His Serene Excellency (not a) Lord Monckton has reluctantly cornered into a debate by climate video blogger Potholer (Peter Hadfield), playing out on the pages of Monckton’s own turf, the WattsUpWithThat anti-science blog.
Let me say upfront that I’m cheering Monckton on. I definitely think the anti-science movement deserves a figurehead that accurately represents its full, surreal and unfathomable nuttiness. The same truth-in-advertising impulse that has me rooting for Rick Santorum/Michelle Bachman ticket as the true face of the Tea Party Taliban.
Hopelessly outclassed, and cornered in an internet debate where sources and data can be readily checked, Monckton is trying to run for the hills. Potholer is calling him out. Get popcorn and, if you haven’t been keeping up, check the Potholer broadsides below.
Transcript of Potholers video open-letter:
Dear Mr. Monckton,
A couple of months ago you entered into a debate with me on wattsupwiththat.com (See “Update on the Monckton-Hadfield debate” – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/07/update-on-the-monckton-hadfield-debate/) about alleged errors in your public lectures — allegations that I made in a series of videos on my YouTube channel “Potholer54”. But as soon as I presented documentary evidence to back up my claims, you suddenly fell silent. Despite promising Anthony Watts that you would respond when you returned from Australia mid-February, you have not done so, and now you have written to tell me that you are, in effect, running away. Sorry, I don’t know how else to phrase your abrupt retreat from our debate as soon as I showed evidence that supports my allegations and starkly contradicts your claims.
I am referring to your e-mail to me dated March 22nd:
= I am on a very busy tour and will be still more busy when I return to the UK, so I do not know when I shall have further time to respond. Many people like to engage in debates on inconsequentialities and, while I try to accommodate them, other priorities must sometimes come first.=
Let me address the first excuse first. I understand you are currently on a busy tour, but you promised Anthony Watts you would respond when you returned from your last tour, and you did not. Meanwhile I note that you have had plenty of time to respond to a university newsletter that criticized you, and you spent two hours talking on skype to a small classroom of students. I fail to see why these are “priorities”, while my 57,000 subscribers and the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to wattsupwiththat are not deserving of an answer from you concerning clear evidence that you seriously misled your audiences over a period of several years. The people watching this debate have watched you vacate your chair, and are still expecting to see you to re-appear from backstage at any moment with some incisive rebuttal after checking my evidence. I am sure they will be as shocked as I am to hear the squealing of car tyres as you make good your escape.
You have, after all, been given every advantage in this debate. It is taking place on wattsupwiththat, a regular forum for you and one that YOU chose, so there can be no suggestion that the umpire is biased against you. In fact, even though he and I disagree on the climate issue, Anthony Watts has been good enough to give us equal space for our responses. You were given not just one but two to rebut my videos, responding first to a summary of my videos that was made by someone in a WUWT comments forum, and then directly to something that was, as you put it: “not word what [Peter Hadfield] said, but I hope that they fairly convey his meaning.” (“Monckton responds to Peter Hadfield aka “potholer54″ — plus Hadfield’s response” – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/)
With respect, no, the points you wrote did not fairly convey my meaning — in fact they ignored the substance of the allegations altogether and a lot of your response focused on ad hominem attacks questioning my integrity, honesty and intelligence.
So when I responded with the actual allegations, along with supporting documentary evidence –17 video clips of your speeches, 13 scientific papers and studies and one newspaper article that you yourself cited — and showed that you had clearly misquoted or misrepresented your own sources, you inexplicably fell silent, and then failed to deliver your promised response.
Your other excuse: “Many people like to engage in debates on inconsequentialities”
If you think these issues are “inconsequentialities” then why did you bring them up time and again during your many public speeches? The sun is largely responsible for recent warming — there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature over the last 500 million years — only one Himalayan glacier is retreating — the Earth has been cooling — Greenland isn’t melting — there is no long-term decline of Arctic ice…. etc. etc. It was you, not I, who decided these should be the bedrock of your case against anthropogenic climate change. I simply asked you for the sources of your assertions and when you gave them to me I checked them — and it turned out that you either misrepresented or misquoted these sources, or your source does not have the authority you claim it does.
And if you think they are inconsequentialities, why have you decide to expend several thousand words on wattsupwiththat trying to rebut them? You were quite happy to do so when you thought the debate would be easy, and when you addressed your own rather crude summary of what you thought I was alleging. It was only when I came back with details and a wealth of supporting evidence that you apparently decided it was better to beat a hasty retreat than try to answer such prima facie evidence.
