Denier comment of the day: undermedicated at WUWT

So, let's talk about what went wrong here. First question: what is it about the mentally ill that makes them adverse to paragraph breaks? Really, I sincerely wonder this. Lots of great writers and artists in general have been pretty nutty, yet skilled at their craft. But if you wander into the dark corners of the internet where aliens built the pyramids, vaccines cause autism, or "the Greenies" cooked up the global warming scare, you get headache-inducing rambling like this, the written equivalent of pressured speech. At a certain point horror gives way to pity, and I just wish I could help.

The CO2 numbers are wrong in predictable and boring way, debunked by better men than I here and here. But I do find this interesting: "CO2 naturally is . . . ."

Essentialism is, of course, not a scientific concept. It's interesting to me that for all their hostility to "greenies," many deniers partake in this idea of a natural world with a fixed set of characteristics which is set apart from humans and our influence. This set of assumptions clashes with many other parts of their Weltanschauung, but it creeps in over and over.

A trace gas in our atmosphere being blamed for as we all know here, everything bad. Somehow my civilian intellect is screaming WTF? That on the surface does not make any sense to me.

The denier has a high regard for his own intuition, which he confuses with rational thought. They form a false idea of the subject which emerges from their lack of understanding of the physical world and is animated by paranoia. The reminder of their process of deduction will involve seeking out confirmatory evidence and ideas and shunning other facts and arguments as the pleas of the condemned.

I have complained before to the CAGW Alarmists, I want them to explain exactly

Like a particularly obnoxious child, the denier firmly believes that other people owe him "exact" answers to any question he might be able to formulate, and that a free education is his right. Meanwhile, with ignorance his holy shield, he will beat off any effort to actually help him bring his thoughts in line with reality.

When I read these reports and NOAA comes out saying warmest winter ever, I get crazy.

 Your words, man. Your words.

Has Christopher Monckton ever won a lawsuit?

My lawsuit was much better than "Cats." I'm going to file them again and again.

Christopher Monckton is an ignorant, incompetent, dishonest, delusional mess of a gibbering idiot. I've reported on this fact for years and I have yet to hear from any lawyers, which is why I was skeptical that the Nova-Monckton account of him repeatedly crushing his enemies in lawsuits was anything other than a slop bucket of narcissistic lies(*).

First claim: Monckton sued the British government over using An Inconvenient Truth in schools, and won.

We have had some good court victories. In 2007 the London High Court condemned Al Gore’s mawkish sci-fi comedy-horror movie. It found nine errors so serious that the court ordered 77 pages of corrective guidance to be circulated to every school in England. The judge said: “The Armageddon scenario that he [Gore] depicts is not based on any scientific view.”
Two days later, Gore won the Nobel Mickey Mouse Prize. But he was holed below the waterline. Now he is seen not as a prophet but as a profiteer.
The whingers of the do-nothing brigade were at work even then. The lawyers refused to file the case on the ground that there was no chance of success. They were fired.
The new lawyers said we could not possibly win on the science and refused to use any scientific testimony. The judge threw the case out. I recovered the position by instructing the lawyers to write to the judge asking if he had even seen Gore’s movie before he had reached his judgment without holding a hearing.
Tellingly, the judge did not reply. I insisted on – and got – a new judge. This time the lawyers did what they were told. I wrote 80 pages of scientific testimony. Bob Carter and Dick Lindzen– bless them both – worked from the document in crafting their evidence, and signed off as expert witnesses. As soon as the other side saw it, they collapsed and settled, paying the plaintiff $400,000.

Reality: Monckton wasn't one of the litigants in that suit, which the deniers lost. The quote from the judge, which I've bolded above, is a fabrication -- a total fiction (for a comparison with what the judge actually said, see this outstanding analysis, beginning at the two-minute mark.)

He claims to have asked one of his friends to fund Stewart Dimmock, who actually sued. Dimmock has been asked who helped fund his suit, at refused to name anyone, calling it "a private matter." Many sources, understandably, report this as fact, because who would lie about participating in a failed lawsuit? But the reality is that Monckton lies constantly, habitually, and always by way of growing the legend of Monckton.

