For the past four or five years, an eccentric British man named Christopher Monckton has been pushing a version of a climate model he believes disproves the whole consensus. Monckton’s model is, to put it lightly, stupid.
Given that Monckton has also claimed to have discovered a cure for both AIDS and the common cold, was once outsmarted by a calendar, is worried about reptilians at the UN and has the prestigious honor of having received a cease and desist letter from the UK’s House of Lords to stop calling himself Lord Monckton because he’s not a Lord, it’s not surprising that Monckton is still sticking to his laughably wrong guns.
At a recent post in WUWT, Monckton addresses the latest criticisms of his work and includes a plug attend Heartland’s conference on Thursday where he’ll present these years-old findings. What’s unique and noteworthy about the post is not that it provides a credible counter to the consensus, but that the entire thing is a response to one commenter who dared to dispute Monckton’s assertions.
Because no summary could possibly illustrate just how far up his own ass Monckton has climbed, here is how his response starts: “Some days ago, a prolix, inspissate whigmaleerie was posted here – a gaseous halation, an unwholesome effluvium, an interminable and obscurantist expatiation purporting to cast doubt upon my team’s conclusion that official climatology has misdefined and misapplied feedback and has thus made a mountain out of a molehill, approximately tripling the true midrange rate of global warming we can expect our sins of emission to engender.”
It’s almost sad how desperate for credibility Monckton must be. Can you imagine being so excruciatingly self-conscious that you feel compelled to stuff so much pretentiousness into one sentence? After all, it’s as Einstein (probably never) said in a quote so infamous even Trump has tweeted it: "if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it. While the rest of Monckton’s post pulls back on the approach of “if I use unnecessarily antiquated or obscurely Scottish language maybe no one will realize I’m actually a moron” it still doesn’t make much more sense than “prolix, inspissate whigmaleerie.”
Monckton’s ego is as big as his actual contributions to science are small, and it’s apparent that sense of self-importance is getting in the way of clearly communicating.
Sadly, that’s not the only recent example of someone’s inability to see past their own biases. Over at Heritage’s Daily Signal, “investigative reporter” Kevin Mooney has a supposed exclusive about how mainstream media has filed far more FOIA requests for info from the EPA under the Trump administration than it did under Obama.
First off, it’s not an exclusive: this exact same story floated around the deniersphere back in March. And even if this wasn’t just a rehash of a months-old story, considering FOIA requests are public information that literally anyone can access, he’s really stretching the meaning of “exclusive.” (Though worth noting that with Bastasch out at the Caller, the EPA might be turning to Mooney for help like this.)
While Mooney thinks he’s very clever in pointing out that media filed more FOIAs under Trump, and concludes that means the media is biased, his instinct to attack ignores many potentially much more simple answers.
Maybe the EPA released information more readily under President Obama, making it so that reporters didn’t need to file FOIAs to get basic information. Or maybe since the EPA wasn’t stuffed to the gills with industry cronies under President Obama, there wasn’t an air of suspicion about whether or not former lobbyists for polluters were now working in the public’s best interests.
Perhaps reporters were doing less oversight under Obama because less was needed, and it ramped up under Trump because of the obvious corruption he welcomed into the administration.
Mooney makes no effort to address that possible (obvious) asymmetry, or even acknowledge it.
But hey, at least he didn’t use the phrase “gaseous halation” or “unwholesome effluvium.”
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