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AUTHOR'S NOTE
 WHY is true debate about the science behind “global
warming” and the extent (if any) of the manmade threat to
the planet so very rare? Late in 2006, the Institute for Public
Policy Research, a Socialist think-tank in the UK, proposed that the Left
should in future merely assert that there was no scientific dissent, the
debate was over, and the Earth doomed – unless, of course, the
economies of the free West were shut down as completely and as
rapidly as possible.
Of all the elaborate lies that feed the climate scare, this was the most
successful. Ever since it was first circulated, Leftist academics, scientists,
politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists worldwide were relieved that they
no longer had to argue against the mounting body of scientific evidence and
data pointing to the fact that the influence of greenhouse gases on
temperature is far smaller than the UN’s climate panel admits. They simply
refused to debate the issue.
However, on rare occasions one of the true-believers in the New Religion is
so appalled when the scientific truth is unexpectedly published that he
becomes drawn into – horror of horrors – a real debate about the credibility
of the science behind the scare.
In the April/May 2009 Journal of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London,
Paul Maynard and I published an article entitled Let Cool Heads Prevail,
expressing grave scientific doubt about the supposed magnitude of the
anthropogenic effect on global temperature, and providing substantial
evidence from the published data and from the peer-reviewed literature.
Our article caught the insurance industry by surprise. Lloyds of London had
publicly issued blood-curdling warnings of the climatic terrors allegedly to
come. The Prince of Wales had established Climate Wise, a group of leading
figures in the insurance market committed, in effect, to peddling and
promulgating the scare, and to silencing all dissent. The market was sewn
up. How, then, could no less an organ of academic opinion than the Journal
have allowed two heretics – one of them a very senior and widely-respected
figure in the insurance world – to publish a substantial and well-referenced
paper demonstrating that the scare was scientifically baseless?
The first instinct of the true-believers was to try to prevent our paper from
being published. However, the last vestiges of belief in free speech
prevented an outright ban. Instead, a clumsy attempt was made to censor
the paper, reducing its length substantially and cutting out its central
scientific argument to the effect that the UN’s climate panel had
prodigiously exaggerated the actually-minuscule effect of changes in
atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations on global mean surface
temperature.
My co-author, Paul Maynard, and I decided not to accept censorship. We
made it clear that if our paper were not published in full, at the agreed
length, we should arrange for publication elsewhere, with an additional
paragraph pointing out that certain parties had wanted to censor the paper
when it had been due to appear in the Journal.
Free speech prevailed. Our paper was published in full. This is what
happened next:
► The leading firm of insurance brokers where Paul Maynard works was
contacted and was pointedly asked whether it still adhered to the Climate
Wise principles. The firm replied, splendidly, that it was also committed
to free speech and to serious academic debate about the extent of the
imagined threat to the climate.
► The Journal received, and printed in its next edition, a letter from the
Chairman of Climate Wise comparing my co-author and me to flat-
earthers who believed that the Earth was a disk carried on the back of a
giant tortoise. The letter did not make any attempt to rebut even one of
the scientific data or arguments we had presented.
► The Journal received, but did not print in its next edition, a very large
number of letters supporting our paper’s conclusions.
► When we protested that the overwhelming majority of the letters in
response to our paper had been supportive, but that all of these letters
had been suppressed, the Journal printed a single letter congratulating
the Journal for publishing our paper and condemning the chairman of
Climate Wise for insulting the readers’ intelligence by treating us as flat-
earth freaks: “Instead of rebutting the claims made by the authors,
Maynard and Monckton, he makes childish references to flat plates and a
giant tortoise. If this is the level of response to a very detailed and
expertly-argued counter to the widely-held view that the release of
carbon by human activity is causing global warming, what value should
we place on Climate Wise?”
► The Journal also received a long letter from Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki, a
contributor to the UN’s climate reports, strongly criticizing the science in
our paper and attaching a 10-page commentary which – mirabile dictu –
actually debated what we had written.
► We produced a 40-page response to Dr. Dlugolecki’s letter and
commentary, answering each of his points in turn and in detail. We
suggested that the Journal should print his letter and a letter of reply
from us, with a weblink to his commentary and to our detailed response.
► The Journal at first told us it would print Dr. Dlugolecki’s letter, with a
weblink to his commentary, but would not print any letter from us, and
would not provide a weblink to our response to his commentary.
► I pointed out that Dr. Dlugolecki’s letter and commentary were libelous if
unanswered by us, in that he had falsely accused us of having deliberately
misrepresented the science.
► The Journal told us it would print neither Dr. Dlugolecki’s material nor
ours.
In the interest of fairness and open debate, therefore, the Science and Public
Policy Institute has agreed to publish our original Journal article, Dr.
Dlugolecki’s letter, our draft letter of reply, his commentary on our article,
and our detailed response to that commentary.
I hope that readers will find this document fascinating. Precisely because
supporters of the climate scare nearly always refuse to debate the issue, this
is one of the very rare instances where the arguments for and against the
apocalyptic view of “global warming” appear side by side. Readers may like
to ask themselves the following questions as they read it –
1. Which side of the debate has best argued ad rem rather than ad hominem
ad rem – discussing the subject at hand rather than merely inveighing
against the opponent?
2. Which side has best avoided the temptation to set up straw men, stating
and then attacking a point of view that the opponent has not in fact
expressed?
3. Which side has been best able to produce reasoned, detailed,
quantitative arguments in support of its position?
4. Which side relies most heavily on the peer-reviewed literature, and which
on polemical websites?
5. Which side seems more confident in its presentation of and reliance upon
real-world scientific observations and data?
At the end of the day, the central question is this. Which side in this scientific
debate is most likely to be right and true?
Much turns upon the answer to this central question. If there is in fact no
“climate crisis”, then the world is about to spend not billions but trillions on
a Sisyphean attempt to find non-solutions to a non-problem. Every cent
spent on the non-problem of “global warming” is a cent not spent on the
world’s real environmental problems, not the least of which is the abject and
needless poverty in which far too many are condemned to struggle.
Also, the repeated and often furtive attempts by powerfully-placed true-
believers to stifle, suppress, and silence debate – attempts which were
repeatedly made in the present case – raise serious questions about the
degree to which the freedom of speech on which the West once prided itself
still survives.
Without freedom of speech, and without the academic freedom of thought
that is its handmaid, there is a clear and present danger that the West will
drift silently and miserably from the Age of Reason and Enlightenment into a
new Dark Age.
MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
Rannoch, Scotland
August 2009
The full 98 page PDF document
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