The Manager
Northern Club
19 Princes Street, Auckland
CC: Jocelyn Morgan, Members Liaison Manager
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” – Edmund Burke
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict” - Martin Luther King, Jr
29 July 2011
To Whom It May Concern,
Cancel Monckton Luncheon
I call your attention to your club’s plans to host Mr Christopher Monckton at a luncheon scheduled for 12.30pm on Thursday August 4. At this luncheon Monckton will deny that climate change is a serious problem and suggest that we do nothing to stop it. I urge you to cancel this luncheon due to the large risk that associating with Monckton poses to your club’s reputation. If your club has a charter or a code of ethics, I am sure that it contains statements prohibiting dishonesty, misrepresentation and fraudulent behaviour, and discouraging behaviour that would bring your club into disrepute. As I will show in this letter, Monckton is guilty of the extremes of this kind of behaviour.
Providing a platform for climate change denial is not ethical – consider the families of the victims
Before I detail Monckton’s behaviour, I would like to pause and ask you to consider the state of the world today and the ethical ramifications of providing a platform for someone who denies that climate change is a serious problem. Right now Somalia is experiencing the worst drought and famine for 60 years, with thousands starving, and many mothers forced to abandon their weakest children to die so they can take their stronger children to aid camps. As the linked article notes, a study this year in found that rainfall in East Africa is likely to continue to decrease due to climate change.
In the USA there is currently an extreme heat wave that has already resulted in 64 human deaths and the loss of thousands of cattle. See also here and here. Would these current and recent extreme events, such as the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European heat wave of 2003, have occurred if humanity had not increased the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? NASA scientist Jim Hansen has stated “almost certainly not.”. The World Health Organisation considers that the climate change that has occurred since the mid 1970s may have caused over 150,000 deaths in 2000. Furthermore, a recent study indicates that 'deadly heat waves more likely in coming decades'.
Unfortunately, the behaviour of Monkton and others like him is all too common, A comparison with the damage caused by those who deny the link between the HIV virus and AIDS is apt. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki did not believe the consensus position that HIV caused AIDS and therefore refused to let South African doctors use the latest anti-retroviral drugs. Mbeki instead encouraged the use of folk medicine. The entirely predictable result was the death of thousands. Here in New Zealand, some parents refuse to immunise their children because they believe the scare stories spread by some about vaccines. The result - a measles outbreak.
Monckton’s dishonest, fraudulent and extreme behaviour
I will now provide details of Monckton’s behaviour. I apologise for the length, but there are so many examples. Please read the links yourself to see the proof of his behaviour. Most of the examples are obtained from Barry Bickmore, a geochemistry professor at Brigham Young University, Utah. (As an aside, Bickmore is both a Mormon and a Republican, thereby disproving Monckton’s theory that scientists expressing concern about climate change are raving lefty tree huggers).
Only a month ago in June – Monckton depicts respected Australian economist as a Nazi
1. The most recent example of Monkton’s malicious behaviour is his depiction of Australian economist Ross Garnaut as a Nazi. While standing in front of a picture of a giant swastika, Monkton said that Garnaut’s views that one should accept mainstream science were “fascist”. Said Monckton “Heil Hitler, on we go”. I wonder how your club’s Jewish members, or those with German heritage, feel about that?
Making up cures to diseases and providing false hope
1. Monckton claimed that he has developed a cure for Graves’ Disease, AIDS, Multiple Schlerosis, the flu, and the common cold. This is no joke–he actually filed an application to patent a “therapeutic treatment” in 2009. Is it homeopathy? Massive doses of vitamin C? The world waits with bated breath.
2. The list of diseases cured by Monckton’s miracle tonic expands from time to time. At one point he claimed, “Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves’ Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex VI.” At another time he said, ”Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves’ disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, food poisoning, and HIV.” Maybe some of you physicians out there can help me interpret this, but it looks to me like Monckton is claiming that his Wonder Cure will 1) wipe out any virus without harming the patient, and 2) cure auto-immune disorders that may (or may not) have initially been triggered by a viral infection. It is unclear to me whether bacterial infections are supposed to be affected since, for instance, food poisoning could be caused by either. Monckton apparently is now saying the miracle cure should be effective against both viral and bacterial infections, as well as prions
Shady business dealings
1. Monckton lied about his personal circumstances to sell more of his Eternity puzzle, and admitted it. Later, he tried to talk his way out of the lie.
Inflating his résumé
1. Monckton represented himself to members of the U.S. Congress as a member of the U.K. House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament.) When people started pointing out that he doesn’t appear on the official list of members, however, he started saying that he is a member “without a seat or vote.” When queried, the House of Lords responded that there is no such thing as a member without a seat or vote, and Lord Monckton had never been a member because he inherited his title (Viscount) in 2006, after all but 92 hereditary peers had been barred from membership in the House of Lords since 1999. Monckton has no scientific training or science degree, merely a degree in classics and a journalism qualification.
