Irony Collapses After Desperate Sprint to Not Get Lapped

Thin skinned anti-science idiot Chrisopher Monckton has a big sad that a bunch of actually smart people called out his errant nonsense as nonsense so he's naturally doing what real intellectuals do when their ideas are challenged:  Defend them, I mean complain to authorities and try to have the critics fired:

In a letter to Victoria University vice-chancellor Pat Walsh, the British aristocrat claimed the professors had been dishonest and brought the university into disrepute.

He claimed professors James Renwick and David Frame, both accomplished climate scientists, had insulted him in the media by calling his views harmful with no scientific basis.

 The mot-de-juste comes not from the scientists (who are happily not concerned about ramifications from this) but Monckton himself:

"In saying I have 'no training' he [Professor Renwick] has lied. I have a Cambridge degree in classical architecture."

I'm sure there were important lessons about atmospheric chemistry and radiative forcing in learning about the Collesium.

This is your hero, cliamate deniars.  Aren't you tired of being on the same side as such an egregious moron?  There's a cure for that, accept reality and stop pulling for the wrong team.  Your grand kids may thank you (if we actually avoid the calamity that will come if we don't act, if not, I hope you have some compelling lies planned to explain why their world is a shithole.  Saying you hated Al Gore, David Suzuki and enviro hippies isn't probably going to explain it to their satisfaction).

 

New Zealand Sets the Gold Standard For Monckton Journalism

This is how every article about one of Christopher Monckton's revivalist evangelical bamboozlement roadshow sessions should go:

Lord Monckton, who once argued for the quarantine of AIDS patients in internment camp-like facilities, is a vocal leader of the climate change-denying movement. 

In Copenhagen in 2009, the member of the right-wing anti-European UK Independence Party (UKIP) caused fury when he called young climate activists, 'Hitler Youth'. 

In 2011, he was forced to apologise after comparing Australia's chief climate adviser Ross Garnaut to a Nazi. 

Lord Monckton, 61, has no scientific training, having studied classics and journalism. He has toured the world trying to convince people that climate change is being exaggerated.

Awesome.  You don't have to embellish anything, just describe the man's actual record and it's transparently obvious not only should you not take his climate views seriously, you wouldn't even buy a used car from the guy.

Why Argue With Climate Change Deniers?

Recently on Twitter I engaged first the execrable Ezra Levant who had retweeted some obvious climate change denialist trolling to #cdnpoli (apparently the fact that it is cold at the coldest place on Earth in March is somehow proof that climate change is a lie) and later another persistent climate denier going off their current favourite talking point about how climate change has supposedly stopped for X years (X can be various things, but typically 14 or 15 years).  Two different climate realists asked why I even bother replying to these people, as it is clear that I'm not going to persuade hardened climate change denier ideologues just by posting the real science that they're so busy trying to confuse people about.

And they're not wrong: In the first case the person who had originally provided the oh-so-useful information about Antarctica being cold took quite ill to my calling it out as denialism (he has since deleted his sputtering rage-tweets), and proceeded to block me (Ezra Levant of course didn't reply).  The second played a frequent denialist tactic of changing the subject and refusing to ever get pinned down on their now revealed erroneous claims.  Classic textbook sophistry for anyone trying to muddle a debate.

So why even debate these people?  Is it just "someone-wrong-on-the-internet" egoism?

No, it has to do with my theory of change about Global Warming and understanding that the debate isn't about the direct participants, but about the passive audience.

