You might object that Monckers has already saltated the Chondrichthye but I submit that his most recent missive, faithfully conveyed to wider public attention by the esteemed Dr Seitz pushes absurdity so far that one cannot but wonder if this is not a False Flag Operation.Stripped of the windbaggery - which is to strip out almost everything - Monckers is sad that the recent somewhat weird Nurture piece "Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians" calls him a denier and so on; whether it does I don't know because obviously I didn't bother read it, because it was tedious dull and unoriginal. He wants an apology and threatens legal action if not satisfied; since he won't get his apology but has posted his screed in full public view, one wonders how he will disguise his inevitable climb down. Probably he won't disguise it; the Watties will give him a free pass.
Well, if you didn't like that you can always enjoy the picture. As the caption says, "Confusing medieval depiction of Roman god Saturn devouring his son, which mixes the Greek Chronos (Χρόνος), the personification of time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature, known for devouring his own children, with the Titan Cronus (Κρόνος), who castrated his father Uranus with a scythe". I'll skip the bit about what Aphrodite is bathing in.
Update 2019/08/30: Monkers keeps going. I didn't bother read it though.
What's the conversion rate between threats of legal action by climate change deniers and actual legal action?
ReplyDeleteAndy, for Monckton I think it is somewhere around 100:1.
ReplyDeleteIf Monckton complains about being called a denier (the article uses the word "denialist" - once), it can only be because he isn't included, as the authors appear to separate contrarians and denialists...
W, Thanks for reminding us in timely fashion of the differnce between Father Time and Zeus chronically cthonic dad Kronos, but I don't get the cat in the hat bit either way- Monckton's Pitlochery haberdashery establishment sold shirts , not hats, and I'm no doctor, just a reguar Fellow.
ReplyDeleteIf this, the money quote from the Nature piece, is Tom's idea of idiocy, he must have a real problem with bibliometrics.
ReplyDeleteWhat really triggers the Climate Change Contrarian cohort is the sad revelation that most of them have no scientific publications to measure - Monckton at least can claim Willie Soon as a coauthor
"Understanding Earth’s coupled human–environmental systems requires broad and deep knowledge of processes occurring across a range of scales—from microscopic chemical processes to macroscopic thermodynamic flows and human consumption and land-use trends that span the entire global system52. The monumental task of drawing together and integrating expertise across numerous research domains will require intense trust-based collaboration across disciplinary, organizational, and political boundaries35. To this end, the consortium science framework53—whereby teams of teams organize around a common goal, with a mission to share returns both within and beyond organizational boundaries—is an appropriate model for facilitating cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange and achieving the transformative breakthroughs needed to address this grand challenge. We see this collaborative pattern in the structure of citations within the broader Climate Change Science community documented here (Fig. 7), but not within the Climate Change Contrarian community, which is too small to encompass the complexity required to grapple with the fundamental issues of CC science."
That the denialists have no scientific credibility is obvious to anyone who cares to observe or think. Writing a paper about it is just wanking and serves no purpose; it will convince no-one. How could it? Anyone with the sense to read the paper already knows the obvious. In this sense it resembles Oreskes only famous work which was also pointless in retrospect at least, although vaguely convenient to use in arguments at the time. And (also in retrospect) her methodological carelessness was telling, and appears to be shared by the current paper.
ReplyDeleteOh I just read the archived copy: its genuinely hilarious. My favourite bit:
ReplyDelete"The journal, its editors names supra and the three authors of the purported “study” are guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by misrepresentation and by abuse of public trust on multiple counts evidenced later herein ... I shall report the fraud to the Serious Fraud Office, to the Chief Constable of South Gloucestershire, and to Interpol"
I think Monckton may have stolen the idea for this from TBBT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSyjcib_Fps
The Chief Constable of South Gloucestershire ?
ReplyDeleteWhat about the Lord Lieutenant of Berkingmadshire?
Monkton's scientific tin ear should make him a Person Of Interest to the Warden Of The Stanneries too.
P.S.
I recycled the picture minus the naughty bits.
People seem to have invented “carbon opportunity costs” but I'm not quite sure what it means.
ReplyDeleteTo curb the imperial ambitions of the Viscounty of North Moncktonshire , I have pre-emptively colonized the Hashtagate of #MECO2
ReplyDelete