by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog
Dr. Russell McKenzie, an associate professor at Southeastern Louisiana University Department of Management and Business Administration, is rather pleased with the guy he has secured to speak to students and the public about the economic cost of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are honored to have someone of his stature speaking,” he told an online university community newspaper. In another story, Dr McKenzie added: “It’s not every day you have the opportunity to have a world renowned speaker to come to Southeastern”.
So who is this global powerhouse on climate change and economics? Sir Nicholas Stern, perhaps, author of the UK government’s “Stern Review”? Could it be James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and famed climate scientist?
No. The “world renowned speaker” appearing at Southeastern Louisiana University on 2 October is none other than Lord Christopher Monckton, the British hereditary peer who believes climate scientists are part of a plot to introduce a socialist world government.
Apparently, the university is “honored” to host a man who told told climate scientists through a partisan crowd that “we are coming after you. We are going to prosecute you, and we are going to lock you up”.
Honored to have someone who compared former Australian government climate policy advisor Ross Garnaut to a Nazi? Honored to have someone who tells young climate change campaigners that they are the “Hitler youth“? Honored to be in the presence of a person shown to have misrepresented climate science (repeatedly) and yet is promoted by coal mining magnate and world’s richest woman Gina Rinehart?
And yes, honored to host a man who has written that the chances of Barack Obama having been born in the US are ”no better than 1 in 62,500,000,000,000,000,000“.
The lecture in question has been well promoted through official university channels and through a university-based website for student journalists which has written not one, but two stories promoting the event. Between 75 and 120 people are expected to attend.
News went out earlier this week to staff and students via the university’s weekly newsletter and on a 21 September daily bulletin, which included a link to a flyer promoting the event. The fawning newsletter article provided a potted biography of Lord Monckton:
Monckton is a businessman, newspaper editor, the inventor of “Eternity” puzzles, of the Sudoku X puzzles and of a promising new treatment for infectious disease… Credited with discovering evidence that a group of scientists, officials and politicians had manipulated data to exaggerate the threat of global warming, Monckton has authored more than 100 papers on the climate issue for layman. He is currently writing a book entitled “Climate of Freedom,” which is expected to be a worldwide bestseller among his millions of followers on YouTube and Facebook.
Monckton, who has no science qualifications, may very well have written more than 100 papers on the climate issue but not a single one of them has been through conventional scientific peer review process, a fact you would think pertinent to a public university.
So how did Lord Monckton get the gig? In a statement to DeSmogBlog, made through the Department of Management and Business Administration interim head Dr Toni Phillips, the university said it had been contacted by another group “to see if we wanted him to speak here while he was in the area. Some faculty expressed an interest, so he was scheduled to speak.”
That group was the “Northshore Tea Party“.
“He is speaking as an individual who has knowledge of, and presents talks on, CO2 mitigation,” the statement said, adding the university was not paying any expenses to Lord Monckton.
I also asked if Lord Monckton would be covering his latest pet conspiracy in his lecture – you know, the one about President Obama lying about his birthplace and faking a birth certificate.
“His topic is Is CO2 Mitigation Cost Effective?” the university replied.
Not everyone at the university has swallowed the Monckton propoganda. The university’s Professor of Philosophy is Barbara Forrest, a director of the National Center for Science Education, a not-for profit organisation campaigning to keep creationism and climate change denial out of classrooms. She told DeSmogBlog that Monckton had no scientific legitimacy to speak on the issue and should not be considered an authority “on anything”.
Lord Monckton is to the issue of climate change what the creationists at the Discovery Institute are to the issue of evolution. Neither is a credible source on the issues, concerning which, they seek to influence public policy. Lord Monckton, like the Discovery Institute, is trying to influence public opinion and public policy by distorting the science.
Monckton has no earned expertise in the relevant climate science but commands attention because of his aristocratic status and affiliations which, to uninformed laypersons, give him an air of legitimacy. Few people actually know the nature of his Science and Public Policy Institute, which purports to provide “research and educational materials dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science.” One look at this page, “Proved: There is No Climate Crisis,” on which Monckton says, “Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. … The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing,” dispels any idea that he speaks with scientific legitimacy. What the science actually shows about climate change is a separate issue from what should be done as a matter of policy.
