period—in
    agreement with previous similar studies
    .
    ther is absolutely no doubt, that the lead author of the paper you cited is NOT a member of the “MWP was 0.5°C warmer than today” “consensus”.
    .
    her own words contradict that claim.
    .
    but even if she would say “i don t know”, or if she believes that south afrika might have been warmer at that time, it wouldn t make her part of the Monckton consensus.
    .
    your very first paper completely failed to deliver. but i am not surprised. your source was co2science, which, as i pointed out above, is a horrible source.
    .
    (The funny thing here is that to me you are not so different from what you think of co2science as a source of correct/precise unbiased information!)
    .
    you provided a link to a paper from co2science, which you thought supports the false Monckton consensus. i could show you, that the lead author of that paper has published stuff, that contradicts the false claim made by Monckton.
    .
    somehow you seem to think, that the fact that i showed that you were wrong, proves that i am not open minded. that is plain out stupid.

  340. Even if Abraham doesn’t ordinarily cite youtube videos, failing to cite the video has to be some sort of citational-lapse.

    Also, in some fields, citation encourages giving page numbers for journal articles and even the specific page in a book where one might find things. Given the number of times Abraham complains about Monckton’s poor citing practices, it might have been nice if Abraham told the reader the minute stamp on the youtube video where we could find what Monckton said.)
    .
    Abraham does offer to send the Monckton video. and he mentions a time stamp for the first claim (27 minutes into the video). he also explains how he cites and numbers the Monckto slides. (all of this is on page 7, starting about 15 secs into that slide)
    .
    i think he did a pretty perfect job.
    .
    here is the Monckton video:
    .
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stij8sUybx0
    .
    here are the slides:
    .
    http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/monckton_2009.pdf

  341. “somehow you seem to think, that the fact that i showed that you were wrong, proves that i am not open minded. that is plain out stupid.”

    I wasn’t trying to show anything but your stubbornness and bias. Which I did because I was trying to get you to look at the papers themselves off the co2 website which you did not do!! I had the wrong link and you didn’t even notice.

    That paper of hers is also used to graph the temperatures for the Little Ice Age all over the place too, including the wikipedia page for the Little Ice Age. I bet you don’t object to that part of the data or the graph.

    How I feel about the MWP and how silly I think AGW believers are about what they think or feel about the MWP is easy. YOU ARE STILL ARGUING OVER FRACTIONS OF A DEGREE WITH DATA THAT IS QUESTIONABLE ON BOTH SIDES. So in my mind the difference is NADA. It was warm then too, warmer then the LIA, just like now; all by itself.

    I don’t use or need C02 science to find sources for papers on the MWP either and I kick myself for trying to even speak to a butt head like you about anything. Its not worth it.

  342. http://home.arcor.de/gheiss/Personal/Abstracts/SAJS2000_Abstr.html
    The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming in South Africa

    P. D. Tyson1, W. Karlén2, K. Holmgren2 and G. A. Heiss3.
    1Climatology Research Group, University of the Witwatersrand
    2Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University

    Abstract
    The Little Ice Age, from around 1300 to 1800, and medieval warming, from before 1000 to around 1300 in South Africa, are shown to be distinctive features of the regional climate of the last millennium. The proxy climate record has been constituted from oxygen and carbon isotope and colour density data obtained from a well-dated stalagmite derived from Cold Air Cave in the Makapansgat Valley.
    The climate of the interior of South Africa was around 1oC cooler in the Little Ice Age and may have been over 3°C higher than at present during the extremes of the medieval warm period. It was variable throughout the millennium, but considerably more so during the warming of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Extreme events in the record show distinct teleconnections with similar events in other parts of the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The lowest temperature events recorded during the Little Ice Age in South Africa are shown to be coeval with the Maunder and Sporer Minima in solar irradiance. The medieval warming is shown to have been coincided with the cosmogenic 10Be and 14C isotopic maxima recorded in tree rings elsewhere in the world during the Medieval Maximum in solar radiation.”

  343. On Monckton’s part, it might have been wise for him to just say he was going to respond to the first 10 minutes, and then show why those first 10 minutes weren’t quite right. He could have then said that in his opinion, the remaining 73 minutes were similar.

