Well, frumps, as if we didn’t have quite enough of our own homegrown nut cases, we now seem to be running an exchange program with the UK. The visiting wingnut making the most waves, recently, is an impressive and always entertaining peer, Christopher Lord Monckton of Brenchley, international climate change denier, bon vivant and self-appointed Protector of the US Constitution.
Lord Monckton, now in semi-retirement, has become an outspoken critic of the scientific community’s global warming theories and proposed efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the fact that Monckton has suffered major debunking attacks in his own country and Europe-at-large, he has soldiered on and found an extremely receptive audience among conservative Americans. In fact, Monckton has developed a nice little cottage industry doing public speaking tours on the evils of restricting carbon emissions. He has testified in a Congressional Hearing on Climate Change (that our planet is actually suffering from “carbon starvation”) and of course he’s appeared on The Glenn Beck Show.
I’ll bet most of you frumps had absolutely no idea that the upcoming (December, 2009) United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Copenhagen, is actually just a façade for the establishment of the long-dreaded New World Order! I wouldn’t have had a clue myself were it not for my friends at ResistNet.com who comb the world for news that the nefarious mainstream media refuse to cover because then we might be tipped off to some of their bolder conspiracies to dismantle America.
Thank God I followed the link this morning and discovered the awful Truth . . . and we have so little time . . Oh dear.
Monckton’s most recent public appearance in the States was as Keynote Speaker at a Minnesota Free Market Institute event at Bethel University in St. Paul last Wednesday, October 14, 2009, where he fired off this incendiary little fear-bomb:
“At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.”
“I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.”
“How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.” [laughter]
“And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.”
“So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.”
“But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.”
“So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”
Watch:
And just for reality’s sake, here’s a link to the document that Monckton has built this travesty on.
Not Again!?!
Just when the right-wing fever had gone down a degree or two, milord’s speech has gone viral through the conservative underground and already, “patriots” are getting itchy trigger fingers. Here’s a sampler of the commentary that’s flying around the cyber-right:
Thank you for posting this information here. I have been all over it for the past three days, posting at several other sites. This will be a Seminal Moment for America. Quite frankly, we are quickly crossing the line of Sedition.
Just read the article and I am furious and afraid.
If he should sign, he is gone, or we will have a Revolution!
He must be gone BEFORE he can sign it. Do we need to go back to Washington again?
This makes me so angry!!!! This also terrifies me. I do not believe we can stand back for much longer. We can not let this happen!
We are going to give all our power over to a GOP that wil be elected by a group of officials that cannot govern their own country. Where in the heck is the media??????? Truth in media my lower end. If December is the summit the time is at hand the American people need to hang their flags upside down, I believe this represents treason or corruption. How in the name of freedom are we going to stop this??? Big money must be sleeping, redistribution of wealth to 3rd world countrys? How much has obama and the rest of the crooks in washington given of their own money to the 3rd world countries? I was wondering why obama was kissing the rears of the gay and lesbian org with their equal rights crap, if this goes through they will be the first in line of the firing squad. The mockery of our Constituion of the United States should be punishable by death, how much blood has been shed and is still being shed because the true Americans believe the propaganda being delivered to us by a non American president. God Bless America, is Revalations being fulfilled?? If the bible is supposidly a bunch of bull it is showing positive and correct course of the country . World War Three is at hand, take your course and hold stead fast.
The largest armed civilian population in the world may differ!!!!
If so, Lock & Load. I’m not buying this crap. It will come uncorked here if he thinks he has the balls to do that. Will not stand.
Jefferson’s tree is getting very thirsty. My gut tells me that Obozo has no clue what the U.S. Citizens are capable of, …..yet. There are a few Lefties that think they are “bad”, but I have known some X-mil folks who are quiet, but effective. I would put my money on them.
I don’t think an American would do what is being done to America. And I don’t think an American is doing it.
Bring it…again, the world’s largest ARMED civilian population may have a design to stand behind what GOD created.