The case, Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills, wasn't settled, and Dimmock didn't get a payment of $400,000. He did, as is routine in British legal battles, win a payment for a portion of his legal costs, leaving him 60,000 pounds poorer.

His stated objective in the lawsuit was for An Inconvenient Truth not to be shown in schools any more. The judge rejected that request.

Monckton claims to have been involved in funding this failed lawsuit, but as far as I know, no one actually involved in it has confirmed that, placing his role in the same category as his claimed discovery of the cure for AIDS.

The second win claimed by Monckton has already been exposed as another fantasy: he claimed that Mann had settled a lawsuit with Tim Ball for a million dollars. Whoops! Pure fiction, and Jo Nova was troubled to print a correction.

Monckton also trumpets a huge, simply huge, victory against the dasterdly BBC:

I sued the BBC a couple of years ago when they did a hatchet job on me. I had been told – in writing – that I should have the chance to alter any points that were inaccurate. Fat chance.

So I lodged a High Court application for an injunction. The BBC’s first reaction was to deny that the director-general’s office had received my letter. Not having been born yesterday, I had delivered the letter myself and had insisted that the director-general’s personal assistant should sign for it.

I insisted on seeing the programme before it was broadcast. It was a disgrace. I wrote to the Director-General listing two dozen factual errors and numerous other biases in the schlocumentary. No reply.
So I lodged a High Court application for an injunction. The BBC’s first reaction was to deny that the director-general’s office had received my letter. Not having been born yesterday, I had delivered the letter myself and had insisted that the director-general’s personal assistant should sign for it.
The BBC crumbled and cut the programme from 90 minutes to an hour, taking out the overwhelming majority of the vicious nonsense. There were still some objectionable points, so I went into court.
I fought the case myself. When I introduced the two barristers and three solicitors for the Beeb, the judge interrupted me and said: “Lord Monckton, I fear I must draw your attention to a potential conflict of interest. You see, I am a member of your club.”
I had no objection and invited the BBC’s expensive QC to give his opinion. He had no objection either, but added: “Er, I too have a conflict of interest. I also am a member of Lord Monckton’s club.”
The judge did not prevent the Beeb from leaving a few barbs in my side. The BBC issued a lying statement that I had lost. But the judge held that I had “substantially won” the action. A 90-minute programme had become 60 minutes. The Beeb had lost. Big-time.

He lost, of course. Really this story gets to the heart of why Monckton is such a memorable liar. It's full of specific details -- about the club, and the judge, and the director-general's personal assistant. Yet nothing that can be easily checked, nothing that can be readily verified. It's full of numbers -- two dozen errors, 90 minutes to an hour, two barristers and three solicitors, etc. And it has a simple story of Monckton prevailing against odds. Really the only weakness of the story, as is typical of Monckton, is that he cannot control his own narcissism long enough to sell the story. Monckton is always the least believable part of a Monckton anecdote. He demands! He sues! He belongs to a fancy club! He takes on an army of lawyers and wins!

Monckton has surely mastered the Big Lie(**), as his fictional legal career illustrates.

Monckton has also threatened legal action against George Monbiot after an article dissecting Monckton's dishonest hackery. (He claimed it was "libellous of me in my calling.") But no lawsuit ever emerged. He promised to have John Abraham brought up on charges of academic misconduct; he didn't. He made the same threat about Dr. Barry Bickmore: again, no follow-through.

So here is my question of the day: Has Monckton ever actually followed through on his profuse threats, undertaken legal action against a critic, and won a judgement against them? Or are his repeated claims to have done so -- claims that have now progressed to advocating specious lawsuits against critics as a strategy, since it's worked so well for him -- simply another of his narcissistic fantasies?

See also:

Skeptical Science's Monckton Myths.

Barry Bickmore's Lord Monckton's Rap Sheet.

Abraham debunks Monckton (1/6)

Monckton Bunkum (Parts 1-5):

--------------------------
*That, and of course the fact that their mouths were moving.

