MONCKTON 2
===
see main 6/16
MERRI OK
SEE DIMMOCK INC TRUTH UK CASE 2007
CT FUCKERY FUNDER
HAPPER HORNER KOONIN
HEARTLAND HACKS
MORANO
RELATED TO LAWSON, FARAGE
RON JOHNSON
4 26
Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills - Wikipedia
Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills was a case heard in September–October 2007 in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, concerning the permissibility of the government providing Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth to English state schools as a teaching aid.
The case was brought by Stewart Dimmock, a lorry (HGV) driver and school governor from Kent, England, a father of two sons who attend a state school. Dimmock has twice stood as a local election candidate[1] for the New Party and received backing for the case from Viscount Monckton, the author of the New Party's manifesto.[2] Monckton, one of the UK's most prominent climate change deniers, launched an advertising campaign against Al Gore in March 2007 challenging Gore to a public debate on climate change.[3] Monckton has received funding from a Washington-based conservative think tank of which he is chief policy adviser, the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), to create a film, Apocalypse No, which will parody Gore, showing Monckton presenting a slide show making an attack on climate change science.[2]
...Viscount Monckton criticised the judge, who he claimed had been "a Labour [Party] candidate before", and asserted that the Government had "decided that for the sake of retaining what little scientific credibility the office still has, they better admit this were errors and once they admitted them, the judge, even though he wanted to, couldn't find that Gore's film was accurate."[11]
In July 2009, Gore was interviewed by Heather Ewart of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In the interview, Gore was questioned about Justice Burton's ruling that there were "nine errors" in the film. Gore commented that "the ruling was in my favour."[31]
Costs and funding
Dimmock's legal costs were said to be around £200,000.[32] He was awarded only two-thirds of his costs and is reported to have received a bill of more than £60,000 for the remainder.[2]
:{:{The question of the lawsuit's funding was raised in September 2007, even before the case had concluded, by a report in The Daily Telegraph which wondered "Where will the money come from?". According to Stewart Dimmock's solicitor, it was "a private matter for him". However, the Telegraph noted that Dimmock was a member of the New Party, a small right-wing party with a record of climate change denial. The party declares that "political opportunism and alarmism have combined in seizing [the IPCC's] conclusions to push forward an agenda of taxation and controls that may ultimately be ineffective in tackling climate change, but will certainly be damaging to our economy and society".[13]}:
The New Party was reported to be backing Dimmock.[33] It issued a press release on 1 October 2007 in which it publicised the case and declared, somewhat prematurely, that "it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the film will ever be shown as intended."[34]
In March 2008, the New Party's manifesto-writer Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley acknowledged he had prompted an unnamed wealthy friend to fund the case and that he had himself been heavily involved in the litigation. The Observer reported at the time that Dimmock's backers were "a powerful network of business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies." The chairman of the New Party, Robert Durward, has been described as "a long-time critic of environmentalists" who established a climate change denial group called the Scientific Alliance. The alliance publicised Dimmock's case on its website and was also involved in advising Channel 4 on the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle,[10] which Viscount Monckton is distributing to schools as a riposte to An Inconvenient Truth.[2]}:
---
[### Climate change film to stay in the classroom | Schools
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › education › oct › schools](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/oct/10/schools.uk)
Oct 10, 2007 — A parent has failed in his legal action to prevent Al Gore's climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, being shown in schools in England.Read more
Missing: MONCKTON | Show results with: MONCKTON
==
TESTIMONY
- PREPARING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: ADAPTATION POLICIES AND PROGRAMS
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH 25, 2009
Witnesses
Thomas Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration................ 19
Prepared statement........................................... 22
John Stephenson, Director of Natural Resources and Environment,
Government Accountability Office............................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Larry Schweiger, President and CEO, National Wildlife Federation. 47
Prepared statement........................................... 49
E. Calvin Beisner, The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of
Creation....................................................... 104
Prepared statement........................................... 106
Lord Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.. 117
Prepared statement........................................... 119
David Waskow, Climate Change Program Director, Oxfam American.... 159
Prepared statement........................................... 161
Bishop Callon Holloway, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,
On Behalf of The National Council of Churches.................. 171
Prepared statement........................................... 173
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman
JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan JOE BARTON, Texas
Chairman Emeritus Ranking Member
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts RALPH M. HALL, Texas
RICK BOUCHER, Virginia FRED UPTON, Michigan
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey CLIFF STEARNS, Florida
BART GORDON, Tennessee NATHAN DEAL, Georgia
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky
ANNA G. ESHOO, California JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
BART STUPAK, Michigan JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York ROY BLUNT, Missouri
GENE GREEN, Texas STEVE BUYER, Indiana
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado GEORGE RADANOVICH, California
Vice Chairman JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
LOIS CAPPS, California MARY BONO MACK, California
MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania GREG WALDEN, Oregon
JANE HARMAN, California LEE TERRY, Nebraska
TOM ALLEN, Maine MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina
HILDA L. SOLIS, California JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania
JAY INSLEE, Washington MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
JIM MATHESON, Utah PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama
G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana
JOHN BARROW, Georgia
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
DORIS O. MATSUI, California
DONNA CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands
KATHY CASTOR, Florida
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio
JERRY McNERNEY, California
BETTY SUTTON, Ohio
BRUCE BRALEY, Iowa
PETER WELCH, Vermont
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE BARTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. Barton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to again
commend you and Chairman Waxman for holding these series of
hearings. They are very informational and informative, and most
of the time, they are even entertaining. So I am grateful, as
always for this regular order.
I especially want to thank Lord Monckton for testifying. He
is generally as one of the most knowledgeable, if not the most
knowledgeable experts from a skeptical point of view on this
issue of climate change. And we are very glad that he could
stay over this week in the United States and testify at this
important hearing.
Today's hearing is about adaptation. Adapting is a common
natural way for people to adapt to their environment. I believe
that the earth's climate is changing, but I think it is
changing for natural variation reasons. And I think mankind has
been adapting to climate as long as man has walked the earth.
When it rains, we find shelter. When it hot, we get in shade.
When it is cold, we find a warm place to stay. Adaptation is a
practical, affordable, utterly natural reflex response to
nature when the planet is heating or cooling, as it always is
doing one or the other.
As Lord Monckton will testify, in the Middle Ages, it was
warmer almost everywhere in the world than it is today. Some of
our ancestors grew grapes in Britain. Others sailed ice-free
seas to settle northern places like Newfoundland and Greenland.
This period used to be known as the Medieval Warm Period. It
was followed by the Little Ice Age, the Period of Dramatic
Cooling, which lasted until the middle of the 19th Century.
During the Little Ice Age, both the Vikings and the British
adapted to the cold by changing. I suppose that one possible
adaptation response of Viking retrenchment and British
expansion is that we are conducting the hearing today in
English instead of Norwegian.
In the Chesapeake Bay and the Piedmont Marsh, the lower
Hudson Valley, layers of sediment reflect what happened to the
North American continent. That history shows that the nature of
the climate is to change and to make organic shifts in
temperature regardless of mankind's presence or supposed
influence.
Nature doesn't seem to adjust to people as much as people
seem to adjust to nature. I think that it is inevitable that
humanity will adapt to global warming. I also believe the
longer we postpone finding ways to do it successfully, the most
expensive and unpalatable the adjustment will become.
Adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult.
What will be difficult is the adaptation to rampant
unemployment, enormous, spontaneous, and avoidable changes to
our economy if we adopt such a reckless policy as cap and tax
or cap-and-trade. That will devastate our economy, and we will
have great difficulty adapting to that.
The majority of this committee has promised, and I hope
this is a promise they don't meet, to introduce an economy-wide
cap-and-trade bill in the next month no matter that the past
seven years have witnessed a cooling period. Europe just
experienced its coldest winter in the last 20 years last
winter.
In the name of the house of cards posing as scientific
certainty and an alarmist policy asserted by its followers with
a religious fervor, the Democratic majority apparently is hell-
bent to propose to cap our economy and trade away our jobs.
Some of us on this committee are going to try to stop that or
at least deflect it.
On top of the very real threat of job losses caused by
closed factories, shut down mines, vacant power plants rendered
uncompetitive under an American cap-and-trade scheme, the new
majority's cap-and-trade goal is to make our electricity so
expensive, our gas so pricey, and our food so dear that we will
be forced to change the way we live. We will literally be
forced to change the American way of life.
We have had hearing after hearing where armies of witnesses
representing both sides of the debate have warned us that the
impact of cap-and-trade on everybody in this country but the
mega-rich. The people at greatest risk are low income, middle
income families, blue-collar workers, the elderly, and those
whose jobs will be destroyed--and I say will be, not may be,
will be destroyed if we adopt a cap-and-tax policy.
The question is not how Americans will adapt to cap-and-
trade legislation. The question is if and how we will survive
when blackouts, rampant job loss, and empty cupboards threaten
out very way of life. With those cheery words, Mr. Chairman, I
yield back, and I look forward to this hearing.
Mr. Markey. And we thank the gentleman. The chair
recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Barrow. The
gentleman's time will be reserved. The chair recognizes the
gentlelady from Wisconsin, Ms. Baldwin.
---Mr. Markey. We thank you very much for being here. Our next
witness is Lord Christopher Monckton. He is the Viscount of
Brenchley. Lord Monckton is the chief policy advisor to the
Science and Public Policy Institute. From 1982 to 1986, Lord
Monckton served as a special advisor to Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher. Please proceed, Lord Monckton.
STATEMENT OF LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON
Mr. Monckton. Sir, I bring fraternal greetings from the
mother of Parliament to the great Congress of your athletic
democracy, and I pray that God's blessing may rest upon your
counsels.
[Slide.]
The right response to the non-problem of global warming is
to have the courage to do nothing.
[Slide.]
Slide please. Thank you. There has been global cooling, as
you see on that slide, for 7 years. The UN's climate panel has
exaggerated carbon dioxide's effect on temperature sevenfold,
verified by satellite observation--next slide please--that the
diminution over time in outgoing long-wave radiation is one-
seventh of that which the UN's computer models were told to
predict.
[Slide.]
Next slide please. Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the
air at less than half the rate that the United Nations had
imagined. This century we may warm the world by just half a
Fahrenheit degree, if that.
[Slide.]
Next slide please. If doing nothing is inexpedient,
adaptation to warmer or cooler weather, when and if necessary,
is many times more cost effective than attempted mitigation.
Adaptation to warmer weather is, of course, unnecessary
unless the weather actually gets warmer. For 14 years, there
has been no statistically significant global warming. Do not do
or spend anything to mitigate or adapt to global warming until
global temperature is two Fahrenheit degrees warmer than in
- That may not happen for at least a century.
We have been adapting to natural variations in climate
throughout the history of humankind. Adaptation is a practical,
affordable natural response to natural climate change. In the
Middle Ages, it was warmer worldwide than today. Then global
cooling set in. Our ancestors adapted. The Vikings abandoned
their settlements in Greenland. Their graveyard in Hvalsey is
under permafrost. It was frost free when they were buried.
In Europe we adapted too. We moved to the valleys as the
glaciers advanced, burying mountain roads, silver mines, and
forests. Only now are all of these emerging once again.
Adaptation therefore is at present unnecessary. Mitigation is
always unnecessary. It is also disproportionately expensive as
Dr. Beisner has rightly pointed out.
In particular, the impoverishing regressive poll tax that
is cap-and-trade has an ignominious past and no future. It has
collapsed twice in Europe and once in New Zealand. If the
United States adopts cap-and-trade, she may find herself doing
so alone. Cap-and-trade will create green jobs by the thousands
while destroying real jobs by the million at a cost of
trillions. It is senseless. Green jobs are the new euphemism
for mass unemployment.
Cap-and-trade will perversely increase the global emissions
it is intended to diminish. You will transfer your jobs,
industries, and wealth to India and China. Their emissions per
unit of production are far greater than your own. Protectionist
tariffs, to try to prevent that, are the last resort of the
economically illiterate and the politically desperate. Tariffs
always damage those nations who impose them and they also flout
your nation's obligations to the World Trade Organization. They
are ultra vires.
For proof of the economic damage caused by unilateral but
futile attempts at influencing climate, see the galloping
exodus from California. Everyone with any get-up-and-go is
getting up and going. And unlike their robotic governor, they
won't be back.
Or see the food riots in a dozen of the world's poorest
regions after the biofuels scam that arose directly from the
global warming scare doubled food prices in 18 months. A third
of your farmland no longer grows food for people who need it.
It grows fuel for automobiles that don't.
For us, dearer food is inconvenient. For starving millions
worldwide, as Dr. Beisner has pointed out, it is death. Next
slide please.
[Slide.]
In Haiti, the biofuel driven doubling of world food prices
has forced the poorest to eat mud pies made with real mud.
There is serious starvation going on around the world now, and
this is directly--not as a result of global warming. There
hasn't been any for 14 years--but as a result of policies
intended to mitigate what does not need to be mitigated. You
must apply the precautionary principle also to the precautions.
[Slide.]
And finally--next slide please--King Canute reminds his
courtiers of the limitations of earthly power when the waves
disobeyed his command not to wet the royal feet. You can no
more command the forces of nature than could King Canute. For
the sake of your taxpayers and the poor, whom their taxes
support and defend, please don't try.
[The prepared statement of Lord Monckton follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7818A.093
MANY
Mr. Markey. Good show, Lord Monckton. Very good show. Our
next witness is Mr. David Waskow. Mr. Waskow is the climate
change program director at Oxfam America. Before joining Oxfam,
he worked for Friends of the Earth where he focused on a range
of international, environmental, and development issues. We
welcome you, sir.
STATEMENT OF DAVID WASKOW
Mr. Waskow. Good morning. Thank you. Oxfam is an
international development and humanitarian organization that
works in more than 120 countries, including the United States,
and I am here today because our staff and partners are already
responding to the serious impacts of climate change, including
heat waves, severe storms, sea level rise, and reduced water
supplies.
Both in the United States and abroad, we believe it has
become essential to develop innovative and effective adaptation
strategies for vulnerable communities. And, as I will note in a
moment, we also believe these strategies are an opportunity for
economic growth, both at home and abroad.
We witnessed the reality of climate impacts firsthand in
our operations in the Gulf Coast, responding to the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina. And although a particular weather-related
event like Katrina cannot be specifically attributed to climate
change, its impacts do stand as a tragic warning sign of the
consequences if we fail to develop robust adaptation
strategies.
And let me just note for a moment here that I think our
approach to climate change in general should be a proactive
one, not reactive. And that is the case both in terms of
reducing our emissions and also in doing adaptation, which is a
matter of promoting resilience in a proactive manner.
In the United States, low income and other vulnerable
populations will be disproportionately affected by climate
change, as has been noted earlier. According to the recent
findings of the Federal U.S. Climate Change Science Program,
many of the expected health effects are likely to fall heaviest
on the poor, the elderly, the disabled, and the uninsured.
Health waves and extreme weather events are but two examples of
climate impacts that will disproportionately affect the low
income and other vulnerable populations.