I appreciate that you would much prefer this kind of debate to take place on stage, where oratory is paramount. It is much harder to engage in this kind of debate online, where everything is written down and can be quoted back, where sources are demanded for any facts you give, and where these sources can be checked and verified. But this is the nub of our debate — whether you have chosen reliable sources and quoted and represented them correctly.
Nowhere in my videos or in the WUWT debate have I suggested that you are making these errors deliberately, or that you are being dishonest ( a courtesy you did not extend to me), and neither have I descended to ad hominem attacks or name calling (also a courtesy you did not extend to me.) Errors are simply errors in my book, and if you unintentionally misled your audiences over several years then I accept that it was unintentional.
After all, the truth alone is worthy of our entire devotion… as you yourself said at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy last year.
In the same speech you said: “Before we subjucate the truth to mere expediency, convenience or profit it is first desirable to discern the truth.”
And again: “What matters here are the facts; what matters here is the truth.”
For a man so dedicated to the truth I am surprised that you did not jump at the opportunity to either rebut my allegations by showing that it is I, not you, who misread these sources and quotes, or check your sources again and acknowledge that you made these errors. In that spirit, I urge you to rejoin the debate that Anthony Watts has so kindly agreed to host.
This may be the triumph of hope over experience. My experience tells me that you won’t be too busy to issue a long response addressing the issue of the debate itself and why you shouldn’t have to continue it, or an attempt to deflect the debate onto some other subject or forum, combined with another ad hominem attack on me — instead of what everyone would LIKE to see, which is a clear rebuttal or acceptance of the evidence I provided.
Monckton’s Two Hour Skype to a Class:
Monckton’s First attempt to answer Potholer:
Monckton’s second attempt at rebuttal, along with Potholer response:
“Lord” Monckton will be appearing in San Diego tomorrow night (3/24) at USD.
For those pro-science types who live in the greater San Diego area and who need a “train-wreck fix”, reservation info can be found here: http://lordmonckton.eventbrite.com (note — the supplied map is misleading — copy/paste the address into GoogleEarth/Maps instead).
If anyone reading this knows of any UCSD/SIO/SDSU/USD profs/postdocs/grad-students/etc. who might want to help “truth-check” Monckton, please do pass this info on to them.
Well, I took one for the team and sat through a Monckton presentation — so that the rest of you guys won’t ever have to. 😉
Not long after I arrived at the venue, I realized how utterly futile my on-line attempts to recruit pro-science types to “pack the audience” were. I am now feeling silly about that bit of foolishness and naivete. The sea of rubes surrounding Monckton was endless — the entire research staff of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography could have shown up and Monckton would easily have blown them all off.
Monckton played the overflow-crowd of rubes like a cheap harmonica — the SOB got three standing ovations, for f#@!’s sake! My failure to participate in the ovations made me feel a bit conspicuous — I was almost the only one in a 300-seat auditorium who did not stand up and applaud.
Monckton did not hesitate to stir up the audience with hate and bile directed at mainstream scientists/academics. Singling out UCSD’s Naomi Oreskes, he expressed outrage at the failure of the UC regents to “reign in this monstrous woman” and then said, “We are now considering whether, in the United Kingdom, we should de-recognize the University of California because it is no longer a legitimate academic institution.” — to which this big crowd of California rubes applauded quite loudly.
When I was in college way back in the day, there were mobs of pro-Khomeini Iranian students running amok, demanding that the Shah be replaced by that sour old mullah. I remember thinking to myself, “Those folks are f*&!ing nuts!”. Well, I now feel the same way about many of my (supposedly) fellow Americans.
Monckton much prefers the face to face fantactasies forum. It’s an inconvenient truth, as Hadfield points out, to have an debate by blog post as you can’t interrupt and your made-up hoopla, selective deletions, memory lapses , etc can be instantly checked.
Sigh. Christopher Monckton is a lord, a genuine viscount. His father’s father was a legal advisor to the prince of Wales and then to the king in the 1930s, and then held various ministerial posts in the UK government in the 1940s and 1950s. He was made viscount, for these various services rendered, in 1957.
So the grandson is a viscount, but doesn’t have a seat in the House of Lords (because that institution, constituted of both hereditary and lifetime peers, was reformed to kick out almost all the hereditaries).
I find it mystifying that so many people in some countries place so much store by titles which the holders have done nothing to earn, but let us at least be accurate. Whether or not you use his title, for instance by calling him Lord Monckton, is up to you (I won’t, because I’m a Quaker). But please let us not add any errors of our own to his litany of nonsense by calling him “(not a) Lord” and similarly casting doubt on his title.
sorry. Lord Monckton has specifically misrepresented himself as a member of the house of Lords in a Letter to US Senators- stating –
“I BRING fraternal greetings from the Mother of Parliaments to the Congress of your “athletic democracy”. I pray that God’s blessing may rest upon your counsels.”