** The Big Lie is a propaganda technique described by Hitler in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Monckton, exceptionally, explicitly admits to hiding behind this cognitive glitch:

Abraham’s approach is novel. He’s saying not that I got one thing wrong but that I got just about everything wrong. And how plausible is that?

"Climategate 2.0" a giant flop

That tiny bump at the end is for the stunning disclosure of yet more email that the hacker had hidden for two years.

The potty peer actually jumped out of a plane to try and gin up interest in this big bag of nothinginess:



Fortunately for AIDS sufferers and puzzlers everywhere, his chute opened without problems. Reeks of desperation a bit, though, doesn't it? I don't think this is going down quite as planned. Besides not giving us anything new, this rehash repeats the experience of revealing emails that say nothing about fraud or any misconduct of any kind. The first batch of emails landed in a more innocent world in which a few scientists using rude language to describe deniers who clearly deserved the epithets could by relentlessly flogged by the right-wing noise machine and this surprised people. It could appear organic, not scripted, and sell itself as the revelation of secrets, which thrills people, and not as a political dirty trick, which it actually was.

The second batch of emails undermines all of the elements of the original story that helped it sell. It is obviously calculated, not organic. The thief held on to the e-mails for two years. Moreover, the new release proves the thief selected which e-mails to release in 2009. That destroys the myth of the "whistleblower" pulling back the curtain on bad behavior -- selective disclosure to maximize embarrassment, concealment of the full context -- these are the hallmarks of political manipulation and deceit.

All in all, a pretty devastating own goal for Team Denial.

Peak denial?

The Dish points to new polling:

They only have 33 percent national favorable ratings, which means Independents have all but abandoned the brand. That 33 percent is statistically indistinguishable from the Tea Party, because most people recognize there is no difference between the two. The GOP hasn't been this unpopular since the CNN polls started measuring these things in 1992. They are now regarded less favorably than they were when Obama was elected! 66 percent of non-whites view the GOP unfavorably, alongside 64 percent of Independents. 57 percent of Independents want their own congressman to be thrown out at the next election.

The Tea Party's unfavorables, meanwhile, have doubled in the last eight months.

While the Democrats have been disappointing on climate change, it is the Republican base, and especially the Tea Party fringe, that has embraced climate denial. The "Six Americas" polling reflects this strongly: 42% of "dismissives" (climate deniers) consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement, compared to just 10% of the general public. Two percent -- two percent -- of climate deniers are Democrats. Eighty-four percent of deniers identify as conservative, compared to only 3% who identify as liberals.

So the self-immolation of the Christianist, pro-default, anti-EPA, pro-tax-cut and anti-Medicare right is a piece of unqualified good news. It's long been clear that there's no persuading the core of the anti-science movement -- they are fanatics on a crusade. Therefore the best outcome we can hope for is that they become isolated from the other 90% of the public, their views stigmatized, their support shunned.

Harsh, maybe, but this is how social debates work: you pull people out of the middle to your side, and without them, the people on the edges are toothless. And it certainly helps if your opponents sound and act as crazy as a truck of bedbugs.

Breaking: Yes, Anders Behring Breivik is the first climate denier mass murderer

His manifesto confirms it:

That's exactly what is happening with the Anthropogenic Global Warming scam; too many people are too demoralised to assess true information about Socialism, Communism, and climate change to allow its use for other agendas on the hands of the useful idiots “the leftists” as former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov calls them.
Enviro-communism is a new twisted idea of redistribution of wealth through “environmental” policies and the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference 2009 is the perfect manifestation of it. Environmental Justice is the new Social Justice; Climate Debt is the new Redistribution of Wealth, Anthropogenic Global Warming scam is the Communism.

