Who is Lord Monckton?
Last October Senators John Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) sent a letter to the Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil. The Senators wanted to browbeat him for the crime of funding research at odds with the officially approved theories of global warming. The text of the letter is available here; a Wall Street Journal analysis of the letter, here.
The Journal took the Senators to task, but it required an Englishman, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, to give the Senators the verbal slapdown they so richly deserved.
That’s the backstory. Monckton is back in the news. He has challenged Al Gore to a debate:
“The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley presents his compliments to Vice-President Albert Gore and by these presents challenges the said former Vice-President to a head-to-head, internationally-televised debate upon the question, ‘That our effect on climate is not dangerous,’ to be held in the Library of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History at a date of the Vice-President’s choosing.“Forasmuch as it is His Lordship who now flings down the gauntlet to the Vice-President, it shall be the Vice-President’s prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate. May the Truth win! Magna est veritas, et praevalet. God Bless America! God Save the Queen!”
I say there is no way Gore takes the challenge. Just to make things interesting, I’ll put up $100 against $50 from the first taker who thinks Gore has the balls to step up. If Gore debates, I pay. If he doesn’t, you pay. The loser contributes to a charity of the winner’s choice. A real charity mind you, not a political cause. Muscular dystrophy, cancer research, an animal shelter, something like that. We can work out the details if anyone is game.
Posted on March 19th, 2007 by pwyll
Filed under: eco-catastrophe
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Why has the global warming debate become this site’s recent obsession? Is there legislation that I don’t know about about to be passed that will outlaw *anything* having to do with this issue. Is it really about the meaningless sound and fury that passes for political debate in this country?
If you want an issue with teeth, how about the banning of trans fatty acids? Heck, this thing has already passed in several places, including NYC. There is no science behind this. I repeat, NONE. No predictive models of any sort, just some correlation studies of the worst type. This sh*t affects my life. Do you realize that you can’t get baked goods in NYC that use butter, because butter has *naturally occurring* trans fatty acids.
I like my butter. First it’s butter, then it will be my coffee cream. Now that’s an issue to get obsessed with. They try to mess with my coffee, and someone is going to get cold.
I commented on trans fat ban some time ago, here.
Why go on about global warming?
I got sick of the unending deluge of propaganda and indignant self-righteousness from fear mongers.. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the literal call for trials for the crime of climate change denial. I realized that this debate had gotten way past science and into the realm of compulsory religion, courtesy of the “reality based community”. No thanks. The way to fight that sort of crap is by speaking up.
Looking around the blogosphere I see that I am not the only one who is tired of the indoctrination.
Also, re your question whether there is any legislation you don’t know about, the BBC reports: “Former US Vice-President Al Gore made an emotional return to the US Congress to testify about global warming.
The winner of an Oscar for his film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, told a large crowd that “our world faces a true planetary emergency”.
He said the US should freeze carbon dioxide emissions and push for a strong climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. ”
If emissions freeze costs are anything like, say, those of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, they would run into the billions. A Kyoto like treaty would cost hundreds of billions. So yeah, there does seem to be relevant legislative activity.
Your turn. So tell me, why does it get you all riled that a no-name blog would criticize the new scientific consensus? It’s not like the Al Gore and crew don’t get enough publicity every single day. I don’t see an Oscar coming my way, and unlike Mr Gore, I don’t make a dime on this.
Please forgive me, but pushing for a treaty to replace a treaty that expires in 2012 that we never ratified, doesn’t seem all that compelling to me.
No-name blog? Why, Carnal Reason is the axis of symmetry upon which the entire blogosphere spins.
I guess it was the witch trial post that got to me. I really thought it went over the top. When you start comparing mass executions to whatever debate is currently going on, however silly, you’ve gone too far, IMO.
I couldn’t care less what bubbles up from the “minds” of hollywood celebrities, or what cause happens to be their current, fleeting, craze (by the way, has Tibet been freed yet?). But, dammit, Carnal Reason had better be, well, reasonable.
Our political debate in this country has been coarsened by exagerration.
On parts of the political left, it is not sufficient to say that the Iraq war was a mistake, and that Bush has handled the war incompetently. No, it must be said that he was a liar, and led our our country into war under false pretenses. Not just any liar, but the lying leader of a vast criminal conspiracy. In fact, not just any lying leader, but Hitler himself reincarnated.
On parts of the political right, it is not sufficient to say that Gore is a scientific incompetent, and much too enamored with the adulation of celebrities. No, it must be said that he has “gone off his lithium” and is unbalanced. Not just unbalanced, but so crazed that his (out-of-context) writings are said to be indistiguishable from those of a madman.
Enough is enough. We need to recapture the art of reasonable discussion.