29 May 2010

My Lord! You Hath No Clothes!

Posted by Dan Satterfield

Heard of Christopher Monckton? He inherited the title of LORD, so you may have heard the name Lord Monckton.

He travels around the world with a very slick slide show telling everyone who will listen that climate change is a big hoax and that all the worlds scientific bodies have it all wrong.

He has no background at all in any field of science and despite having the seal of Britain’s House of Lords on EVERY slide, he is NOT a member of that body.

I’ve only seen a few video clips of his little show and knew enough to realize this buffoon knew nothing about science. Why waste my time?

Unfortunately he has a ready and willing audience for his message. People will give time and money to have their viewpoint reinforced, no matter how crackpot it is.

Enter John Abraham. He is a professor of fluid mechanics and heat transfer at the University of St. Cloud in Minnesota. He sat through a video of Monckton’s entire presentation. (Sometimes doing good science can be painful.)

He then put together a slide presentation that debunked each slide one by one. Except he used REAL science. You know, stuff you have to source and get through peer review.

Click to see Professor Abraham's presentation

After watching Abraham’s debunking, one is left with only two possible conclusions about Monckton’s propaganda. Either he is stunningly incompetent in his research or deliberately manipulating scientific graphs and information. Perhaps both, you will have to decide.

Perhaps Charles Pierce is right. Stupidity IS becoming a virtue in the land of the free…

Abraham notes that Monckton is very convincing and that his British accent tends to imply knowledge to many Americans. He is also correct that the average person has not the time or perhaps the scientific literacy to check that his claims are correct.

None of them are of course. None…

Note June 4 2010:

George Monbiot of the Guardian has a column that pretty much shows how deluded Monckton and his followers really are.

Dan