When asked to respond about this misrepresentation by members of Congress, Monckton basically acknowledged that the British government doesn’t recognize him as a member of the House of Lords, but claimed that they’re wrong because his “Letters Patent” that granted his title to the family (and presumably mention membership in the House of Lords) had never been revoked by specific legislation. He said that the Lord President of the Council in the House of Lords had admitted that letters patent could only be annulled by specific legislation. However, Tim Lambert actually looked up what the Lord President of the Council said, and it turns out that she used the House of Lords Act 1999 as an example of legislation that altered the effect of Letters Patent. In other words, she said the exact opposite of Monckton’s claim.
Monckton has also gone about using a logo that it quite similar to that of Parliament. Derek at Friends of Gin and Tonic sent an inquiry to the House of Lords Information Office about Monckton’s claim to be a member and his use of the logo, and they responded that, “The House is currently taking steps with a view to ensuring that Lord Monckton does not in future either claim to be a member of the House or use the parliamentary emblem or any variant thereof.”
Leo Hickman at The Guardian followed up on this with the House of Lords, and found that it’s just possible Monckton could do prison time. We can only hope, but it appears that Monckton may be quietly backing down! In his latest post on the Watts Up With That? blog, Monckton has changed his logo to a gaudy coronet, rather than the gaudy coronet and pink portcullis. However, more recently, Monckton is still claiming to be a member of the House of Lords, and he has added the portcullis back into his logo (although with wavy chains instead of straight). Now the House has taken the step of publishing a “cease and desist” letter on their website. Full story by Leo Hickman in The Guardian.
2. Monckton claimed to be a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC because he supposedly sent the IPCC a letter pointing out something that needed to be corrected in a draft report. At one point he said the claim to be a Nobel laureate was all a joke, but it has continued to be posted by Monckton in his bio at the Science and Public Policy Institute, and the sorts of people who believe Monckton have often repeated the claim with a straight face. (This brings up an important question. On whom was Monckton playing the joke?)
3. Monckton has made several dubious claims about what he did as a member of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit. In fact, Monckton was so important to Thatcher that in Thatcher's autobiography she never mentions Monkton at all. Thatcher, a trained chemist, is on record expressing concerns about climate change over 20 years ago in 1990.
4. One example of these dubious claims is 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.” George Monbiot phoned up the BBC, and they said they had never done any specifically Argentine broadcasts. Maybe Monckton was confused about who did the broadcasting, however.
Deflating others’ résumés
Monckton is not only prone to artificially inflate his own credentials–he also tends to deflate others’ credentials. This makes the issue of Monckton’s qualifications that much more entertaining. Since he was a classics major and journalist, anyone who got a minor in Nutrition or Physical Therapy would automatically have more formal scientific training than him. Why would Monckton, of all people, make an issue of others’ qualifications to talk about climate science?
1. In his wonderfully batty first response to John Abraham’s critique of one of his presentations, Monckton attacked the credentials of both Prof. Abraham and the journalist George Monbiot. He explained, “All of the sciences are becoming increasingly specialized. So most ‘scientists’ – Abraham and, a fortiori, the accident-prone Monbiot among them – have no more expertise in predicting or even understanding the strange behavior of the complex, non-linear, chaotic object that is the Earth’s climate than the man on the Clapham omnibus.” He called Abraham “a lecturer in fluid mechanics at a bible-college in Minnesota,” and Monbiot “a fourteenth-rate zoologist, so his specialization has even less to do with climate science than that of Abraham.” But as Prof. Abraham later pointed out, the physical processes he studies (fluid mechanics and heat transfer) and some of the techniques he uses (numerical simulation) are the same ones climatologists use to understand climate. So while he isn’t a climatologist, his professional background does help him understand clearly what the climatologists are saying. (This is a particularly good thing, e.g., if you are looking up scientific papers Monckton cites to see if he has represented their content correctly. See the next section.) Furthermore, he works at the University of St. Thomas, which is a Catholic University with graduate programs, rather than a ”Bible College,” and Prof. Abraham has extensively published his research. George Monbiot has a Master’s degree in Zoology from Oxford although he never mentions it when he discusses the climate.
2. Five scientists (including Barry Bickmore) recruited over 20 world-class experts in various climate-related specialties to respond to Monckton’s 2010 testimony to Congress. Monckton responded by dismissing all of the experts because of “Climategate.” Apparently, even if you were only mentioned in those stolen e-mails, that means you are now discredited! He attacked the organizers because most of them aren’t climate specialists, but, um… that’s why all those experts were recruited.
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