Climate debate: Lord Monckton vs HRH Prince Charles

Posted on 6 February 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I noticed this letter From Lord Monckton to Charlie on Tallbloke. Interestingly we had a discussion in the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum which divided between monarchists and republican tendencies or polite and not so, and finally decided not to respond. So I am glad to see Lord Monckton has:
Following HRH Prince Charles intemperate remarks about ‘headless chickens’ reported at the talkshop last week, Lord Monckton has written him an open letter, reproduced below
lordm-header
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales,
Clarence House, London.
Candlemas, 2014
Your Royal Highness’ recent remarks describing those who have scientific and economic reason to question the Establishment opinion on climatic apocalypse in uncomplimentary and unroyal terms as “headless chickens” mark the end of our constitutional monarchy and a return to the direct involvement of the Royal Family, in the Person of our future king, no less, in the cut and thrust of partisan politics.
Now that Your Royal Highness has offered Your Person as fair game in the shootout of politics, I am at last free to offer two options. I need no longer hold back, as so many have held back, as Your Royal Highness’ interventions in politics have become more frequent and less acceptable in their manner as well as in their matter.
Option 1. Your Royal Highness will renounce the Throne forthwith and for aye. Those remarks were rankly party-political and were calculated to offend those who still believe, as Your Royal Highness plainly does not, that the United Kingdom should be and remain a free country, where any subject of Her Majesty may study science and economics, may draw his conclusions from his research and may publish the results, however uncongenial the results may be.
The line has been crossed. No one who has intervened thus intemperately in politics may legitimately occupy the Throne. Your Royal Highness’ arrogant and derogatory dismissiveness towards the near-50 percent of your subjects who no longer follow the New Religion is tantamount to premature abdication. Goodnight, sweet prince. No more “Your Royal Highness.”
Hi, there, Chazza! You are a commoner now, just like most of Her Majesty’s subjects. You will find us a cheerfully undeferential lot. Most of us don’t live in palaces, and none of us goes everywhere with his own personalized set of monogrammed white leather lavatory seat covers.
The United Kingdom Independence Party, which until recently I had the honor to represent in Scotland, considers – on the best scientific and economic evidence – that the profiteers of doom are unjustifiably enriching themselves at our expense.
For instance, even the unspeakable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has accepted advice from me and my fellow expert reviewers that reliance upon ill-constructed and defective computer models to predict climate was a mistake. Between the pre-final and final drafts of the “Fifth Assessment Report,” published late last year, the Panel ditched the models and substituted its own “expert assessment” that in the next 30 years the rate of warming will be half what the models predict.
In fact, the dithering old fossils in white lab coats with leaky Biros sticking out of the front pocket now think the rate of warming over the next 30 years could be less than in the past 30 years, notwithstanding an undiminished increase in the atmospheric concentration of plant food. Next time you talk to the plants, ask them whether they would like more CO2 in the air they breathe. Their answer will be Yes.
The learned journals of economics are near-unanimous in saying it is 10-100 times costlier to mitigate global warming today than to adapt to its supposedly adverse consequences the day after tomorrow.
Besides, in the realm that might have been yours there has been no change – none at all – in mean surface temperature for 25 full years. So if you are tempted to blame last year’s cold winter (which killed 31,000 before their time) or this year’s floods (partly caused by the Environment Agency’s mad policy of returning dozens of square miles of the Somerset Levels to the sea) on global warming, don’t.
You got your science and economics wrong. And you were rude as well. And you took sides in politics. Constitutionally, that’s a no-no. Thronewise, mate, you’ve blown it.
On the other hand, we Brits are sport-mad. So here is option 2. I am going to give you a sporting second chance, Charlie, baby.
You see, squire, you are no longer above politics. You’ve toppled off your gilded perch and now you’re in it up to your once-regal neck. So, to get you used to the idea of debating on equal terms with your fellow countrymen, I’m going to give you a once-in-a-reign opportunity to win back your Throne in a debate about the climate. The motion: “Global warming is a global crisis.” You say it is. I say it isn’t.
We’ll hold the debate at the Cambridge Union, for Cambridge is your alma mater and mine. You get to pick two supporting speakers and so do I. We can use PowerPoint graphs. The Grand Debate will be televised internationally over two commercial hours. We let the world vote by phone, before and after the debate. If the vote swings your way, you keep your Throne. Otherwise, see you down the pub.
Cheers, mate!
lordmsig
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

