Goodbye!

I have no doubt many of the sceptics (of which I’m one) will come on here and pump their chests that they’ve chased you away.

I won’t. Though I can imagine the constant criticism you get for posting your point of view on here gets tiresome and would contribute to your loss of enjoyment. It happens in every walk of life for different reasons.

Good luck with whatever you do.

Goodbye and good luck in the next venture.

I’m really sorry to hear that Graham.

I have really enjoyed contributing to the Green Blog and I have learnt a great deal from it.

We may not see eye to eye on most issues but I have great admiration for someone who stands up and defends their principles. The debate with Christopher Monckton was an admirable display of this conviction and I have a great deal of respect for that. You stood up for your beliefs while many of your colleagues on your side of the debate were hiding behind the door.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do. I hope Burnley brings you a lot more joy, hope and satisfaction than you are clearly getting from the global warming debate.

Take care and stay safe!

You’re right. Sometimes there is a need for a change of scenery. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

All the best in your new endeavours.

I note that the Faroe Islanders manage the odd upset now and again and the score stands in history. The Australian Cricket Captain may claim that they are well prepared for the Ashes but recent history has shown the fickle nature of the weather and it’s influence on the best of intentions.

Congratulations Graham. You have provided a great service to the public, in what would otherwise be a barren landscape of one-sided reporting.

You certainly deserve better, and I’m sure you will find it. I’ll put my feelers out for you mate, but for now enjoy the peace and quiet, and send those whingeing denialists to the far, dim reaches of your memory. A new chapter begins! As the saying goes: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

Sorry to see you go, Graham. I can understand your frustration and desire to do something more productive with your time. Let me say that your blog and the links have helped me immensely in my investigation of climate change despite discordant chorus.

As this is your last post, I have been forced to send in a few random bits and pieces of what I had hoped would be a more definitive analysis of the phenomenon of the Viscount. So in no particular order, I offer some cautions for those who have been duped by Monckton.

A SCOTTISH aristocrat who claimed he was forced to sell his ancestral pile after losing a fortune on a $1 million puzzle has admitted that he invented the story to boost sales.
Christopher Monckton, the third Viscount of Brenchley, owned up to the duplicity yesterday as he launched a new version of the world’s toughest jigsaw.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Aristocrat-admits-tale-of-lost.3340554.jp

And again:

“In that context, the few femtowatts you will save by not leaving your television on standby don’t matter. It is not that energy efficiency, renewables and recycling will not make enough difference. They will hardly make any.”

Femtowatt = 1 x 10-15 watt. Clearly Monckton is being facetious. That’s OK, Chris, we can all return to sanctimonious seriousness when you decide that the ‘absurdist’ mockery is meant to finish, like about the first moment someone accuses you of pleasuring yourself about being the discoverer of the cure for half the world’s worst diseases.

‘Sometimes half the truth is a whole lie.’

Monckton causally claimed that “Thalidomide comes in left (S) and right (R) stereo-isomers. Only the (S) form causes birth defects.”

So, on the basis of this partial information, he claims that the (R) form of the drug has been unnecessarily restricted. The whole truth is that the drug spontaneously racemases in vivo, with some of the drug adopting the (S) form, restoring its teratogenic potential after it has been administered.

Monckton carefully avoided naming the ‘super drug’ that he was using to cure MS and many other diseases. I wondered about his familiarity with the Thalidomide case… But I couldn’t possibly comment.

Monckton, Telegraph 12/11/06:
“By 2035, says Sir Nick[Stern], temperature will have risen by “over 2C”. It sounds alarming. What he means, though, is over 2C since 1750, when we don’t know what the temperature was.”

Does Stern mean 1750? No he doesn’t. 1750 is Monckton’s own idea about when the current warming began, courtesy of an over blown estimate of the increase in the intensity of sunspot activity since the ‘Maunder Minimum’. Clearly Stern, using the expert advice of real climate scientists, refers to the warming that has ACTUALLY occurred in the 20th Century, approximately 0.8 oC plus that predicted to occur by 2035, not some largely illusory, and uncertain change commencing in the 18th Century, according to the unique theories of Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, BA.

Were we to accept Monckton’s theory (for the sake of argument) then the total change with respect to the most legitimate estimates of the temperature in the ‘Little Ice Age’ -0.5 below the 1900 mean, would be about 2.5 oC by 2035. If we accepted his inflated idea of the little ice age average of – 1.5 oC,( which he dis-ingenuously claims here not to know) the total change would be more like 3.5 oC. So using his own figures, even Monkton would have to admit this climate change is getting a little ‘alarming’.

“Stern’s 485 parts per million by 2035 is based on the UN’s worst case. Even then, the increase compared with today would be just 0.7C. On the UN’s lower projection, implying 425ppm by 2035, only 0.3C”

Monckton dismisses the upper range figure for CO2 as if it were by definition absurd. This is not so surprising when you hear that Monckton believes that the rate of acceleration of the increase in global CO2 in the latter part of the 20th Century was negligible. At Noosa he said the ‘curve’ was ‘a straight line’, meaning he recognises no acceleration in the rate, which is clearly erroneous. Given the failure of Copenhagen, and the determination of China, India and the other developing economies to ‘forge on regardless’, a further doubling of the annual rate of build up to 4ppm/y is not too extreme a prognosis. When we take into account some of the feedbacks from a warm, CO2 saturated ocean, burgeoning CH4 concentrations released by melting permafrost, and decreased albedo due to melting of the polar ice cap, the ‘upper range projection’ by the IPCC might just turn out to be as hopelessly conservative as their estimate of the rate of melting of the Polar ice cap.

In addition, as we are reminded by the denialists, water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. The increase in world temperatures will result in more water being evaporated into the atmosphere, leading to further feedbacks, intensifying the GH effect, and further raising temperatures. I’m sorry to be ‘scary’, but that’s what ‘uncontrolled climate change’ does.

Despite all this Monckton subsribes to the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ theory of risk management: “Why waste time and money protecting Humpty. Let’s wait and see what happens, and if Humpty Dumpty falls, we’ll put him back together again.”

The world needs better advice than fairy stories.

Good luck and all the best for the future Graham.  And thanks for your efforts in maintaining the blog.

Do you know if the CM will be continuing this blog with another journalist?

Cheers,

BennO

As I said to people in the audience, if they choose to buy their climate science from non-qualified sources continually shown to be incorrect, then that’s their choice.

Is that Gore or Monckton you are referring to?

Good luck, Graham with whatever you choose to do.  Look after yourself and your family - these are the most important things.

(PS - you never did answer my question on traffic lights!)

I too wish you luck. I admire the way you allowed us sceptics to have a say. Science is never “settled”. Very few scientists are climatologists. Many, such as 20 y.o. female grad’s in marine biology make fantastic claims based on minimal data. Last night’s 7.30 report on Monkton looked like a year 12 effort with no direct interview attempted. People are media wise nowadays and don’t hold reporters, especially TV, in the high regard as they once were. Anyway, wish you and your family well.

Goodbye Graham… Good luck.

So, Graham, I believe that you will be appearing in a bbc DOCUMENTARY with your “debate” with Lord Christopher Monckton IN FULL.

Funny, not one email published telling Readfearn what people really think of him. Nah...not so funny....typical CM approach!

Denial isn’t a river in Egypt, Graham.