Your recent article" Climate-change denier Lord Monckton hot...

Your recent article" Climate-change denier Lord Monckton hot under the collar for nothing", which twice used the hate-speech term "climate change denier", unfairly exploited my disability in the text and a ridiculous photo.

It made unevidenced, inaccurate allegations that in a talk in Whangarei I was "manipulating" graphs and figures and that my "claims" were "as wild as an Atlantic hurricane".

It contained many further damaging inaccuracies. Thank you for printing this letter of correction.

Though the article said I could prove the change in recorded temperature for two decades "has been so minuscule no thermometer could measure it", the implication in context was that I could not. Yet I cited the UN's climate-science chairman as having recently said global warming had "paused for 17 years" (23 years on satellite data).

I did not say, "If all developed countries cut their emissions by 30 per cent by ... 2020 global temperature would only be reduced by 0.05 C". I said that, if the CO2 tax cut Australia's (not 'all developed countries') emissions by 5 per cent (not '30 per cent'), warming prevented would be 0.00005 C (not '0.05 C').

I did not say, "CO2 levels ... were much lower in Proterozoic times ..." I said that in the Neoproterozoic (not 'Proterozoic') they had been 30 per cent, against 0.04 per cent today. I did not say, "There is no scientific consensus that man is the primary cause of global warming." I said there was no consensus about how much warming a CO2 doubling might cause, and that fewer than 5 per cent of climate change papers study that question. Many of these suggest only 1C warming per CO2 doubling. I did not say, "Al Gore is lying to you." These words appeared on a bumper-sticker sold by sponsors. I cited a High Court judge in 2007 as saying, "The Armageddon scenario that [Gore] depicts is not based on any scientific view."

I did not say, "Nature, not human activity, rules the climate." That is the title of a book sold by sponsors. I acknowledged we have some effect on climate. I did not say, "The only thing polar bears are suffering from is Ursus bogus". I said Al Gore had wrongly said scientists had found polar bears dying after swimming 60 miles to find ice. They had found four polar bears dead after a storm unconnected with global warming. I said Gore's inaccuracy was known as Ursus bogus, not that bears were suffering from it.

I did not say "In Greenland the ice did not melt 8000 years ago and it isn't melting today." I said there had been coastal ice loss. I did not say that at the 2012 Doha climate conference I had "slipped into the empty chair of the ICPP delegate from Burma and proceeded to verbally rip apart the draft document on climate change - resulting ... in half the draft being dropped". I said that at the 2011 Durban (not 2012 'Doha') IPCC (not 'ICPP') talks I had reported (not "ripped apart") the negotiating text.

Within 12 hours delegates abandoned half the draft, including proposals to give "Mother Earth" rights to sue in an "International Climate Court" and to halve CO2 concentration, destroying most species. I did not say, "Last week in Wagga Wagga [I] heard from a man not allowed to put a huge pond next to his house".

I said that the previous day (not 'week') a farmer in Tangowahine (not 'Wagga Wagga'), in New Zealand (not 'Australia') had told me that, on paying a $1200 "resource fee", he had been allowed (not 'not allowed') to install a small (not 'huge') fishpond (not 'pond').

I did not say someone in Wagga Wagga had been "fined for moving rocks". I said a farmer in the Lofty Ranges, South Australia (not 'Wagga Wagga', New South Wales) had said the Natural Resources Management Board (not prosecutors) had answered his complaint of excessive zeal by saying, "We can prosecute you" (not that they had 'fined' him) "for shifting a rock" (not 'rocks').

I did not make a "reds-under-the-beds address". I cited two founders of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore and the late Eric Ellington, as having said separately they had had to leave when Marxists took it over. The implications that I was "miffed [he] can't attract a face-to-face debate ..." and that I thought "there's a conspiracy to shut me up" are unfounded.

Yours faithfully, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

Topics: climate change
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24th April 2013


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