As a first step to addressing these challenges in our
country, the federal government should establish a national
climate adaptation strategy, coordinate actions across
agencies, and provide capacity building assistance to state and
local governments. All of these climate adaptation strategies
should prioritize and include the participation of vulnerable
communities, including improving the management of emergency
response strategies for those who are most vulnerable.
Internationally, the capacity of vulnerable communities in
developing countries is even more limited and is being
stretched even further that is the case here in the United
States. Agricultural practices, water systems, disaster
preparedness, and health systems will all need to be
strengthened and improved in order to be more climate
resilient.
In these countries, the consequences of climate change
reach significantly beyond direct impacts of course. Stability
and security will be undermined by climate change, and recently
retired U.S. admirals and generals recommended that the U.S.
take serious action to build climate resilience in those
countries.
Climate resilience, however, is not only a necessity both
in the United States and around the world. It is also smart
economically. Taking preventive action now will pay for itself
many times over, and studies have shown that reducing disaster
risk saves $4 for every dollar spent on disaster preparedness.
Adaptation strategies are also a key economic opportunity
that we should seize. Innovative solutions can be an integral
part of a global transition to a clean and climate-resilient
economy. From developing climate resilient buildings to
buttresses sustainable transport systems to improving water
systems and agricultural practices around the world, we can
find substantial economic benefits from adaptation strategies.
In the Gulf Coast, we have been involved with a promising
example of climate resilient economic development building
green, climate resilient housing. And we are seeing the
development of new markets at home and abroad for technologies
and services to help communities build resilience. Water pumps,
infiltration devices, irrigation equipment, early warning
systems for weather events, and weather index microinsurance.
U.S. companies and workers are well poised to partner with
communities at home and abroad in deploying these technologies
and services. For example, Pent Air, a Minnesota-based company,
manufactures pumps and filters for the entire water cycle and
recently installed and maintained filtration systems in rural
communities in India and Honduras.
The development of new, clean energy technologies to
support climate adaptation and resilience, both here and in
developing countries, is another economic opportunity. And I
would just take a moment to note that in many cases, off-grid
renewable energy technologies are, in fact, the most cost
effective, best way to provide energy sources to the poor in
developing countries.
Out of necessity, a wave of innovation is possible if we
seize this opportunity to tackle climate adaptation and
resilience that stands before us. So I encourage you to seize
that opportunity. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Waskow follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7818A.133
Mr. Markey. Thank you so much, sir. And our final witness
is Bishop Callon Holloway who was recently elected to his third
term as bishop of the Southern Ohio Synod of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. Prior to that, he served as
assistant to the bishop of the Southern Ohio Synod and pastor
of the Western Lutheran Church in Dayton. Please begin whenever
you feel comfortable, Bishop....
GUK
Dozens of aristocrats claim under UK furlough scheme
Dukes, earls and marquesses, some of them owners of inherited estates, have drawn on public funds
Mon 5 Apr 2021
Dozens of members of Britain’s land-owning aristocracy have claimed under the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme to pay staff at their ancestral estates and personal businesses.
Analysis of publicly available data reveals the names of at least 50 nobles, including dukes, earls, viscounts, barons and marquesses, who have drawn on public funds.
The list includes the owners of vast inherited estates with a combined area nearly the size of Worcestershire, as well as hereditary peers already paid by the taxpayer to sit in the House of Lords, and the owners of multimillion-pound art collections.
Details of the aristocracy’s use of the furlough scheme emerged after the Guardian revealed last month that tax exiles, Saudi royals, oil-rich gulf states and multi-billionaires had also drawn on taxpayer support to pay furloughed staff.
The latest snapshot reveals that claimants including companies owned by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, who are divorced and live in separate parts of the duke’s ancestral home, Belvoir Castle, which sits in 15,000 acres of Leicestershire parkland and has featured in The Crown.
Treasury disclosures suggest that the pair made four claims of up to £10,000 in December, increasing the amount to between £10,000 and £25,000 in January when a national lockdown took hold.
They also own the Engine Yard Cafe & Bistro and a clothes shop, the Duchess Gallery, which claimed up to £55,000 between them over the two months.
The duke, a former Ukip supporter, was listed as having an estimated wealth of £125m in the 2013 Sunday Times rich list, although he sold an item from his art collection, a painting by Van Dyck, to fund the estate’s upkeep. The pair did not respond to requests for comment.
Wellington Estates Barn, which had one employee during 2019, received up to £10,000. Companies House data list the Earl of Mornington, heir to the title Duke of Wellington, among persons with significant control over the company.
The company is part of the 7,000-acre Wellington estate in Hampshire, including Stratfield Saye, the former home of the first duke, who triumphed over Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815.
A spokesperson said: “It is the estate’s (and we believe government) policy to furlough only those employees at risk of redundancy as a result of the law preventing the business in question from trading.”
Viscount Cowdray, Michael Pearson, owns a stake in the Pearson publishing and education company as well as the 16,500-acre Cowdray Park estate, which features a golf course and a polo club that refers to itself as the “home of British polo”. Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales were often photographed at Cowdray, where as a young royal Charles competed in tournaments.
Treasury data shows a claim on behalf of Viscount Cowdray of up to £25,000 in December 2020, rising to between £25,000 and £50,000 in January. He also owns Cowdray farm shop, which claimed up to £25,000 in January. Cowdray Park polo club and the estate’s golf course also received support. Viscount Cowdray did not return requests for comment.
An environmental consultancy owned by Christopher Monckton, the third Viscount of Brenchley and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, is listed as one of the smallest companies to claim taxpayer support. With one employee as of 2019 listed in its latest accounts, the firm received £10,000 in both December and January.
A regular speaker at events around the world, who has dismissed the notion of manmade global heating, Monckton is a former deputy leader of Ukip. He was sacked by Nigel Farage, who later condemned him for remarks he made about homosexuality. He did not return requests for comment.
Treasury data shows a £10,000 claim in January under the name of the Marquess of Northampton, Spencer Compton, who had an estimated net worth of more than £100m in 2017, according to the Sunday Times rich list.
A claim of up to £10,000 in December, rising to £25,000 in January, for the Falcon hotel on his Ashby estate is also registered.
“In line with government policy we used the furlough scheme at a time of great uncertainty when the only other option would have been to make people redundant. We used the scheme, as it was intended, to save jobs,” said a spokesperson.
One of the largest claimants among companies linked to aristocrats is Brechin Castle Centre, a country park, shop, cafe and garden centre in the grounds of a castle built in the 13th century near Angus, Scotland.
The company received up to £100,000 in January, after increasing its claim from up to £10,000. Its owner, the Earl of Dalhousie, is also the lord steward, a senior official of the royal household personally appointed by the Queen.
In 2019 he put Brechin Castle up for sale, citing the cost of upkeep. He did not return a request for comment.
Between them, the aristocratic claimants own approximately 448,000 acres of land, according to analysis by Guy Shrubsole, the author of Who Owns England?
Olivia Blake, a Labour member of the Commons public accounts committee, which overseas government spending, said: “Clearly the furlough scheme was an opportunity to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs up and down the country. It’s meant to be a lifeline for businesses hit hardest by the pandemic.
“Questions need to be asked about whether this money has gone to those who really need it, or to people and companies who could have made their way through comfortably. Many companies have been handing money back, which perhaps suggests the initial scheme needed more thought.”
Many of the claims were in the names of the peers themselves, rather than companies they own. HMRC said this was because of an ongoing process ironing out the detail in a vast repository of data.
Three hereditary peers are also listed among claimants. They are the Earl of Lindsay, Earl Howe and the Earl of Glasgow. The Earl of Lindsay, who declined to comment, is understood to have claimed just over £2,000.
===
WIKI
Rosa Monckton was born on 26 October 1953 to Gilbert Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, and Marianna, Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley (née Bower).[1][2] The only daughter of five siblings,[3] her elder brother is Christopher, a journalist, public speaker, and outspoken climate change denier. Monckton was educated at the Ursuline Convent in Tildonk, Belgium.[1]
She is married to the journalist Dominic Lawson (son of Conservative politician Nigel Lawson and brother of the food writer Nigella Lawson). They have two daughters, Domenica and Savannah. Domenica has Down syndrome; her godmother was Monckton's friend Diana, Princess of Wales.[4] Monckton had a stillbirth in 1994, the baby was buried in a garden on the grounds of Kensington Palace with Diana's help.[5]
---
aug 2024 but big gap before
https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/despite-moncktons-climate-denial-the-world-is-still-burning,18851
*Viscount Christopher Monckton has become notorious for his climate change denial, despite scientific evidence proving him wrong time and again. Steve Bishop writes.
CLIMBERS ON Scotland’s Ben Nevis this summer may come across the tragic figure of a man labelled as one of the world’s most notorious climate science deniers searching for signs of a non-existent glacier.
In September 2014 and again in October 2017, Viscount Christopher Monckton claimed on Nights With Steve Price:
*“In Ben Nevis now we have a glacier beginning to form for the first time in 9,000 years.”
Despite scientific measurements demonstrating record heating, Monckton had alleged in 2014 that there had been “18 years without any global warming at all” and had said in evidence to the UK Parliament's Energy and Climate Change Committee in 2013:
*‘...global cooling is more likely than warming in the next five to ten years.’
Viscount Christopher Monckton: Lord of the lies on climate change
So climate scientists could have been forgiven a sense of unbridled schadenfreude when in 2017, global warming resulted in Ben Nevis being completely free of snow and ice even as Monckton made his glacier assertion.
This year, I couldn’t resist emailing him to point out that in the summers of 2018, 21, 22 and 23, soaring temperatures had again resulted in all snow and ice on Ben Nevis meltingand asking him if he still maintained a glacier was forming.
Instead of admitting the obvious, the Viscount said:
‘I shall next visit the summit of Beinn Nibheis* [sic] this summer and will see whether there is any sign of it.’
It’s not just the Viscount who clings to such climate idiocy.
Tellingly, the Heartland Institute, named by The Economist in 2012 as‘the world’s most prominent think-tank promoting scepticism about man-made climate change...’,clings to Monckton as a policy advisor.
This is despite Monckton making false statements about climate change such as in the following examples.
In a
about the need for truth in the climate change debate, he told the audience he would present only “facts” and “settled science” before alleging the Himalayan glaciers were *“showing no particular change in 200 years”
Dutton's climate policy nothing but hot air
But satellite images prove this is completely untrue.
And a World Wide Fund for Nature project found:
*‘Sixty-seven per cent of glaciers are retreating at a startling rate in the Himalayas...’
A Yale study reports:
*‘New research suggests that the area of Himalayan glaciers has shrunk by 40 per cent since the Little Ice Age maximum between 400-700 years ago...’
Another report says melting has doubledsince the turn of the century, with more than a quarter of all ice lost over the last four decades.
In 2013, Monckton asked:
‘If you happen to know of a small Pacific Island that’s getting worried by the propaganda, tell them the good news* [that there’s no warming]
News Corp continues to endorse climate change nonsense
The Viscount would not be welcomed with his “good news” on the islands of Tegua, Tebunginako and Serua which are among many islands that are disappearing.
Monckton alleged the threat of damage to the Great Barrier Reef was imaginary and that:
“The Barrier Reef Authority has established that sea temperatures in the region of the Reef have not changed at all over the last 30 years.”*
In fact, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reports:
‘...the Great Barrier Reef warming by 0.8 degrees Celsius[since 1910].’*
In New Zealand, Monckton claimed:
“In Greenland, the ice did not melt 8,000 years ago and it isn't melting today.”*
Not only is it melting but a study published in Nature shows the rate is unmatched in the last 12,000 years and is accelerating. Satellite images emphasise the predicament.
In an address to the U.S. Congress, Monckton alleged:
*“The Sahara is greening.”
As the planet burns, the insane chase the almighty dollar
In fact, evidence demonstrates the Sahara is expanding at a great rate.
Despite these and many more such claims, the Institute, which for years has created many of the world’s anti-climate science myths, is still featuring Monckton as a climate expert.
In December 2021, the Institute featured him
and “warning” him to stop talking about the climate crisis and telling the future king:
“...you lack either the intellect or the ability to be dispassionate[about the topic].”*
It even used him to deliver his eccentric views as a
at its international conference on climate change last year.
In this speech, Monckton referred to predictions by scientists of increases in extreme weather leading to more severe wildfires.
But,
:
*“They are not a problem.”
However, Carbonbrief.org reports that in North America:
*‘Today, wildfires are burning more than twice the area than in the 1980s and 1990s.’
Don't believe fossil fuel lies — we didn't start the fire
In extolling the Viscount on its website, the Institute tells how:
‘A speech by Lord Monckton to 1,000 citizens of St Paul Minnesota in October 2009, in which he drew public attention to a then little-known draft plan by the U.N. to establish an
at the (now-failed) climate summit at Copenhagen in December 2009, received 1,000,000 YouTube hits in a week — thought to be the fastest-ever YouTube platinum for a political speech.’
What the Heartland Institute fails to admit is that the draft treaty made no mentionof an “unelected world government”.
And it ignores Monckton's unequivocal claim:
*“They are about to impose a communist world government on the world.”
Readers may have noticed that 15 years later, we do not have a communist world government.
Despite its shortcomings, the institute has a revenue of about US$4 million (AU$6.9 million) a year.
In 2012, documents acquired from the Heartland Institute revealed climate science denier Professor Bob Carter was paid a monthly fee of US$1,667 (AU$2,537) as part of a program to pay ‘high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist[anthropogenic global warming]message’.
The Institute pays authors and contributorsthousands of dollars for their contributions to its Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) conference reports.
Viscount Monckton has been a keynote speaker at several NIPCC conferences.
I asked him:
‘Are you, or have you been, in receipt of payments or other benefits from the Heartland Institute, fossil fuel companies, think tanks or any organisation that receives funding from fossil fuel interests or from such organisations that might hide such donations by refusing to reveal the sources of their funding?’*
He did not respond.
You be the judge of how wrong the Viscount and the Institute are.
*Steve Bishop is a journalist and author. You can read more from Steve at stevebishop.net.
Related Articles
- Labor and Coalition both ignore climate crisis
- Fishing industry facing pressure from climate crisis
- News Corp continues to endorse climate change nonsense
- Fossil fuel lobby steer COP28 climate deal towards global catastrophe
- Climate denial order of the day at COP28
===
TEST NOV 2013 iD AS ipcc 2003? 12 PP
Written evidence by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley: monckton@mail
Christopher-walter-viscount-monckton-of-brenchley-IPC0005
Written evidence by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley}:
UK Parliament
https://www.parliament.uk › commons-committees](https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/energy-and-climate-change/Christopher-walter-viscount-monckton-of-brenchley-IPC0005.pdf)
Lord. Monckton is Chief Policy Advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute, which has published more than 100 papers by him on climate science and ...Read more
12 pages
BONA FIDES
10 Lord Monckton is an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (2013). His published papers in the academic journals include Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, in Physics and Society for July 2008; Let Cool Heads Prevail, published in the Journal of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London for April/May 2009;
Global Brightening and Climate Sensitivity, published in the Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists’ Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, 2010, reprinted in the book Empirical climate science, edited by Dr. Don Easterbrook in 2011;
; Is CO2 Mitigation Cost-Effective? (WFS Annual Proceedings, 2012); and Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: a Rejoinder to ‘Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change’, published in Education and Science (2013). Lord Monckton is Chief Policy Advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute, which has published more than 100 papers by him on climate science and climate economics.