    Lucia- I don’t think that this would be any sort of rebuttal by Monckton. If you don’t agree, turn it around- if Abrahams had just demolished only the first 10 minutes of Monckton’s speech, and then said “in my opinion the remaining minutes were similar” then the anti-AGW people would have been screaming about how this was not a rebuttal.

    In fact, the interesting information in Abraham’s presentation is where he takes the citations used by Monckton supporting Monckton’s arguments, and contacts the original authors, or shows the quotes used by Monckton in context in the original paper. In all cases the scientists whose papers are quoted by Monckton say that the data/science/conclusions have been misprepresented by Monckton.

    So, it is irrelevant if Abrahams is a University Professor, an investigative reporter, or a lawyer, or a blogger who did the hard work of investigating the references used by Monckton in this talk, and showing that the information has been misused (you can’t misquote a scientific paper to make it seem as if it is saying the opposite of what is actually written & concluded, and in this case the original authors confirmed in writing that Monckton was wrong). Most of the major foundation stones of Monckton’s lecture (and beliefs) have been demolished. The result of Abraham’s investigation is a a significant reduction in Monckton’s credibility- one mistake can be a mistake, two might be sloppiness, but a dozen or more? Does this sound like deliberate deception? Viscount-gate, anyone?

    And for those people who “can’t be bothered listening to more than 8 minutes” of the rebuttal, this is a clear indicator of a lack of an open and sceptical mind- the quality most often bragged about by anti-AGW people as being something they possess.

  344. Sod–
    First– have you found a video that actually shows slides along with Monckton’s talk? Because the one you showed does not. This is where Abraham telling readers the precise one he was using might help us all out.

    I hunted a bit more and found this with viewgraphs:

    The viewgraph about sea level is at minute 25:45 which differs a bit from the time stamp Abraham gave. I found it– but I needed to rewind a bit. I had to rewind even further to find the discussion associated with the video. (This is where Abraham providing a link could help readers verify what Abraham says about Monckton’s talk.)

    In the narrative Monckton says Gore says “the melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are going to raise sea level by 20 feet imminently” and then continues. Monckton then points out that no one is predicting this sort of rise happening “imminently or even this century. In fact, few are predicting 20 ft. happening imminently. He repeats the issue of “imminently” many times– so this clearly has something to do with the point he is trying to make about Gore’s presentation.

    Now, let’s turn to slide 7 of of Abraham: http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

    Interestingly, Abraham does not actually engage what Monckton said. He ignores the entire notion of “imminently” and also ignores the fact that Monckton is clearly discussing what people think is likely not the possible, but thought unlikely upper bound.

    Abraham explains to readers that the number 20ft is not a number that appears nowhere. He finds it in a portion of the IPCC that discussed the upside uncertainty. Some might interpret the number as as the result of some sort of bounding calculation and not intended to convey anything anyone considers probable.

    Discussion of the upside uncertainty coming from a bounding calculation does not turn the upside uncertainty does not turn 20 ft into the IPCC view of what is likely to happen in the next century.

    And if Monckton’s point is that Gore lies by hunting for the most alarming possible numbers in the report and presenting those as what scientists expect to happen anytime soon– maybe Monckton is right. Or maybe he’s not.

    But this much is true: Abraham does not rebut that point– and it appears to be the point Moncton made.

    Mind you, one could criticise what Monckton actually said or meant. One could also point out that Mocktons numbers are just as fishy as Gores. But that’s not the path Abraham took.

    This is where we have a problem with dueling videos, and also where the fact that Abraham leaves it to the reader to either contact him to obtain the video or dig it up for themselves.

    You, sod, may think Abraham’s practice was perfect, but I think it shares some of Monckton’s lapses. (That is, if they are lapses. It’s not at all clear to me that scholarly citations standard apply to youtube video presentations. I just happen to think that either the standards apply to both men or neither. We can’t say that Monckton is required to follow them but Abraham is not.)

