Christopher Walter, the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, attracts some pretty colorful criticism, but it’s a bit stunning to see someone at the climate-skeptical Telegraph* call Monckton “a fantasist, a blethering popinjay useful only for amusement.”
Unfortunately, you can’t read that quote on the Telegraph* website where blogger Tom Chivers wrote it in the first place. After a complaint from Monckton’s own noble self, his allies in self-delusion have had it deleted. But the original piece is still available to all at Tenney Naumer’s blog, Climate Change – the Next Generation. (Thank you, Tenney.)
Chiver’s position, convincingly rendered, is that Monckton has made himself a goof, a paragon of “utter scientific illiteracy,” and, as such, has become an embarrassment to the denier community.
That accords perfectly with the stuff that George Monbiot has been writing at the Guardian. Monbiot says,
“Lord Monckton is digging his hole ever deeper, and dragging down into it everyone stupid enough to follow him. Those of us who do battle with climate change deniers can’t inflict one tenth as much damage to their cause that Monckton wreaks every time he opens his mouth.”
This agreement, across what we usually think of as the full spectrum of journalistic opinion in the U.K., is attributable to University of St. Thomas Engineering Professor John Abraham, whose devastating deconstruction of Monckton’s silliness has been the subject of a couple of previous posts, 1, 2.
In pulling down Chiver’s post, the Telegraph* has done the only merciful thing that it could in the circumstance: it has looked away. It’s a good start. The only thing better than a bunch of people all criticizing Monckton at the same time, would be an even larger group ignoring him entirely. Hurry the day.
*This reference corrected – with apologies to the Independent.