He has have given lectures, seminars and invited papers at faculty as well as undergraduate level on climate sensitivity and climate economics at Charles University School of Economics, Prague; Texas A&M University; the University of Rochester, New York; Hartford University, Connecticut; South-Eastern Louisiana University; Union College, Schenectady; the University of California at Los Angeles and at Sacramento;
Brigham Young University; Liberty University, Virginia; the Catholic University of Colombia, Bogota; Cambridge University; Oxford University; Trinity College, Dublin; the National University of Ireland; St. Andrew’s University; and Keele University. Lord Monckton gave an invited presentation on climate economics at the Los Alamos Climate Conference in Santa Fe in 2011.
He gave the Hancock Lecture at the University of Western Australia in 2011 and the Nerenberg Lecture on Mathematics, Canada’s premier annual mathematics lecture, at the University of Western Ontario in 2012. He founded, cochaired and addressed the panel on climate economics of the World Federation of Scientists in 2012.
He has testified four times on climate change before the United States Congress. He has chaired or addressed hundreds of public and private meetings worldwide on climate change, including meetings in both Houses of the UK Parliament and of the US Congress.
His largest live audience was 100,000 people. His address to the Minnesota Free Market Institute on the then-proposed Copenhagen climate treaty in October 2009 received almost 3 million hits in a week on YouTube, and is thought to have attained the fastest YouTube platinum for any political speech.
He has advised several governments on climate change, and have addressed the Kentucky, Colorado and California State Legislatures, and the European and Danish Parliaments. He has addressed international conferences on climate in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Australia, China, India, Colombia and several other nations. In 2009 the South-Eastern Legal Foundation awarded Congressman John Linder and Lord Monckton jointly the Meese-Noble Award for Freedom for their work on climate change. In 2013 the Army Intelligence School of Colombia awarded Lord Monckton its Intelligence Medal for his work on climate change
...
19 The IPCC responded, in the pre-final draft sent to governments, by inserting a statement to the effect that models had not generally represented the standstill in global warming over the past decade and a half. However, at the insistence of the political representatives of Germany and Hungary, the statement was removed on the ground that it would indicate that the IPCC had not previously been correct in its predictions (which it had not). 20
This episode is a reminder that the IPCC is, as its founder Maurice Strong had always intended, a political and not a scientific body. It is pursuing a partisan, self-serving and in some respects scientifically disreputable course. It has a direct, financial vested interest in prophesying doom. For if it were to admit what is now becoming apparent, that CO2 will have a modest, slow and harmless warming effect, and that even if warming were to occur at the predicted rate and cost it would be orders of magnitude more expensive to mitigate today than to adapt the day after tomorrow, governments would – rightly – see no further need to fund it.
...
27 To what extent does AR5 reflect the range of views among climate scientists?
28 When the initial scoping meeting for AR5 was to be held in Hawaii, I applied to participate and was told I could not attend because I was known not to agree with the IPCC’s conclusions. The scientific clique that runs the IPCC also tried to exclude Professor Paul Reiter, the world’s foremost expert on the epidemiology of malaria, who had been nominated by the U.S. The IPCC pretended it had not received his nomination papers, but he had sent the papers to four separate high officials, with proof of delivery. I sent the IPCC a list of more than 400 scientific papers demonstrating its error about the mediaeval warm period, but hardly any are referenced in the Fifth Assessment Report. Only one viewpoint is allowed. The IPCC can rely upon acquiescent governments to let it continue to present a narrow, partisan, prejudiced viewpoint with little scientific merit.
29 Can any of the areas of the science now be considered settled as a result of AR5’s publication, if so which? What areas need further effort to reduce the levels of uncertainty? 30
Adding greenhouse gases to an atmosphere like ours may be expected to cause some warming, all other things being equal. However, it is by no means clear that any measurable warming will result from our altering the atmospheric composition by the predicted 1 part in 3000 this century, for the temperature feedbacks whose presence the IPCC relies upon to triple the small direct warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration may be net-negative, cancelling rather than amplifying the direct warming from CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009, 2011; Spencer & Braswell, 2010, 2011). Furthermore, the equation the IPCC uses so as mutually to amplify the net-positive feedbacks whose quantification relies upon just a single paper has no physical meaning in the real climate, though it has a meaning in electronic circuitry, for which it was originally derived.
...
END:
46 There is no need to cut CO2 emissions, which are and will remain not only harmless but net-beneficial, by common consent, until at least 1.3 K further global warming has occurred, and that could take 100-400 years
:. 47 What relevance do the IPCC’s conclusions have in respect of the review of the fourth Carbon Budget? 48 The IPCC itself has said (AR4, WG3) that there is no economic case for intervention to mitigate global warming. Indeed, the near-unanimous opinion in the economic peerreviewed literature, to which I have contributed, is that there is no case for mitigation at all. Besides, there is no need for a “carbon budget”. Carbon dioxide is a naturallyoccurring trace gas essential to all life on Earth. It is plant-food, and it is also essential to the functioning of calcifying organisms such as corals, which first throve when its atmospheric concentration was 15-20 times today’s.
CO2 fertilization increases crop yields and reduces crops’ water dependence. Tripling the present atmospheric concentration would probably exhaust realistically-extractable fossil fuels worldwide. Trees and plants would thrive. Temperatures would hardly change. 49
Since the oceans already contain 70 times as much CO2 as the air, it would be impossible appreciably to acidify them even if all the CO2 in the air found its way into the sea. Besides, the oceans are buffered by the rock basins in which they move, and the buffering is homoeostatic, maintaining the present pronouncedly alkaline acid-base balance. So even the fall-back position that the profiteers of doom have adopted when faced with the failure of their global-warming predictions – ocean “acidification” – has no rational scientific basis. 50 The climate scare is over. November 2013
---
GGL 4 26
[### Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Christopher_Monckto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley)
Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (born 14 February 1952) is a British public speaker and hereditary peer.Read more
[### WSJ Opinion Page Coding
Union of Concerned Scientists
https://www.ucs.org › sites › default › files › Wa...](https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/Wall-Street-Journal-Opinion-Pages-Datasheet_Union-of-Concerned-Scientists-2012.xlsx)
XLS
Lord Christopher Monckton, Prof. Michael E. Mann writes ("Climate Contrarians Ignore Overwhelming Evidence,"Letters, Dec. 5) that his 1999 "hockey stick ...Read more
[### Dozens of aristocrats claim under UK furlough scheme
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › uk-news › apr › dozens...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/05/dozens-of-aristocrats-claim-under-uk-furlough-scheme)
Apr 5, 2021 — An environmental consultancy owned by Christopher Monckton, the ... net worth of more than £100m in 2017, according to the Sunday Times ...Read more
[### - PREPARING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: ADAPTATION ...
GovInfo (.gov)
https://www.govinfo.gov › content › pkg › html](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg67818/html/CHRG-111hhrg67818.htm)
... Lord Monckton served as a special advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Please proceed, Lord Monckton. STATEMENT OF LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON Mr.Read more
[### Lord Monckton: Net Zero Emissions — The Costliest Error ...
Mises Society
https://mises.web.ox.ac.uk › event › lord-monckton-net...](https://mises.web.ox.ac.uk/event/lord-monckton-net-zero-emissions-the-costliest-error-of-physics-and-of-economics-in-history)
A £1 million prize was won after 18 months by two Cambridge mathematicians. By that time, 500,000 puzzles had been sold. Monckton launched the Eternity II ...Read more
[### Uncharitable Think Tanks
Florida International University
https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu › cgi › viewcontent](https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=lawreview)
by F Stevelman · 2025 · Cited by 1 — The doctrines are intended to keep think tanks charity-worthy educators, but they have not succeeded. Ironically, the failure reflects other ...Read more
### Richmond Parish Lands Charity
---
Marc Morano
Weekly update ⋅ October 21, 2022
pix gp mm holds bk next to his junk]
https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/20/climate-science-deniers-go-unchallenged-at-london-green-summit/
a “sustainable development” conference taking place in London gave a platform to two prominent climate science deniers, who used the event to claim that coal-fired power is “clean” and call global warming a “religion”.
Marc Morano and Christopher Monckton were hosted at the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair this week for the “Global Investment in Sustainable Development” event organised by Climate Change (CC) Forum, which touts itself as the “green Davos”.
Last week DeSmog revealed that UK Climate Minister Graham Stuart had agreed to give a keynote speech at the event, before pulling out on Friday after DeSmog asked questions about Morano and Monckton’s involvement.
When contacted, CC Forum’s CEO Max Studennikoff, who claims to support climate action, defended holding a debate with climate science deniers as a way of “publicly debunking their arguments”.
But DeSmog can report that the pair were given free rein to spread climate science misinformation at the event on Tuesday, with their arguments warmly applauded by the audience. Monckton was also allowed to give a keynote speech unchallenged in which he called net zero “not possible” and likened global warming to a religious belief.
Morano and Monckton
on GB News after the event claiming victory, and referenced coverage by DeSmog, which Monckton called “the smug blog”.
At the event, Studennikoff expressed frustration that the climate minister had pulled out, but repeatedly claimed that Prime Minister Liz Truss had provided a message of support for the conference. Monckton read out a “short message” he claimed was emailed from Truss. Number 10 did not respond when asked by DeSmog whether such a message was provided.
The event was partly supported by Mastercard, and featured a “fireside chat” with the company’s vice president Derren Powell. Mastercard had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted the dangers of climate misinformation, which it said “undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency”, at a time when there is “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.
The scientific body has also described the link between human activity and climate change as “unequivocal”.
Climate Change ‘Debate’
U.S. activist Morano runs the climate science denial website Climate Depot and is Director of Communications at the think tank CFACT, which has received funding from ExxonMobil and Chevron. He is one of the world’s most aggressive climate science deniers, and has said that climate scientists deserve to be “publicly flogged”.
In the debate this week, Morano said: “There is no climate crisis, from my perspective, no climate emergency, and even if there were, the work of this net zero agenda would have no impact on said climate crisis.” He also plugged his book, The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Global Lockdown, to the audience of wealthy investors.
Marc Morano and Christopher Monckton during the debate. Credit: DeSmog
Monckton has a long record of anti-climate activism. In 2010 he
in the U.S. in a call and response chant of “Global warming is?”, with the crowd shouting “Bullshit!”Earlier this year he wrote that “communist front groups posing as environmental campaign entities but in reality fostered, funded and too often founded by Moscow and Beijing” were targeting climate “sceptic” scientists.
In the debate, Monckton claimed “there has been no global warming at all for the last eight years”, and attacked climate policies, saying: “Global warming policy is a strategic threat, but global warming, so far at any rate, isn’t, and doesn’t look as though it’s going to be.”
He also supported continuing to burn fossil fuels, claiming: “The fact is coal-fired power is still, far and away the cheapest, and now the cleanest [source of electricity]because it has very high energy density.”
Coal is the highest-emitting form of energy, producing a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Renewable energy from offshore wind is currently estimated to be nine times cheaper than gas.
Warm Reception
Despite CC Forum’s claims about the debate format and its intention to “debunk” the deniers’ arguments, its star speaker, Belgian economist Gunter Pauli, agreed with Morano and Monckton that net zero targets, which he called “the opium of the masses”, should be abandoned.
Morano welcomed this, asking: “Are you an outlier when you say that net zero is the opium of the masses? Does everyone in this room agree with him?” Debate chair Rand Neveloff, managing director of consultancy Titan Global, said: “I would say you have a much healthier mix in this room than you would imagine.”
Both Morano and Monckton received applause for their talking points from the audience.
[Christopher Monckton delivered a keynote speech on net zero at CC Forum. Credit: DeSmog
Pauli’s debate partner, Mustaq Patel, managing director of geothermal energy company Cindrigo, was able to point to the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, but spoke the least in the debate.
After the event, Morano told DeSmog he was surprised to have been invited to a conference on sustainable development, but said “the audience loved it”.
Later in the day, Monckton gave a keynote speech unchallenged, where he presented a slideshow claiming that cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 is a bad investment and could not be reached, claiming: “You can’t get to net zero. It isn’t actually possible.”
He concluded: “It’s all very well to have beliefs. If global warming is your religion, that’s fine. I don’t want to interfere with anybody’sreligion.”
Unlike the debate, his speech was followed by a brief question and answer session. DeSmog was refused an opportunity to ask Monckton a question.
CC Forum CEO Studennikoff calls himself an “ardent supporter of climate change action” but says he believes “in the power of private wealth more than in policy making”.
The conference will close with a “Networking Luncheon” at the House of Lords on Thursday.
NEWS
Climate Science Deniers Go Unchallenged at London 'Green' Summit - DeSmog
DeSmog
Marc Morano and Christopher Monckton were given free reign to spread misinformation at the CC Forum conference, which Liz Truss's climate minister ...
UK Climate Minister Pulls Out of Event with Climate Science Deniers - DeSmog
DeSmog
Graham Stuart was billed to give a keynote speech at a conference where high-profile US climate science denier Marc Morano will debate “global ...
Legit speakers bail on "sustainable development" investment conference that invites climate liars
Red, Green, and Blue
Instead, as DeSmog reported on Friday, they'll be subjected to the climate disinformation presented by Marc Morano and Christopher Monckton.
Climate COVID? The Guardian Insists 'Next Pandemic' May Come From … 'Melting Glaciers'
Newsbusters
Climate Depot founder Marc Morano ripped The Guardian's nonsense as a media precursor to legitimizing government-mandated climate lockdowns ...
no lnx
mrc medit cruise w/ celebs bozell...
Climate COVID? The Guardian Insists ‘Next Pandemic’ May Come From … ‘Melting Glaciers’
Joseph Vazquez
October 19th, 2022
It’s happened. The eco-crazies in the liberal media are trying to mesh climate change and the pandemic into one big fear porn monstrosity.
:{:{}:
}:
The Guardian released a nutty story Oct. 18 propagandizing how “[t]he next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data.”
The liberal outlet tried to frighten readers into believing in the imaginary specter of climate COVID: “The findings imply that as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, it becomes more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife, particularly as their range also shifts closer to the poles.”
The headline for the article didn’t beat around the bush: “Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows.”
The Guardian, however, conceded a glaring contradiction that upended its fear-mongering, which it conveniently chose to bury in the eighth paragraph. The scientists the outlet cited apparently didn’t bother determining whether the so-called “viruses” trapped in the ice were even capable of triggering infections:
The team did not quantify how many of the viruses they identified were previously unknown – something they plan to do in the coming months – nor did they assess whether these viruses were capable of triggering an infection, [emphasis added].