  345. Re: Indulis Bernsteins (Jun 10 10:13),

    Lucia- I don’t think that this would be any sort of rebuttal by Monckton. If you don’t agree, turn it around- if Abrahams had just demolished only the first 10 minutes of Monckton’s speech, and then said “in my opinion the remaining minutes were similar” then the anti-AGW people would have been screaming about how this was not a rebuttal.

    Of course they would have said it’s not a full rebuttal. What Monckton posted is also not a full rebuttal. If full rebuttal means “rebutt every single sentence uttered”, no one ever presents a full rebuttal of anything anywhere. Why would full rebuttal be required of either Monckton or Abraham?

    In reality, it is often better to edit any rebuttal to cover the more important points. If the person rebutted wants to respond with “Well, you got me there. But there are no grammar errors, and I have a nicer accent, so there!”, let them. If they want to bring up their weakest point and say you didn’t rebutt those points, you can wait until they do so, and then respond to those points.

    And for those people who “can’t be bothered listening to more than 8 minutes” of the rebuttal, this is a clear indicator of a lack of an open and sceptical mind- the quality most often bragged about by anti-AGW people as being something they possess.

    Oh? First: people — including scholars–often read the beginning of papers and stop if they discover the argument contained within is drivel. In fact, teachers and academics would often advise students to not waste time delving deeply into stuff that shows signs of being not particular useful when first viewed. To do otherwise robs people of time to invest in more fruitful pursuits.

    People may, of course, misjudge and miss stuff worth reading– but that doesn’t make useful time-management skills proof of lack of curiosity.

    Second: Are all those who are decreeing Abraham’s rebuttal masterful listening to the whole thing, hunting down Monckton’s hour + some minutes talk, and checking whether the statements Abraham makes actually match the claims Monckton made?

    In some of the early slides, Abraham either misunderstands or distorts what Monckton claimed and then rebutts something Monckton didn’t actually say. Abraham also spends time on things I consider trivial points (and is himself guilty of some of the sins he attributes to Monckton).

    So, given what we see in the early portion of Abraham’s presentation, I have to ask: in ordinary circumstances, why would someone spend a lot of time watching and waiting to see if the material improves after 8 minutes?

    I continue to think Monckton would have done well discussing the first 8 minutes said the rest was similar. I also think Abraham would have done well to find an objective third party to edit his presentation down to 40 minutes, cutting out at least 2/3rd of the material and adding quotes or audio clips of what Monckton actually said. He also should have given a link to Monckton’s talk on the web.

    Maybe next time Abrahams will do this. Or not. His video does contain lots of useful stuff and maybe someone else will use it as a launching pad to make a better paced video with more explicit citations to Monckton’s stuff and franes the viewgraphs in context of what Monckton actually said. Or not.

    Abraham’s video is a good start. I’m sure he’s not funded– if he were, he’s probably have a paid third party to help him. But the thing was not perfect.

  346. KevinUK (Comment#45463)-The only point I wish to object to of yours:

    “I disagree with you in regard to Nick Stokes. Sadly from personal experience I have found Nick to be an apologist for Michael Mann and in my book that means he’ll have to try a lot harder before I listen to anything he has to say.”

    I said that flinging invective is not Nick’s only talent. Sod, for instance, is basically just an invective machine. You basically agree that Nick has other talents. Back in the day at the CA forums, Nick was sorta my “nemesis” because we often squared off over his tendency to make statements I disagreed with, particularly where he tended to over-generalize and simplify matters. I nevertheless came away with the impression that he was a lot smarter than most pro-AGW commentators I’ve had the misfortune to argue with. He was often frustrating, but I didn’t feel like I had to lose IQ points by talking to him.

  347. geez sod, you left out a bunch of text from that conclusion you posted that you suggested “trumps” all else…
    sheesh and I took your word for it.

    We find no evidence for any earlier periods in the last two
    millennia with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period—in
    agreement with previous similar studies…

    And the part you left out goes on:

    The main implication of our study, however, is that natural multicentennial climate variability may be larger than commonly thought…etc etc etc.

  348. Lucia- why don’t we stick to the parts of Abraham’s rebuttal where he is showing that the scientific references Monckton quotes are taken out of context and misrepresented. I’d like to see an anti-AGW person actually show how Abrahams was wrong.

