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.

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.

Lomberg cons Sullivan

The usually-savvy Andrew Sullivan recently penned a very foolish review of Lomberg's recent sedation-prop, the movie "Cool It":

What's great about the movie is its focus on R&D and how innovating new energy is more important than taxing carbon. In a mostly negative review, Andrew O'Hehir whines from the left but makes no substantive critique of what Bjorn argues. Yes, some climate change denialists latch onto his work, but Lomborg is not now and never has been a climate change denialist. He's a climate change realist and wants to address the problem through new technology while focusing aid on more pressing human problems . . .

The first problem here is that he mistakes Lomberg for a credible source of information, when in fact the mendacity of the man I like to call "Monckton Jr." is legendary. Entire books have been written about his errors, misrepresentations, and outright lies. Websites too. Here's a recent example of the Lomberg method from an exchange with the reliably gullible Andy Revkin:

Second, the damage cost of a ton of CO2 (at 3% discount rate) ranges from negative to $22 at the 99 percentile [from Richard Tol's paper "The Social Cost of Carbon: Trends, Outliers and Catastrophes" ], with a median of about $4. Emphasizing the high end does indeed mean we should reduce emissions a little more (a carbon tax that is $22/ton CO2 rather than just $4). But it does not justify that we should embrace the incredible outlier of Stern and say let’s tax at $86.

The science-sounding stuff here (99th percentile! The Social Cost of Carbon! Outlier!) is all smokescreen. Richard Tol is among the 2% of working climate scientist that reject the consensus and argue that warming either will not happen or will have few negative effects. Hence, it doesn't matter what discount rate he uses or what bogus cost calculation he comes up with, because his beliefs on what will happen as the earth warms are so far out of the mainstream you'd need a six-meter telescope to find them.

The impressive-sounding paper turns out not only to be un-peer reviewed, but actually to have been self-published online. (Thank you, "Economics: The open-access, open-assessment e-journal.")

This is the story of Lomberg's "sources" in their hundreds: the fringe is presented as the mainstream, dubious sources are passed off as scholarly; real science is ignored. Often, he will cite real science, but completely misrepresent what the article says (a favorite Monckton Sr. tactic as well).

Besides giving credence to a serial liar (a lapse I credit to Sullivan's personal friendship with Lomberg) the larger problem is that Sullivan, a self-professed conservative, is nodding along with this:

What's great about the movie is its focus on R&D and how innovating new energy is more important than taxing carbon.

I should not have to explain to someone who has written at length about their libertarian sympathies the reason why a carbon tax is the optimal instrument for reducing carbon emissions. It should be obvious. Research grants and tax credits affect only the behavior of the people eligible to receive them. They invariably favor certain technologies or approaches, because there must be some standard in how the money is distributed.

There are about a half a dozen ways to reduce carbon emissions. We can:

1. Chose to invest in research directed at new low-carbon energy sources.
2. Chose to invest in technologies improving energy efficiency.
3. Chose to upgrade our current infrastructure to take advantage of the technologies (power-generating) that we already have.
4. Chose to upgrade our current infrastructure to take advantage of the technologies (power-saving; efficiency) that we already have.
5. Chose to conserve (actually give up things; less meat, shorter showers, etc.)
6. Chose to capture and sequester carbon (scrubbing emissions, planting trees, etc.) Or research methods to accomplish same.

Which of these should we attempt, and in what proportions? Assuming we do invest in new technologies, at what point do we decide the technologies are good enough to push widespread implementation (upgrade our infrastructure)? Is it better to work on improving current power sources (wind, tidal, solar) or invest in other power sources further from market (fusion, thorium reactors, etc.)?

These are the kind of complex allocation-of-resources problems capitalism was made to solve. By pricing carbon according to our estimates of the negative externalities of climate change, we correct the market failure, and instead of depending on the government to back the right research by the right scientists and industrialists, we instead engage the brainpower of every producer and consumer in the economy; anyone with a pocketbook. When solutions range from double insulation on your home to massive irrigation projects to grow thousands of square miles of forest, from hybrid cars to self-contained mini nuclear reactors, the only way to optimize our choices is the market. The market is the only tool that can find the right balance between all the choices we have to cut our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.

Conservatives, especially smart conservatives like Andrew who understand that conservatism is not about reflexively hating taxes, ought to see the power of raising the price of carbon emissions, which is the only solution that can harness the power of the market to avert disastrous climate change.

Christopher Monckton; the lesser-known lies

It's an unfortunate feature of our political discourse that the term "liar" has become debased, with commentators on the right and the left applying the term indiscriminantly to those with whom they disagree -- as if to state something someone else does not believe do be true were the same as being dishonest. Thus "liar" is devalued as a criticism. Although one would think that clear evidence of premeditated deception -- as with the faked temperature graph used by Don Easterbrook at the recent ICCC conference -- would disqualify the liar's assertions from further consideration, but sadly, not so.

The example of Christopher Monckton illustrates another point about liars -- they don't just lie about one thing. Monckton does not just lie about global temperatures, or satellite data, or glacier retreat. He lies early and often -- seemingly compulsively. Here are some of the lies that many have escaped your notice:

* He make up a story about having to sell his family home to pay prize money, in order to sell puzzles. Seriously.

* He called protesters at one of his speeches "Hitler Youth." Then he lied about it, even though the event was caught on video.

* He claimed President Obama was born in Kenya, although one may hold out the faint hope he was joking.

* Monckton is also capable of almost superhuman falsehood density -- in one single paragraph describing the (fictional) ban on DDT, which he (mis)attributes to Jackie Kennedy, and mistakenly blames for the persistence of malaria in Africa, he lies no fewer than eleven times in three sentences.

* Monckton claimed in Febuary to have invented a drug which cures HIV, multiple sclerosis, and the common cold. Really. I guess we'll just have to wait on that one to see if it turns out to be true.

Monckton is not a fringe figure in the denialist community -- he is a star. He has challenged Al Gore to debate, and headlined denialist events all across the world. As far as refuting the science of climate change, he is the best they can do. And that one fact tells you most of what you need to know about "climate skeptics."

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