Climate Beliefs Are Not Binary

The most important thing to realize is that a person's beliefs about climate change are not black or white.  You are not forced to choose between Al Gore and Christopher Monckton "extremes."  I had long understood there were a range of beliefs and recently came across (via Bill Moyers) some good empirical work by a Yale professor named Antohny Leiserowitz who leads a project on communicating climate science devised a taxonomy of six groups based on opinion research of Americans.  Here's what they found with the percentages as of fall 2012 (my chart using their categories):

The hardened human induced climate change denying activists I'm debating are of course in the 8% segment at the top.  It is of course very doubtful anything is going to move them from "dismissive" to "alarmed."  But what about the other 92% of the people?  Where are they?  They can easily move between "doubtful" and "disengaged" or from "concerned" to "cautious" depending on the news and information they receive.  Which category they're in has important public policy impacts on our ability to get government to act decisively on addressing the climate crisis.  For example here's a few of their findings on the beliefs of these subgroups:

• In five of the six segments, larger proportions prefer to reduce, rather than increase fossil fuel use; only the Dismissive prefer to increase the nation’s use of fossil fuels.
• In every segment except the Dismissive, half or more favor the elimination of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and oppose the elimination of subsidies to renewable energy companies.
• Majorities of the Alarmed, Concerned and Cautious – comprising 70 percent of the U.S. population – say the U.S. should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other nations do.

There are many other interesting break-downs like this where particular ameliorative policies that would at least slow the harm of our current climate trajectory become tolerated or even supported at supermajority levels within the United States, probably the nation subject to the worst climate denial propaganda and the least amount of accurate climate science interpretation.  We don't have to get to 100% in the alarmed group to get things done here, moving a few percentage of people from disengaged to cautious can make a difference in how they react to say, a carbon pricing policy proposal or the building of a giant new pipeline to more efficiently burn the world's second dirtiest oil (US DOE).  

Moderates Are Usually The Least Informed

All of this is concurrent with other political science research which shows that "moderates" on issues tend to be the least informed and engaged, so as a heuristic in the absence of well thought out opinions on the subject they opt for some kind of "middle of the road" approach.  These people, particularly in the middle two categories are persuadable.  If all they see when they're browsing twitter or other media is climate denier propaganda, they are more apt to gravitate up the scale above.  If they see climate denialism being aggressively and persuasively rebutted, they will at least go no higher and may drop down a category or two. 

Now there are still other problems to solve in acting on climate change, particularly in the US where hardened minority opinion groups have a death grip ability to veto policy they don't like via the preposterous US Senate, but we certainly aren't going to get action without more people in the alarmed and concerned categories where people are most apt to actually ask their government to take action.  The cautious and disengaged will generally go along with whatever, so moving the doubtful into those categories also serves to weaken the opposition to action.   In Canada, I am fairly convinced that during the 2008 Federal Election, the Conservative ad smear blitz against Stephane Dion's carbon tax proposal was quite effective in mobilizing the disengaged and doubtful into joining with the dismissive in heartily opposing any possible action on the climate that could have any cost for themselves.  You can probably get most people in the "disengaged" category to tell pollsters they think the world is warming and humans are the cause, but that's not enough to let them tolerate risk to their pocketbooks in the societal response.  

This is why we in the alarmed group must keep up the fight.  Who else will?  Even moving the concerned into alarmed is of value because it increases the critical mass of people demanding change.  You don't have to persuade the unpersuadable and irrational, but recognize that leaving them to shout unanswered will lead some to think they must be right since we're all so quiet about their egregious nonsense.

Chrisopher Monckton, Climate Skeptic Hero

This post provides the sources of a series of claims I am making over Twitter.  My main points are two:

1) Christopher Monckton is the leading climate "skeptic" and is held in extremely high regard by climate skeptics.

2) Monckton is singularly unreliable, dishonest, deceitful, preposterous and possibly some kind of compulsive liar or outright sociopath.  If he were some kind of fringe figure in the climate skeptic movement, this might not matter, but given #1, it says a great deal about the credibility of the whole movement that they cannot seem to find anyone more credible and trustworthy to be their leading voice.