Climate Depot founder Marc Morano ripped The Guardian’s nonsense as a media precursor to legitimizing government-mandated climate lockdowns similar to the 2020 COVID-19 restrictions.
“Unchecked climate change leads to more deadly viruses,” Morano told MRC Business. “Presto! Climate change becomes a public health issue subject to undemocratic dictates by unelected bureaucrats.”
He’s right on target.
The Guardian’s climatepropagandizingfalls right in line with a 2020 Project Syndicate piece that pushed an eco-dystopian idea from economist Marianna Muzzacato. That 2020 story exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to make the case that the world may need a “climate lockdown” to preempt climate change unless the world undergoes a “green economic transformation.”
The Guardian is seeking to legitimize those same dystopian ideals by “morphing climate and viruses into one issue,” Morano noted. “Climate activists were at first jealous of the COVID lockdowns then they decided to copy the same methods."
Morano pointed to a Yahoo! News article that noted “[s]ome environmental advocacy organizations have been urging Biden to declare climate change a national emergency ever since he won the presidency.” Center for Biological Diversity Energy Justice Program Director and Senior Attorney Jean Su reportedly told Yahoo! thatif Biden were to declare “‘a national [climate] emergency, it triggers the ability for him to deploy around 130 different powers.’”
Morano added that climate activists are operating with intent to “[b]ypass democracy and rule by abuse of emergency powers." He continued: “That is the lesson that COVID taught the climate activists.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The Guardian at guardian.readers@theguardian.com and demand it stop exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to push climate propaganda.
tags Marc Morano
The Guardian
Business
Coronavirus
Global Warming
Pollution
Environment
---
Invited Just To Be Debunked, Deniers Manage To Embarrass Conference Before It Even Begins
Daily Kos
Tomorrow in London, a four-day investment conference in London kicks off. CC Forum calls itself the "green Davos," and its audience could have ...
no lnx many
tomorrow in London, a four-day investment conference in London kicks off. CC Forum calls itself the "green Davos," and its audience could have heard from the UK's new climate minister Graham Stuart. Instead, as DeSmog reported on Friday, they'll be subjected to the climate disinformation presented by Marc Morano and Christopher Monckton.
Even beyond their rank climate denial, these two are particularly odious figures. On January 6th, 2021, as Trump supporters were violently attempting to overthrow American democracy, Morano called for similarly violent attacks "to storm state Capitols and the CDC to end Covid lockdowns once and for all."
[California's 2020 wildfire season may have cost the state 18 years of emissions reduction progress]
And Monckton is listed inaccurately as a "Lord" on the CCForum website, despite the fact that The House of Lords sent him a "cease and desist" letter a decade ago to tell him to knock it off. Oh, and in addition to being so wrong about climate science that even other deniers debunk him, Monckton has claimed to have cured AIDS and the common cold, and has a history of threatening to sue his critics to try and intimidate them into shutting up.
Now, it is definitely possible that the "unforeseen urgent government business" that Stuart's team told organizers caused them to cancel has nothing to do with the fact that DeSmog asked them about the conference hosting Monckton and Morano, but the timing sure makes it look like the noxious deniers were sufficiently toxic to make appearing at the same event as they are a political liability a precarious new government couldn't afford.
Stuart's office had confirmed that week that he would attend, but "when DeSmog made further inquiries," Adam Barnett reported, the office "then appeared to link Stuart’s decision to withdraw to his not knowing who else was booked for the event when he agreed to speak – an apparent reference to Morano and Monckton."
And Stuart isn't the only one. Dr. Aaron Theirry also announced his withdrawal from the event, as he "cannot in good conscience lend legitimacy to an event that would profile grifters who knowingly shill for fossil fuel polluters, even as millions have their lives & livelihoods destroyed by climate impacts." Which is, if anything, going easy on the two.
Even the event organizers themselves didn't exactly defend the dud duo. Instead, the CC Forum's Max Studennikoff said they're giving them the stage with the intent of "publicly debunking their arguments in a public debate on stage, as we firmly believe that any attempt to shut down such a debate would constitute an affront to free speech.”
Which is a) funny, because he's essentially admitting that they invited a couple of dufuses to the conference to point and laugh at and b) stupid, because they could have just… not given professional propagandists a platform to spread harmful disinformation, and instead given that time to literally anyone saying anything that's actually true.
It's fine to want to understand the opposition to sustainable investment, as the most generous interpretation of the invitation would suggest were their aims. But you absolutely do not need to talk to a liar to understand their lies! And these days, there are plenty of experts on the disinformation industry, who would almost certainly be thrilled to have an opportunity to explain why what people like Monckton and Morano say is irrelevant.
What matters is that they have built a career out of politicizing science and obstructing policy, and the lies they tell are a tool they use for that aim.
And as this episode makes clear, there are costs to choosing to platform deniers. Not only is it an embarrassment to the event, but those with integrity or political sensitivities withdraw, leaving the audience exposed to more disinfo and less info.
This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.
===
==
Soon off bs bibliography (even BS ones)
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/
eg
- R. Connolly, M. Connolly, Willie Soon, D.R. Legates, R.G. Cionco and V. M. Velasco Herrera. Northern hemisphere snow-cover trends (1967-2018): A comparison between climate models and observations. Geosciences, 9(3), 135 (2019). Journal homepage
- C. Monckton of Brenchley, W. Soon, D. R. Legates, W.M.Briggs, Keeping it simple: the value of an irreducibly simple climate model, Science Bulletin, 60, 1378-1390 (2015). Journal homepage
Monckton of Brenchley, W. Soon, D. R. Legates, W.M. Briggs, Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model, Science Bulletin, 60, 122-135 (2015). Journal homepage
d R. Legates, W. Soon, W.M. Briggs, and C. Monckton of Brenchley, Climate consensus and misinformation: A rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change, Science and Education, 24, 299-318 (2015). Journal homepage...
===
guk monbiot jul 2010
https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jul/14/monckton-john-abraham
say what you like about Viscount Monckton, he never fails to entertain. His response to the devastating critique of his claims about climate change by the physicist John Abraham is magnificently bonkers.
To give you a flavour of Monckton's reasoning, here are some examples of what he cites as evidence of Abraham acting out of malice:
Abraham pointed out that Monckton "has not written a single peer-reviewed science paper on any topic";
Abraham stated that Lord Monckton "presented a lot of data with no citations or no explanation";
He pointed out that "if you don't tell us where it's from we can't assess the data";
He explained that a graph displayed by Lord Monckton was "almost off by 100%".
These are all straight statements of fact. It is impossible to see how they could be construed as malicious, unless you regard all criticism of your views and credentials as illegitimate.
Throughout these 99 pages,Monckton ducks, dives and, like Ian Plimer, avoids answering Abraham's questions by asking questions of his own:Monckton asks almost 500 of them. As far as I can see, he fails to provide a straight or convincing refutation of any of Abraham's criticisms, and succeeds only in throwing a great deal of dust into the air.
All this is accompanied, like so many of Monckton's responses, with a demand for money (in this case $110,000 to be paid to a charity of Monckton's choice), an apology and retraction and an insistence that Abraham's critique be removed from all public places.
Reading these ravings, I'm struck by two thoughts. The first is how frequently climate change deniers resort to demands for censorship or threats of litigation to try to shut down criticism of their views. Martin Durkin has done it, Richard North has done it, Monckton has done it many times before. They claim to want a debate, but as soon as it turns against them they try to stifle it by intimidating their opponents. To me it suggests that these people can give it out, but they can't take it.
The second thought is as follows: is this the man who was invited to testify before Congress? Who has become deputy leader of the UK Independence party? Who has been cited all over the internet as having proved that manmade climate change isn't happening?
One of the characteristics of the foot-soldiers of climate change denial seems to be their startling inability to spot a wrong 'un. As well as publishing a long series of falsehoods about climate change, Monckton has falsely claimed to be a member of the House of Lords (although you can read his explanation here); falsely claimed to be a Nobel laureate; falsely claimed to have won the Falklands war (by suggesting to Margaret Thatcher that the SAS introduce a mild bacillus into the water supply in Port Stanley); maintained that he has invented a cure for HIV, multiple sclerosis, influenza and other diseases; and grossly exaggerated his role in shaping Margaret Thatcher's views. Yet none of this seems to have discouraged his disciples one jot.
There's a pattern here too. Those who insist that sea levels are not actually rising, for example, often cite the work of Nils-Axel Morner, who maintains that his work in the Maldives proves that it's all a false alarm. Our old friend Christopher Booker claimed that Morner "knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world", that he "has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe" and that his findings demonstrate that "all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story."
Morner's work in fact consists of indirect measurements in just a few locations, which reveal the sum total of zilch about recent changes in sea level and have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.But the interesting thing, which connects this to the Monckton issue, is that Morner has also made a series of wild claims about other matters. He maintains that he possesses paranormal abilities to find water and metal using a dowsing rod. He also insists that he has discovered "the Hong Kong of the [ancient] Greeks" in Sweden. Working with a homeopath called Bob Lind, Morner inflicted unauthorised damage on an Iron Age cemetery in order to try to prove his thesis.
Similarly, Peter Taylor's claims that the planet is in fact cooling down have been given prominence by the Daily Express and other outlets, though they are unfounded in science.His book Chill has been a hit in the denier community. Taylor has also claimed to have uncovered toxic dumping by venturing into the astral realms. He has speculated that a Masonic conspiracy was tuning into his thoughts, and had sent a "kook, a ninja freak, some throwback from past lives" to kill him. He has also maintained that plutonium may "possess healing powers**, borne of Plutonic dimension, a preparation for rebirth, an awakener to higher consciousness".
As these examples suggest, those who lead the movement which claims that manmade climate change isn't happening often seem to entertain a number of other irrational beliefs.
In May, New Scientist interviewed the social psychologist Seth Kalichman, who has studied HIV denialist groups. He found that the leaders of these groups "display all the features of paranoid personality disorder".
These features include an intolerance of criticism and an inflated sense of their own importance. They succumb to what psychologists call "suspicious thinking".
The cognitive style of the denialist represents a warped sense of reality, which is why arguing with them gets you nowhere … All people fit the world into their own sense of reality, but the suspicious person distorts reality with uncommon rigidity.
I'm no psychologist, but the wide range of crazy beliefs the gurus of climate change denial entertain suggests that something of the kind that Kalichman identifies is likely to be at play. The question which bugs me is this: why, when it seems so obvious that men like Monckton, Morner and Taylor have serious issues with reality, are so many people prepared to follow them?
===
p 156 mashey 2012
Z.2007.02.8 Heartland on Monckton Letter
British Lord Demands End to Climate Science Censorship
“Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley and a member of the
Upper House of the British legislature, 763 has sent a letter to Sens. Olympia
Snowe (R-ME) and John D. Rockefeller (D-WV)excoriating them for
attempting to strong-arm ExxonMobil into cutting off support for public interest
groups that question global warming alarmism. …
Monckton, a former science and technology advisor764 to British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, .. Monckton’s open letter, edited for length, appears below.
…”
“You commend Britain’s Royal Society 765
, once a learned body and now a mere
Left-leaning political pressure-group, …
Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the
United Kingdom legislature,…”
Heartland edited the original 766 document, deleting the following section
quite relevant to the topics discussed in this report:
“In the circumstances, your comparison of Exxon’s funding of sceptical
scientists and groups with the former antics of the tobacco industry is
unjustifiable and unworthy of any credible elected representatives. Either
withdraw that monstrous comparison forthwith, or resign so as not to pollute the
office you hold.”
Monckton has been discredited numerous times, 767 but Heartland promotes
him as a “global warming expert” to their readership.
This was apparently insufficient as seen in next article.
763 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Br
enchley Monckton has never been a member of the House of Lords.
764 There is no evidence of this claim, and much otherwise.
765 The RS is the oldest science society in the world. Monckton is a nonscientist.
766 www.ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf p.6
767 scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/monckton_debunks_monckton.php
www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-tries-to-censor-john-abraham.html
yyy.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jul/14/monckton-johnabraham
===
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/08/06/mystery-man-behind-monckton-s-conversion-climate-denial
8/15
This DeSmog UK epic history post reveals the identity of the man behind Lord Monckton’s eccentric climate denial.
Lord Monckton hoisted himself into centre stage of the denier circus in November 2006 with a double-page feature in the then respectable Sunday Telegraph, in which he claimed climate science was “a Sci-Fi panic”.
The eccentric Scottish peer would boast: “In the climate change debate, one figure is real. The Sunday Telegraph’s website registered more than 127,000 hits in response to last week’s article revealing that the UN had minimised the sun’s role in changing past and present climate, persisted in proven errors and used unsound data, questionable graphs and meretricious maths to exaggerate future warming.”
The newspaper article represented a remarkable return after illness to the media spotlight for a man apparently addicted to publicity and the adoration of the crowd. As the satirical magazine Private Eye reported at the time, the article was “largely incomprehensible”.
Untidy Factoids
Tim Lambert, of the Deltoid science blog, was even more dismissive. “The main problem with his article is that he doesn’t know what he’s writing about it. He offers up an untidy pile of factoids, some of which are true but out of context, some of which are not at all true, and some of which he seems to have conjured up out of thin air.”
Prior to this news splash, the Viscount had appeared in the press in 2000 as the inventor of the Eternity puzzle and the man who promised £1m to the first person to find its solution. Two Cambridge mathematicians were quick to claim the prize. Monckton at first claimed the payout forced him to sell his 67-room mansion - and then later that he hadlied to get more publicity for the puzzle.
Many years earlier, Monckton had worked as a junior advisor in Margaret Thatcher’s highly politicised Number 10 Policy Unit, although he failed to get a mention in her autobiography years later. He claimed to have introduced the first computer to government.
And, he also claimed to have been the first to persuade the PM to take the issue of climate change seriously. It may have been this remarkable and totally unsubstantiated claim that persuaded Patience Wheatcroft, the then editor of the *Sunday Telegraph*, to take his rambling feature seriously.
As it would happen, Monckton’s sister Rose is married to Lord Lawson’s eldest son Dominic. But both men deny that it was Lawson who had persuaded his in-law to adopt the well-worn and tragic claims that scientists had conspired to construct an international conspiracy in order to support the case for a Communist global government.
Monckton’s Denial
So how exactly did it come to be that Lord Monckton should become the spokesperson for the more eclectic climate deniers – flown around the world by ExxonMobil-funded think tanks like the ominous sounding Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) – to attack scientists?
This is how Monckton himself takes up the story: “Well, I didn’t decide. It was all accidentally; I was rung up by the chief executive of a boutique finance house.”
According to Monckton, the mystery chief executive said: “Look, all our investors want to pile in on this green investment stuff but I want to know: is there a problem with the climate?”
Monckton replied: “Oh yes, I advised Margaret Thatcher on it 25 years ago and it was quite clear then that the scientists were worried and I recommended to find out more.”
CEO: “[We] would like you to find out more.”
Monckton “spent a month on his dime” investigating the science and sent the investor a 40-page report. It concluded that climate change did not represent a serious threat.
The man called a few days later and demanded: “Why should I pay any attention to this?”