    I for one do not care what AL Gore said. What I care about is Monckton trotting about telling people that scientists and research are supporting him, when in fact they are doing no such thing!

    For the ordinary person, Monckton disproving “imminent” rises leads to the belief that ANY rise has been disproved. It is the same as the Monckton search for references in scientific papers that predict “imminent catastrophe”, so he can tell the audience “there are no scientific papers talking about an imminent catastrophe due to global warming”, leading them to conclude that scientists think that there will be no catastrophe (they do, but they think it will happen over time, and scientists just don’t write papers called “Big Catastrophe is Coming Soon: The Proof”). This is the language of debate, not science. It is about convincing people using “sleight of tongue” not facts.

    How about an anti-AGW person actually looking at Abraham’s proofs that Monckton misrepresented scientific data. Discussing them one by one, and showing how Abrahams was wrong.

  349. Re: Indulis Bernsteins (Jun 10 11:05),

    Lucia- why don’t we stick to the parts of Abraham’s rebuttal where he is showing that the scientific references Monckton quotes are taken out of context and misrepresented. I’d like to see an anti-AGW person actually show how Abrahams was wrong.

    If you want to pick out the points Abraham made and explain why they are correct that’s fine. That is the way to direct the discussion toward the points you would like to see people engage.

    But, if you are going to suggest that people watching the beginning of the video, assessing the first few minutes and then deciding the quality of argument is not worth there time lack curiosity or a desire to discover the truth, your are suggesting lacks merit. The conversation will go in that direction. When it does, people will point out that even if the parts you think are splendid are splendid, they didn’t watch them.

    This leaves you with the heavy lifting of needing to be proactive and bring up the points in Abraham’s video you consider to be strong. Then, explain that and see where that goes. You really can’t expect others to do the heavy lifting of making your arguments for you. It might have been convenient for you if Abraham’s had edited, but he did not. But, there you are.

    I for one do not care what AL Gore said. What I care about is Monckton trotting about telling people that scientists and research are supporting him, when in fact they are doing no such thing!

    That’s all well and good. But the Monckton’s discussion of sea rise is a criticism of what Al Gore said. Abraham’s criticism of that portion of Monckton’s talk constitutes either the first or one of the first substantive points in Abraham’s rebuttal.

    So, you may not care what Al Gore said, but Monckton has a right to go to Minnesota and make a presentation criticizing what Gore said, and people have a right to listen to him. Moreover, it is germane to the discussion of Abraham’s rebuttal.

    For the ordinary person, Monckton disproving “imminent” rises leads to the belief that ANY rise has been disproved.

    Why do you think that for an ordinary person, Monckton saying “a” means he has proven “b”?

    This is the language of debate, not science. It is about convincing people using “sleight of tongue” not facts.

    Monckton’s discussion is to a large extent levying the same accusation against Gore. Are you allowed to make this point against Monckton but he’s not allowed to make qualitatively similar points? Because I think if there is a rule about making this point, it should be applied equally to you and Monckton.

    How about an anti-AGW person actually looking at Abraham’s proofs that Monckton misrepresented scientific data. Discussing them one by one, and showing how Abrahams was wrong.

    How about you doing the heavy lifting and show what Abraham said was right and actually addresses what Monckton said? That is: take the effort to add what Abraham left out, adding video clips of what Monckton actually said so we can put what Monckton actually said in context of what Abraham said.

    I’m not sure why you don’t get the concept that when the minutes of Abraham give the impression of not being quite fair, people will decide it’s not worth their time to hunt down the context for every remaining snippet. If your desire is to show that the remaining stuff is in context, you are going to have to do the scut work.

  350. All I have to say is that I think Monckton is much smarter than Abraham and Lucia. It seems to me that nobody uses history when talking about global warming. I think everyone agrees that in the time of the dinosaurs there were 7,000ppm of co2 in the atmosphere. It was much hotter and the sea level was higher. Apparently it didn’t matter though because the dinosaurs were not drowning. So all I am saying is that for you people to think we are in trouble at our current rate of emissions is idiotic. Also, if the temperature goes down for several years straight, you can expect a big fat I told you so because this is not a complex argument. Keep up the good work Monckton, millions believe you over these 100 or so clowns that have no life and probably no job which is why they spend all their time imagining the world blowing up because of idiot global warming.

