This is both my personal learning project and my contribution in the struggle to confront the ongoing Republican/ libertarian assault on rational science and constructive learning, as manifested in their malicious strategic Attacks on Science ~ A collection of articles, scientific resources, plus my own essays and indepth critique of various presentations from unidirectional-skeptics ~ Hopefully a resource for the busy, yet discerning, student who's concerned about the health of our Earth
It's a selection of incisive observations regarding the decades long Republican/Libertarian driven PR attack on science and all attempts at a rational public global warming education dialogue. Since this short list of Dr. Schneider's observations are worth becoming familiar with, I transcribed them, both to help me digest the information and to share with others who might be curious.
Lately I've been extra busy working so haven't had much chance to keep up on the climate change blogosphere dialogue, which seems more mud fight than constructive conversation, but hope and striving for improvement we must. Now that I'm getting caught up, I've been revisiting the SkepticForum.com climate change board to look in on the haps, read some opinions, share some thoughts, take some abuse, and do some people watching.
In any event, the denialist* arguments of a few - (*oops, they want to be called "skeptics" even though their skepticism runs in only one direction) - are like listening to a broken record repeating vacuous soundbites as though never absorbing one piece of scientific information. Like there's nothing to learn, only a mantra to repeat with eyes, ears and minds firmly closed.
Though trying to discuss the actual Climate Science with them always seems to turn down dead-ends where muggers lurk, the beatings do inspire me to react with constructive exercises that sometimes turn into blog posts and an occasional article.
This time, I decided to transcribe some highlights of a talk given by Stephen Schneider PhD not too long before his tragic untimely death in 2010. In this talk Dr. Schneider does a masterful job of describing the dysfunctional public dialogue. He reviews the scientific process and systems science, and speaks to the issues of educating the public, risk assessment and value judgements.
I'm posting it because Dr. Stephen Schneider's words are a beautifully concise distillation of over four decades worth of world class scientific experience and all around learning. If you are engaged in the struggle to communicate science and dialogue with faith-based denialist types, you're sure to find these personal reflections beneficial for your own process.
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Science & Distortion The Truth About Global Warming
0:15 "How did we know, in the 1970s, pretty much what would happen? It was theory then. And since then nature's been cooperating with theory, but we kinda knew what would happen, you couldn't add 4 watts of energy over every square meter and have nothing happen."
0:35 (a clip of Dr. Schneider in 1979) "The scientific consensus that CO2 will build up and will be a potential problem is pretty large. But, a scientific consensus on exactly how influential it will be in ten years, twenty years, what areas will get better what areas would get worse, this is where the controversy comes in."
0:50 "We also knew that we needed to stop using the atmosphere as a unpriced sewer to dump your smoke stack and tailpipe waste and land use changes interactions, all that was known. It was known not just in the club of a hundred left brained people. ..."
1:35 So why didn't we succeed? What happened?
1:40 "science is never settled"
"Climate Science is a system science. It's like trying to understand your body or trying to figure out something with cancer, ..., everyone of these complex systems problems has multiple components. And when you break them down what you find out is, rarely do we know everything and rarely do we know nothing.
"So we have to break systems science into the well established components, which are settled... into competing explanations where our work has been able to get us to winnow it down to two or three possibilities.
"Here's where the disconnect comes along. Special interests will grab what's convenient for their ideology or their position. So what you end up with, is you end up with a cacophony typically of people selecting stuff out of context. And then you end up with, the end of world versus good for you."
3:30 "I'll confess my preference, the end of the world and good for you are the two lowest probability outcomes. What we are looking at is a multiple range of potential outcomes. ..." What systems scientist do is they try to winnow out the relative likelihood of these other multiple outcomes.
So if you try to cover it as a Yes or No and you go out there and take a 200 scientist report like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change it goes through three years of writing, two rounds of reviews, thousands of comments on each chapter and two petroleum geologists come along who are special interests in finding oil, paid by you know which oil company, because they have PhDs they are given equal status in a story or on television, you see we get a little mad about that.
4:15 "We call that utter distortion. And they say, oh no that's balance. It is not balance, it is utter distortion because they are not reporting the relative credibility of the multiple positions. And it means you are leaving it up to the public and the political world to figure that out for themselves. They're capable of it, but they rarely do it."