Monckton: “Well, you asked me to do this, I gave it my best shot, you’ve got all my evidence there.”
CEO: “I’ve consulted a dozen people, all of them more eminent than you…”
Monckton:“Well, thank you very much.”
CEO: “And they all tell me that this is a real problem, this is the worst problem humanity has ever faced and we have to do everything we can to stop this and you’vesaid: ‘no problem at all’.”
Monckton: ‘WellI don’t say there is no problem at all, I say it’s not likely that there is much of a problem and even if it were it would be cheaper to let it happen.”
CEO: “Well, we are going to go with you and not theother 11.”
Monckton: “Why is that?”
CEO: “You’re the only one who provided any evidence, and you’ve provided 40 pages of it. The others all told me that I had to believe: I didn’t get where I am today by believing stuff.”
Generous Financier
Monckton has always refused to give up the name of the financier who paid him generously to investigate climate science who and set him on the path of attacking scientists in talks in the United States and Australia ever since.
However, an investigation by DeSmog UK has established that the mystery man is Edgar Miller, a right-wing American who claims to have significant influence in the Conservative Party and who boasts of having made a fortune from early investments in shale gas development.
Miller was born in Bailey County, Texas, but moved to Britain almost 40 years ago. He is a serial investor and entrepreneur, having directed companies with names like Palladian Software Limited, Maxwell Espinosa and UK Israel Business.
The climate denier is a political animal, claiming to have met Margaret Thatcher “on several occasions.” He is also close to Peter Lilley MP and Andrew Tyrie – the unsung hero of Tory climate denial.
“I used to be more connected to the Conservative Party. I used to work up in there with policy but I quickly learnt that it’s a mug’s game because most politicians are not interested in anyone’s help,” he told a female journalist over dinner.
Moderately Wealthy
“When you are talking to these people, they are either so ignorant that they didn’t understand what you were saying or they were just so ego driven, or both, that they figured they know all the answers.”
Miller is moderately wealthy, having bought a London townhouse in Notting Hill for £725,000 in 2000. He used to drive an E-Type Jag until he had an accident, apparently attempting to impress a female passenger.
Miller will become significant again in our history of climate denial – supporting Lord Lawson at the Global Warming Policy Foundation and speaking candidly about his falling out with the new Conservative leadership.
Up next in theDeSmog UKepic history series, we detail how a Channel 4 programme on climate change was edited to promote climate denial.
---
READ THE EXTENDED EXTRACTS FROM MONCKTON’S INTERVIEW
So, both then you wrote an article in 2006 – in November, you say? So, when did you decide to get really involved in the debate?
Well, I didn’t decide. It was all accidentally; I was rung up by the chief executive of a boutique finance house, who said: ‘Look, all our investors want to pile in on this green investment stuff, but I want to know: is there a problem with the climate?’
And I said, ‘Oh yes, I advised Margaret Thatcher on it 25 years ago and it was quite clear then that the scientists were worried, and I recommended to find out more.’ And he said, ‘I would like you to find out more.’
And I spent a month on his dime and had a look, and sent him a 40-page report, and he rang up a few days later and said, ‘Why should I pay any attention to this?’ I said, ‘Well, you asked me to do this: I gave it my best shot; you’ve got all my evidence there.’
And he said, ‘I’ve consulted a dozen people, all of them more eminent than you’ – and I said, ‘Well thank you very much.’ He said, ‘And they all tell me that this is a real problem, this is the worst problem humanity has ever faced and we have to do everything we can to stop this, and you’vesaid: “no problem at all”.’
I said, ‘Well,I don’t say there is no problem at all; I say it’s not likely that there is much of a problem and, even if it were, it would be cheaper to let it happen.’ And he said, ‘Well, we are going to go with you and not the other 11.’ I said, ‘Why is that?’ He said, ‘You’re the only one who provided any evidence, and you’ve provided 40 pages of it,’ he said, ‘the others all told me that I had to believe,’ he said, ‘I didn’t get where I am today by believing stuff.’
So, do you remember the name of this guy who contacted you?
Ah, I think I ought not tell you that because it was confidential. Although, he did at the end say, ‘Can I send this paper to the editor of theSunday Times?’ She then rang up and rather tested it and said, ‘How can I print 40 pages of equations in a paper?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think that was the idea; I think he wanted to suggest to your mind that there might be another side to this story and suggested I might write it for her (sic). I can do plain English as well; I don’t just write in equations.’ ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘Well, could yousend me over 1,000 words?’ So, I sent her a 1,000 words sample…
==
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/11/27/madness-viscount-monckton-descends-paris-conference
3/15
BY BRENDAN MONTAGUE AND KYLA MANDEL IN PARIS
Barack Obama is leading a clandestine international project to establish a Communist-fascist world government through the United Nations COP21 climate change conference in Paris. That's the reality that Viscount Monckton wakes up to every day.
The president of the United States is working alongside an international network of “totalitarians” who hope to impose their will on the people of the world by introducing international courts perportedly to enforce climate change regulations, he told DeSmog UK today.
A “small group of malevolent scientists” had fraudulently falsified scientific data, while other researchers had become “useful idiots” or had been bullied into supporting the climate change “hoax” to provide a pretext to form the new communist and fascist global state, Monckton claimed.
The evidence was a short passage in the draft Paris treaty currently being negotiated by thousands of delegates from more than 200 countries calling for an international climate court. Articles 36 and 38 of Annex One of the Copenhagen treaty draft had earlier been proposed to introduce a global government through the back door, he argued.
Monckton has previously gone to extraordinary lengths to steal a bit of the limelight from the United Nations climate conferences, on one occasion parachuting into the talks with the support of ExxonMobil-funded Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).
Communist Totalitarianism
The British aristocrat - who has never been a member of the House of Lords despite his assertions - was banned from the Qatar conference after he donned Arab dress and posed as a delegate during the negotiations.
Monckton made the comments during the last day of a climate denier fringe meeting held at the Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris. The event was attended earlier in the week by Roger Helmer MEP, the frequenter of a ’sleazy massage parlour’, and Piers Corbyn, the one-time Marxist and brother to the Labour Party leader.
“They are trying to establish a single world government,” he said. “You can argue whether it is communist or fascist depending on whether you think the people concerned are crony capitalists, in which case it’s fascist, or whether they are collectivists, in which case it’s communist.”
---
HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR INVESTIGATION INTO VISCOUNT MONCKTON
THE MYSTERY MAN BEHIND MONCKTON’S CONVERSION TO CLIMATE DENIAL
LAWSON AND MONCKTON ROW OVER CLIMATE SCIENCE CAMPAIGNING
THERE IS THE RESPECTABLE MASK OF CLIMATE DENIAL - AND THERE IS LORD MONCKTON
MONCKTON TEAMS UP WITH CLIMATE DENIER PHILIP FOSTER FOR PARIS DISRUPTION
POPE FRANCIS SHOULD ANWSER TO EXXONMOBIL RATHER THAN GOD, IMPLY CLIMATE DENIERS
---
He confirmed he believed Obama was among the “totalitarians” using the COP21 process to implement a communist-fascist world government. “There are elements of communist totalitarianism and of fascist totalitarianism in the policies that Obama is arguing for and in the way they are implemented.
“I am not just using hate speech words in a random way… I have described elements in the way that Obama operates that have feet in both those camps.”
Malevolent Scientists
Monckton announced during a fringe event in Paris during the climate conference that he would act as chief investigator for a new International Committee on GeoEthics, which willinvestigate allegations of scientific fraud leveled against climate researchers. Observers have, he added, already been dispatched to watch over academic conferences.
He added: “It is surely rather clear that if you have a small group of malevolent scientists who are bending the facts, the science and the data for the sake of over-egging this particular pudding and then you get politicians who for various reasons want to increase their power globally by setting up global entities that are not accountable to any electorate, there will be, to say the least, a synergy of interests between them.
“We are not interested in looking at whether there are vague or actual connections, that’s no interest to us. What we are interested in, is finding those few people who are guilty of outright scientific fraud.
“All one knows is that if you have people proposing policies that are avowedly totalitarian on a global scale, and there are a lot of them, then whether or not they are working in some smoke-filled room behind closed doors or whether they are all-seeing to themselves and advantaged and therefore there is a coalescence or coincidence of interests rather than a conspiracy is not for me to say. I don’t care. What I care about is the truth is going to emerge, whether they like it or not.”
Monckton claimed an Australian radio broadcaster commissioned a barrister specialising in international law who appeared on the programme to confirm there was an attempt to set up a global government. “I’m absolutely horrified,” he apparently said on air. “Monckton was entirely right to draw attention to it.” The climate denier was unable to name the lawyer or the radio station when asked.
Deliberately Offensive
We asked Lord Monckton whether anyone concerned about his welfare had raised the possibility that his claims of a clandestine attempt to form a world government through the fraudulant construction of climate science was delusional.
He responded: “What you are doing is deliberately trying to be offensive. That’s all you’ve got. You don’t go to someone and accuse them of either lying or being delusional unless you are deliberately being offensive. I quite understand that and I am quite used to it.”
The aristocrat said his new investigations committee would collect evidence of scientific fraud and supply it to the police and authorities. “The prosecuting authorities will decide whether this is delusional or not.”
He added that DeSmog UK itself was now was under investigation as part of an attempt to have reporters and scientists tried for fraud in the criminal courts and then when found guilty imprisoned. “Our estimate is that if two or three people go behind bars for having acted fraudulently everybody else will run for cover.”
Monckton has proven a highly unreliable witness, making claims to journalists that are too often at variance with the facts. He used to regularly threaten to sue critics and criticise others for trying to stamp out free speech.
His only claim to authority in the climate debate is his assertion that he advised the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the issue of climate change when serving in the Policy Unit of the Cabinet Office in the 1980s.
This claim is not supported by his own personnel file, as confirmed by the Cabinet Office itself following a Freedom of Information request. Moreover, it was contradicted by colleagues working on environment for Thatcher at that time. It is also at odds with Thatcher’s own account of the period.
*not. [?]
@brendanmontague
==
wow ref parachute durban
https://www.desmogblog.com/sky-falling-climate-deniers-parachute-cop17-durban
7/11
What’s that falling from the sky? A bird? A plane? No!
It’s just crazy climate denier Christopher “Lord” Monckton! Apparently trying to one-up himself after the “Hitler Youth” debacle in Copenhagen in 2009.
Monckton and his compatriots from the climate-denying, pollution-loving Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) skydived onto the beaches of Durban yesterday in another failed attempt to flog the dead “Climategate 2.0” horse.
The image of Monckton dropping from the sky, eyes closed, destined to decry his well-worn “U.N. world-domination conspiracy” is just priceless. Witness the great non-Lord's descent unto the masses, assisted by a hunky “paratrooper” to guide him to dry land since he couldn't bear to watch himself:
The Deniers of Durban sure picked a plucky way to drop in on the city hosting the UNFCCC negotiations, although their message is still stale and baseless - it's really a shockingly desparate attempt to find a pulse for the completely lifeless and flailing “Climategate 2.0” corpse.
Demonstrating just how strained the effort was, Monckton couldn’t bear to open his enormous eyes on the way down, according to footage posted by CFACT to YouTube.
Apparently undeterred by the amateurish antics of the CFACT contingent, U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Denial) supposedly arrived in Durban today to deliver some message of importance to the denier squad.
CFACT said in its post-skydiving delerium:
“Secretary Figueras is telling the COP that she can obtain a new commitment period in Durban,” said CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker. “After she hears what Senator Inhofe has to say, she may want to re-evaluate her wishful thinking.”
No word on whether Senator Inhofe will also parachute into Durban to join his denier dudes in action. Stay tuned for the details.
Somehow, we're guessing that he'll phone it in via videoconference, since no other U.S. Congress members are headed to Durban this year. If he does show up in person, Oklahoma taxpayers and the rest of us have to wonder how much tax money Inhofe is using to support his earth-defying stunt in South Africa. Update: [Inhofe did indeed video message from D.C., the Washington Post reports]
Speaking of wasted resources, here's Monckton just before the jump, doesn't he look thrilled to be there??!! 
Prediction: Expect many of the same lies and distortions that have marked the last two years of the “Climategate” nonscandal, in which climate scientists are dragged through the mud because their personal emails were illegally published to the world wide web, while the climate denialosphere clings to the vapid conspiratorial “Climategate” meme.
Despite the complete debunking of the original edition AND the “two year old turkey” reprise they tried to dub “Climategate 2.0,” climate deniers will surely continue this charade as long as a gullible media will repeat it. Stay tuned for the next nonscandal, timed to pester the next attempt to deal withthe ever-increasing climate disaster we face.
Thumbs up for flying blind and pretending climate change doesn't exist! Way to go CFACT.
UPDATE: Maybe this is why Monckton had his eyes closed, check out this image of 2,000 Durban school children forming a lion's roar for climate action this morning on the same beach CFACT landed on yesterday. H/T TckTckTck for the news, image courtesy of Shayne Robinson for Greenpeace and SpectralQ:
==
ref 2 desmog
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/18/how-climategate-laid-foundations-fake-news-era
lord Lawsonstepped to the curb hailing a taxi. We had both been at an event in a swish Fleet Street hotel discussing illegal phone hacking by journalists. I had followed him out onto the pavement and asked whether thehacking of scientists' emails from the servers of the British university had been unethical — as well as criminal. “It was a whistleblower,” he scowled. The black taxi took off, leaving me in a cloud of diesel.
Another Lord, though of a different stripe, Lord Monckton, I have met many times. The one that comes to mind is when he was the star turn during a fringe event of climate deniers near the Vatican in April 2015. I began by asking whether he, as a Catholic, believed the Pope could in fact be fallible when pronouncing climate change the challenge of our age. Before I knew where we were, the faux peer was accusing Barack Obama of being the centre of a global Communist-Fascist conspiracy.
Dr S Fred Singer I interviewed at a Heartland Institute conference in Las Vegas, the United States, back in 2014. He spoke quietly and softly, explaining his role in recruiting Lawson, the former British chancellor, to the climate denial cause. This mattered because Singer is the grandfather of the denial of climate science, and has been associated with both tobacco and oil companies.
These three men were influential in turning Climategate into an international scandal 10 years ago now.
Creating a storm
The illegal hacking of thousands of private emails between climate scientists, both at the University of East Anglia and elsewhere, and their publication in November 2009 was supposed to be the smoking gun which proved that hundreds of highly respected, indentured university scientists working around the world had conspired together to exaggerate the risks from climate breakdown.
The target of the hack attack had been Pennsylvania State University Professor Michael Mann, the author of the first ‘Hockey Stick’ graphwhich showed a dramatic uptick in average global temperatures following hundreds of years of a fairly stable climate. Professor Phil Jones was collateral damage: accused of academic dishonesty, hauled in front of a powerful Parliamentary committee to answer these trumped up charges, his life’s work unfairly called into question. He considered suicide.
Climategate should have been a storm in a teacup. The emails revealed nothing new. A few choice phrases were taken out of context, twisted, and presented as damning evidence. It was Lord Lawson who turned it into a crisis for climate science.