  351. Furthermore Lucia, if your so smart go out and debate Monckton. All of you make like the Peking and duck when the heavy hitter from Britain comes in. Then you sit there and say boo hooo boo hoo! Why doesn’t the public believe us? Because your pussies that have no courage and nothing to say. What if the temperature goes down by as much as you think its going to warm? We don’t talk about that though do we. The temperature can never go down ever again. There is no such thing anymore as summer,spring,winter and fall. There is only climate change.

  352. shooshmon,
    “your pussies” I have 4 big fat pussies and they all resent being called kitty cats.

  354. All I have to say is that I think Monckton is much smarter than Abraham and Lucia.
    .
    you are right of course. if Monckton was not much smarter than lucia, she would be a member of the house of lords, and not Monckton…
    .
    Furthermore Lucia, if your so smart go out and debate Monckton.
    .
    Tim Lambert did debate Monckton recently. Monckton took a big slapping.
    .
    ———————-
    .
    isn t it nice lucia, to have “sceptics” like shooshmon around? it was a great idea to ban the d***** word!

  355. shooshmoon has a point.

    Dont we wimps have something better to whine about – rising sea levels, warmth, getting wet in the rain, species dying off…? Watching the Arctic ice graph worm its way up and down?

    There is a problem here – those of us skeptical of CAGW have to be the first to admit here. This is a mental disease.

  356. Sod,..dude…open your third eye man! (or woman). You’ve been hob-nobbling with the skeptics for long enough now. Get over your Moncktonitis.

  358. How about you doing the heavy lifting and show what Abraham said was right and actually addresses what Monckton said? That is: take the effort to add what Abraham left out, adding video clips of what Monckton actually said so we can put what Monckton actually said in context of what Abraham said.

    Well, one good reason for not doing this is that Abrahams has already done it. If climate change skeptics are not going to watch beyond the first few minutes of a well researched presentation by Abrahams, why would I get a different reception?

    If any anti-AGW person can be bothered, the work is already done, with Monckton’s presentation charts and written quotes being shown, and analysed and rebutted on the next pages of the presentation by Abrahams. How much clearer do you want it?

  359. How about you doing the heavy lifting and show what Abraham said was right and actually addresses what Monckton said? That is: take the effort to add what Abraham left out, adding video clips of what Monckton actually said so we can put what Monckton actually said in context of what Abraham said.

    And if I did this, would anti-AGW people give me any more time than Abrahams? In fact the work has already been done by Abrahams- screenshots of Monckton’s presentation and then then next pages have a rebuttal. It is already there- not the video but the written word.

    I can actually just see the response if I did spend months putting together videos of Monckton’s talks, then the excuse for not accepting that Monckton has distorted the facts would be “well that is just rhetoric, people often exaggerate when they speak publicly”.

  360. How about you doing the heavy lifting and show what Abraham said was right and actually addresses what Monckton said? That is: take the effort to add what Abraham left out, adding video clips of what Monckton actually said so we can put what Monckton actually said in context of what Abraham said.

    Isn’t making a rebuttal to the written quotes in Monckton’s presentation a valid first step- that is, exactly what was done by Abraham? Then an anti-AGW person can do to Abraham’s presentation exactly what Abraham did to Monckton’s presentation, show where Abraham is wrong. But no anti-AGW person can be bothered.

    Cutting in video of Monckton is of little value, when Monckton has clearly put written misrepresentations of the science on his presentation pages. And for those the “heavy lifting” has already been done by John Abraham, with a page from Monckton’s presentation, then the clear and logical rebuttal on the next pages. If you access Abraham’s presentation you can easily skip to the middle or end, look at Monckton’s page, then see Abraham’s reply.

  361. PS sorry for the 2 similar posts- your blog threw a “server error” on the 1st post

  362. Indulis Bernsteins

    And if I did this, would anti-AGW people give me any more time than Abrahams?

    Beats me. Would you do a better job than Abrahams? Are you willing to invest the time to try to do a decent job?