5:00 "Supposing you got a spot on your lung for a chest X-ray that you did for a different purpose than for looking for cancer. Well it could be cancer and it could be a lesion... What should be done? ... biopsy ... risk assessment ... there is a price for false positive ... what if you wait ... but if you wait and it's metastatic and it's too late to do anything? ... Or you could have had it taken out and lowered your likelihood of being dead now..."
6:00 Risk assessment... value judgement
"There is no right answer, that's your value judgement..."
6:15 Home owners and fire insurance to protect against a 1 to 2% risk
6:30 "We do not need 95% certainty."
People frame this problem by looking of exceptions to the conventional wisdom and claim until the exceptions are resolved, it isn't proven and it's premature to act. Yet we're acting on a one percent risk and paying (fire) insurance and here we're talking about 50% risk to the planetary life-support system, and they're telling us that's not certain enough."
7:15 "... special-interest blather..."
8:00 Pro-smoking ad campaign, cigarettes and risk assessment
"... and they correctly said and still to this day we do not know biophysically the precise link between smoking and cancer. So they give you a therefore, when there's no therefore there. Therefore it's premature to act, that's a value judgement about risk management and of course they want you to protect market share.
"Whereas the data are so overwhelming epidemiologically, you know the statistics, that you'd have to be crazy not to control this, even though you don't understand every detail of the mechanism.
So this is again where we have to do risk management. Which is how do you want to deal with a preponderance of evidence, not an absolute certainty in every detail.
9:00 "Lets talk about tipping points... "
What about Greenland? Could Greenland be a tipping point?"
Giving some details of the glacial dynamic going on in Greenland.
9:30 "... what we don't know is does it need one more degree before that happens, 2 or 3? All I can say with high degree of confidence is the more we keep adding unprecedented levels of warming to the system the more the number of tipping points that are going to be crossed.
We know for sure they are there, we don't know for sure where they are."
9:45 "This is not just an academic exercise, this is something we've got to have people deeply engaged in, because we're talking about the sustainability of their children and grand-children and the rest of nature.
"What's the worst thing about tipping points like Greenland, we will probably never know when we've crossed it for fifty years. So our behavior in the next generation could (will) precondition a sustainability issue for a millennium or ten based upon the convenience of one species for one generation. I find that a very morally daunting prospect.
10:35 (a clip of Dr. Schneider in 1979) "What we're really doing is we're insulting our global environment at a faster rate than we are understanding it. And the best we can do in all honestly is say: "Look out, there's a chance, a potentially irreversible change on a global scale based upon the benefits of the use of energy and it's very tough for us to know if those benefits today are worth the potential rises of environmental change over our children."
11:10 "How are we going to deal with this problem, or others like it, if it requires public understandings so they can send the right value signals to our representatives when they're completely knocked off their pins by this cacophonous fraudulent debate where all parties are given equal credibility when they don't deserve it?"
"We've got to take back the air waves and make certain that what's out there is more credible not just simply following some formulaic balance."
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The Truth About Global Warming - Science & Distortion - Stephen Schneider
Uploaded on Jan 2, 2012
Information:
Stephen Henry Schneider (February 11, 1945 -- July 19, 2010)
was Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University,
a Co-Director at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and,
a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Schneider served as a consultant to federal agencies and White House staff in the Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
His research included modeling of the atmosphere, climate change, and "the relationship of biological systems to global climate change."
Schneider was the founder and editor of the journal Climatic Change and authored or co-authored over 450 scientific papers and other publications.
He was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II IPCC TAR and was engaged as a co-anchor of the Key Vulnerabilities Cross-Cutting Theme for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) at the time of his death. During the 1980s, Schneider emerged as a leading public advocate of sharp reductions of greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.
Regarding your "Historical Data on Global Warming provided by U.S. Government Agencies" op-ed"
Dear Dan Pangburn, You've written to me over at my citizenschallenge.blogspot.com and offered links to your work. I have read more of your blogs and posts and various comments around the web. Well, it's fired me up with a desire to write you a letter asking some heart to heart questions and sharing my perspective with you and your compatriots. I'm doing it here because WUWTW seemed a more appropriate location.
I'll base my letter on that piece you keep plugging, your March 15, 2008 op-ed:
"Historical Data on Global Warming provided by U.S. Government Agencies"
I will include your direct quotes from that paper followed by comments and further links to sources that support my arguments.