He launched the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in Parliament just in time to make best use of the faux scandal, toured the newspaper offices using his reputation as Thatcher’s one time chancellor to persuade editors to take the event seriously, and called on his Tory friends to open their cheque-books to fund his opaque think tank.
The GWPF scored some initial successes. Lawson is said to have persuaded his former friend, Lionel Barber, until recently the editor of the Financial Times, to take the Climategate fiasco seriously. This in turn likely influenced the Guardian in its decision to run day after day of coverage of the hacked emails, and its reporters’ fruitless attempt to find the hacker.
Lawson was also influential in the decision of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons to launch its investigation — trapping Professor Jones under the cameras and the hot lights to answer evidently preposterous allegations. Lawson, even during a hearing which he had been influential in being opened, refused to say who was funding his new thinktank.
Manufacturing denial
Alongside Lawson, Singer and Monckton were also there from the very beginning and had significant roles to play in the development of the GWPF.
Singer was among the first climate deniers in the world, indeed when he entered the fray most climate scientists were aware of the complexity and contingency in the research. It was firmly established that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused heating, and that the amount pumped out through the use of fossil fuels was inextricably rising. But issues like the sensitivity of the atmosphere to change and how quickly this would change was still hotly debated.
Singer worked with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (now Atlas Network) in the United States. The foundation was primarily concerned with promoting free market, neoliberal economics. Friedrich von Hayek was the intellectual inspiration. He argued that any regulation would distort the market, leading to hardship.
This ideology was very much in the ascendancy around the world: Lord Lawson has been its “chief architect” in the UK and as chancellor had torn apart the regime of financial regulations. But as well as causing economic collapse in many of the economies where it was tested, neoliberalism now faced the challenge posed by climate science — which would inevitably lead to calls to stop (or regulate, or tax) fossil fuel use.
[pix clatham hse]
The Atlas Foundation turned to Singer for help. The physicist had previously worked with the tobacco industry deliberately creating smoke and mirrors around the increasing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. The foundation received money from the oil industry, including Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, and was instrumental in founding the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in the UK. It was a trustee of the IEA — David Henderson — who first approached Lord Lawson at an event hosted by the London School of Economics and persuaded him to take up the cause of climate denial.
Lord Monckton also had a part to play. A viscount, Monckton was born into money, but despite his rather eccentric denials, actually missed out on becoming a member of the House of Lords when hereditary peers were abolished. The viscount worked for a very short period for Thatcher’s policy unit. He later lost £1m in prize money when he launched a puzzle betting no-one could crack it. They could.
Monckton became something of a hero to the climate denier community when he published a two-page rant in the Sunday Telegraph claiming that he alone had exposed the fatal flaw of the science of climate change. The rather eccentric ramblings had originally been drafted as a report for a private investor (with an historic interest in **fracking).He was also instrumental in formulating talking points from the Climategate scandal for climate science deniers across the world.
[pix congress?!]
Monckton — if you believe his side of the story — advised Lawson to establish the GWPF and take up his new climate denier cause — attacking science rather than policy. He also claimed to have recommended Dr Benny Peiser — who wrote his dissertation on whether people are more athletically active in the summer — as the head of the charity. Peiser denied this version of events, desperate to distance Lawson and the think tank from the discredited and conspiracy-prone Monckton.
Political game
Lawson once boasted that he was responsible for what he (modestly) called Lawson’s Law: he advised the Tory party not to fight elections based on what the electorate actually cared about, but instead to persuade the electorate to care about what the Tory party could win an election on.
Lawson did not advise fake news, but it encouraged a distortion of reality that has seriously undermined our politics. It opened the floodgates.
Along the way, the GWPF has gotten into bed with the wildest of right-wing neoliberal think tanks, becoming intimately entwined with those responsible for serious spin and corporate lobbying around Brexit.
Lawson himself was instrumental in the Vote Leave campaign (before applying for residency in France). He was happy to appeal to reactionary populism to settle scores within the Tory party.
One consequence of this is that Nigel Farage long ago adopted the tactics of his namesake. Farage has dabbled in climate denial. He has gone further in stirring up populism. He is the master of scapegoating. And he is forever throwing “dead cats” into the political arena, keeping us constantly focused on our relationship with the EU. And in doing so, his Brexit Party — a party riddled with a Lawsonian brand of climate science denial — came close to destroying Lawson’s Tory party while continuing to push the UK towards the hardest of Brexits.
Moving on
Lawson, Monckton, and Singer have all quietly fallen off the radar. But their legacy, honed through the manufactured scandal of Climategate, lives on.
Lawson made himself chairman of the GWPF for life, but age has — with the same inevitability as climate breakdown — taken its toll and he has retired from climate politics to hisbeautiful mansion in the south of France. The GWPF lost the argument. It is now ineffective, losing support, and should soon be defunct. Singer has long retired from his think tank. Monckton is still attacking the Pope, but to no effect.
From climate denial and the fakest of fake news, to corporate lobbying and media spin — you reap what you sow.
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https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories-en/2020/02/11/the-heartland-lobby/
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no lnx vid
A joint investigation from CORRECTIV and Frontal21 reveals how the American Heartland Institute is supporting climate change deniers in Germany with the goal of undermining climate protection measures. We went undercover to meet with the institute’s chief strategist. He told us how the network of climate change deniers works, how donations are disguised and how they intend to use a German YouTuber affiliated with the AfD to reach young people. In the end, he made us a concrete offer.
Shortly before the crucial conversation, shortly before Heartland’s chief strategist tells us how it’s all orchestrated, we sit together, some enjoying steaks. The German lobbyist and YouTuber, Heartland’s chief strategist from America, a British lord and Trump’s former security advisor are all present.
It’s the evening of Dec. 3, 2019. The location: Madrid, in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel. Gray marble flooring, expensive furniture high columns. A few kilometers away, heads of states and governments are negotiating at the World Climate Conference on how the global rise in temperature can be curbed.
We are tracking an international network of climate change deniers, ranging from conservative American billionaires to the German AfD. We want to understand their links and strategies. We tried to get the information by going through the normal channels, but we failed. There was only one way to get into the inner circle: We had to go undercover. That’s why we’re sitting at this table – and that’s why we’re nervous.
We keep checking the hidden cameras, one of them in Katarina’s pen, which she’s wearing on her conference blazer. We try to keep the cameras stable while acting naturally and making small talk.
The people around the table consider the negotiations at the Climate Conference nonsense – yet they have come to Madrid to meet in the shadows of the World Climate Conference with an international lobby of climate change deniers .
Their goal: to spread doubt about human responsibility for current global warming. Their opponents are anyone who recognize this responsibility: politicians, activists, journalists and climate researchers.
CORRECTIV reporters Jean and Katarina are not at the table. Instead, meet Mathias and Karina, two public relations consultants who work for a strategic communications agency in Berlin. We pretend to probe for potential donor opportunities for our clients in the automotive industry and energy sector, who want to anonymously support the work of climate deniers with money. Big money.
The New Right, particularly the AfD, put the fight against climate protection high on their agenda last year. They continue to fight against young activists like Greta Thunberg and present themselves as the defender of the diesel car. Former AfD leader Alexander Gauland recently proclaimed that climate change was a new key topic for his party: “Criticism of the so-called climate protection policy is the third major issue for the AfD after the Euro and Immigration”. It is a polarizing topic.
The AfD relies on an international network of climate change deniers. Here, in the hotel lobby, many of the key players have gathered. One of them is EIKE, aopaque German association that provides politicians with arguments against climate protection. We want to learn as much about them as possible, but we can’t be too pushy. We need to play our roles, discreetly and firmly. We can’t get busted.
At some point Mathias gets up and speaks to James Taylor, chief strategist and director of climate policy at the Heartland Institute, a libertarian thinktank based in the US. We suspect many of the threads that we’ve been following will convene at Taylor. If we want to learn how this network spreads doubts about human-induced climate change, we need to talk to him.
Mathias politely asks if he has a moment for a question.
Taylor understands: It’s time for business.
They get up and head to a seating area a few meters away. It’s not completely isolated, but sufficiently enough that nobody can eavesdrop. While walking, Mathias starts to explain:
“I have a client.”
Throughout the next half hour, Taylor shares the inner workings of his disinformation toolbox. He believes that Mathias, the PR agent sitting opposite him, wants to help his clients funnel cash into the intricate network of climate change deniers.
Taylor explains how he is able to raise awareness of topics in exchange for money, how people can make tax-deductible donations anonymously through a U.S. foundation, and how the Institute’s publications mimic the tone of the New York Times so obscure ideas are taken more seriously. He detailed how he intends to make a young YouTuber from Germany the star of climate denier, and how he works closely with German partners whose ideas are consistently cited by the AfD in the Bundestag.
Then a few weeks later, Taylor will send an offer in writing. It is something like a strategy document for a PR campaign in Germany: A campaign that the public will not recognize for what it really is, making it even more effective.
The goal: No more prohibitive climate laws. Diesel instead of electric cars, energy from coal instead of wind turbines, industry growth instead of environmental protection.
The document, a product of our joint investigation with ZDF Frontal21, gives exclusive insight into the million euro business of climate change deniers. It proves how disinformation is professionally scattered around society with the help of supposed experts, corrupt scientists, intentional spin and YouTube.
A Fight
Against Science
There is a worldwide consensus among climate researchers that climate change is largely caused by humans. Hundreds of climate researchers regularly evaluate the current state of scientific knowledge in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their forecasts are conservative, yet dramatic.
Climate change deniers are disputing the results of the IPCC – supposedly based on the same methods. They call themselves “climate skeptics” or “climate realists” and conduct scientific studies to cast doubt on human-induced climate change. They write papers and magazines, organize conferences and dedicate time to lobbying. They are waging an information war to disseminate doubts about human-induced climate change.
If it were up to them, then their self-proclaimed “science“ would be confronting science. Thus, the question of whether human-induced global warming actually exists would be a question of opinion – with good arguments on both sides.
However, hardly any climate researchers or scientists agree with them. The facts speak clearly.
“The communication practiced by the Heartland Institute has nothing to do with science. These are definitely politically motivated statements,” said Kathleen Mar, a scientist at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam.
Throughout the US there is a traditional belief that competition and continued growth are good for the economy. It is a mindset fundamentally intertwined with the rejection of state intervention in such economic matters. Libertarian think tanks like the Heartland Institute — financed by the foundations of wealthy entrepreneurs like the Mercer family and, until a few years ago, the Koch brothers – are founded in this tradition. In Germany, this current of opinion is relatively small. But it is getting louder when it comes to the topic of human-induced climate change.
The AfD is using the frustration over climate policy to gain momentum. It’s a good topic for populist politics, given that policies meant to halt climate change often involve placing restrictions that threaten personal comfort: less driving, less garbage production, less meat consumption, less travel. The AfD is increasingly using the arguments of climate change deniers at the EIKE association by inviting representatives to technical conferences and Bundestag committees. But the spin doctors are somewhere else.
There Is No Other Choice
But To Work Undercover
We wanted to understand the extent of the climate change denial network, exactly how it’s funded, and how it’s members think and work. So we started our investigation by looking into climate change deniers in Germany. We made the decision to go undercover because we believed it was the only way to get authentic insight.CORRECTIV is well known among the German EIKE association, as their publications regularly fail our fact checks– and they frequently publish furious counter-articles. In 2018, a journalist at CORRECTIV was banned from participating in one of EIKE’s conferences when she tried to obtain press credentials. Also that year, the head of EIKE violently threatened a reporter from the ARD magazine, Monitor. We carefully weighed our decision. In the end it was clear to us that we would not get very far following the typical path.
So we built our undercover identities: Karina and Mathias, two PR agents who, on behalf of a client from the automobile industry, wanted to learn how to send money to climate change deniers in Germany –discretely, without attracting attention.
We create a fictional agency called “Faidros”, printed business cards to reinforce our fake identities, got a second pair of cellphones with new numbers and set up a website. We pretended to be experienced consultants who increase public awareness of climate-skeptical arguments on behalf of industrial clients.
Our undercover journey started in Munich. To be able to participate in an EIKE conference as private individuals, we paid 220 euros each to the association. We used PayPal because it allows you to change your name without being immediately exposed by online searches. Then we received an email confirming that the money had arrived and the venue would soon be announced. A cumbersome way to organize a conference.
An Invitation
to Madrid
Munich, late November. The tables are organized in long rows. A desk and a large screen are in front. Roughly 250 people walk through the entrance hall of the closed Munich-Riem Airfield, the so-called Coat of Arms Hall. They are mostly older men, some with doctorates or professorships, many of them already retired. We stand among them, equipped with business cards, wearing conference clothing and hidden cameras. We are significantly younger than the average attendee. Karina is a woman under 30. We stand out.
EIKE’s annual conference had almost been canceled. After protests, the contract between the original hotel and EIKE was terminated. But shortly before the planned start, we received an email with the new venue.
EIKE stands for “Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie” (European Institute for Climate and Energy). Many channels of self-proclaimed “climate realists” meet at this association in Germany, which states on its website that human-induced climate change is a “hoax affecting the general public”.
Like Heartland, the non-profit organization claims to be a scientific think tank and advertises its online studies as “peer reviewed”.
“They take scientific terms and misuse them for political purposes. They are not interested in scientific work at all,” said Potsdam sustainability researcher Mar about the self-appointed climate experts. “I would immediately ask myself who these scientists are, what their qualifications are.”
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Holger Thuss, the chairman of EIKE who threatened the Monitor’s reporter last year, kicked off the Munich conference. He set the framework for the conference by sayingclimate protests have assumed “terrorist proportions”.
Then we saw James Taylor, the chief strategist of the Heartland Institute, for the first time. He went on stage in good spirits to give a lecture. He looks like a company manager, slightly stocky, black hair pulled back, ironed shirt, a smile on his lips. A smart man with a meaty American accent, and an engaging speaker. Standing on the stage, he congratulates everyone for making it to the conference and says that the original hotel’s cancellation is encroachment on freedom of expression.
Taylor is a successful lobbyist and spin doctor who says of himself that he is more libertarian than conservative. He considers hostility to be praise for his work. Taylor also appears frequently on American television, and for some time he wrote a column in Forbes magazine.
For the next two days, the group of almost exclusively white men present scientific-looking graphs, diagrams and tables. There are those who consider themselves to be on the side of science, presenting their methods, explaining, arguing and evaluating series of experiments.
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And then there are the conspiracy theorists, the esotericists and the ultra-religious. A man sitting next to us in the audience says it is contempt of God to judge whether something God created is good or bad. He was talking about CO2.
EIKE was founded in 2007 and has close ties to the AfD.Michael Limburg, the organization’s vice-president, is employed by the office of Karsten Hilse, a member of the German Parliament, the Bundestag. He confirmed this to CORRECTIV. Limburg is an AfD member himself, and he participated in drafting of the AfD’s party program on climate policy as well as ran for the Bundestag in 2017 on the Brandenburg state list.
