Christopher Monckton has said that his was a life in lonely dedication to Truth - that thing, he says, that never changes no matter how many lies are told.
He should really learn to practice what he preaches.
Monckton makes David Bannerman look like an amateur when it comes to telling lies.
He claims to be a science expert. This is despite the fact that his paper-thin educational background lies in the Classics and his single academic credit is a diploma in journalism.
He has been accused of deliberately manipulating scientific data. See: LINK
He has claimed to be a Member of a House of Lords. Here is one example:
In 2006 Monckton sent a letter to U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and John D. Rockefeller.
Part of the letter read:
Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter, should take the unusual step of calling upon you as members of the Upper House of the United States legislature either to withdraw what you have written or resign your sinecures.
To read the original: LINK
Monckton has attempted to get into the House of Lords. He tried in 1999. See: LINK
He also tried in 2007. He failed to receive a single vote. See: LINK
But perhaps he didn’t notice. Or did he just forgot?
He should really learn to practice what he preaches.
Monckton makes David Bannerman look like an amateur when it comes to telling lies.
He claims to be a science expert. This is despite the fact that his paper-thin educational background lies in the Classics and his single academic credit is a diploma in journalism.
He has been accused of deliberately manipulating scientific data. See: LINK
He has claimed to be a Member of a House of Lords. Here is one example:
In 2006 Monckton sent a letter to U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and John D. Rockefeller.
Part of the letter read:
Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter, should take the unusual step of calling upon you as members of the Upper House of the United States legislature either to withdraw what you have written or resign your sinecures.
To read the original: LINK
Monckton has attempted to get into the House of Lords. He tried in 1999. See: LINK
He also tried in 2007. He failed to receive a single vote. See: LINK
But perhaps he didn’t notice. Or did he just forgot?
Monckton is best known for his lectures on climate change. At the start of these talks he is introduced as ‘Lord Monckton’. He even uses the emblem of Parliament, the Crowned Portcullis, on his PowerPoint slides.
Monckton has said:
“I am a member of the House of Lords, though without the right to sit or vote, and I have never suggested otherwise.”
A quick call to the House of Lords will confirm that Christopher Monckton is not and has never been a Member of the House of Lords. There is no such thing as a “non-voting” or “honorary” member.
Here are the facts:
Christopher Monckton's father, the 2nd Viscount Monckton, was a Member of the Lords until 1999. The House of Lords Act 1999 ended the automatic link between the holding of a hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords, and the 2nd Lord Monckton ceased to be a member of the House at that point.
Christopher Monckton is the 3rd Viscount Monckton and inherited the title following his father's death in 2006. He has never sat in the House.
It is interesting to note that use of the Crowned Portcullis is protected by legislation. This is what the UK Parliament website says on the matter:
The principal emblem of the House is the Crowned Portcullis. It is a royal badge and its use by the House has been formally authorised by licence granted by Her Majesty the Queen. The designs and symbols of the House should not be used for purposes to which such authentication is inappropriate, or where there is a risk that their use might wrongly be regarded, or represented, as having the authority of the House.
The House symbol is primarily used to authenticate communications from Members. Further background information can found in The Portcullis.
If you require further information about using the Crowned Portcullis, please contact webmaster@parliament.uk
We sincerely hope that Monckton has not appropriated the symbol of the House for purposes "where there is a risk that their use might wrongly be regarded, or represented, as having the authority of the House".
In 2007, Monckton, or someone using Monckton's personal IP address, claimed on his Wikipedia page that he had won a libel judgment against the Guardian’s George Monbiot. He lied. When challenged, Monckton dodged the issue. See: LINK
Monckton also makes ridiculous claims on other topics, such as that a ban of DDT was singlehandedly responsible for all malaria deaths in the last few decades, or that the best way to have solved the AIDS crisis was to imprison all AIDS sufferers until they died.