I am ashamed that we let our country get to the point where someone thinks they can takeover and trash the American way of life domestically..internally…from within. Shame on us. But let this mistake serve to make us stronger in the future. Let the outcome of the upcoming be a shining example of the greatest nation on this earth…now or at any time in our past and future.
(By the way, I’m represented in this matter by the law firm of Mossberg, Makarov, Springfield and Colt, PC.)
The 2nd amendment defines who ultimately holds sovereignty in this country.
Great job, Viscount
So, who is this Lord Monckton of Brenchley? Besides being an unprincipled opportunist who has recognized that American conservatives are the largest remaining pool of climate change skeptics on Earth who will be happy to pay his Lordliness to deliver his doomsday pronouncements and whip the grassroots into a Cap and Trade frenzy that will make the health care reform protests look like a bad dress rehearsal.
Monckton’s credentials for delivering this unnerving message are just about nil and any one of his American gothic followers could confirm that in five minutes with the aid of Google and half a brain.
They might start with British writer and environmentalist George Monbiot who has criticized Monckton’s arguments, labeling them “cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish.”
Here are Monckton’s lightweight bona fides:
Attended all of the right schools (of course) – Harrow and Churchill College, Cambridge where he read classics (not Science) and University College, Cardiff, where he obtained a diploma in journalism (not Science)
worked as a reporter and leader-writer for the Yorkshire Post. From 1977 to 1978,
moved on to Conservative Central Office (like the RNC) as a press officer
became the editor of the Roman Catholic newspaper The Universe in 1979.
became managing editor of The Sunday Telegraph Magazine in 1981.
Moved on to the English tabloid newspaper, Evening Standard, as a leader-writer in 1982.
returned to Conservative Central Office in late 1982, this time as a policy advisor for Margaret Thatcher. That stint has been translated everywhere as “Science” policy advisor but that’s stretching it since these were his contributions (by his own account):
“While at 10 Downing Street, Lord Monckton gave policy advice on technical issues such as warship hydrodynamics, psephological modeling (predicting the result of the 1983 General Election to within one seat), embryological research, hydrogeology, public-service investment analysis, public welfare modeling.”
became assistant editor of the newly-formed (and now defunct) tabloid newspaper, Today.
became a consulting editor of the Evening Standard from 1987 -1992.
Monckton is, in short, a gadfly and a royal dabbler gifted with that most dubious of human talents: the ability to persuade others that he knows what he’s talking about. He is here to tee off a revolution and laughing all the way to the bank, I’m sure, at how naïve and gullible Americans are. As Monbiot pointed out when Monckton “published” his scientific findings on climate change in two installments in the Sunday Telegraph:
“A scientific paper is one published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This means it has been subject to scrutiny by other experts in the field. This doesn’t suggest that it’s the last word on the subject, but it does mean it is worth discussing. For newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph the test seems to be much simpler. If they don’t understand it, it must be science.”
Americans have always had a weakness for a plummy British accent and this is no exception. Should the bullets start to fly, Lord M will be long gone, taking his US dollars back across the pond and retiring to the manor to watch the unpleasantness unfold on BBC World News, by a roaring fire in his manorial study.
Lord Wonker
Monckton obviously does fancy himself a policy wonk. It is his stint as a Thatcher policy advisor that he highlights in his CV over all of his other experience. His last policy grandstanding was in the late 1980’s when he offered up his solutions for containing the AIDS epidemic. It was simple, but he felt it would prove quite effective. His position, as advanced in an article entitled “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS,” written for the January 1987 issue of The American Spectator, was that “there is only one way to stop AIDS.”
“That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month … all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently.” This would involve isolating between 1.5 and 3 million people in the United States (“not altogether impossible”) and another 30,000 people in the UK (“not insuperably difficult”).”
For a time, Monckton rode that wave, gathering up some anti-gay popular support along the way. Eventually, though, the British gay rights group Outrage! took him on and Monckton dropped out of the AIDS public policy biz.