[graf]
The Transatlantic Network Over the past 20 years, the Heartland Institute has received funds from various companies and wealthy families
in the United States for the purpose of denying the climate change. It has also helped EIKE to spread its ideas in Germany.
Police officer Karsten Hilse sits on the environmental committee of the Bundestag on behalf of the AfD. He gave a speech in the Bundestag in March 2018. At the time, while being laughed at by members of other government parties, he declared war on the “false doctrine of human-induced climate change”. A year later, he distributed leaflets that contained a quiz to demonstrators of “Fridays for Future”, who he intended to embarrass.
Hans-Joachim Lüdecke, EIKE’s press officer, wrote an expert statement for the environmental committee at the invitation of the AfD. Now, members of EIKE’s entourage are writing for a new wave of right publications such as “Freie Welt” (Free World). The blog is run by the right-wing association “Zivile Koalition” (Civil Coalition), which is led by the deputy federal spokeswoman for the AfD, Beatrix von Storch.
We asked members of EIKE what kind of relationship the association has with the Heartland Institute. Michael Limburg, EIKE’s Vice-President, answered in writing: “We maintain a good relationship based on similar interests.”
After the conference, we invited Heartland lobbyist Taylor to dinner. We talked about his Institute, which is based in Chicago with just 40 employees.
While making small talk, Taylor explains that he knows how to convince people: “I think I present the actual logic, but people aren’t motivated by an actual logic. So you have to go and argue emotions.”
Things are going smoothly and we indicate our reason for meeting with him without revealing too much. We are successful, too: At the end of the evening we receive an invitation. In 10 days, climate change deniers will meet once again on the sidelines of the World Climate Conference in Madrid. The organizer of the counter-conference is the Heartland Institute.
“Our event will take place on December 3,” said Taylor. “We have eight or nine speakers and a five-hour program.”
The next stop for these consultants from “Faidros”: Madrid.
The Denial Lobbyists
Among Themselves
The “Climate Reality Forum” takes place on the first floor of the Marriott Hotel in Madrid, a small room with suspended ceilings. There are about 20 people, half of whom will give lectures today. Water in tetra packs with an environmental seal are on the tables.
The conference is significantly smaller than the one in Munich. It is shorter, without journalists, and the Heartland Institute does the filming and online streaming itself with two large cameras. The World Climate Conference was originally scheduled to take place in Chile, but a month earlier the Chilean President cancelled it due to protests against social inequality that took place throughout the capital city, Santiago de Chile. Climate change deniers also had to reschedule, rebook flights and hastily organize a new conference.
We met some acquaintances from Munich and greeted each other amicably. “It’s nice to see you again,” said one of the few women in the room. She is a YouTube influencer, 19 years old and blonde. Later on we would learn that she is supposed to become the star of the scene.
One of the speakers is William Happer, professor emeritus of physics and former security advisor to US President Donald Trump. In 2015, a team from Greenpeace, disguised as an oil and gas company, asked Happer to write a scientific paper to prove the benefits of high CO2 emissions for plants. Happer, then a professor at Princeton University, agreed – for an hourly rate of $250.
“I don’t know how far this shrillness will get,” said Happer, visibly aged, in Madrid. “First global warming, then climate change and now climate crisis and climate emergency – what else?”
German climate change deniers are also present. Wolfgang Müller, Secretary General of EIKE, praised the Heartland Institute before his lecture: “Heartland is a paragon in the fight against this climate madness.”
Christopher Monckton, an English lord residing in the Scottish Highlands, speaks later. Monckton advised neoliberal British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s – and does the same today for the British right-wing populist party UKIP. His suggestions include asking to quarantine people who are HIV positive. Monckton is a dazzling character, always polite and eloquent, who happens to also represents some of the crudest beliefs.On stage he pretends to give a speech to country representatives at the World Climate Conference. The delegates, he says, promote a cult of death through their ignorance. “Everything on which this conference in Madrid is based is fundamentally wrong.”
A few hours later, when the conference is over, Lord Monckton sits contentedly at the grand piano in the hotel lobby, playing a few songs. The other speakers sit a few meters away, ordering drinks and snacks to their table.
We sit in between, asking questions, laughing, answering without getting too personal. Secretly, we check the undercover cameras we are carrying with us.
The YouTuber talks about studying economics in Münster: She stopped because the program was too socialist for her. She also says that she is going to work for the Heartland Institute soon.
The YouTuber did not respond to a request for comment after the conversation.
Later at the bar, Karina met Debbie, who introduces herself as a cattle rancher from the States. After a while Debbie pulls a pen out of her pocket and points to the hidden camera at the end. She says she intends to secretly film people at the official UN Climate Conference. “You have no idea about what people will tell you if they don’t know who you are.” The pen is the same model, even the same color as the pen tucked into Karina’s blazer pocket.
The Moment of Truth
Finally, Mathias asks Taylor for a private meeting. This is the moment we have been working for over the past few weeks. Taylor sits relaxed in the armchair, his white shirt unbuttoned at the top, with a glass of red wine in his hand.
Business talk.
From the start, Mathias directs the conversation towards the possibility of donating to groups that deny climate change anonymously. His client, he says, is interested in a long-term investment — but requires that under no circumstances can he be linked to the transactions.
If the donor does not want to be named, there are some groups in the US, Taylor says. “One is Donors Trust.” You can tell them which group the money should go to – Donors Trust will then channel the funds.
Donors Trust’s activities are not illegal, but they do bypass the otherwise quite extensive transparency regulations in the US. Both Donors Trust and Donors Capital Trust are tax-exempt foundations that redistribute corporate donations to conservative and market-liberal think tanks. US tax law requires them to disclose to whom the funds are given. However, they are allowed to keep the name of the donor undisclosed on the grounds of anonymous. In practice, this means oil and coal companies can support anti-climate campaigns via Donors Trust or Donors Capital without having to reveal their financial support.
In the past, big players in the fossil industry like Exxon Mobil and Koch brothers were among Heartland’s major donors — but they withdrew public support a few years ago. We checked this by looking at tax returns, which are largely public in the US.
Now, Donors Trust is now one of the association’s biggest donors. The American magazine “Mother Jones” described Donors Trust in 2013 as a “Black Box ATM”. You could say that the foundation lends its name to the actual donors. Taylor confirmed this during the conversation.
Donors Trust is now directing between two thirds and three quarters of its budget to Heartland to support its climate-skeptical positions, says Taylor. He sells this as his personal doing.
Soon after, Taylor starts to speak about the German YouTuber sitting at the table a few meters away.
“We’re looking to bring her on board,” says Taylor, pointing in her direction.
Mathias asks: “The young lady?”
“To do some videos for us. Presenting to young people.”
The young influencer is to start forming new groups. She should be a dropout from mainstream society, with whom as many as young people as possible should identify. According to a Facebook post by the Rhineland-Palatinate Association of “Junge Alternative” (Young Alternative), she is a member of the AfD’s youth organization. The AfD and its members regularly distribute her videos. Taylor says the fight against climate protection measures needs a better image, to move away from old white men and instead showcase a younger generation. The YouTuber is going be the new face of the movement. She is Taylor’s media strategy for the masses.
Taylor also knows how to reach those who are not on YouTube but do vote in parliament. For a long time, he published a monthly brochure that the Heartland Institute sent to politicians.
He says it was specifically written “We do it as if it were for The New York Times or any other leftist newspaper.”
He explains that the rule for their editors is to write it as if they were news stories. They cannot write anything that looks like it is opinion. “You present our angle on it, but you do it by who you decide to quote”, he says”.
Taylor’s team uses supposedly journalistic standards to raise doubts about human-induced climate change. What he is not interested is rigor and balance.
And he succeeds at that, or at least that’s what he says. There are people who will realise it is Heartland how is writing these articles, he explains, but others feel it is something they could use, and this is how they get to them.
Taylor repeatedly emphasizes the good work done by EIKE. He says it is amazing what they can do in a year with such a small budget, and claims that the organization has 200,000 euros available. They help each other, he says, by participating in each other’s conferences. Heartland also gave EIKE a small sum of money for the Munich conference in late November. When asked about EIKE’s budget, the organization’s representatives said that their “donation volume” per year is “significantly below the stated amount”.
But whenever Mathias steers the conversation toward our client’s possible investment, Taylor brings his own institution into play — even though Mathias emphasizes several times that the client wants to donate to EIKE because he is mostly concerned about the European market.
“Then he tries to convince me to give my client’s money directly to Heartland, instead of EIKE“, Mathias recalls. Taylor politely adds that EIKE could, of course, use it much better in Europe. Then, a few seconds later, he talks about the benefits of Heartland establishing and disseminating specific information at the request of the client in exchange for money.
A half hour has passed. Taylor and Mathias promise to stay in touch before returning to the other conference goers. Mathias writes down the conversation so he can jog his memory later.
This is far more than we had hoped for. Taylor has given us a deep insight into the business of climate change deniers. We now know about some of the strategies they use to disseminate disinformation.
But we want to have it in writing.
The Phone Call
A few weeks later, we call Taylor for a follow-up. How does Taylor intend to get into business in Germany? Would it even be possible to purchase content as a donor?
We mention our client from the auto industry and bring up the current diesel bans in Germany and the growing popularity of electric cars, which are hurting his business.
Again, Taylor advertises the 19-year-old YouTuber as a promising social media strategy in Germany.
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Mathias asks: Can his client decide what she says in her videos?
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Taylor hesitates, but doesn’t say no. Of course, she would have to agree with and feel comfortable with what is going to be said. And he’s pretty sure that everyone involved wants the same thing.
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Mathias: “Perhaps we could agree on certain buzzwords. Disseminate certain information.”
Taylor: “Absolutely. Key points, keywords, the way to present something.”
Content in exchange for money. It’s like a deal in the advertising industry. The only difference is that the content is political.
Taylor thinks he’s in business with Mathias. Shortly after our phone call, we text Taylor to send us a written offer to convince our client.
He agrees.
Two Hours Later:
The Offer
The document arrives via email, just two hours after our conversation. It’s three pages long, with the title: “Funding Proposal: Germany Environmental Issues”.
In the proposal, Taylor summarizes what we discussed over the phone – and goes into even more detail. He outlines a plan for a possible campaign against climate protection policies in Germany. It’s an immoral offer formulated in the advertising language of a pitch. Recognize the problem, present the solution.
He describes German climate policy as “unwise”.Conventional power plants could be closed and replaced by expensive, unreliable wind turbine systems. Diesel vehicles could be banned. “These restrictive environmental programs are largely unnecessary”, says the proposal. Even worse: Other countries would be negatively impacted by Germany, which is often viewed as a pioneer.
Taylor suggests that the Heartland Institute instead draws attention to projects that “raise German living standards through common-sense environmental stewardship.”
For climate change deniers, this means one thing: As few environmental protection measures as possible.
Taylor uses the same language utilized by Heartland and EIKE, the same language pushed by climate change deniers on social media and also by the AfD in the Bundestag: Climate alarmists are thoughtless and hysterical people who jeopardize economic growth. So, in reaction, they stand up: the climate realists, the only sensible people in the debate.
The central pillar of the German campaign is to be the AfD-affiliated YouTube influencer praised by Taylor in Madrid, “(…) she is eager to direct her viewers to topics on environmental overreach that harm German households,” writes Taylor. The funding will allow Heartland to equip her in such a way that she can produce a series of effective videos.
For the first time, Taylor is also involving staff from his institute. Their titles and degrees are intended to ensure credibility beyond YouTube.
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Peter Ferrara, a graduate in economics from Harvard University and former advisor to US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, is to join the team. Ferrara can “(…) research and present important information on the severe economic costs of German environmental restrictions”.
Taylor also has a plan to counter the argument that diesel car emissions are harmful to health.
To tackle this particular issue, he plans to get a physician and a biostatistician in on the plan. The two scientific professionals, Dunn and Milloy,“are two of the science experts Heartland would – if properly funded – like to utilize calling attention to the minimal health impacts of diesel engines, coal power plants, and other conventional energy sources”
Their degrees and job descriptions will give off a supposed level of expertise.
The strategy is similar to the one used by Heartland US. Without mentioning EIKE explicitly, Taylor writes that “Heartland would proactively explore opportunities to galvanize our friends and allies to advocate in conjunction with our Germany Environmental Issues project.“
Taylor proposes two US trusts as payment vehicles, with confidentiality and legality guaranteed: Donors Trust and National Philanthropic Trust. “Donors fund an account with the organization and then direct the organization how it would like to distribute the funds” In exchange: One percent of the donated amount will be debited quarterly.
It is an offer designed to be convincing. And it actually is convincing, because it shows how strategically and discreetly the climate change denier network functions. It establishes topics, tailors communication strategies and offers entire campaigns while granting the donors and masterminds complete anonymity.
After the conversation, we offered the Heartland Institute the possibility to make a statement. However, they did not response to our comment.
The Influencers
Other people in the climate change denier network are, however, in the public eye: young influencers on YouTube as well as older men who present themselves as professionals at conferences, in interviews and in pseudo-scientific discussions.
The network of climate change deniers extends across the Atlantic and grows increasingly closer to the authorities. They use professional communication strategies, funded by anonymous donations.
Heartland functions as a kind of model for its German counterpart, EIKE – even if the latter has only a fraction of the budget at its disposal. Still, under German law, EIKE does not have to disclose its finances. The association itself reports that it has “almost only small and very small donors”.
In the US, Heartland’s ideas have reached the President. In Germany, EIKE benefits from the fact that the AfD now uses climate policy for itself, framing it in the context of the euro and immigration.
Heartland had already extended its hand into Europe before we went undercover. Our reporting confirms that for years, Heartland and EIKE jointly sponsored conferences, even though an EIKE spokesman said he was not aware of this when we reached out for comment. The German association is an ally to Heartland: they share the same goals and attend each other’s conferences. And on Heartland’s website, the chairman of EIKE, Holger Thuss, is listed as an “expert”. We also learned that that Heartland will run campaigns for German foundations and corporations in exchange for donations.
Climate change denial is spreading not just in the US, but also in Germany. Members of the movement do not outright deny climate change itself, instead preferring to question whether it is the fault of man’s fault, and if it even poses a serious risk. This frames their ideas as diverse, and presents the possibility that everyone else is simply hysterical. They paint their challengers as hotheads who want to introduce socialism instead of protecting individual freedoms.
Thus, the wording of the “false doctrine” of climate change, of the hysterical and erring “climate alarmists” – conceived and disseminated by institutions such as Heartland and EIKE – ends up on social media and in the Bundestag. Look no further than AfD member Karsten Hilse, who spoke of “the false doctrine of human-induced climate change” – the same language used by the YouTube influencer. Numerous members of EIKE and speakers at Heartland conferences use the same rhetoric.
A few weeks after the Madrid conference, a video appeared on Heartland’s YouTube channel. It shows fragments from the speech given by the 19-year-old influencer at the conference in Madrid, intermittent with statements by Greta Thunberg. The video ends with a question: Who do you believe more?