Lord Monckton is clearly trying to influence public policy. However, he is attempting to do so by making claims that undermine the science. And the ridiculous claims he has made with respect to other things — such as wanting to quarantine AIDS patients for life, and falsely claiming to be a member of the House of Lords — means that no one should consider him an authoritative voice on anything.
The Discovery Institute, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is an anti-evolution “think tank” which aims to promote the teaching of “intelligent design” in schools. Professor Forest has been studying and battling the intelligent design and creationist movement for at least the best part of a decade.
Coincidentally, at the conference when Lord Monckton was showing pictures of Nazi swastikas next to quotes from climate policy advisors, he shared the speaking duties with one of the Discovery Institute’s senior fellows, Wesley J. Smith.
You have to wonder who the university will have the “honor” of hosting next? Perhaps Mr Smith will oblige? Or maybe these guys have someone available?
Graham Readfearn is an independent journalist based in Queensland, Australia, with 15 years experience as a reporter and writer on newspapers, magazines, radio and online. This piece was originally published at DeSmogBlog and was reprinted with permission.
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Dr. Russell McKenzie, another economist.
How many economists does it take to screw the Earth’s life support system?
Only one, Friedman, really. The rest are mere ‘ditto-heads’.
I am so embarrassed to have attended SLU, just like I am shocked that the university I graduated from UTArlington has a natural gas pad with 22 oncampus gaswells!!! The TCEQ and probably LA DEP doesn’t screen for methane on their air monitoring equipment and rightly should because methane losses from all the natural gas development is speeding up global warming…..a one million dollar Ft Worth ERG air study tester told a group of citizens that Ft Worth’s ambient methane levels were 2.5 to 5 times the average worldwide global background levels.
Important *note* That is really him, not an image from a Monty Python skit.
Are you thinking of Marty Feldman?
Wow, how embarrassing for the university. This is really the most prominent speaker they can get? A walking, talking Poe’s Law?
I had the displeasure of sitting through one of Monckton’s economics talks, in California. To say he has no idea what he’s talking about on the subject would be too kind. He completely misrepresents the climate economics literature, and William Nordhaus had to come out and specifically refute misrepresentations of his research by deniers like Monckton.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-misleads-CA-lawmakers-now-its-personal-part1.html
Louisiana is close to or at the bottom of most good lists after over 100 years of ExxonMobil’s free diseases and mono-economy. Currently, our extremist Republican and Christian governor is in Iowa in a bus helping to destroy their judicial system. Since crimes agains “nature abhors a vacuum”, we get a bug-eyed gang probing space alien to take money that should go for marsh loss, a giant statue of the grandson of Jim Crow – Mike Foster, or even repairing/replacing infrastructure lost from Hurricanes Katrina to Isaac.
Of course the Lord is a scientist, how else could he have discovered his alleged cure for Aids, Graves Disease, and the common cold.
/snark off
“Graves Disease”? I was being torn several new ones from EssoKochs’ poorly exported AGW and other toxic dumping that turned into MCS when it was reported that the non-extreme President George Herbert Walker Bush, his wife, and their dog all had developed Graves in the White House. The only thing the Lord of lizard-eyes has cured was having any money to pour outside the AMA hole that is also occupied by their worker comp denials.
Kim, if it’s any consolation UCSB has huge natural gas seeps right offshore and adjacent to Isla Vista where most of the students live and imbibe and on weekends the whole place seems to be high on something. Natural gas was used as an anesthetic well into the 1950s.
Louisiana is the state, outside of Florida, that has the most to lose from Climate Change. In traditional fashion this State milks disasters for money from the Feds while they resist change at all cost. New Orleans is the original Real estate scam and much bigger than the “Hollywood” thing ever became.
In spite of their clinging to old ideas and I have no doubt the Northshore people would have had the initials KKK fifty years ago Louisiana is a pleasant place to be, but if you need a job and don’t have connections directly to powerful residents, then you better stay in New Orleans and work with the other refugees from Los Angeles – the TV & Film Industries. They will hire you but it’s not enough to survive on when the industry rolls ups operations for the Summer when it gets too hot for outdoor work.
There are some generous and great people in Louisiana but not many believe or even pay attention to Climate Change. People like this are pretty common everywhere but considering the situation they need to pay more attention.