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16 Responses to Climate debate: Lord Monckton vs HRH Prince Charles

  1. Mervyn says:
    6 February 2014 at 02:01

    Now that’s what I call “a fair dinkum” letter, written in a style one could easily put down to a common-touch Aussie, down-under! Well done Lord Monckton!

  2. stefanthedenier says:
    6 February 2014 at 02:58

    to say it again: it’s trendy to talk to the plants, what Charley does – BUT, if the plants start talking back to him – Camilla must take him home, immediately. From his castle he can spam to every plant in Britain.
    P.s. when his royal highness talks to the plants, he mustn’t use any four letter words, unless the tree is over 18 years old!

  3. William Connolley says:
    6 February 2014 at 07:59

    > I am glad to see
    Interesting to see you endorsing Monkers’ use of “Chazza!” and “Charlie, baby”. So you’re not only a Republican but also in favour of deliberate impoliteness. I admit to surprise at the former, though not at the latter.

  4. Scottish Sceptic says:
    6 February 2014 at 11:26

    When the prince of Wales enters into politics and then libels and insults a whole group of people endorsing those who would have us exterminated, put in prison, tattooed “with our crime” – I think we have right to be a little impolite to the plonker.

  5. William Connolley says:
    6 February 2014 at 11:30

    Mmmm, but the problem is you’re judge-n-jury in your own case. Its a bit like the Watty, who signed a confidentiality agreement, and then awarded himself the right to break it. Imagine if the law were like that! So, just to be clear, your position is that you’re polite and nice, except when you don’t feel like it. That doesn’t really differ, except in degree, from the Rude Boyz.

  6. Derek Alker says:
    6 February 2014 at 11:51

    I want a ringside seat at this one, it’s well worth a drive to Cambridge.

  7. neilfutureboy says:
    6 February 2014 at 12:12

    I somehow suspect Chuck will not be willing to defend his claims in open debate. Experience of all 129 MSPs refusing a similar invitation suggests this.
    However they can, if that is their choice, be empty chaired by 3 tubs of lard – a process the BBC in HIGNFY have deemed appropriate.
    I also hope the state broadcaster will be invited to broadcast this debate (or indeed any other true debate on the subject). Bearing in mind they have a legal Charter duty to be “balanced” and debates with 2 sides (unlike what the BBC normally call debate) is, by definition, balanced, I would be interested to see what reason the BBC give for censoring it.
    I regard free debate of political issues to be a necessary and perhaps sufficient condition for a free society. I assume that since the BBC totalitarian propaganda broadcaster consistently refuse to allow such examination for the political movements they promote, they agree on its importance
    Connolly is, of course, entirely wrong to say that open public debate is sceptics being “judge & jury in our own case”. In fact it is the precise opposite – it is inviting members of the public to be judge & jury – a system which has been tried with some success since the Anglo-Saxon conquest and may be ready for permanent acceptance.
    It would be nice if political activists could, if they cannot embrace such a process, at least give arguments against which are not the opposite of factual.

  8. William Connolley says:
    6 February 2014 at 15:29

    > entirely wrong
    You’ve misunderstood, as usual. What I was saying is that our Host apparently feels free to call anyone a plonker, if he doesn’t like what that person is saying (and he is to be the judge of this – that is what J&J is referring to). Now of course he’s entirely free to do such things – within the laws of libel, of course – but it casts a dent in his assertion that he is polite.