This started yesterday when a climate ostrich posted a link to "10 Killer Questions" that Monckton poses to what he calls "climate extremists."  I googled the title of the post and found:

Who is this person who so-called climate skeptics find so enthralling that so many of them repost his every utterance?  Here's the statements I make over twitter, and my sources:

Eg. In 2010, US House Republicans asked Monckton to testify to a congressional commitee as an expert witness. Their only witness. #cdnpoli

First up, Monckton has a BA in Classics and an MA in Journalism. No science formal education. #cdnpoli

Monckton repeatedly falsely claims to be a member of UK House of Lords. The Clerk of that body wrote an open letter denying this. #cdnpoli

Monckton claims to have been Margaret Thatcher's chief science advisor. Members of Thatcher's cabinet have mocked this. #cdnpoli

Monckton did advise Thatcher, but on domestic policy. His thing: privatizing housing, l8r called a failure by a Con party leader #cdnpoli

If Monckton did advise Thatcher on science, she ignored him because she accepted global warming was real and helped found IPCC. #cdnpoli

Thatcher's autobiography never mentions him. She had many advisors, Monckton was not inner circle. #cdnpoli

Monckton chickened out of a debate at Anthony Watts' site (skeptic central) on climate science with Peter Hadfield. #cdnpoli

Monckton is a "birther", claiming Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake. #cdnpoli

Monckton claims repeatedly to have invented a drug that cures HIV, MS, Malaria, Grave's disease, the Flu and the Common cold. #cdnpoli

Re: Nobel prizes, Monckton claims to have one too. Called on it, says he was joking, but still claims it in skeptic venues. #cdnpoli

Monckton accused NASA of purposely crashing a climate satellite to suppress data undermining climate science #cdnpoli

Monckton says he advised Thatcher to use biological weapons against the Argintinians in the Falklands war. #cdnpoli

Monckton further claims, without evidence, that Thatcher actually did use biological weapons. #cdnpoli

Monckton infamously argued in 1987 that people with AIDS should be interned for life in camps. #cdnpoli

Monckton also argued that the governments should institute mandatory monthly tests for HIV/AIDS for everyone. #cdnpoli

Despite his own fascism and advocacy of WMDs, Monckton delights in calling climate realists things like "Hitler Youth."  #cdnpoli

Monckton travels around with his bizarro skeptic version of Gore's slideshow. A climatologist tore it apart in detail: http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/ #cdnpoli

Monckton tried to have that scientist fired. #cdnpoli

I expect climate deniers would be inclined to reply with something about Al Gore, his big houses, plane flying or the money he makes from his green business interests.  Ok.  I have previously compared Gore and Monckton's relative credibility and even if you think Gore is an unworthy spokesperson for climate reality and action, he is nowhere near Monckton's league of duplicity and farce.

Climate Change having "Natural Causes" is Far More Alarming

It strikes me that the set of climate deniers who say "yes the earth is warming, but it is natural causes not human behaviour" think somehow this is a sufficient and comforting explantion.  Actually it would be a far far more alarming explantion for the phenomena if one considers it rationally:

• First off it means the world's collected climate experts know absolutely nothing about what could actually be causing this, since they have looked into every possible natural cause they can think of, and found no evidence to support any of them as driving the observed climate change.  No one should ever think smugly that science knows everything there is to know about something, but the idea that a major climate driver could elude human understanding means we are missing something huge, and it's hard to view that with any kind of aplomb.  This kind of scientific gap in our understanding of the world would almost certainly have to be much larger than climatology, it would likely be some form of physics or chemistry of which we have not even a theory to account for.  What mystery energy source could be injecting or retaining additional energy into the climate? 
• Secondly and tied to the first, if we have no idea what is warming the planet, it means we have no possible way of knowing how bad this problem will get, how fast, and whether there is any possible way to stop it.  At least we know if we are causing global warming with our emissions, we can stop adding to the problem by reducing emissions, and maybe even solve the problem if we can find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere (or in extremis, treat the more catastrophic symptoms through some kind of risky geoengineering scheme).  Will it warm 1 degree per decade?  10 degrees?  Maybe the Earth will actually end up like Venus, completely uninhabitable. Even geoengineer schemes, as suspect as they already are would be doubly dubious in an environment where we didn't actually understand the causes of climate change. 
• Last, and I've made this point before, but a naturally warming planet is still something we need to deal with and prepare for.  Sea walls don't build themselves.  Coastal settlements still need to move inland.  Agricultural land suitable for growing food under new climate norms will still need to be located, and prepared for growing food, water supplies for areas destined to become especially arid must be located or those communities moved.  All of this is expensive, and you either invest up front and ameliorate some of the effects, or you pay through the nose to recover from various disasters. 