He has also stated himself “a member of the house” — “without a right to sit or vote”, what ever that means, in this
australian radio interview.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2011/07/lord-christopher-monckton-interview.html?site=sydney&program=702_breakfast
Moreover, on nearly every slide in his presentation he stamps the portcullis, symbol of the British parliament. And although you apparently have not been sensitive enough to pick up on this, the British Parliament itself has been, having now asked “Lord” monckton to STFU.
http://www.desmogblog.com/monckton-sent-cease-and-desist-letter-house-lords
“I must therefore again ask that you desist from claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication, and also that you desist from claiming to be a Member “without the right to sit or vote”.
I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not.
David Beamish
Clerk of the Parliaments”
I’m as compassionate as the next guy in regard to the medical condition that predisposes His Resplendent Malignancy to psychotic episodes, but whether its a lie, a fabrication, or a fantastical delusion, and I don’t tolerate them here.
Quite right, he has certainly misrepresented himself on many occasions in this and various other ways. I have been chortling over this particular one for some years, as it was obvious from the start that sooner or later he would be publicly slapped down by Parliament. It gave me great cheer when that finally happened last year (after various people, including myself, wrote to various officials to point out what he was doing).
He is, never the less, entitled to be called Lord Monckton. He is not a member of the House of Lords, although he would have been under the old rules.
“entitled to be called” is in the gift of the caller. I acknowledge that he is a viscount, but I will not call him (or anyone else) Lord.
he can call himself the grand vizier, poobah, or potentate, but the Parliament says he’s misrepresenting himself, and told him to stop. That’s good enough for me.
Quite so. But even the letter from Parliament itself – always worth a read when the world seems particularly dark – addresses him as “Lord Monckton”. He is not, and has never been, a member of the House, but he is a lord.
Briefly returning to the topic, I think Hadfield’s video is terrific. Your transcript is missing a few sentences, before “Your other excuse”.
Having to repeatedly expose and discredit Monckton is so damned tedious and depressing. Like a drug-resistant case of toenail fungus one has to treat again and again and again.
So that’s my current entry for the “Most Apt Simile for Monckton” contest: Monckton like a stubborn case of toenail fungus. Can anybody top it? We’ll let Peter decide on the winner, which person thereafter must be addressed as “Lord of the Simile.” Agreed?
hooahmungus can beat a fungus?
Lord Monckton does rather discredit peerages.
Has anyone here tried Monckton’s Sudoku X? Standard Sudoku but where the diagonals also use 1 to 9. I would have thought that it would make finding the solution easier rather than harder.
Speaking of fungus, wasn’t he supposed to have invented a marvelous panacea and cured himself of Graves’ disease? And it treats AIDS, too, I believe.
I guess the Viscount will soon be Grand Imperator, if his mystical medecines pan out.
that’s right. He’s a medical genius as well, it turns out.
I believe Nick is correct. You can have the title “lord” and not be a member of the House of Lords. So to say he is “not a lord” is incorrect.
Whether you want to call him a “lord” or not is a different matter though.
I hadn’t been following the debate, mainly because I didn’t want to give Anthony’s sites more hits as he keeps thinking that particular metric actually means something relevant. But I have enjoyed Potholer’s videos and have learned a few new things.
“Lord” is an expression of respect, so I refuse to use it on Chris Monckton, as he has done nothing to earn my respect and plenty to lose it. “Doctor” and “Professor” are expressions of respect, earned by extensive learning and research, that I still apply to people like Singer and Lindzen, even though I disagree with them.
Being born into the English nobility is not an achievement, unlike earning a doctorate or tenure. If Chris Monckton wants to earn a doctorate from some legitimate university, I will address him by the title he has earned; until then, he remains, to me, merely “lordy, lordy, it’s Monckton!”
Isn’t it strange how the Christian-fundamentalist element of the Right is only too happy to call him “My Lord”? I would have thought they would be uncomfortable about taking their spiritual Lord’s name in vain, but it seems to be another case of double standards.
With regards to Monckton’s performance in San Diego aren’t their some ironies in the name of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Theater…..the least of which being “Kroc”?
holy Crap! is there video of that!!?
Hopefully the procedings here: http://lordmonckton.eventbrite.com/ will be recorded as further evidence of his spreading of false witness.