Monckton says that he is the author of a 1200-word article for the Daily Telegraph on the reasons in international law why the Falkland Islands are British. It was supposedly read out on the BBC World Service's Argentinian broadcasts every 20 minutes during the Falklands War.
But the BBC World Service deny this. They don't have an Argentinian service, and have never made specifically Argentinian broadcasts.
Monckton has said that he has won the Nobel Prize.
In an open letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), he claimed to have been named a Nobel Peace Laureate for correcting the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel in 2007
Monckton also claimed on the website of his organisation, the Science and Public Policy Institute, that he “earned the status of Nobel Peace Laureate (through) his contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.”
The website continued, “his Nobel Prize pin…was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York.”
In 2007 Nobel committee awarded the 2007 Peace Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".
Monckton claimed to also be a Nobel winner because he had done such good work trying to undermine their effort. Monckton claimed that he deserved the accolade because he was a "reviewer" of the IPCC report.
Monckton said he also deserved a Nobel Prize because he wrote a letter pointing out a decimal point typo in one table of one IPCC report, making him a “contributor to the IPCC”.
The IPCC accepts reviews, unsolicited, and actually invites reviews from people who have varied perspectives, scientific and otherwise. But that doesn’t mean they can claim to be a Nobel Laureate!
The Nobel Committee were less than impressed with Monckton.
Committee secretary Geir Lundestat had never heard of Lord Monckton.
“The claim is ridiculous,” said Lundestat. “He is not a laureate - no way, no way.”
Thousands of people, he said, participated in the program of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 prize with Al Gore.
“But the organisation won the prize. Not even Dr Rajendra Pachauri (the chair of the IPCC) is an individual laureate.”
No individual, no matter what their involvement with the IPCC, can pass themselves off as a Nobel Laureate.
And Monckton’s Nobel Prize pin?
“It certainly wasn’t issued by us,” said Lundestat. “We have no pin.”
Actually, Monckton got a friend to melt down an old science experiment so they could fashion a little Nobel Prize pin. It was later presented to Monckton in a highly unofficial ceremony! See: LINK
When Monckton was cornered by the Sydney Morning Herald, he reportedly said that the claim to have won the Nobel Prize was “a joke, a joke.” See: LINK
The admission was made several hours after he had said on a radio program that he had been awarded the Nobel - a claim that the interviewer did not question.
So why does the website of his organisation, the Science and Public Policy Institute, still state that:
His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.
To read the original: LINK
And this is the man now being touted as UKIP’s next leader! A serial liar as a political leader? He should feel right at home!
So now you know the truth. But will that disturb those UKIP lovers of Truth who still think that Monckton should succeed Pearson?
Here is what the Guradian has to say on the lies of Monckton:
Christopher Monckton continues to dig his own hole.
The longer this goes on, the better it will be for all those who take science seriously. Lord Monckton is digging his hole ever deeper, and dragging down into it everyone stupid enough to follow him. Those of us who do battle with climate change deniers can't inflict one tenth as much damage to their cause that Monckton wreaks every time he opens his mouth.
He has now answered the devastating debunking of his claims published by the professor of mechanical engineering John Abraham with a characteristically bonkers article. It conforms to the cast iron rules of climate change denial, which are as follows:
1. Falsely accuse the other person of ad hominem attacks, while making vicious ad hominem attacks of your own.
I have seen it done many times before, but never as blatantly as this. Monckton manages to pack his double standards into a single sentence:
"So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abraham's artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face — he looks like an overcooked prawn), that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies."
Those who have followed Abraham's destruction of Monckton's wild claims will know that he doesn't make any ad hominem attacks at all: in fact he goes out of his way to be civil and courteous to his subject and does his best to give him the benefit of the doubt. Unlike the bad-mannered lord, he sticks to the facts. Just for the record, Abraham looks nothing like an overcooked prawn, but quite normal and pleasant.
Does Viscount Monckton possess so little self-awareness that he couldn't spot the contradiction between the standard of argument he expects of others and his own behaviour? Or does he take his followers for morons?
