I am completely behind now, and won’t get to the story at all this morning, not that there is much left of it.

I wound up on perusing one of the climate pages and tumbled headlong into a vicious attack on Viscount Christopher Monckton’s views on the science pertaining to what has, sequentially, been known as Global Warming, Climate Change and lately, “Oceanic Acidification (OA).”

It is all part of the carbon thing we have heard so much about of late, though less as the economy battles the phenomenally expensive attempts to regulate release of the inert gas into the atmosphere.

The settled science appears to indicate that there has been both more and less of it in the air in the historical record, as there has been more and less ice at the poles. The specific unsettled question is whether we are confronting a crisis that man has created.

Increasingly, I have heard the BBC and NPR publicly wrestle with that question; to wit, is it appropriate to air the views of climate change skeptics as being a fairness issue. Both have concluded that since the science is settled on the matter, opposing views are irresponsible and incorrect, and therefore not required.

Accordingly, everything from the recent Virginia earthquake to Hurricane Irene have been ascribed to climate change. Both contentions are absurd, even as it would be absurd to contend that the climate is not changing. That is the one constant in a complex, constantly evolving system of systems.

I have touched this lightning rod before, and don’t want to do it again, but do so in the spirit of fun this morning.

I heard from a pal who commented tersely that: “the science is settled,” so I will allow others have their say and let you make up your own mind. No that you should have to make a decision; there are plenty of experts to tell you what to believe. The “scientific method” was once supposed to be about testing hypothesis. Now, it appears be about testing hypothesis against the Model, as it runs on the computer- a subtle but profound change.

The Model, in its twenty or so variants, is settled science, and not to be questioned.

There have been some questions lately about whether solar cycles and flux not in The Model may have an impact on climate. That, generally speaking, is what brought me around to Viscount Christopher Monckton is a piece of work.

The BBC has painted him as a “potty Peer,” and whether he is or not, he definitely is a legitimate British curiosity. He has had an intriguing career as a journalist, among other things, and an attempted member of the House of Lords, a position from which he was barred by the Labor government’s reform of eligibility to that traditionally hereditary body.

Not that he did not try. His elliptical justification is as much fun as the adventure on which he took me this morning.

Of late, his Lordship has joined the ranks of the climate change skeptics, and has traveled the world to decry the tyranny of the alleged cabal whose theory has caused such gnashing of teeth with former Vice President Albert Gore, a man whose alarmism matches his vast carbon footprint.

Anyway, if you want to sum things up in a nutshell, you can refer to the links below that caused me to miss writing a story this morning.

This is a rather startling response by Professor John Abraham of St. Thomas College to an address given by Viscount Monckton a couple years ago in Minnesota. It rather nicely sums up the case against his Lordship, and amounts to a fairly vicious attack on him. It is laced with sneering and hominum attacks, and is quite devastating. I include a link to it here, since you may want to check it out. It is long, a bit tedious, but here it is:

http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/ <http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/>

Lord Monckton responded, and reading what he wrote is what hung me up and destroyed the morning. This 84 page rebuttal seems to have demolished Abraham’s diatribe. I read the whole thing, dumbstruck.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/monckton-warm-abra-qq2.pdf

Now, neither of these gentlemen are credentialed paleo-climatologists, and neither, strictly speaking, are scientists. Dr. Abraham is an engineer, who apparently prefers being one, and Lord Monckton, well, we don’t know quite what to call him. But if you have a love for the English language as it used to be spoken, it is a most entertaining read.

If you have already made up your mind on the settled science end of this, I wouldn’t pay it any mind.

I have to be getting on with things. We are tailgating tonight at College Park for the FLA-MD football game with Jake. I am cooking the brats, sautéing the onions and peppers, making the cole slaw and setting out the packages of hoagie rolls, condiments and a big bottle of vodka.

The weather for the game is going to change- rain, they say. I need to swim before I get wet. And change is about the only thing I can believe in these days, with all apologies to the bumper sticker.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com