Tag: Monckton

Monckton & the case of the missing Curry

Monckton’s eruptive bellow was still echoing round the halls of Tannochbrae Manor when old Scrotum, the wrinkled retainer, shuffled quietly into the laird’s library. “You called, Sir?”, he queried in his soft Highland brogues. The last few weeks had been hectic at Tannochbrae — the master had been unusually busy with his scientific interests — and the comfortable rhythm of Scrotum’s life had been jolted from a gentle 4/4 joggling (with pipes) to a jaunty 6/8 contra-bounce (with accordion). Jimmy Shand would have approved.

“Scrotum, I appear to have lost a Curry. Please institute an immediate, that is not to say precipitate, but carefully thought out, considered yet complete search for the fellow. Draft in all the help you need from the estate, but find him you must.”

“Would that be a chicken korma, or my lord’s preferred vindaloo (hot)?” Scrotum asked.

“Of course not, you wretched little man. I speak of Curry, esteemed co-author of Curry & Clow (1997) whose scientific labours conclusively prove that current global temperatures are unremarkable and that we therefore have nothing to fear from the closet socialism that is warmist science.” Monckton was quivering with barely supressed excitement. A fleeting concern scampered across Scrotum’s bushy brow and buried itself behind his ear. He left the room. This could turn out to be another of his lordship’s dreadful hunt the haggis days…

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Tear-stained letter #2

pottypeer.jpg Some summer reading for NZ prime minister John Key: Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (“I’m no potty peer”) has penned another of his dippy epistles — an “open letter” in the next issue of Free Radical, an NZ libertarian publication. His last, to John McCain, was a triumph of hilariously overblown climate crank nonsense. This looks to be no more succinct, but has the publishers of FR chortling with excitement. From Not PC:

This is pure gold; the world’s leading climate ‘skeptic’ explains to NZ’s new Prime Minister that the apocalyptic vision of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is a lurid and fanciful account of imagined future events that was always baseless, was briefly exciting among the less thoughtful species of news commentators and politicians, and is now thoroughly and scientifically discredited.

Thoroughly and scientifically? How exciting. Let’s take a look.

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Fairytale Of New York

homer.jpg New Zealand’s climate cranks have been out in force in recent weeks. I’ve got a number of posts I’d like to make discussing what they have to say, but those got pushed down the queue by a column by Garth George in today’s Herald, helpfully headlined “Climate change warriors, throw down your weapons”. Garth devotes himself to a discussion of the “Manhattan Declaration“, the statement issued by the Heartland Institute‘s crank conference in New York last month, and then wonders:

Now why this forthright declaration did not receive prominent coverage in the press anywhere in New Zealand, including this newspaper’s vaunted Green Pages, I have no idea. It was, after all, a Kiwi initiative.

Perhaps, Garth, it’s because the “declaration” is nonsense, and the involvement of New Zealanders more a matter for national shame than pride? Let’s have a look at this declaration in a little more detail…

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Being economical with the truth, or lying through her teeth?

homer.jpg Politicians are skilled at manipulating facts to convey any impression they desire. It’s called spin, and in its worst cases truthiness – nicely defined by the man who invented the term, Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report: “We’re not talking about truth, we’re talking about something that seems like truth—the truth we want to exist.” Out in wingnut land, they want to believe that global warming is not real. So Muriel Newman at her NZ Centre for Political Research web site starts spinning the facts and, in the middle of a rambling attempt to justify a recent climate crank call for a joint Australia-NZ Royal Commission on climate change manages to come out with the following:

Anyone who claims that the science on global warming is settled is wrong. There is now growing evidence that that the earth is not warming but cooling: since the 1970s the glaciers of the Arctic, Greenland, and the Antarctic have been growing, and since 1998 average world temperatures have been falling with 2006 cooler than 2005 and 2007 cooler still.

This may be what Muriel fervently believes, but it is also completely untrue. So untrue, in fact, that saying it in an attempt to influence public policy amounts to lying. Sadly, in the echo chamber of truthiness around her web site, she gets taken at face value. Out in the wider world, it simply leaves her credibility in tatters.

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Bali ha’i, Bali low?

The Bali conference ended with a cliffhanger, but as I was cocooned in a kayak paddling up the coast of the Abel Tasman it passed me by like a fur seal in the night. I did notice a fishy smell, but I don’t think it emanated from Nusa Dua. The big news, of course, was the US climbdown at the last minute, memorably blogged by David Sassoon at Solve Climate. He extensively quotes an eye witness account by Peter Riggs, Director of the Forum on Democracy and Trade:

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