Is there anyone out there who is preparing a detailed analysis/criticism of the Monckton articles?
I, for one, would like to see a decent climate scientist address his points one by one. He has done
a thorough job and deserves a detailed response, based on scientifically proved and sourced facts.
It may be a laborious piece of work, but it should be done.
The criticisms I have seen so far rely too much on who he is (a rich aristocrat who used to advise
Margaret Thatcher), where it is published (the Daily Telegraph instead of Nature), and a few
obvious blunders he has made (1421, for example), which are not really of great importance. If his
work is that flawed, it should not be difficult for someone who knows these things to disprove it
beyond reasonable doubt.
Personally, my mind is still open. I think it is unlikely that the scientific community and parts of
the political world could be convinced of anthropogenic global warming out of some sort of mass
hysteria, but I cannot exclude it either. I'm a scientist on the "hard" physical end, and I know that it
can be quite easy to misinterpret even reproducible experimental data, never mind statistical
analyses of past climate. It is not impossible that Monckton, as a climate outsider, has really made
a valuable contribution, and so far I'm not convinced by the criticisms I've read. The George
Monbiot one in the Guardian this week is disappointing, making much out of the fact that
Monckton does not have a science degree (this is not so different from dismissing critics of the
Iraq invasion on the grounds that they are not military or political professionals).
Unfortunately I'm not sufficiently qualified in the field to judge most of Monckton's arguments
myself. Is anyone aware of a good-quality science criticism, that concentrates on the facts? Like
them or not, Monckton's articles are really bugging me.
all the best
malcolm
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