    In fact the work has already been done by Abrahams- screenshots of Monckton’s presentation and then then next pages have a rebuttal.

    Oh? Are you sure the work that you think ought to have been done was actually done by Abraham? I think Abraham tried, but there the presentation contains some obvious flaws. One of the flaws is that in the first portion of his presentation he “rebutts” things Monckton didn’t actually say.

    When people point this flaw out, you at least seem to concede that Abraham didn’t do a particularly good job rebutting. However, you suggest people ought to assume the later arguments in the video are correct.

    Why should anyone who notices the flaws in the beginning of Abraham’s video accept your diagnosis that Abraham’s presented correct, convincing arguments later in his video? Especially since you aren’t willing to explain why they are correct?

    then the excuse for not accepting that Monckton has distorted the facts would be “well that is just rhetoric, people often exaggerate when they speak publicly”.

    Who says that people who are criticizing Abraham or Gore think Monckton doesn’t distort? That Monckton might distorted something doesn’t mean the Abraham and Gore did not distort anything. It is perfectly possible for someone to think all three men distorted. It is also possible for some to refuse to excuse any of the three men for their distortions.

  363. Indulus–
    Yes. I’m also getting the server errors. I don’t know the cause.

    If you access Abraham’s presentation you can easily skip to the middle or end, look at Monckton’s page, then see Abraham’s reply.

    Of course you can look at Abrahams presentation. But if you google to find Moncktons presentation (which Abrahams did not link) and then actually listen to the oral part of Monckton’s presentation, Abraham distorts what Monckton said in at least some instances. This is a problem for Abraham even if Abraham said some things that are correct. It’s a problem for Abraham even if Monckton spins “facts” like towels in a front loading washing machine.

  364. Alarmists top load
    While skeptics fill from the front.
    Why should the spins match?
    =================

  365. OK here is the first example of blatant misrepresentation of facts- Monckton saying Greenland ice is “just fine”
    Drag movie pointer to 1:00:00 for Monckton’s presentation
    You will see him claim “Arctic sea ice is just fine” and the same presentation page as quoted in John Abraham’s talk.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXmJ4jd-8&feature=channel

    Which is talked about in John Abraham’s rebuttal, complete with the authors of the paper quoted by Monckton saying “he is wrong!” (Monckton that is!).
    Go to slide 60 in Abraham’s talk
    http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

    Then come back and tell me how Monckton is not distorting the facts.

    Then we can go to the next example.

    At what point do anti-AGW people admit that Monckton is deliberately distorting and twisting facts, and that no matter how good an orator he is, misrepresenting the work of scientists is not acceptable?

  366. The reason I believe Abrahams on the whole is because I can actually look up the proofs he offers of Monckton’s misrepresentations- the original quote by Monckton, the papers Monckton has misquoted and misprepresented, the other papers which back up Abraham’s views.

    Go to Monckton’s speech, 1:00:00 and you will see Monckton’s claim about “sea ice is fine”.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXmJ4jd-8&feature=channel

    And go to slide 60 in Abraham’s presentation
    http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

  367. So why have I been blocked when using my usual e-mail address?

    The reason I believe Abrahams on the whole is because I can actually look up the proofs he offers of Monckton’s misrepresentations- the original quote by Monckton, the papers Monckton has misquoted and misprepresented, the other papers which back up Abraham’s views.

    Go to Monckton’s speech, 1:00:00 and you will see Monckton’s claim about “sea ice is fine”.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXmJ4jd-8&feature=channel

    And go to slide 60 in Abraham’s presentation
    http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

  368. Indulis– Your 2 comments went to spam. Sorry!
    I fished them out. (If you get blocked, I’ll tell you!)

    The reason I believe Abrahams on the whole.

    I’m not suggesting that you or others can’t believe Abraham on the whole. But you seem to be ignoring the fact that plenty of people think that Abraham and Gore who Monckton criticized in the presentation Abrahams is critiquing also do so to some extent.

    Some people who perceive some mis-representations in Abrahams video will not believe Abraham “on the whole”.