2. Ignore or gloss over the most substantial criticisms. Monckton concentrates on some of the least damaging of Abraham's revelations. Abraham has replied to him. You'll note that, unlike Monckton, he remains courteous and calm. And that he swiftly destroys the viscount's specious responses.
3. Never admit that you are wrong. Even when your errors are staring you in the face, do not acknowledge them. Never apologise, never concede. This is the crucial difference between scientists and charlatans. True scientists welcome challenges to their work, admit their mistakes and seek to refine and improve their hypotheses in the light of them. Charlatans raise the volume and denounce the people who expose their errors. Or they quietly drop their claims, without ever acknowledging that they were wrong, and replace them with a new set of implausible assertions.
I have now read thousands of articles by climate change deniers - far more than I would like to have done - and have never come across a single admission that they have got something wrong. I challenge the deniers who are about to populate this thread to produce an example of someone on their side of the debate acknowledging an error.
4. Project your worst characteristics onto your opponent. Without providing any evidence to support his claim, Monckton repeatedly accuses Abraham of being a liar and of using "flagrant and deliberate misrepresentation". This comes from a man who has, among other interesting assertions, falsely claimed to be both a member of the House of Lords and a Nobel laureate. He also lambasts John Abraham for not being a climate scientist, though Abraham does in fact work in closely related fields. Monckton's own qualification, of course, is a classics degree.
So now you know the truth. But will that disturb those UKIP lovers of Truth who still think that Monckton should succeed Pearson?
Here is what the Guradian has to say on the lies of Monckton:
Christopher Monckton continues to dig his own hole.
The longer this goes on, the better it will be for all those who take science seriously. Lord Monckton is digging his hole ever deeper, and dragging down into it everyone stupid enough to follow him. Those of us who do battle with climate change deniers can't inflict one tenth as much damage to their cause that Monckton wreaks every time he opens his mouth.
He has now answered the devastating debunking of his claims published by the professor of mechanical engineering John Abraham with a characteristically bonkers article. It conforms to the cast iron rules of climate change denial, which are as follows:
1. Falsely accuse the other person of ad hominem attacks, while making vicious ad hominem attacks of your own.
I have seen it done many times before, but never as blatantly as this. Monckton manages to pack his double standards into a single sentence:
"So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abraham's artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face — he looks like an overcooked prawn), that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies."
Those who have followed Abraham's destruction of Monckton's wild claims will know that he doesn't make any ad hominem attacks at all: in fact he goes out of his way to be civil and courteous to his subject and does his best to give him the benefit of the doubt. Unlike the bad-mannered lord, he sticks to the facts. Just for the record, Abraham looks nothing like an overcooked prawn, but quite normal and pleasant.
Does Viscount Monckton possess so little self-awareness that he couldn't spot the contradiction between the standard of argument he expects of others and his own behaviour? Or does he take his followers for morons?
2. Ignore or gloss over the most substantial criticisms. Monckton concentrates on some of the least damaging of Abraham's revelations. Abraham has replied to him. You'll note that, unlike Monckton, he remains courteous and calm. And that he swiftly destroys the viscount's specious responses.
3. Never admit that you are wrong. Even when your errors are staring you in the face, do not acknowledge them. Never apologise, never concede. This is the crucial difference between scientists and charlatans. True scientists welcome challenges to their work, admit their mistakes and seek to refine and improve their hypotheses in the light of them. Charlatans raise the volume and denounce the people who expose their errors. Or they quietly drop their claims, without ever acknowledging that they were wrong, and replace them with a new set of implausible assertions.
I have now read thousands of articles by climate change deniers - far more than I would like to have done - and have never come across a single admission that they have got something wrong. I challenge the deniers who are about to populate this thread to produce an example of someone on their side of the debate acknowledging an error.