You write: "I have been researching the global warming issue for months. I am a licensed Mechanical Engineer with an MSc in Mechanical Engineering. The following is a brief verbal description of some of my sources and findings with graphics that show these findings..."
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First off, what's up with that title?
It's sweeping and somehow authoritative sounding, as if it originated in a government office. Why did you choose to give it that semi-official sounding name?
Then consider how you establish your authority.
You seem to believe that as a mechanical engineer you've got the background to master climatology with a few months of personal study. As if that lends you the genius to leapfrog scientists who have spent many years studying and mastering this topic.
Aren't you claiming a bit too much? What about those experts who have spent years wrestling with the formulas, data, models and their complexities?
How does mechanical engineering prepare you to understand the natural world?
Your world of buildings and bridges and mechanical forces is filled with the laws of physics in their most simplified form. It's a world full of constraints and absolutes - whereas our planet's natural systems work on an altogether different level.
How is it that after a few months of study you feel qualified to so absolutely dismiss long standing "consensus" science and practice? You complain about papers not being accepted for publication.
What that lot of unpublished papers that were basically substandard? Ds and Fs so to speak... why should seriously flawed papers deserve to be published?
Even from reading your replies at various discussions you reply to knowledgeable folks and their critiques... it seems evasive and willfully ignoring significant complaints.
I wonder, can you explain the difference between mechanical and Earth studies?
I'm serious, can you come up with a short descriptive comparison?
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You write: "The assertion that humans have or ever can have a significant influence on climate such as by limiting the use of fossil fuel (a.k.a. limiting human production of carbon dioxide) is not supported by any historical record."
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What does this mean? The human population has never been as large or resource consuming as today - so of course, there are no historical comparisons.
Do you seriously question whether humans can have a significant influence? - please explain that.
What about the evidence that humans have become a unprecedented major geologic force on this planet? Centuries of struggling to tame and subdue the biosphere have succeeded with a vengeance... don't you think?
I'll be honest with you, to me, believing humans can't possibly have major global impacts makes as much sense as believing our universe was formed 6 thousand years ago in one frenzied week... oh yea, silly me, half the US population does believe that god created Earth in a week long frenzy.
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For those who are curious human impacts the evidence overwhelming, here's a sampling:
Dawn of the Anthropocene Epoch? Earth Has Entered New Age of Geological Time, Experts Say
Mar. 26, 2010 — Geologists from the University of Leicester are among four scientists- including a Nobel prize-winner -- who suggest that Earth has entered a new age of geological time.
As you can see, honest curiosity and a sincere effort reveals a plethora of evidence of human's major disruptive impacts upon our planet. There's much more out there then I'll ever have the time to dig up.
Faith can't erase that reality.
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You write: "The temperature1 has varied substantially while the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere2 exhibits a smooth progressive rise. Note on this graph that prior to about 1910, and again from 1944 to about 1976, temperature showed a decreasing trend while atmospheric carbon dioxide level was increasing. . . "
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You are deliberately misrepresenting the science. For a more complete treatment view these examples:
You write: "In the previous graph it appears that since 1976 the increasing carbon dioxide level has caused the average global temperature to rise. However, a close look at the graph below reveals the fact that, typically in the past, global average temperature rose or fell before the carbon dioxide level changed."
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Dan you ignore too much of the story. What about this information:
CO2: The Biggest Control Knob on Earth's Thermostat
You write: "This graph shows that the average global temperature 400 years ago was significantly higher than now and the recent rate of temperature change is not unusual."
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That graph does not represent the global temperature, nor does any one graph definitively do that. They are building blocks of learning. Why are you ignoring the accumulated knowledge scientists have built up regarding the MWP and other temperature fluctuation over the past thousands of years?
Do a search for "Medieval Warm Period" over at SkepticalScience.com (that internet repository of climate science papers), the list of informative information is impressive and clearly shows that temperature fluctuations are considered and understood.
You write: "For most of earth’s history carbon dioxide level has been several times higher than the present8,9. The planet plunged in to the Andean-Saharan ice age 440 million years ago10 when the carbon dioxide level was over ten times higher than now.The conclusion from all this is that carbon dioxide change does NOT cause significant climate change."