    But when you say this “the papers Monckton has misquoted and misprepresented,” you are over egging the pudding. Sure, Abraham’s presentation makes it appear Monckto did this, but lets look at the example you point to and the Abraham point that immediately followed it. Abraham does not show Monckton misquoting in either case.

    Go to Monckton’s speech, 1:00:00 and you will see Monckton’s claim about “sea ice is fine”.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=channel

    And go to slide 60 in Abraham’s presentation
    http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

    Monckton does say the sea ice is fine. But he doesn’t quote anyone else on this and he doesn’t represent this as being the view of any scientist anywhere.

    What does Monckton does: Monckton looks at data he thinks matters and concludes on his own the sea ice is fine.

    I suspect if he was presented with the graphs showign the long term decline posted by Abraham Monckton would still interpret this as indicating the sea ice is fine (whatever “fine” might mean.)

    But what didn’t Monckton say: He didn’t say the IPCC says the sea ice is fine. He didn’t say Mark Serreze or the people who Abrahams contacted agreed with him. Monckton would probably be the first to admit they don’t. He is saying that this is his own interpretation.

    If you want to say that Abraham’s shows evidence that Monckton’s own interpretation presented as his own interpretation is mistaken or even deluded ok. But Monckton did not mis-represent or misquote anyone.

    Now, let’s look at the greenland ice issue. In October of 2009, Moncton quote a result from a paper published in 2005 giving the sort of citation one often finds on a view graph (i.e. name, year.). Abraham doesn’t say Monckton misquoted the paper.

    What does Abraham actually say: He contacted the author Johannaessen and asked him what he thought. What’s Johannsen reply: In a paper published in 2009 he found iceland lost ice. Abraham calls it very recent. It is very recent. In fact, it was published after Monckton gave his talk.

    Did Monckton mis-represent Johannessens work? Or had he merely failed to read a paper that had not yet been published? And how do you think people who thought Abrahams was spinning in the first 8 minutes are going to react to Abrahams rebuttal seeming to suggest that Monckton is misrepretenting the contents of a 2003 publication because a paper published after Monckton’s presentation shows a different result?

    If this discussion was merely a question of whether we believe that, on the balance, Greenland ice is melting or not, the fact that more recent work shows melting is the important point. But if we are assessing whether or not we believe Abraham’s is being entirely straightforward, the fact that Abraham is presenting this specific bit as evidence Monckton mischaracterized Johanssen’s existing publication will weigh heavily in some people’s minds.

    The fact is, many people can distrust Monckton. My thinking is that if Monckton said the sky is blue, I would look up to check. But that doesn’t mean that Abraham isn’t also sprinkling some distortions into his argument.

  369. Shub and Sod are phonies. You people say you care about all this stuff but your full of yourselves. Your both so concerned about the artic that your using a computer that is probably running on electricity from coal. Oh well, not one person here can dispute that we do not have very much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, compared to what we have had throughout history. Some people say that 580ppm is a tipping point, you have no way of testing this. Furthermore, it takes 5yrs to add 1 molecule of co2 to 100,000 parts of atmosphere, this all anybody needs to know. The Sahara Desert was once a tropical rainforest, what the hell happened there? Ohhh it was climate change! Oh my! There is a giant ball cloud of co2 forming over the artic and the ice is going to melt next week! What a joke.What happened with the ozone layer, I thought it was going to disappear. Oops that was a lie. Coal ran out in 1985? Fat lie again. How about we stop companies from polluting water. No, instead lets prop up the scheme cooked up by Enron and BP to tax carbon. I can’t believe any of you call yourselves environmentalists and endorse a plan made by a company that was scamming people.

  370. I would love to use the tip jar Lucia if you guarantee that all proceeds will be donated to Lord Monckton.

  371. Shooshmon– If you want to give Monckton tips, why don’t you just approach him and ask if he takes donations directly? That’s no skin off my nose.

  373. “lucia (Comment#45526)-Even if it’s meant in a complimentary sense? Because I can’t believe they had to bleep that. It would have been such a nice moment.”

    [thumbup]When the d*****rs are getting me down, I’ll put a fag between my lips, and think of you.