4. Project your worst characteristics onto your opponent. Without providing any evidence to support his claim, Monckton repeatedly accuses Abraham of being a liar and of using "flagrant and deliberate misrepresentation". This comes from a man who has, among other interesting assertions, falsely claimed to be both a member of the House of Lords and a Nobel laureate. He also lambasts John Abraham for not being a climate scientist, though Abraham does in fact work in closely related fields. Monckton's own qualification, of course, is a classics degree.
To these well-trodden tactics Monckton adds one of his own: run to daddy. He says that "I have already initiated the process of having Abraham hauled up before whatever academic panel his Bible college can muster, to answer disciplinary charges of willful [sic] academic dishonesty amounting to gross professional misconduct unbecoming a member of his profession."
There is, as yet, no evidence that he has done such a thing: the university is not aware of any complaint from Viscount Monckton and nor is Abraham. But it must be the 20th such threat I have seen him make. He throws threats of libel around like confetti, reported me to the Press Complaints Commission (his complaint was not upheld) and claims to have initiated disciplinary proceedings against another academic who criticised him (oddly, this didn't materialise either).
For all his bullying and bluster he is (to deploy the Scots he often uses) a "wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie". He is capable, as you have seen, of astonishing viciousness, but as soon as someone questions or criticises him, he runs off to a complain to a higher authority – or threatens to. This suggests that, like most bullies, he can deal it out but he can't take it.
When Abraham published his destruction of Monckton's claims, the Telegraph had a brief moment of sanity, allowing its blogger Tom Chivers to post a celebration of "one of the most magisterial scientific take-downs on record." Chivers noted that:
"Lord Monckton is a fantasist, a blethering popinjay useful only for amusement. He can be safely ignored in all serious scientific debate. But it reflects badly on those people who want seriously to argue against the science of climate change that this capering jester is among the public figureheads of their movement. If I were, for example, m'colleagues James Delingpole or Christopher Booker, I would publically wash my hands of Lord Monckton, and soon."
No sooner was the post up than it was down again. Monckton phoned the author to express his disappointment regarding Chivers' "popinjay" and "jester" comments. Chivers reported in an update to the blog that he had refused to take it down pending a conversation with his editor. But shortly afterwards the blog was removed from the Telegraph website without explanation. Fortunately Chivers's post had already been reproduced elsewhere.
As Chivers suggests, Monckton's claims to be a serious contender are over. From now on, like the defrocked Vicar of Stiffkey, he'll be a circus act, a figure of fun whose only followers are as crazed as he is.
Delightfully, he has just been given a whole new ring in which to perform. In the craziest political decision since Gordon Brown put Digby Jones in his cabinet, the UK Independence party has just made Monckton its deputy leader. His appointment has provided him with yet another opportunity to inflate his credentials. Among other claims he maintains that he was the, "Author of a 1200-word article for the Daily Telegraph on the reasons in international law why the Falkland Islands are British, read out on the BBC World Service's Argentinian broadcasts every 20 minutes during the Falklands War."
I phoned the BBC World Service. They do not have an Argentinian service, and have never made specifically "Argentinian broadcasts". There was, however, an entirely separate organisation set up by Thatcher's government to beam propaganda into Argentina during the Falklands war, called Radio Atlantico del Sur. It had nothing to do with the BBC. The idea that it might have read out Monckton's essay every 20 minutes is entirely plausible: I can't think of a better means of demoralising the enemy.
His Ukip CV adds more details to Baron Monckhausen's wonderful claim to have invented the universal cure.
"Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves' Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex VI."
But what happened to the other diseases? When he joined UKIP in December, he claimed that
"Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves' disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, food poisoning, and HIV."
Never mind. The best bit is the name of the company he has set up to market this miraculous treatment: Resurrexi Pharmaceutical. Last week I proposed that it was only a matter of time before Monckton proclaimed himself the risen Christ. Looks like we didn't have to wait too long.
Anyway, Ukip is now led by two aristocrats. One, Marina Hyde suggests, is "the sort of patrician dullard you pray not to be seated next to at dinner". The other is clearly deranged. This is going to be a lot of fun.
To see the original: LINK
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