Sixes all around the park from Monckton
Richard Treadgold | July 21, 2011
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley opened his debate at the National Press Club in Australia two days ago by reminding his audience that England not only took the Ashes off Australia, but also held on to them in the next rematch. He said: “I just thought I’d rub it in.” Then he proceeded to take his cudgel to his feeble debating opponent.
Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave the impression of not knowing where he was, so he said the things he normally said. Which usually works, because his normal audience has heard them before and agrees with him. But here, he floundered and had no idea what he was doing.
He definitely didn’t know what we were doing, which was measuring the two men against each other, and he didn’t realise we wanted facts about the climate. He kept reiterating his bewilderment that “sceptics” disagreed about climate change measures, or how important it was to bow to the scientific consensus. The stodgy stratagem was leaden against the sparkling, acrobatic and keenly wielded wit of his opponent Monckton.
He stood no chance. He might as well have spent his time scrawling “cretin” on his forehead and blinking up at the television lights with his tongue hanging out, so ineffective was his delivery. Coming as an adversary to the rapier intellect of Monckton he offered the resistance of damp paper.
Whatever climate facts Christopher Monckton mentioned, Deniss didn’t argue with them; he didn’t even acknowledge them — he just ignored them and talked about the “consensus” or again recited the scientific authorities supporting global warming. He was soporific.
But we got the facts from Lord Monckton — heaps of them. And he still had lots of time to enthrall us, entertain us, inspire us, berate the journalists for not doing their job in relation to global warming and even gloriously reprimand one journalist for bringing up the forbidden topic of Monckton’s dispute over his membership of the House of Lords.
Through it all he never lost his bearing.
You must watch the video. It’s outstanding.
I hope to get along to the Auckland venue. Does anyone who thinks they might be there also want to catch up for a beer?
I’d be keen if it worked out
PRINZ have not finalised plans for the public meeting Thursday 4th August yet but it will be open to members and non members. They will post details on http://www.prinz.org.nz shortly
I’m looking forward to meeting you all. I don’t know the timing of the evening meeting, but it probably won’t be late, so there could be time afterwards for a beer and a chat. But let’s look out for the details and make a decision then.
I’m also considering driving to Whangarei on the Saturday for his meeting with the farmers but I’m not yet sure whether I can do that.
Denniss kept repeating the “overwhelming” authority of “thousands” of scientists, without ever once stating what these nameless people agreed upon.
On the face of it, there are lots and lots of Government scientist who are hired to work on the thesis that the world is warming (accepted by most sceptics) and that human activities contribute to this (also accepted by most sceptics). So there is some consensus.
If that’s all there was to it, there wouldn’t be any passionate debate. Nor would there be any carbon tax, ETS, subsidised renewables, junkets, world government, etc, etc . All these factors arise from the claims of future ACCELERATED warming, that’s MOSTLY caused by mankind and has CATASTROPHIC impacts.
There’s no consensus on any of these quantitative issues, and no evidence either! They all came out of computer models. Most scientists don’t even have a model – in fact there are only 22 of them, and 14 of those are duplicates. No “overwhelming thousands” here!
So 14 models are duplicates? There are only 9 models?
AR4 lists 19 models but says 23 are used.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-2.html#table-8-1
I don’t think there is duplication in that list just variations of configuration. There’s a lot more models now but not every one will be an AR5 submission and some AR4 models have been superseded. At least one model has another models core e.g. CSIROs ACCESS has a UKMO core.
These models all feel pretty much the same. Is there anywhere a complete list of the input parameters for any of the recognised models? That might at least give a rough idea of what they were capable of predicting.
Yes Jim, there’s two sets of parameters – initialization and projection. The RCP Database of projection scenarios is here :-
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/tnt/RcpDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=compare
Blurb:-
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/tnt/RcpDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=welcome
“The RCP database aims at documenting the emissions, concentrations, and land-cover change projections of the so-called “Representative Concentration Pathways” (RCPs).”
The scenarios are complementary to the IPCC SRES scenarios.
The model groups generally all use the same initialization climatologies and historical data e.g. Levitus, Lean (solar) and standard concentration datasets e.g. Law Dome – Mauna Loa CO2. For some comparative studies the initialization datasets and timeframes are specified for the model spinup. I could dig up a spec if you were interested.
Basically though, the parameters are preset for all models so yes, if you want an idea of the results just look at the RCPs.
[...] debating opponent was economist Richard Deniss, and this is how the Climate Conversation Group characterised the debate: Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave [...]
Jo Nova is reporting that this debate swayed public opinion by 9% away from the idea that concerns about global warming are exaggerated.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/this-is-why-they-want-to-stop-skeptics-speaking-monckton-swings/
I feel sorry for L.M. having to debate with such w***ers. That Dr Dennis hadn’t a clue. He was hopeless, it appeared to me that he certainly couldn’t have prepared anything. I thought that L.M. could have debated that guy in his sleep and still trashed him.
G.S. Williams