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What a sad, even pathetic, deception you are playing here. It's worth repeating, no climatologist has ever claimed CO2 was the driving factor in every climate swing Earth has experienced !
Comparing today's globe and biosphere with what existed 440 million years ago is as disingenuous as it gets.
You willfully ignore that our global heat distribution engine is a product of evolution and that it has reached a special sweet spot during the recent geologic era. One that has been most conducive to society's development; one that we are dependent on; one deserving of much respect and appreciation. After all our society is dependent on predicable stable weather conditions.
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YouTube's "ThinkAboutIt" has put together an excellent < 8 minute video reviewing the past 600 million years of our climate's evolution. It valuable information presented in a timeline fashion and filled with fascinating details you seem obvious to.
Man Made Climate Change in 7 Minutes (The last 600 Million years of our climate's evolution in 7 minutes)
You write: "Actions to control the amount of non-condensing greenhouse gases that are added to the atmosphere are based on the mistaken assumption that global warming was caused by human activity. These actions put freedom and prosperity at risk. "
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You reveal your agenda... and it doesn't sound like its got anything to do with understanding our planet. I'm thinking you are one of those folks committed to that "free-corporate-market" philosophy, more interested in retaining assets and power than understanding how our planet behaves.
You talk of "freedom and prosperity" but ignore how dependent every aspect of our society is on stable reliable weather patterns. The very thing our rampant ever increasing CO2 injections into our thin atmosphere is promising to disrupt.
Have you seriously considered you might be wrong and this course you are advocating, of ignoring Earth Observation evidence and expert opinions, will prove destructive to our younger generations?
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Mr. Pangburn, I wonder what you think of Spencer Weart's words in his essay:
"I often get emails from scientifically trained people who are looking for a straightforward calculation of the global warming that greenhouse gas emissions will bring. What are the physics equations and data on gases that predict just how far the temperature will rise? A natural question, when public expositions of the greenhouse effect usually present it as a matter of elementary physics. These people, typically senior engineers, get suspicious when experts seem to evade their question. Some try to work out the answer themselves (Lord Monckton for example) and complain that the experts dismiss their beautiful logic.
The engineers’ demand that the case for dangerous global warming be proved with a page or so of equations does sound reasonable, and it has a long history. The history reveals how the nature of the climate system inevitably betrays a lover of simple answers. . . link"
We often get requests to provide an easy-to-understand explanation for why increasing CO2is a significant problem without relying on climate models and we are generally happy to oblige. The explanation has a number of separate steps which tend to sometimes get confused and so we will try to break it down carefully. . . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm
Basic Radiation CalculationsThe foundation of any calculation of the greenhouse effect was a description of how radiation and heat move through a slice of the atmosphere. At first this foundation was so shaky that nobody could trust the results. With the coming of digital computers and better data, scientists gradually worked through the intricate technical problems. A rough idea was available by the mid 1960s, and by the late 1970s, the calculations looked solid — for idealized cases. Much remained to be done to account for all the important real-world factors, especially the physics of clouds. (This genre of one-dimensional and two-dimensional models lay between the rudimentary, often qualitative models covered in the essay on Simple Models of Climate and the elaborate three-dimensional General Circulation Models of the Atmosphere.) Warning: this is the most technical of all the essays. K
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Over at Skepticforum I’ve just been introduced to the latest example of the ruthless depths the AGW “skeptic” community is happy to sink to, in order to distract attention from the scientific evidence of what society is doing to it’s one and only home planet. The slander is so disgusting I will not discuss it, though the above link will take you to the post in question.
Suffice it to say the attacks against Michael Mann have reached new depths of sleaze in their desperate attempts to deny what Earth Observation evidence is showing us. Namely, that Michael Mann’s pioneering paleoclimate reconstructions and the early so called Hockey Stick graph’s voracity continues to be supported by the evidence. And that the basic outline has been repeated, well... repeatedly. As illustrated within the evidence at the other side of the links provided below.
It is tragic that the contrarian skeptical community has managed to sell the notion that anything less than 100% accuracy should be shrugged off. As for the constant refrain 'we want proof', well the lie in that is - we don’t even have proof the sun will rise tomorrow morning until after it happens. So can we try to be realistic? When will these folks start learning rather than dodging and ignoring every new piece of evidence?