None of this should reflect any doubt on my part about the veracity of the science telling us that human greenhouse gas emissions are the overwhelming cause of global warming.  But it is more a statement on the irrationality of this particular (and in my experience, now most common) denialist position.  If you really do believe "natural causes" are the reason for warming you should be a major advocate for huge additional resources for science to get to the bottom of the actual causal mechanisms, and for money being spent to prepare for the predictable effects of such warming.

And no, you can't rely on some airy fairy idea of "natural cycles" - wheels turn until they break.  Mars was once warm enough to have liquid water on it.  Something about its climate cycle 'broke' and now it is far too cold for that (and its atmosphere too thin, as well).  The Earth was not always a place that life as we know it could survive.  It had vastly different atmospheric compositions, temperature ranges and so forth.  Think we could survive an atmosphere that was half as thick?  Or twice as thick?  Or with half the oxygen?  Or twice as much?  

You needn't be surprised that I have yet to see any climate change deniers of this sort make such calls.  Somehow the mystery source of knowledge they have (I believe they sit on it) also tells them that the warming will be modest and slow and adaptation is no problem.  But if you don't actually know what is causing the warming, you can't really have that assurance. The past 10,000 years or so have seen a climate pretty well suited to humans.  There is no reason to think that must continue.  A giant asteroid on course to hit earth would be "natural" too, but in no way would that obliviate any need to do anything about the problem.

Denier Evidence of the Global Cooling Consensus Proves No Such Consensus

A climate denier in the comments to an article linked me to this.  It's a PDF scan of the original infamous April 1975 cover story in Newsweek magazine that talked about "global cooling."  For many years now this has been a go-to argument of climate deniers, to show that climate scientists don't have a clue, they thought it was cooling the 70s, now they say it's warming, how can we trust them?

So I read it, I'd never read the actual piece.  Here's the best part.  It includes a quote from a 1970s report by the esteemed US National Academy of Sciences on the phenomenon:

"Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climate change is at least as fragmentary as our data.  Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."

This is their global cooling "scientific consensus"?  What a sad bunch of liars climate deniers are.  No wonder they're taken in by preposterous charlatans like Viscount Monckton.  These people have absolutely no ability to discern reality from fantasy.  Even the very proof they offer of this inherently stupid and irrelvant claim (it wouldn't matter if there was a global cooling consensus in the 70s, reality is what it is, and being wrong in the past doesn't make you wrong today, not to mention almost none of the climatologists active today were working in the field, or even alive back in 1975) disproves the very basis of it.  The NAS said we didn't know enough to act, and more study was needed.  That's what happened.  Now what does the NAS say?  Well here's a 2009 joint statement issued by the National Academies of 13 nations including the G8:

"Climate change and sustainable energy supply are crucial challenges for the future of humanity. It is essential that world leaders agree on the emission reductions needed to combat negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change."

That's your global scientific consensus.

Gore Versus Monckton

In a recent post on climate deniers, one showed up in the comments.  I made a comment about Monckton's status as a leader of the climate denier movement, and how any group that would take him seriously cannot be taken seriously.  In reply, the anonymous denier threw a comment about Al Gore at me.  It occurred to me that the two have more in common than merely being the most prominent spokespeople for their viewpoints, but that Monckton is actually a kind of bizarro-Al Gore, a goatee universe evil version of him.  Usually, climate realists shy away from embracing Gore since he's not an actual climate scientist, and of course he's a politician with plenty of legitimate baggage, but really, if deniers want a side by side comparison, I'm game, let's play:

Christopher Monckton	Albert Gore Jr.
(source: Wiki Commons)	(source: Wiki Commons)
Legislative Experience:
None.  Repeated claims to be a member of the upper chamber of the UK legislature.  The Clerk of the House of Lords published an open letter stating explicitly he is not and never was. Defeated four times in running for election to the House of Lords, receiving zero votes each time (he didn’t even vote for himself!). Ran for election to the Scottish Parliament, not elected.	Actually was a member of the upper chamber of the US legislature, the Senate.  Elected by the voters of Tennessee, twice.  Also elected to the US House of Representatives numerous times.
Executive Branch Experience:
Member of Margaret Thatcher’s policy advisory team.  Claims to have advised the PM on science and climate change.  Thatcher’s autobiography never mentions him, and names someone else as her science advisor.  Thatcher’s Environment minister calls him a “bag carrier” and the idea that he advised Thatcher on climate policy “laughable.”	Twice elected Vice-President of the United States with President Bill Clinton.  Noted for his especially strong relationship with Clinton, described as his “indisputable chief advisor.”  Described by Clinton as “the most powerful Vice-President in history.”  Promoted information technology extensively in the Executive branch, and across the US economy. Won the 2000 Presidential election popular vote, lost in the Electoral College.
Policy Effects on Head of Government:
Margaret Thatcher famously surprised the UN with a 1989 speech calling for action on climate change.  Thatcher, with an actual science education evidently did not take Monckton’s dubiously claimed advice on the subject. Thatcher’s government did implement Monckton’s social housing privatization ideas, which now even prominent UK Conservatives regard as having failed.	At Gore's urging, Bill Clinton signed the domestically unpopular Kyoto treaty even though ratification in the Senate was impossible.  While the US did not implement Kyoto, it did achieve full ratification and remains the only formalized global greenhouse gas emissions reduction treaty.
Education:
B.A. , M.A. in Classics from Cambridge Diploma in Journalism studies from University College, Cardiff.	B.A. in Government from Harvard. Studied Law (incomplete, left to run for Congress)
Remarkable claims:
Curing Grave’s Disease Also claims the treatment is effective against influenza, Multiple Sclerosis and Herpes. No evidence of these claims has ever been supplied. Accused NASA of crashing a weather satellite on purpose so to suppress data that would refute climate science. Is apparently an Obama-born-in-Hawaii denier too.	“I took the initiative in creating the Internet” He did say the words once in an interview, but clearly was speaking about the multiple legislative efforts he started, supported and lobbied to fund research, investment into multiple areas of information technology.  Newt Gingrich admits of all members of Congress Gore “most systemically” worked to support the technology that would become the internet.  A multitude of internet pioneers credit Gore explicitly for his legislative advocacy and he has won awards relating to the work.  The 1991 “Gore Bill” was credited by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen for creating the first browser, Mosaic. It's really more of a gaffe  than a ridiculous claim.
Beyond the Pale:
Called for forced life internment of AIDS patients in 1987 in a published article.  Article also advocated mandatory monthly AIDS blood tests for the entire population of UK.  Has defended the article in recent years.    Claims to have suggested to Thatcher that she employ biological weapons against Argentine forces in the Falklands war, and that she did so.  No evidence of UK use of biological weapons in that conflict has ever emerged.	There’s nothing really remotely like this on Gore’s record.   On these two topics, Gore co-sponsored a 1990 bill to fund health care for AIDS patients.  The Clinton administration oversaw the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997.
Political Ideology:
Too right wing for the Conservatives, left the party for the anti-EU, anti-immigration UK Independence party, and briefly served as Deputy-Leader.	Self described “raging moderate.”  A Democrat elected in Tennessee, Gore took numerous moderate and even conservative positions on multiple issues.  As Vice-President he led a major bureaucracy reduction effort within government.  His solutions to climate change are market centric and supportive of businesses finding ways to profit creating and selling the technology needed to transform the energy system.  One of 10 Democrats to vote for the 1991 Gulf War.  Picked noted hawkish conservative Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate.
Climate Science Credentials:
