Tag: Joanne Nova

Recursive lying: Monckton rails against liars by telling lies

“Potty peer” Chris Monckton has reacted to criticism of his threats to sue Australian academics by doubling down on his commitment to pursue legal action. In a typically overblown piece at an Australian sceptic site, Monckton tries to reassure the faithful that their guru has not gone off the rails:

Going to court is the deadliest weapon we have against the extremists who have lied and lied and lied again to save the Party Line. Lies have consequences.

Indeed they do, as Monckton may find out one day. He goes on to demonstrate how “successful” this tactic can be by re-writing the history of one or two cases he’s been involved with, and then states:

“Dr.” Michael Mann, fabricator of the “hockey-stick” graph that falsely abolished the medieval warm period, sued Dr. Tim Ball for calling the graph scientific fraud. Tim Ball’s defence was to propose showing the judge the many dodges by which “Dr.” Mann had done what “Dr.” Overpeck had called for in 1995: “We have to abolish the medieval warm period.”

Rather than face cross-examination, “Dr.” Mann gave up the case at a cost that cannot have been much less than $1 million.

This is not true. It is an invention. Monckton is lying about the state of the Ball/Mann court case, and repeating Ball’s libel of Mann to boot. Mann’s lawyer, Roger McConchie, has described Monckton’s statement as “nonsense”. The legal process continues — in fact, Mann’s legal team were deposing Tim Ball as part of the discovery process on the same day that Monckton concocted and published his story!

The discount viscount concludes his epistle with a rousing call to his own arms:

But if the liars tell lies about me, if the fraudsters deny the scientific truth when I speak it, if the cheats make up baseless personal attacks on me, then I have the opportunity to fight back, not so much on my own behalf as on behalf of the silent, broken millions who cannot speak for themselves and whom your political class no longer bothers to represent.

Monckton’s hypocrisy is breathtaking. He is a puffed-up propagandist who has repeatedly lied about many things, and who has misrepresented the science of climate at every one of the many opportunities he has been given by those campaigning against action to reduce emissions. When the “silent, broken millions” who will be hit by climate changes made worse by Monckton’s efforts wake up to his mendacity, his words will surely return to bite him on his upper class bum. And the sooner they do, the better.

Prat watch #6: My coup runneth over

Courtesy of the ever-helpful NZ Climate “Science” Coalition — you know, the guys who take money from American think tanks and found “charities” to sue scientists — I stumble on a remarkable exposition of the world view to which they subscribe. Apparently, “Climate criminals almost took control of the whole world by deception, a grand fraud. Money has changed hands on a vast scale due to a bunch of easily-dispelled untruths.” Really? Here’s another sample:

The supporters of the theory of manmade global warming are […] an intellectual upper class of wordsmiths, who regulate and pontificate rather than produce real stuff. There is little demand in the economy for their skills, so they would command only modest rewards for their labor in the marketplace. Arguably they are a class of parasites enriching themselves at the expense of producers, because they are rewarded out of proportion to the value they create—value as determined not by themselves, but by voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

Yes folks, those of us who would like some meaningful action on climate change are the “regulating class” according to a penetrating new analysis by Australian denialist Dr David Evans. And we’re bent on world domination…

Continue reading “Prat watch #6: My coup runneth over”

How Heartland lied to me and illegally recorded the lies

4 a.m. Bali, December 2007, the first Tuesday of the two-week UN climate talks. My phone rings, waking me up. Blearily, and a little crossly, I answer it.

I was in Bali to run Greenpeace International’s media for the meeting. The caller was someone called “John” who said he was an intern for a US NGO that I had never heard of. It was a small NGO, he said, who couldn’t come to the meeting, but “john” asked me for a copy of the UNFCCC’s media list for the meeting.

I confirmed I had a copy but refused to give it to him – he appeared a little suspect. The conversation ended when I put the phone down – the caller clearly wasn’t bothered that he had woken me at 4 am, which was odd, as an NGO colleague would have apologised and hung up immediately.

Three days later I was again woken by the phone, with the information that the right wing think tank the Heartland Institute had just issued a press release slamming the UN for working with environmental NGO’s. Heartland’s press release posted a link to a recording of the 4 a.m. conversation earlier in the week.

Hang on, let’s get this clear:

Someone from the Heartland Institute:
 – called me at 4 am, lied to me saying they were an intern for a US environmental NGO 
- recorded that conversation without my knowledge or my permission, and released the audio of the telephone conversation to the media, again without my permission.

Sound familiar?

Continue reading “How Heartland lied to me and illegally recorded the lies”

What becomes of the broken Heartland?

The ramifications of last week’s leak of internal documents from the Heartland Institute — the US lobby group up to its neck in organised climate denial in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and perhaps elsewhere — continue to make news. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Heartland money was used to fund Aussie climate denial campaigners in 2009 and 2010, with funds channelled through the “American Climate Science Coalition” — a member of the coterie of climate “science” coalitions spun off from the New Zealand original with Heartland funding. Heartland’s charitable status in the US — which allows donors to the group to claim a 30% tax deduction (effectively a tax-payer subsidy of Heartland activities) — is being called into question as a result of the latest Mashey report into the links between Fred Singer and Heartland, and the dodgy nature of Heartland’s overseas grants. There have also been calls for some of Heartland’s large corporate donors to cease providing financial support for an organisation so steeped in climate denial.

Continue reading “What becomes of the broken Heartland?”

Mad, bad and dangerous

Australian climate scientists have been receiving abusive emails — even death threats — from people who mistake violence for political expression. Graham Readfearn provides some examples (not for the squeamish). The Canberra Times broke the story at the weekend and it’s been covered in depth at The Conversation (one, two). Tim Lambert comments on the vapid response from right wing commentator Tim Blair, but I was horrified by the unrepentant tone adopted by Joanne Nova:

This is sheer beef-it-up spin, making a mountain out of a molehill, clutching at straws in desperation to eek out a PR victory from the dregs of a fading scam.

I might have expected a ritual “we do not condone violence” from Nova and Blair, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Nor is this tactic new. It’s been a fact of life for climate scientists in the USA for years. That it’s crossing the Pacific and polluting the discourse in Australia should be a matter of shame for those opposing action on climate change.

It’s also evidence of how desperate the campaign of denial has become. Denied recourse to the evidence because it is overwhelmingly against them, they resort to bullying and hate speech. There’s a lesson here for those who would argue against action on climate change. When you make common cause with the crazies by invoking conspiracies as your case for inaction, then you open the doors on a very dangerous form of debate.