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Thus I share a slightly cleaned up version of my reply:
I'm still in a bit of shock at these new depths of brutality and ruthlessness that the denialist community and it's adherents feel comfortable promulgating. {and some folks wonder why I'm so motivated - and frustrated at not being able to spend all my energy in trying to present the science and confront lying predators like osullivan et al.}
Since I'm already involved in a Hansen discussion thread over at the SkepticSociety's forum I found this recent post and the comments following another sad example of so-called "skeptics" ability to twist facts and avoid reality.
James Hansen’s climate forecast of 1988: a whopping 150% wrong
Posted on June 15, 2012 by Anthony Watts
"From their Die kalte Sonne website, Professor Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning put up this guest Post by Prof. Jan-Erik Solheim (Oslo) on Hansen’s 1988 forecast, and show that Hansen was and is, way off the mark. h/t to Pierre Gosselin of No Tricks Zone and WUWT reader tips.
{...}
Another irritating part of Anthony's blog is how he tries to come across like some fair minded person, yet his site constantly censors and bars folks who bring civil yet actually challenges.
Case in point being a rejected post by TC:
"The repeated attacks on Hansen's 1988 scenario blow the cover on most so called "skeptics". The fact of the matter is that it is very easy to check the gas concentrations used in Hansen's three scenarios: http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios.dat
Many thanks to John Cook and that incredibly hard working team of volunteers over at SkepticalScience.com.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Top Scientists Vent on NASA’s Sub Prime Greenhouse Gas Hoaxer May 20, 2012 ±2400 words
Climatologist James Hansen is under sustained attack accused of global warming fraud at a time when the powerful science journal, Nature admits “research is riddled with systematic errors.”
Here’s a case in point and a worthy addition to this little collection. ;-)
Contrarian-skeptics {as opposed to Informed-skeptics} are slippery fish to catch, but if you don’t mind my saying so, I think I caught a floppy one yesterday.
I was reading
Lessons from Past Predictions: Vinnikov on Arctic Sea Ice Posted on April 27, 2012 by dana1981 over at skepticalscience.com
Quite the interesting read ~ basically examining an Arctic Sea Ice study from way back in 1999 by Vinnikov. et al. and explaining the evolving science and incoming data through the lens of Vinnikov’s models and projections. Anyone interested in better understanding the conflicting claims regarding the future of Arctic Sea Ice owes it to themselves to familiarize themselves with this article and Vinnekov’s work.
Well, I got to the section “Poor Pielke Analysis” and find this gem:
As we've come to expect
from WattsUpWithThat, Anthony will post just about anything, no matter how
outlandish, if it's in the interest of raising confusion and reinforcing
inaction.
This latest post, is an echo of an earlier post ironically titled : "The Emily Litella moment for climate science and CO2 ? (August 5, 2011 by Anthony Watts)
Ironic because it's such a perceptive self-caricature of the kind of misrepresentation and misunderstanding and plain old crazy-making Anthony and his "WattsUpWithThat" has become so successful at. Up to and including the clueless factor.
Posted on April 19, 2012 by Anthony Watts
"What – you mean we aren’t controlling the climate?"
Correlation of Net CO2 emissions with climate properties shows that the growth in CO2 may be natural
Watts has been having a rager over at his blog... adding his own spin fast as he can. Here's a recent update: UPDATE 55: 1:50PM 2/25 The Weekly Standard has a great story up.
(Anthony) Loved this part:
Finally, “coordinated”? Few public policy efforts have
ever had the massive institutional and financial coordination that the
climate change cause enjoys. That tiny Heartland, with but a single
annual conference and a few phone-book-sized reports summarizing the
skeptical case, can derange the climate campaign so thoroughly is an
indicator of the weakness and thorough politicization of climate
alarmism.
Yes it is disgusting that a tiny Heartland can get the type of financial backing to pay professional contrarians in a media effort far removed from doing actual science. But, folks like Anthony are so focused on their political goals they feel justified doing anything and saying anything so long as they can out shout the voices of science and rationality.
Richard Littlemore at DeSmogBlog.com has a great article highlighting one aspect of that rational. Hire scientists - not to learn but to create rhetorical parlor debate tricks intent on stonewalling any recognition of what climate science is teaching us.
Check out The Heartland Institute’s “Brain Trust” - who are incidentally, pretty much the same dozen folks who produce the Nongovernmental Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.
