Psudeo-Science vs Real Science

Before accepting a newspaper reporters assertions that climate change is bunk, one should at least google data on said reporter.

In this case right wing climate change denier Christopher Monckton. Otherwise known as 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. A former member of the Thatcher government.A newpaper reporter given to creating puzzles. Not a scientist.

Top Tory in a kilt hit by visa 'racket' case - Sunday Times ...
A MILLIONAIRE aristocrat and one-time Downing Street adviser is under investigation by detectives probing an alleged international immigration racket.

Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Lady Thatcher when she was prime minister, is at the centre of a criminal inquiry into claims that hundreds of eastern European migrants were brought to Britain on bogus visas.

Investigators at the National Crime Squad have raided a London-based employment firm that uses Monckton as an immigration adviser.

Monckton is credited as the brains behind the Thatcherite policy of giving council tenants the right to buy their homes. A scion of a famous Tory family, his sister is Rosa Monckton, who was a friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, and is chairwoman of the committee that selected her memorial fountain in Hyde Park.

Monckton appears to be at it again in the Telegraph, denouncing climate change scientists as being part of a conspiracy which he calls the climate change consensus. When rightwingers use the term consenus, it a.) demeans the science b.) is another tern for acceptance of the status quo c.) is a term used by conspiracy theorists.

In November 2006 two articles written by him criticising the traditional view of global warming were published in the Sunday Telegraph. His executive summary states his own set of criteria that would need to be met in order for global warming to be true, most of which are unusual in terms of scientific practice, such as a criterion of consensus, which Monckton defines as universal acceptance.

Monckton's debunking of the global warming was criticized by George Monbiot in The Guardian newspaper. In the article, Monbiot states that Monckton's arguments in are based on either misinterpretations and omissions of scientific and historical facts or pseudo-scientific discourse. Monbiot gives historical, political and scientific arguments Monckton's criticisms. Monckton was offered the right of reply to Mobiot's claims in the next day paper and vigorously defended his Sunday Telegraph articles.

As the debate over climate change gets heated those who go over the top on calling it a pending apocalypse allow for climate change deniers like Monckton to appear to give voice to reason.

Monckton brings up the Middle Ages Glaciation period as evidence that climatologists are wrong. However this right wing interpretation of the facts are wrong. As Jeffery Sachs pointed out to the Wall Street Journal editorial board who also used it to excuse America's position on Kyoto.

And as NASA points out paleo-climactic changes have impacts on climate change models. And in fact this model verifies the so called Middle Ages Glaciation period and the resulting increase in climate change.

Feature: Paleoclimatology: Understanding the Past to Predict the Future

Between 1650 and 1710, a period known as the Maunder Minimum, the Sun was relatively quiet, bombarding the Earth with fewer ultraviolet rays than normal. Decreases in the amount of ultraviolet energy hammering the Earth change the stratosphere by decreasing the amount of ozone that is produced. During the same period, paleoclimate data showed that Europe was colder than most other areas. Scientists estimated how much ozone levels would have decreased during the Maunder Minimum based on the decrease in ultraviolet energy from the Sun, and they plugged the information into global climate models. “A change in the stratosphere gave a change in the NAO,” Schmidt says. In fact, the models said the NAO should have been more negative on average during the sixty-year period, resulting in cooler temperatures over Europe.

What climate change deniers on the right cannot accept is that capitalist industrialization has increased the speed of climate change over the last century.
Denouncing the science and the facts as a 'consensus' does not make it any less true. But it does place these climate deniers like 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in the same catagory of nutbars that believe in Jewish Conspiracy Theories.

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