Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/19/2008 11:49:32 PM PDT by neverdem
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has penned a letter to the President of the American Physical Society demanding that an offensive disclaimer to one of his papers be removed from the APS website or justified to his satisfaction. And he's also expecting a well deserved apology for the horrendous mistreatment the Society has recently subjected him to.
"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions."
"The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:
‘Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate.'
Arthur Bienenstock, Esq., Ph.D.,President, American Physical Society,Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 160,Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305.
By email to artieb@slac.stanford.edu
Dear Dr. Bienenstock,Physics and Society
The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines.
I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper. The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to all of the reviewer's requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity - a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain. The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC's viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions."
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur's findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council's decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the "overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community"; and, tertio, that "The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions"? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?
Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?
Yours truly,
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
That’s exactly the letter Lord Peter Wimsey would have written, had he taken a First in Physics, rather than History, at Oxford. I have not yet looked at the Viscount’s educational background, but I’m about to.
Classics at Cambridge, followed by journalism at Univeristy of Cardiff. Interesting family - his grandfather was one of Edward the VIII’s advisors during the abdication.
I simply don’t believe this. Scientists never engage in politically-motivated slugfests. They always pursue the absolute, verifiable Truth, through repeated experimental testing of hypotheses and rigorously honest evaluation of empirical data. When a scientist makes a pronouncement, we know that it owes nothing to the fashions of the time, to his political or philosophical beliefs, or to the source of his research grant.
I love this man’s sentence structure ... so few can use multiple semicolons correctly. Is he cute? Is he married?
Yes he is, and YOU are too, as am I. But damn! can he write or what?
There's probably something wrong with us if we think well-written paragraphs are hot.
Excellent grammar is a sign of genetic superiority :-).
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Thanks for posting this demand by Monckton.
I’m glad he is getting tough and active about this.
His paper a tremendous refutation of the IPCC. I am amazed that the APS is getting themselves so politically involved in this issue. They have clearly strayed outside of their mandate to report hard science. This issue has caused this physicist to lose respect for the organization. It is going to take a long time for me to recover that respect.
It’s a radio recording, so there is no visual component other than MS media player “video noise”.
Excellent grammar is a sign of genetic superiority :-).
You two are just suckers for well-hung punctuation... /gd&r*
(*grinnin', duckin' & runnin')
It’s all in how the commas are placed.
Lord Monckton is Catholic, and he seems like a lot of fun. However, based on the one picture I could find of him (on a Czech blog), he is not cute, even for a 56-year-old Britisher. On the other hand, he would probably say the same about me based on my pictures available online :-).
If you google-image him, you get a lot more. He looks a bit like Rowan Atkinson, who’s attractive without being particularly handsome. The humor and intelligence in the eyes are big selling points.
I must have used the wrong search. On a second try, I got more pictures. Quirky, and probably appealing in real life, in a way ... but not cute, exactly.
Beyond the difficulty imposed by the fact that Rachael Carson is dead, I doubt that a fair jury could convict either of them. One essential principle of justice is that a person cannot justly be convicted of any crime beyond the level of a civil infraction if one could not reasonably have known the action was unlawful. For what particular actions should Al Gore have been convicted? Bear in mind that if a substantial portion of the population would believe an action to be legal, it would be hard to prove that Al Gore could not reasonably have believed it so.
AGW debates by non-scientists quickly degenerate into "Your beliefs suck!", "No, your beliefs suck!" Not informative. AGW debates by scientists degenerate into "My equations are better than your equations," but those equations are informative only to the few people with the background, time, intelligence, energy, and interest to evaluate them.
I dislike the smug AGW true believers and their anti-capitalist solutions, but I still want to know if AGW is occurring, and if it poses a significant threat to humanity. If the answer to both questions is yes, then I want to know what solutions are most practical.
Monckton has repeatedly offered to debate Algore, but I bet I would learn more by watching him debate Andrew Dessler. Algore is an idiot, Dessler is not, and at this point I don't know what to make of Monckton.
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