  374. Sorry Shub, I thought you meant denying global warming is a mental disease. I don’t know anybody who thinks pollution is a good thing. But now we do not even talk about pollution, we talk about giant storm clouds of co2. And posts like “2010 May Hottest on Record” are totally misleading. How long is the record, since 1979? Oh boy, that really tells us a lot. The headline should be “2010 May Hottest we know of in .000000001% of earth’s history”. It was warmer in 1994 so oh no! It was like .02 warmer this May! OH NO! Honestly, do people care about anything else regarding the environment? There is a big trash pile in the ocean and nobody cares about it whatsoever. And look what people like Lucia are doing. They are trying to make a case that today’s temperatures are too high when they have no basis for making such a claim. Well, they say, it was a lower temperature in 199? whenever. So what. And they desperately try to say that the medieval warm period did not exist or was not as warm as today. It is a big scam

  375. shooshmon (Comment#45593) June 11th, 2010 at 10:50 am

    Shub and Sod are phonies. You people say you care about all this stuff but your full of yourselves. Your both so concerned about the artic that your using a computer that is probably running on electricity from coal. Oh well, not one person here can dispute that we do not have very much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, compared to what we have had throughout history. Some people say that 580ppm is a tipping point, you have no way of testing this. Furthermore, it takes 5yrs to add 1 molecule of co2 to 100,000 parts of atmosphere, this all anybody needs to know. The Sahara Desert was once a tropical rainforest, what the hell happened there? Ohhh it was climate change! Oh my! There is a giant ball cloud of co2 forming over the artic and the ice is going to melt next week! What a joke.What happened with the ozone layer, I thought it was going to disappear. Oops that was a lie. Coal ran out in 1985? Fat lie again. How about we stop companies from polluting water. No, instead lets prop up the scheme cooked up by Enron and BP to tax carbon. I can’t believe any of you call yourselves environmentalists and endorse a plan made by a company that was scamming people.

    .
    wow, that post is quite an achievement. so many errors, in such little space! just wow. basically every single point you made in that post, is utterly and completely false. and every person with a working brain knows that.
    .
    Sorry Shub, I thought you meant denying global warming is a mental disease. I don’t know anybody who thinks pollution is a good thing. But now we do not even talk about pollution, we talk about giant storm clouds of co2. And posts like “2010 May Hottest on Record” are totally misleading. How long is the record, since 1979? Oh boy, that really tells us a lot. The headline should be “2010 May Hottest we know of in .000000001% of earth’s history”. It was warmer in 1994 so oh no! It was like .02 warmer this May! OH NO! Honestly, do people care about anything else regarding the environment? There is a big trash pile in the ocean and nobody cares about it whatsoever. And look what people like Lucia are doing. They are trying to make a case that today’s temperatures are too high when they have no basis for making such a claim. Well, they say, it was a lower temperature in 199? whenever. So what. And they desperately try to say that the medieval warm period did not exist or was not as warm as today. It is a big scam
    .
    i am impressed again. this post is even more stupid. ah, and finally the conspiracy theory. pure gold. .
    –
    ps: congrats again, for banning the d… word, lucia. it must be great, to deal with sceptics like shoosh!

  376. What does Abraham actually say: He contacted the author Johannaessen and asked him what he thought. What’s Johannsen reply: In a paper published in 2009 he found iceland lost ice. Abraham calls it very recent. It is very recent. In fact, it was published after Monckton gave his talk.”

    I think (and I will have to go back and verify this) that the 2005 paper is actually quoted by Monckton, and says something different to his interpretation of that paper- that it actually talks about high altitude ice, which is misinterpreted by Monckton and “spun” to say something else. Representing something to an audience using your interpretation, without informing the audience that the originally quoted paper/author actually said something diametrically opposed is misleading and incompetent at best, fraud at worst.

    You can’t quote a credible source to give yourself credibility, while saying something different to that source!

    The pattern of misrepresenting, misunderstanding, and misquoting is seen throughout Monckton’s presentations. That is what John Abraham exposed.

  377. Indulis–

    I think (and I will have to go back and verify this) that the 2005

    Do go back and check. It’s tedious, but that’s what I did.

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