Tag: Monckton

The Climate Show #15: Michael Ashley and the ineducable Carter

We thought we’d try for a record short show — and failed, because once again there was just to much to talk about. We have more on Eritrean volcanoes, extreme weather over the last 18 months, a new report on the dire state of the oceans, and Stoat’s big bet. Special guest is Professor Michael Ashley from the University of New South Wales, discussing the state of play in Australia, John Cook does a rapid debunk of Bob Carter, and we have electric cars, more flow batteries and the gas we do not want to smell.

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The larrikin lord returns

To welcome the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB, as Joe Romm dubs him, or even His Immaculate and Beneficent Highness, Lord Chris of a Kentish Village) to Australia, here’s Peter Sinclair’s latest Climate Crock — a look at Monckton’s claims to have invented a cure for multiple sclerosis, AIDs and the common cold. Also worth watching for a reminder of James Delingpole’s inability to cope with rational argument.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last week or so, you’ll know that Monckton made the news recently for calling the Australian government’s climate adviser Ross Garnaut a Nazi. He subsequently apologised, telling the Telegraph:

I have written to Ross Garnaut to withdraw unreservedly and to apologise humbly. What I said about his opinions was unparliamentary and unstatesmanlike.

Amazing. To make “unparliamentary” comments you first have to be a parliamentarian. Monckton is not now, nor has he ever been a member of either house of the British parliament. And to be unstatesmanlike you first have to be a statesman. The man’s self-delusions are clearly powerful, almost as powerful as his panacea.

Expect more coverage as the good Lord makes his stately progress across the lucky continent, but for some background to the organisation of climate denial in Australia and the potty peer’s international denial network, take a look at Graham Readfearn’s latest piece at The Drum. And Aussie academics are not happy that the Notre Dame University in Fremantle should be providing the Laird of anti-science with a platform, AFP reports.

John Abraham: How to give good radio

It’s hard to know listening to this recent US radio interview with John Abraham whether to be more admiring of his incisive responses or more astonished at the regularity with which tired old denier claims are put forward by the interviewers. The interview perhaps highlights the extraordinary divergences of American society – home to impressively intelligent and dependable science yet harbouring, at high levels of government and in major media, scientific denial expressed with a confidence untethered to any scientific grounding.

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Don’t Hide your love away: Don Brash, climate and a very particular kind of coup

The most right wing political party in New Zealand that is represented in parliament is the Act Party. This blog post by Bryce Edwards, a political scientist at the University of Otago, is a little long and a little out of date now (November 2009) but it gives a reasonable summary of the state of play in New Zealand. For the impatient the guts is that parties can be positioned on xy axes of left-right and libertarian-authoritarian.

Lib cons

Positions of New Zealand political parties as of 2008. Figure by Doug Mackie, drawn from the mean data at Bryce Edwards’ blog. Scale converted from 0-10 in original to -5 to +5 here. Edwards gives the caveats and all errors and distortions are mine.

Until just after the 2005 General Election the ‘centre right’ National Party was lead by Don Brash, an ex-governor of the Reserve Bank. The arguments will go on but most think Brash lost the election for the National Party as he was too right wing.

National won the 2008 election without Don Brash. But it seems Brash and his mates have ‘unfinished business’. Brash gained infamy in 2004 as leader of the opposition for suggesting to a US Congressional delegation that if he were elected in the 2005 election then New Zealand’s nuclear ship ban would be gone by lunchtime. And as leader of the National Party Brash was vocal about his extreme scepticism of climate change.

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Umm, a Gummer and carbon nonsense

Twenty years ago I’d have crossed the street to avoid meeting John Selwyn Gummer, then agriculture minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, chiefly famous for having attempted to feed his young daughter a beefburger at the 1990 Ipswich Boat Show to demonstrate his understanding of the risks of contracting bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad cow disease) from contaminated meat. It has since killed 166 people in Britain, Cordelia Gummer not among them. I now find myself in the strange position of agreeing rather wholeheartedly with Baron Deben, as he is currently styled, in an article headlined Climate change doubters are endangering our common future published in The Australian (!) last week. And his musings on the politics of climate action provide a useful counterpoint to the astonishing submission on the NZ government’s intention to gazette a “50 by 50” target for carbon emissions made earlier this month by an Australian organisation calling itself The Carbon Sense Coalition.

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