It’s difficult to find any actual source of claims calling him an “expert.”  Member of the Christian cult “The Family” Senator James Inhofe does list Monckton as a “climate researcher” doubting the consensus (the report is billed as containing 700 doubting “scientists”).   Monckton has no peer reviewed published papers.  Still, he is employed as a climate science “expert” or “advisor” by numerous Climate sceptic think-tanks and has been invited to testify by Republican majority committees as an “expert” witness a number of times.  I suppose by now he’s become an expert of some sort by virtue of playing one for this long, but the original source of this “expertise” seems to be his out-of-nowhere 2007 rebuttal movie to Gore’s  2005 “An Inconvenient Truth”, titled “Apocalypse? No!” – which apparently makes such a splash I can’t find it on IMDB and never heard of it before seeing it listed in his UK Independence Party profile.	Studied under one of the first scientists to study anthropogenic climate change, Roger Revelle while at University.  Held the first congressional hearing on Global Warming in 1976.  Long history of government advocacy and policy in climate science.  Gore makes no claim to any scientific expertise but has a long public track record of detailed policy involvement on the issue. Would go on to make the most popular and successful documentary on climate change,  the Oscar winning, “An Inconvenient Truth” based on his self-devised multi-media climate science presentation.  Gore would also be awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (along with the IPCC) in relation to his work to promote public understanding of the climate crisis.
Accuracy:
It’s difficult to summarize the rampant litany of egregious false claims, lies, mistakes, mischaracterizations and logical fallacies that characterizes all of Monckton’s work on climate change.   But perhaps the best is this excruciatingly detailed fisking of Monckton’s bizarro-Gore slideshow by engineer/scientist Prof. John Abraham at reputable private school, the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota).  Monckton was so incensed by Abraham’s work that he had a little tantrum and even threatened to initiate academic misconduct procedures against Abraham.	An Inconvenient Truth was actually tested in a UK court due to its inclusion in school curricula.  The Judge eventually found 9 errors, but still ruled the movie was “broadly accurate” and “substantially founded on scientific research.”  He ruled the movie could be shown to school children as long as additional material noting the nine errors was distributed with it.  Aside from one UK Judge, in general, actual climate scientists were generally impressed with the accuracy and currency of the science in the movie.
Major Criticisms:
Aside from a quasi-fascist plan for dealing with infectious disease and making up ridiculous things like curing multiple diseases without any scientific background, a complete lack of credibility and repeatedly twisting, distorting or misquoting the climate science he is responding to, none worth mentioning here.	Gore’s biggest crime is apparently that he doesn’t practice what he doesn’t preach. He lives in a big house and flies in planes, which apparently makes him a hypocrite because climate sceptics imagine that in advocating for action on climate, one must move to a cave, eat kelp and travel only by low-emission donkey.     Thing is, Gore says no such things.  His solutions to climate change are market centric, with some kind of price on carbon, and some neoliberal subsidies for clean energy.   None of this requires individual personal zero emission living. He also pays carbon offsets for his flights, his homes are outfitted for efficiency and he opts for more expensive green energy to power them.  Meaning Gore already voluntarily pays a carbon price even without the laws he advocates that would compel him to.  Where is the hypocrisy? He’s also frequently accused of seeking to profit from the climate issue which is a bizarre companion to the frequent denier claims that global warming is an excuse for global socialism.  Gore has put his money where his mouth is, and this is a bad thing?

The main point here is not that Gore is super-perfect and should be canonized, he's a politician, there's plenty to criticize in his public service record, but on the climate issue, he has a long track record of leadership and sincerity.  Monckton is in my opinion a shameless huckster who jumped into the issue around 2006 and was welcomed by the denier movement because they really have no one more credible to carry their message.  If deniers want to compare the two, I'm fine with that.  It's an indirect way to assess the sincerity of each movement, but it does bear out.  If there was a more credible climate denier, she or he would already be in Monckton's shoes.  The AIDS thing alone should disqualify him from ever being taken seriously by anyone on anything, but for deniers it is any internment camp proponent in the storm.