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819 fake trump phone call praise lord m, state dept offer to swap for aoc squad
There’s no need to worry about reducing the greenhouse gases driving climate change—all that carbon dioxide is actually “greening the planet.” The Green New Deal, on the other hand, would send the country back to the stone age, or at least the pre-industrial era. Those were among the eye-popping and often-conflicting views expressed yesterday at the Heartland Institute’s 13th International Climate Change Conference, a gathering of climate change deniers that took place at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House.
The vast majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that climate change could prove devastating to life as we know it unless we take swift and sweeping action to decarbonize the economy . But those “wild predictions have been pronouncedly exaggerated,” according to the British gadfly Lord Christopher Monckton, who holds the title 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
One of the more colorful figures in the climate denial universe, Monckton ticked off a list of problems scientists have linked to climate change that Monckton says we really don’t need to worry about. According to him, the world is seeing less, not more, drought; sea levels are falling not rising; forest fires are causing less damage; hurricane activity is decreasing, too; and carbon dioxide is actually improving the global environment by “greening” places like Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. “That’s why we need more CO2, because it greens the planet,” he declared.
Other conference panelists joined Monckton in cycling through a series of theories long debunked by peer-reviewed science. Some believe, like Monckton, that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are growing but provide more benefits than threats. (One Heritage Foundation official went so far as to suggest carbon dioxide emitters should get paid a subsidy rather than face the kind of carbon tax scheme policymakers have discussed; of course, the oil industry already does receive billions in subsidies.) Others argued that CO2 levels are in fact not rising, while still others say we should be more concerned about a coming ice age.
“The real problem is we have a lot more to worry about with global cooling than with global warming,” said Rodger Bezdek, an energy analyst and Heartland policy advisor.
If the speakers and audience members don’t all agree on why we shouldn’t worry about climate change, the few hundred people assembled in a hotel ballroom yesterday do share a number of other ideas: chiefly, that the fossil fuel industry is under unfair attack and deserves public support, while the Green New Deal is a totalitarian communist plot to steal American liberties and cast the world into “energy poverty.”
Kevin D. Dayaratna, a senior statistician at the Heritage Foundation, told the audience the Left had already begun to take control of the country and would continue its authoritarian advance with a Green New Deal.
On the surface, times would seem to be good for Heartland and the climate change denial movement, with the world’s most prominent climate change denier living in the White House. President Donald Trump has run with many of this group’s longtime demands such as withdrawing the United States from the United Nations’ Paris climate accord and rolling back Obama-era pollution rules....
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The thrust of Boutrous’ presentation wasn’t that climate science was wrong — he, too, took a turn running through graphs showing the precipitous rise in global temperatures and sea levels — but he also took care to show the rate of emissions in China and India, lingering particularly on a graph that said that China’s emissions currently exceed the United States. He said that this was largely due to the burning of coal, which is being reduced in the US. In fact, Boutrous even credited hydraulic fracking with reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the US.
Boutrous seemed to say that fossil fuel companies aren’t responsible for how people use their products. “IPCC doesn’t say that the extraction or production of fossil fuels leads to emissions,” Boutrous said. “It’s energy use, the economic activity, that drives the demand for fuel that leads to emissions.”
“WE’RE JUST MAKING THE CIGARETTES, PEOPLE ARE CHOOSING TO SMOKE.”
It’s an argument we’ve heard before from tobacco companies, says Peter Frumhoff, chief climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Tobacco companies for years said that ‘We’re just making the cigarettes; people are choosing to smoke,’” Frumhoff says.And for years, courts sided with the companies, he says — until public opinion began to change. “It was the consequence of their efforts to disinform that led juries and judges — who are members of the public — to say, ‘Wait a minute,’” Frumhoff says. The lawsuit itself says bluntly that the defendants “borrowed the Big Tobacco playbook in order to promote their products.” The complaint accuses the oil companies of “promoting massive use of fossil fuels by misleading the public about global warming by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science.”
In response, Boutrous’ presentation on the history of climate science focused on the controversy around the theory that climate change was caused by humans. Chevron may be willing to say nowthat climate change was caused by humans, but surely it wasn’t wrong to say otherwise then. For example, both Boutrous and Allen mentioned Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius who, at the turn of the 20th century, grew increasingly concerned that anthropogenic carbon emissions could increase global temperatures.
But Boutrous took time to emphasize that, until about the 1960s, most scientists didn’t believe him. This isn’t strictly wrong — although Judge Alsup himself noted that in 1938, Guy Callendar linked climate change to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Even NASA’s Earth Observatory agrees that Arrhenius was largely disregarded until the second half of the century. “It’s trial and error. Scientists debating each other,” Boutrous said in court. “Questioning other scientists’ views is part of the scientific process.” (Boutrous did not call any scientific experts on behalf of the oil companies to speak before Judge Alsup Wednesday about how the scientific process is conducted or anything else.)
“WHAT’S ACTUALLY SAID IS NOT NEARLY AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT THE EVIDENCE IS TO SUPPORT IT.”
Boutrous drew quotes from IPCC reports across the years, showing the increasingly strong language that was used to characterize its conclusions about climate change. In 1995, the IPCC said that “the balance of evidence suggests” human-caused climate change, the 2007 report goes with the phrase “very likely,” and by 2013, it becomes “extremely likely.” In other words, the oil companies are emphasizing that it’s taken time for scientists to reach a consensus on climate change. It’s a strategy that climate law expert Jessica Wentz at Columbia Law School was expecting. “Not directly attacking the science, but undermining it by emphasizing uncertainty,” she says.
The legalistic reading of the IPCC’s statements was frustrating to Allen, he said in an interview with The Vergeafter the tutorial concluded, because to scientists, the evidence and context are more important than the language. “The question of whether somebody writing a scientific paper uses the word ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ is kind of neither here nor there,” Allen says. “What’s actually said is not nearly as important as what the evidence is to support it.”
Still, on the basic facts, the two sides agreed more than they disagreed — which kept arguments over whether or not climate change was real from derailing the hearing. This wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the deniers: academics William Happer, Richard S. Lindzen, and Steven E. Koonin requested leave to file their own scientific presentation, which questions anthropogenic climate change. Happer and Lindzen are climate deniers; Koonin claims climate science is “not settled.” Another group of deniers, led by aBritish viscount with a degree in classical architecture, asked to file an amicus brief in the case. Neither group has yet received permission to contribute to the case, but the judge has asked both to disclose their funding sources and any links to either of the parties in the case. Notably, Koonin disclosed that he had “some money vested in a BP pension plan arising from his employment that ended nine years ago.” (He was chief scientist at BP for five years, according to his NYU bio.)
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Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) - Germany
Since entering Germany’s parliament two years ago on an anti-Muslim and anti-immigration manifesto, the AfD has embraced climate science denial as a new campaign strategy.
Its election manifesto denies human-induced climate change and claims that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has meant “world food harvests have increased significantly”.
“We doubt that man has significantly influenced or even managed the recent climate change, in particular the current warming. Climate protection policy is therefore a mistake,” the manifesto states.
As such, the AfD rejects “all EU measures that justify the reduction of CO2 emissions with the protection of the climate”, including the Paris Agreement, which it describes as a “shift of funds from the highly industrialized countries to underdeveloped countries”.
Most recently, the AfD has conducted a targeted smear campaigns against the climate school strike movement and the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
Climate change barely got a mention on the AfD’s social media channels when the party was founded in 2013. But it mentioned climate change more than 900 times in the past year alone, mainly promoting anti-Thunberg rhetoric, according to a joint investigation by the counter-extremism organisation the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and Greenpeace’s Unearthed.
Party chairman Jörg Meuthen, the lead candidate standing in the election, has repeatedly attacked Green politics and described climate change as “a replacement religion of all left green world parties and patronisers”.
Meuthen repeatedly accused those that want climate action of “Greta hype”, labelling them “CO2 believing disciples”.
Maximilian Krah, another AfD candidate, also targeted Thunberg 10 times in tweets between December 2018 and April 2019, describing the movement she inspired as a “psychosis” and the consequences of a post-Catholic age.
He also compared climate change to homeopathy, claiming the EU could soon declare the latter a science.
Earlier this year, coal miner Guido Reil, also a candidate, defended the party’s false claim that
and that it is having no impact on the climate.
The AfD’s anti-climate campaign efforts have been backed by the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), a German-based climate science denial which is known for co-hosting a climate conference with the Heartland Institute, a US-based think tank which has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.
EIKE’s advisory board include Christopher Monckton, a former British politician and advisor to Margaret Thatcher, who was later affiliated with Ukip and a notorious climate science denier.
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http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/5-most-deranged-conspiracy-theories-gop-mega-donors-bizarro-climate-conference
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ref3
https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/feb/21/trumps-potential-science-adviser-william-happer-hanging-around-with-conspiracy-theorists
no lnx many vids
Trump's potential science adviser William Happer: hanging around with conspiracy theorists
Graham Readfearn
The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths
@readfearn
Mon 20 Feb 201723.14 EST Last modified on Thu 5 Jul 2018 16.52 EDT
William Happer: who is Trump’s likely science adviser? – video report
William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.
Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.
So when it emerged last week that the professor might seriously be in the running to be President Donald Trump’s science adviser, that Princeton tag no doubt added an air of authority to his opinions.
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In short, Happer thinks more CO2 will only be good for the planet – putting him at odds with science academies around the world.
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Trump's likely science adviser calls climate scientists 'glassy-eyed cult'
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“There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” Happer told the Guardian. “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.”
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Happer has also compared the “demonisation” of carbon dioxide to the “demonisation of poor Jews under Hitler” – because a Nazi reference will always get you noticed.
But here’s the thing — the first of many to note about Happer. First, he is not, by any stretch, an expert on climate change science.
Happer’s record of getting scientific papers published in leading journals on climate change science is at, or very close to, zero. Simply, he knows a lot about some stuff, but he is not a climate scientist.
While he has a distinguished career as an atomic physicist, previously serving the administration of George HW Bush as a science director,the 77-year-old’s views on climate science are outnumbered by all the credible evidence, all the credible science agencies and are also being laughed at by the Earth’s thermometers and its melting ice sheets and glaciers.
Prof Michael Oppenheimer has scores of articles on climate science in leading journals going back to the mid-1990s. He’s a climate scientist … at Princeton.
So what does Oppenheimer think of his colleague?
“With respect to climate science and scientists,” Oppenheimer told me by email, “[Happer] is not only unknowledgeable but appears to have become unmoored.”
Ouch. But then, maybe Oppenheimer has glassy eyes?
Happer has laid out his thoughts on climate change in some detail in an ongoing Focused Civil Dialogue (my irony meter just exploded) with the Australian climate scientist Prof David Karoly.
While Happer’s contribution seems technical, it’s the same parade of zombie talking points that actual climate scientists have been dealing with for years.
Happer says CO2 levels and temperatures have been much higher in the past and that life “flourished” under these conditions many millions of years ago.
He doesn’t mention that during those times sea levels were probably several metres – sometimes well over 10 metres – higher than they are today. If that’s the world you want to advocate, then it’s time to call the removal guys for most of the world’s major coastal cities.
The climate scientist Dr Nerilie Abram, of Australian National University, specialises in the climate of the ancient past. She told me:
Warm periods in Earth’s past tell us a lot about how our climate works and what we can expect if we don’t act to halt current climate change. The last time that temperatures were similar to now, this caused parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to slowly melt and sea level globally ended up six to nine metres higher than now. If we go back 3 million years – the last time carbon dioxide levels were at today’s level – sea level was probably around 10 to 40 metres higher. Life on Earth might not be fazed by those numbers or even higher ones, but for human civilisations they would be catastrophic.
Happer also rolls out that mouldy old chestnut that CO2 is just food for plants, but ignores the research on the impacts that higher concentrations of CO2 will have on our global food supply.
Research into some staple crops such as rice, wheat and sorghum, for example, finds that they end up with less protein when CO2 is at higher concentrations. That’s before you worry about how food crops will cope with droughts and heatwaves.
At a conference in December Happer said his “main concern” was that climate change was “likely to damage public perceptions of science”.
If Happer is concerned about the reputation of science, then he’s picking some very odd places to hang around – that conference being one of them.
The Arizona gathering was organised by Freedom Force International – a group led by the famed conspiracy theorist G Edward Griffin. He fits right in with the booming culture of conspiracy that’s growing big audiences online.
Among many other things, Griffin has said there is “no such thing” as HIV and that human-caused climate change is a hoax.
Griffin also promotes conspiracies around “chemtrails”. Just punch that word into your favourite search engine for hours of family fun (don’t actually do that).
To summarise, there’s a plan to spray the atmosphere with chemicals added to planes to poison everyone and “they” are using weather modification as a weapon.
Griffin has said “somebody is spending a lot of money and effort to spray the planet” and that this is probably some international effort.
Also appearing at the conference was the British hereditary peer and climate science denier Lord Christopher Monckton, who likes to say he was appointed as a reviewer of the last big UN intergovernmental panel on climate change report without mentioning that, literally, you need no qualifications and can “appoint” yourself.
Happer’s speech to the conference isn’t yet online but an interview he gave at the venue after is.
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William Happer gives an interview on the sidelines of aFreedom Force International conference in Arizona in December] also monckton at some pt
He goes over the same ground. CO2 is really awesome and life would be much better if there was a lot more of it.
“I don’t think there are any cons to CO2 … we are really in a CO2 famine,” he says. “My main concern is that it’s likely to damage public perceptions of science. I am hoping that I and other scientists can persuade the public that we are not all for sale.”
I’m struggling to understand how someone concerned with the reputation of science would want to lend his name, and the name of Princeton University, to a conference organised by conspiracy theorists.
Greenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate science
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This is also the bit when we mention that Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace activists in 2015, when he offered to write a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide for a fake fossil fuel client while avoiding any need to disclose the funding’s source.
Happer asked that rather than pay him, the fake lobbyists should instead pay the CO2 Coalition – a climate science denial group based in the US. Tax documents list Happer as a director and president.
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He has also given evidence in a court case on behalf of the coal company Peabody Energy where he similarly asked that his fee go to the CO2 Coalition. He laid these facts out in emails released by Greenpeace, stating that the coalition did not pay him any fees or salary.
Remembering Happer’s dislike of science being “for sale”, it’s noteworthy that his CO2 Coalition colleague Patrick Moore was paid last year by a major European coal lobby organisation to give a presentation in Strasbourg telling the audience we should “celebrate CO2”.
No doubt Happer would argue that money does not influence the views of people like Moore, though he does say that it influences actual climate scientists who get research grants from universities and governments. Go figure.
Whether or not Happer gets the gig as Trump’s science adviser remains to be seen. But given the climate science deniers and fossil fuel advocates who Trump has already employed, it seems Happer will fit right in.
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10/31/14 aside from singer libel suit discussion, ORESKES
morano, michaels, schnare, horner, s kazman. monckton go after UC, harvard and stanford, w/ glantz at ucsf and 2 unnamed stanford profs; in part b/c alums, so presumably defective education?!
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Fred%20Singer%20emails%20re%20Merchants%20of%20Doubt.pdf
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