Washington, D.C. 7/20/2008 6:00:00 PM
News / Politics

SPPI posts copy of sharp letter from Lord Monckton to APS President

Monckton paper on climate change issues was peer-reviewed

 Lord Monckton has sent a sharp letter of protest to the President of the American Physical Society over the false statement that Monckton’s paper critical of the UN’s estimates for climate sensitivity for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 was not peer-reviewed. 

Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.

The paper clearly and mathematically demonstrates there is no “climate crisis” requiring massive government intervention, as falsely claimed by alarmists such as Al Gore and James Hansen. 

The letter to President Arthur Bienenstock includes all the reviewer comments and Monckton’s responses, which drove the paper from 5,000 to 8,000 words in length.  

Said, Monckton elsewhere, “Trying to duck the usual process of scientific discourse by arguments about peer-review procedures is an ad-hominem approach which is not worthy of the name of science.  What has happened is that the usual suspects, instead of ploughing through the (not particularly difficult) math and saying what I got wrong and why (which is what Popper calls the EE or "error-elimination" step in the scientific-method algorithm), decided it would be easier simply to lobby the president of the APS, who - instead of consulting me first - instantly and shamefully crumbled.”

Reported Monckton, “I've had hundreds of emails from Professors, PhDs and other physicists who belong to the APS, on all sides of the "global warming" debate, saying how dismayed they are at the unethical conduct of their President and Council.”

Lastly, added Monckton, “One might ask President Bienenstock what steps the APS took to peer-review its own half-baked Council policy statement on "global warming", which is unadorned by even a single reference to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal. “

Letter can be viewed here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/lord_monkton_s_letter.html

 Contact:         Robert Ferguson,  Science and Public Policy Institute

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