In March 2007, Monckton ran a series of advertisements in The New York Times and Washington Post challenging Al Gore to an internationally televised debate on climate change. The former U.S. Vice President did not respond. Naturally, the right took that as a sign that Al Gore was running scared – from the esteemed Lord Monckton.
At that point, an American group calling itself the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) provided funding for Monckton to produce a response to An Inconvenient Truth, to be called Apocalypse?, No!, described as “showing Monckton presenting a slide show in a vitriolic attack on climate change science.” The film includes footage of Monckton giving a Gore-style presentation on October 8, 2007 at the Cambridge Union in which he asserted that Gore and the IPCC had systematically falsified and exaggerated the evidence for global warming.
So where did Monckton’s new friends at SPPI come from that they were willing to bankroll his climate change denial projects? This is where it gets interesting: SPPI is a funded project of Frontiers of Freedom which has received money from tobacco and oil companies, including Philip Morris Cos, ExxonMobil and RJ Reynolds Tobacco.
According to a 2003 New York Times report, “Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documents. George Landrith, President of FoF told the New York Times “They’ve determined that we are effective at what we do” and that Exxon essentially took the attitude, “We like to make it possible to do more of that”.
Funding from Exxon includes:
2002: $100,000 for the “Center for Sound Science and Public Policy” (sic), $97,000 for “Global Climate Change Outreach Activities”, and a further $35,000 for “Global Climate Change Science Projects”
2003: $95,000 for “Global Climate Change Outreach” and a further $50,000 for “Project Support – Sound Science and Public Policy Center”
2004: $50,000 for “Climate Change Efforts”, $90,000 for “Global Climate Change Outreach”, $40,000 as “Project Support – Climate Change” and a further $70,000 for “Project Support- Science Center & Climate Change”
2005: $50,000 for the “Annual Gala and General Operating Support” and a further $90,000 for “General Operating Support”
2006: $90,000 for “General Operating Support” and a further $90,000 for the “Science & Policy Center”; and
2007: $90,000 for “energy literacy”.
Foundation Funding: Media Transparency reports that FoF has also received some $580,450 in 25 grants between 1996 and 2005 from the following five conservative foundations:
Earhart Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation
Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation
Carthage Foundation
So now do you get it?
One of Monckton’s American gigs, earlier this year, was to deliver the keynote address at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change which brought together scientists, economists, legal experts, and other climate specialists to “confront the issue of global warming.”
These specialists, all climate change skeptics, aim to call attention “to new research that contradicts claims that Earth’s moderate warming during the 20th Century primarily was man-made and has reached crisis proportions.” The conference was organised and “sponsored” by the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tank that in preceding years received substantial funding from Exxon for its work downplaying the significance of global warming.
According to SourceWatch.org:
“On its conference website, the Heartland Institute states that “all of the event’s expenses will be covered by admission fees and individual and foundation donors to Heartland. No corporate sponsorships or dollars earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted.” However, it does not disclose which foundations are contributing to the conference.”
“Ahead of the conference DeSmog Blog compiled a tally on the funding sources of the Heartland Institute and all the groups listed as co-sponsors of the conference. They found that “over $47 million from energy companies and right-wing foundations, with 78% of that total coming from the Scaife Family of foundations” in the period between 1985 and 2006. In their calculations, the contributors were:
ExxonMobil (1998-2006): $6,199,000
Koch Foundations (1986-2006): $4,438,920
Scaife Foundations (1985-2006): $36,868,640 “
So this would all be pretty entertaining if it wasn’t so damned dangerous. There are fringe Americans out there stockpiling ammunition just waiting for some one like Monckton to give them a good excuse to set off “The Second American Revolution.” The man’s a dangerous shill and needs to be exposed again and again until it’s no longer credible to welcome him to the podium.
Technorati Tags: Lord Monckton of Brenchley, climate change denial, President Obama, Copenhagen, Communist New World Order, United Nations Climate Change Conference, Minnesota Free Market Institute, Al Gore, Science and Public Policy Institute, Heartland Institute, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, global warming
