The Church of Monckton | Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah
The Church of Monckton | Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah
Monckton isn’t just any “non-expert” willing to tell the rubes what they want to hear, though. He’s a complete loon. His Lordship has gone about falsely claiming to be a member of Parliament, claimed to invent a miracle cure for AIDS, MS, Graves’ Disease, herpes, the flu, and the common cold, and his “science” has been debunked many times by scientists.
Over on Lord Monckton’s Rap Sheet, I showed quite clearly that Christopher Monckton is a raving crackpot. There are lots of crackpots in the world, but I decided to publicly document this one because he is constantly being touted as an expert on (what’s wrong with) climate science by some very powerful politicians and media personalities, foundations, and even by a few scientists (who almost invariably are not climate specialists.) The purpose of this page is to document who the politicians, media personalities, foundations, and scientists are, who have treated Monckton as if he were a credible source of information about climate science.
“But Barry, isn’t that just mean to out these people? Aren’t they victims of Monckton’s con game, too?” Well, of course it’s mean, but hey, I’m mean like that. Plus, they are totally asking for it–here’s why.
The sorts of people who are Monckton boosters have one thing in common–they want to be perceived as the sort of no-nonsense iconoclasts who aren’t afraid to question the status quo. ”So what if 97% of climate scientists think humans are significantly affecting the global climate? If you want me to believe it, you’re going to have to prove it to me!” they say. That would be fine, except that when we are dealing with a complex, technical subject, it generally takes several years of very hard work to get to the point where you can make informed judgements about conflicting expert opinions. Most people are way too lazy for all that work, so if they don’t want to defer to an overwhelming majority of the experts, they start pretending. That is, they find plausible-sounding sources of information that go against the status quo, and then pretend that their favored sources blow the consensus out of the water via an irresistible barrage of logic and facts. In reality, these people don’t have a clue who is right–they just pick whatever side fits their preconceived notions or political ideology. In doing so, they leave themselves wide open to be taken in by any outrageous crackpot who will tell them what they want to hear and make it sound “scientific” to a non-expert.