  9. neilfutureboy says:
    6 February 2014 at 16:47

    As you once said on your own blog when its your own blog you are free to say what may or may not be said.
    I am pleased I misinterpreted what you said and that you do not disagree with what I said about the vital importance of public adversarial debate to a free society.

  10. Scottish Sceptic says:
    6 February 2014 at 17:08

    William I’m not perfect – and sometimes I will overstep the mark, but in all the time I’ve been doing this I’ve never had anyone ask me to remove material or complain about my post. To such an extent that when I wrote “the bloggers charter” – I realised I didn’t have any complaints procedure because I couldn’t remember ever getting a complaint.
    No that’s not true, I got a bit of stick for the “sceptics vs. Academics” article – but when I realised the terminology I used was being insulting to people contributing I issued an apology and changed it.
    In particular, if I ever wrote an article about any person and they actually complained, I would give them the benefit of the doubt on all their complaints.
    But that isn’t how your side work. I’ve got a whole list of statements suggesting we should be killed, exterminated, tattooed – and when I went to look for equivalent statements from sceptics — I found bugger all — except one from Monckton – which was much much less worse than the numerous personal attacks about his disability (Swivel eyed).
    Indeed, the last time I complained about a racist comment on a blog, the blog owner then ASKED ME not to comment any more.
    There are two standards of morality in this debate – ours which is what any reasonable person would expect – and that of your side which would lock us up and tattoo us for the crime of saying it isn’t currently warming.

  11. William Connolley says:
    6 February 2014 at 17:27

    > your own blog you are free
    Well, yes, you’re free to say what you like (within the limits of libel, as I’m sure our host would agree; for example the Mark Steyn case; so no you’re not totally free of course).
    But its what you do with that freedom that matters. Give ’em enough rope, as they say. And it looks like that, when given freedom, our host will call people plonkers, and he is no respecter of high estate, oh no indeed.
    > your side work
    Sorry guv: the “there are worse things elsewhere” defence is not valid.
    > There are two standards of morality in this debate
    You just don’t realise how totally lost you are. Your statement is utterly ridiculous. People will laugh at you if you say that outside your quiet corner.

  12. neilfutureboy says:
    6 February 2014 at 18:02

    If you sincerely believe any of what you have said you must automatically have spent an enormous amount of time denouncing those on your own side, including on your own blog, who have said things considerably ruder and enormously more threatening than “plonker”.
    I would very much like to see a few thousand such links to you doing so.
    Or if you sincerely mean 1% – a few 10s.
    From experience I have found that one of the problems with the alarmist/sceptic movement is that they are unwilling to exert any moral pressure whatsoever on their own side, at least none towards moderation or even honesty. You will not find any alarmist, unless you know different, who has dissociated themselves from even such disgusting stuff as Monbiot’s call for hanging people for being airline executives or Hansen’s call for imprisonment for dissidence.
    This lack of any pressure except towards the most extreme totalitarianism inevitably means that any movement adopting it can only move towards the most extreme & destructive totalitarianism. I discussed this positive feedback effect here previously regarding mobbing behaviour, particularly in academe. You would be doing your own side a service if you were to publicly tell them that.

  13. Scottish Sceptic says:
    6 February 2014 at 19:46

    Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had a time machine and could go to the future to see who turned out to be right – who wrong – and the other 99.99999% who got it a little bit both ways.
    What will they put on my grave?
    Here lies a plonker?
    or
    Here lies someone who rightly called Charlie a plonker?
    All I know is that when you see something that you know to be wrong, you have to speak out about it.

  14. Pingback: Bloggers behaving badly – Stoat

  15. John Brookes says:
    10 February 2014 at 07:32

    “All I know is that when you see something that you know to be wrong, you have to speak out about it.”
    Well, no you don’t. But I just did 🙂

  16. catweazle666 says:
    12 February 2014 at 02:00

    “You just don’t realise how totally lost you are.”
    Awesome. Just totally awesome.
    Seek professional assistance.
    Seriously.

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