Weather in Louisiana is changing faster than most places outside the Arctic and Antarctic. It’s hotter and wetter than I remember it when it does rain, then drier when it doesn’t. Saltwater is intruding up the Mississippi so even New Orleans is having trouble with the drinking water. There’s been some progress in learning how to rebuild marsh land through the use of Mississippi River water laden with silt but it comes too little and too late.
People like Lord Monckton should be made to ride out a hurricane in the Ninth Ward in a ramshackle shotgun shack. But then, they would think they’re getting tortured when tens of thousands of poor people called it home. The Louisiana university system is nothing more than a way to support the status quo and even though there are some good people and decent scientists there they’re not going to make much of an influence until it’s too late so that even the deniers can’t argue. Not even seven years of ecological disasters in Louisiana gets oyster growers to think about changing their methods. In a few more years and if BP ever settles then perhaps they’ll change but I wouldn’t bet on it.
The old university ethic and spirit was doomed when they adopted the ‘corporate model’, ME
The ‘corporate model’ is the Errol Flynn of systems, in that it….everything it touches.
Even the old Errol had the occasional day off, ME
Burning Down the House
Years past, back when we could still discuss GW publicly if not civilly, I was invited to attend a GW conference at LSU. The keynote speaker was Myron Ebell from CEI.
A few years ago I was in New Orleans for a conference, rented a car and drove to Grand Isle. The island was all but wiped clean by Katrina, half of the homes are new and the island has been fortified by the federal government at a cost of $50mil.
I watched dolphin and pelicans feed in the bay from the bridge, today I wonder what happened to those splendid animals after the oil disaster. I wondered why we spent $50M to restore Grand Isle, looking at a map I realized that when Grand Ilse washes away New Orleans is the next dry land.
I know the marshes and bayous south of SLU having spent much time sailing and boating there. As late as the 60s New Orleans had dozens of seafood resturants on the lake shore, all serving fresh fish and crap from the nearby waters, all gone.
As late as the 50s the city was surronded by virgin Red Tide Water Cypress swamps, all gone. The cypress will never return, the scars on the swamps allow the salt water to intrude and can be seen easily from planes and Google Earth.
The USGS recently reported that sections of New Orleans are sinking at a rate greater than 3 feet in a hundred years. The new levees will be compromised.
There are good people at SLU, they will be trying to do the right thing. The negative impacts of human activity are fast upon us.
How long will it take for apathetic Americans to realise they are being told “bedtime stories” by hired mouthpieces of greed and avarice?
Unfortunately, by the time they wake up it will not be a nightmare they’re experiencing, but the reality of environmental and economic collapse.
Its time for facts to be faced – atmospheric CO2 has doubled in 200 years; we are guaranteed a 3 DegC rise in average Earth temperature.
This is a very serious matter -it’s not a bad movie that one can walk out of.
If I could get paid what Monckton does, to go on lecture tours telling idiots that they are even bigger idiots than he is I fear I would take the money, whether I believed my own ramblings or not
To 11-NJP1
Could you really knowingly mislead the human race on climate change, while aware of the catastrophic long term consequences of your actions on Earth’s living environment?
I think it is a basic very personal moral question that goes to ones worth to exist.
No amount of money can justify ecocide.
Not to say they’re connected, but I found it truly outstanding that upon clicking on Monckton’s article about Obama’s being born in the US, the first ad which appeared on the screen was promoting tests for dementia
His Lordship attracted overflow crowds in San Diego recently. They weren’t there for the humor, either, but worshipped the man. This is what is really worrying.
When I was an undergraduate in Cambridge in 1969, I avoded the politics as it was mainly Marxist with a few right-wing loohies. Cheif of the latter, I was told by friends who attended student union meetings, was the Honourable Christopher Monckton, who attended in a gown and mortar board, and shouted “I’m a fascst!” So he does tell the truth sometimes.
The next time I heard of this buffoon, he was a special advsor, I think on family matters, to Mrs. Yhatcher. He was advocating interning eeryone with HIV. Mrs. T wisely ignored his advice and faced reality.
Now he disgraces my country with his anti-science claptrap. The House of Lords had to publicly rebuke him. As smeone with degrees in science, I take a dim view of a Classicist who thinks science is so simple he can grasp it all. Of curse, if you are so ignorant of your own ignoorance, then you probably think you know it all.
As for SLU, I’m glad I’m not a recent alumnus seeking a job. My qualification would be turning into a laughing stock.