How did he decide that global warming is a "scam"? Three guesses:

Climategate incident – exposing the eco-Marxist scam
On Thursday 19th November 2009 news began to circulate that hacked documents and communications from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (aka CRU) had been published to the internet.
The information revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change.
The documents and emails illustrated how prominent climatologists, affiliated with the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, embarked on a venomous and coordinated campaign to ostracise climate skeptics and use their influence to keep dissenting reports from appearing in peer-reviewed journals, as well as using cronyism to avoid compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests.
Here follows a compendium of articles and videos on what was quickly dubbed as “ClimateGate”.
The full story:
[3] CLIMATE BOMBSHELL: Hacker leaks thousands of emails showing conspiracy to “hide” the real data on manmade climate change
[4] Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
Hiding the Decline:
[5] Hacked E Mails: Climate Scientists Discuss “Hiding Decline” In Temperatures [6] Mike’s Nature Trick [7] McIntyre: The deleted data from the “Hide the Decline” trick [8] Hide The Decline – Climategate
[9] Bishop Hill’s compendium of CRU email issues

Where did Breivik absorb this poisonous nonsense on his road to mass murder?

Please see Lord Christopher Monckton's speech

Oh. It would seem Monckton matters, even if serious people think he is a clown. Breivik took him seriously enough.

Watts hugs Monckton -- by lying through his teeth.

Having been forced, in a humiliating climb-down, to admit that his hesitant foray into peer-reviewed research confirmed, rather than casting doubt on, global warming, Anthony Watts is back to his wheelhouse: dubious assertions and outright lies, spread widely by credulous followers.

It's times like this we miss Ben, whose heroic effort to catalog the logorrheic distortions of WUWT have led, understandably, to many long hiatuses from blogging:

"Lord Monckton wins National Press Club debate on climate"
Posted on July 20, 2011 by Anthony Watts

Love him or hate him, the man can win a debate. Andrew Bolt shares the results of the National Press Club Debate in Australia writing:

No wonder the warmists hate debate

The National Press Club debate’s results:

Lord Monckton – 10

Former Greens adviser Richard Denniss – 1

Journalists – 0.

Wow, sounds impressive. But I have a few questions. Who is voting? Who counted the votes? Why do all the references to Monckton "winning" this debate lead back to Bolt or Watts himself? Truth or fiction?

If you follow the link Watts provides, it leads to a post by the infamously inaccurate Andrew Bolt. Watts has thoughtfully reposted Bolt's entire post, except for the part that identifies the source of Bolt's information:

(Thanks to reader Adam.)

Yes, thank you "Adam." Now the picture is clearer. Somebody sent Andrew Bolt a claim that Monckton won the debate. The national press club hosts debates, but just like an American presidential debate, the host does not declare a winner. So "Adam" either polled random pseudoskeptics, or he just made numbers up. He passes it on to Andrew Bolt, who reports it as truth. Anthony Watts spreads the fiction, now concealing the dodgy unverifiable source. And the ultimate result is this: "monckton wins" and "national press club" gets you 3,550 hits on Google, including:

http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/environment-energy/97513-monckton-wins-press-debate-10-1-a.html

http://powerpointparadise.com/blog/2011/07/monckton-wins-national-press-club-debate-on-climate-and-boy-does-it-ever-clear-the-air/

http://truthiscontagious.com/2011/07/20/monckton-wins-national-press-club-debate-on-climate

These links are almost entirely* reposts of the same misleading assertions by Bolt as repeated and amplified by Watts. Yet one can see how these assertions, presented to "skeptics" on denier websites, play into an established narrative and are not likely to be questioned on examined critically, especially when they have passed through several sets of hands already. What we are seeing today is that with the help of gullible partisans, a lie can pass from rumor to a partisan conventional wisdom in a matter of hours, The internet has given new bite to the old saying that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots."




* I did find one actual poll of 218 Australians who watched the debate. They found 49% thought Monckton won, 37% thought Denniss won, and the reminder were unsure. This is a far cry from the 91% - 9% claimed by Watts and Bolt.

New addition to blog list: Monckon Watch

"The Conversation," a new collaborative effort by several top universities, prominent scientists, and science journalists, has established Monckton watch, a one-stop-shop for the entertaining ravings of our favorite potty peer as his shining star flames out, still pathetically claiming to be a member of the House of Lords and comparing scientists to Nazis.

The swivel-eyed fanatic is one of our favorite idiots to track, so you will find Monckton watch permalinked on the right, where I have established a new list for specific-idiot-tracking blogs.

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