I'm posting this {words are all Littlemore, highlight are all mine} because in conversations at various internet discussion forums, one of the main refrains that gets tossed in my face is how it all comes down to which scientist you choose to believe. Coupled onto that is the claim that government and university scientists manipulate their data to achieve some mandated consensus.
Sadly those charges come from people who have either remained blessedly ignorant of the parade of scientific literature and the history of their learning process - or folks who are hired guns and for whom honesty is a joke when it gets in the way of their corporate wild west style free-market agenda.
As support for this image of The Heartland Institute as ruthlessly dedicated to a message rather than learning about climatology I copy the following from Richard Littlemore’s February 24, 2012 post at Desmogblog.com because it contains names and sums and reveals Heartland Institute for the agenda driven lobby organization that it is. Dedicated to undermining serious rational science.
It scares the hell outta me that such people remain so powerful and are allowed to cause such counter productive crazy-making... since there's not much I can do, here's my contribution to the effort... to witness and document this scandal as it plays out.
Another installment of my history of the Unfolding DenialGate story. As told by timely articles.
For
the past few days Heartland Institute has been sending out letters
demanding that all references and links to their leaked documents be
removed. Can't blame them it's some embarrassing stuff. But I can't
find any sympathy for them either.
This article
includes a reply letter from Scott Mandia, Joshua Wolfe and Jeff Ruch to
Heartland Institute's threats. And links to copies of Heartlands
Institute's letters. The post is from Scott Mandia's Global Warming: Man or Myth?
This latest tiff regarding Wall Street Journal’s shameful distortion of science centers around a lead letter printed January 27, 2012 and signed by a collection of sixteen engineers and scientists titled: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
It repeats the “free-market think-tank” claims that there's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.
In doing research on the signees I’ve come across an assortment of rebuttals to the various misleading and outright false claims made in the letter from a variety of sources. This post is a collection of those varied rebuttals.
{Part two will review the Wall Street Journal letter in detail}
Considering the oft repeated refrain at a discussion forum I visit of: “it all depends on which scientists you choose to believe” along with something like ‘who am I to judge the voracity of a scientist?’ this recent dust up seems worth sharing. Since it once again underscores the crazy-making Mr. Watts and his pals are guilty of.
I've just posted the following at Watt's Up With That - it remains to be seen if their moderator decides to trash it... thus for good measure I figured I should document the post over here:
It concerns the discussion over there that seems to have gotten side tracked on Monckton's peerage rather on Monckton's serial misrepresentations of science and quotes.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Well it's official this comment did not get through the censors at WUWT, although their comments are finally moving away from peerage nonsense.
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What's with this diversion about the Lord this or Lord that? ... Monckton misrepresents both his standing as a member of the House of Lords as "FaceFirst" pointed out [January 16, 2012 at 5:16 am], if you don't believe him try to find Monckton's name on the official list of members [http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/lords/] And then there's this official reprimand demanding Monckton stop making these false claims: http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/july/letter-to-viscount-monckton/ ~ ~ ~ quoting from that letter: "Letter to Viscount Monckton of Brenchley from David Beamish, the Clerk of the Parliaments.
Dear Lord Monckton My predecessor, Sir Michael Pownall, wrote to you on 21 July 2010, and again on 30 July 2010, asking that you cease claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication. It has been drawn to my attention that you continue to make such claims. . ." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ He has also misrepresented is roll as Prime Minister Thatcher's advisor. From SPPI's personnel page: "SPPI's Chief Policy Adviser: Lord Monckton, UK: -- Christopher, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was Special Advisor to Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister from 1982 to 1986. . ." and then the lavish claims made here at WUWT see: “Margaret Thatcher: the world’s first climate realist” Posted on June 16, 2010 by Anthony Watts
... Yet the man isn’t mentioned once in Margaret Thatcher’s 914 page autobiography. In fact, she credits one George Guise as being her science policy advisor. ~ ~ ~ Why don’t such “inconsistencies” send up red flags to thinking skeptics?
And isn’t all this attempting to build up the Lord’s supposed “authority” in the eyes of his audience nothing more than an appeal to authority? I thought you folks attack ‘appeals to authority’ why is it OK for the Lord to play that card so eloquently? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
