Lord Monckton turns up the heat at AMEC
Climate change inquisitor Lord Monckton doesn’t proclaim to be a scientist. All he claims to be is somebody asking questions.
Presenting his views at the AMEC conference in Perth Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley revealed himself to be not only entertaining but also extremely well researched on what has become his pet topic.
“The points I am going to be making to you will be blindingly obvious and one of the features of this debate is that the obvious has been obscured and the obscure has been made to look as though it is obvious,” he began.
Although portrayed as monodynamic by those on the opposite side of the climate change argument, Munckton’s questioning does provide more than one burr under the saddle of his opponents.
“The very heavy cost…of trying to make global warming go away far outstrips…the cost of focused adaptation to any damages that might occur if, and only if, where, and only where, when, and only when, to the extent that global warming actually happens,” he said.
Monckton presented a slide highlighting the global temperature record for the first decade of the 21st century, which he said clearly demonstrated there hasn’t been any global warming for a decade.
This despite, he claimed, there having been record instances in the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere
“What the IPCC would have expected to happen in this period hasn’t occurred,” he said.
“This does not mean that here is not, no such thing as global warming, or that it has stopped, or that it won’t resume.
“What it does mean is that the rate of global warming is not as fast they are trying to tell us it should be.”
Using IPCC figures of a steep trend of warming of 0.16 degrees Celsius per decade Monckton calculates the rate of warming since 1976 is down to 0.14 degrees Celsius per decade, or since 1950 – 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade.
“Not very alarming; but you see a credibility gap there between what has been happening over the last sixty years and the central estimate of the IPCC of the amount of warming we will have, each decade, over the next ninety years,” Monckton continued.
“It is more than three times greater than what has been observed in the last sixty years.”
Monckton then turned on the Australian Government claiming its credibility gap to be even greater as it attained an estimate of global warming that is fifty per cent higher than that of the supposed consensus.
“They take that fifty per cent higher figure as their central case and that is nearly five times bigger than the rate of warming we have seen over the last sixty years, during which we probably haven’t been much influencing the climate,” he said.
The debate over Monckton’s appearance at AMEC and other speaking engagements around the country has been given just as much air-time and newspaper inches, perhaps more, than the actual climate change debate.
The frustration for his antagonists is most probably the fact he does get a lot of attention, which enables him to get his message across to a wider section of the community.
Perhaps if they want to level the playing field, the climate change does exist side of the debate should seek out an eccentric peer who is equal to Monckton in his ability to research, formulate and present their case.