Climate change
Monckton advocates for climate change denial, [51] [52] is a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute [53] and has stated that those who warn of the dangers of climate change should be jailed,calling them "bogus". [54] He does say a greenhouse effect exists, [55] and that carbon dioxide contributes to it,but claims there is no "causative link" from CO2-concentration to global average temperature. [56] He said the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change underestimated the costs of climate change mitigation and overstated its benefits. [57] Monckton's opinions contradict the scientific opinion on climate change, [58] [59] where there is consensus for anthropogenic global warming,and show a decisive link between carbon dioxide concentration and global average temperatures.
On 18 October 2008 Monckton posted online "More in Sorrow than in Anger,Open letter from The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley to Senator John McCain about Climate Science and Policy" after U.S. presidential candidate John McCain made a campaign speech at a wind farm in which he stated his belief in anthropogenic climate change. Monckton stated in interviews and on the web site of the Science and Public Policy institute that he was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate;he later stated that this had been a joke. [60] [61] [62]
In 2009,John P. Abraham criticized Monckton's claims in a lecture at Bethel University, [63] [64] and Monckton filed disciplinary charges alleging academic dishonesty against Abraham. [65] [66] [67] The University of St Thomas's lawyers wrote to Monckton that "The University of St Thomas respects your right to disagree with Professor Abraham,just as the University respects Professor Abraham's right to disagree with you. What we object to are your personal attacks against Father Dease,and Professor Abraham,your inflammatory language,and your decision to disparage Professor Abraham,Father Dease,and The University of St Thomas." [68] The latter was in response to an interview in which Monckton characterized Abraham as "a wretched little man," the university's president Dease as "a creep," and the University of St. Thomas as "a half-assed Catholic bible college". [69]
Monckton has also been criticised by science journalist and YouTuber Peter Hadfield. On his YouTube channel potholer54 in a series titled "Monckton Bunkum",Hadfield debunked Monckton's claim that the Earth had not been warming based on cherry picking of start and end points of the global temperature record, [70] his claim that climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is a third of what it actually is and his confusion of sensitivity with forcing, [71] and his claim that Himalayan glaciers had been stable for the past two centuries. [72] Hadfield also showed how Monckton had misquoted the words of Kevin E. Trenberth,Murari Lau,Sir John Houghton,and Justice Michael Burton of the High Court of Justice, [73] in addition to falsely claiming that the International Astronomical Union had concluded at a 2004 symposium that the Sun was responsible for the majority of recent global warming. [74]
Social and economic policy
One of Margaret Thatcher's policy advisors, Monckton was credited with being "the brains behind the Thatcherite policy of giving council tenants (public housing) the right to buy their homes." [75] Monckton was a sponsor of the Conservative Family Campaign in the 1990s. [76] Monckton has been associated with the Referendum Party, advising its founder, Sir James Goldsmith. In 2003 he helped a Scottish Tory breakaway group, the Scottish Peoples Alliance. [75]
In 1988, Eddy Shah: Today and the Newspaper Revolution described Monckton as "a fervent, forthright and opinionated Roman Catholic Tory" [77] who has been closely associated with the "New Right" faction of the Conservative Party. [78] In 1997, Monckton criticised works at the Fotofeis (the Scottish International Festival of Photography) and Sensation as "feeble-minded, cheap, pitiable, exploitative sensationalism perpetrated by the talent-free and perpetuated by over-funded, useless, muddle-headed, middle-aged, pot-bellied, brewer's-droopy quangoes which a courageous Government would forthwith cease to subsidise with your money and mine." [79]
Statements on AIDS and homosexuality
American Spectator article on AIDS (1987)
In a 1987 article for The American Spectator , "AIDS: A British View", Monckton argued "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"). The article concluded that current Western sensibilities would not allow this standard protocol for containing a new, fatal and incurable infection to be applied: therefore, he said, many would needlessly die. Andrew Ferguson, then assistant managing editor of The American Spectator, denounced it in the letters column of the same issue. [80] Monckton appeared on the BBC's Panorama programme in February 1987 to discuss his views and present the results of an opinion poll that found public support for his position. [78] Monckton has since stated "the article was written at the very outset of the AIDS epidemic, and with 33 million people around the world now infected, the possibility of [quarantine] is laughable. It couldn't work." He also said that this standard protocol could have worked at the time; that senior HIV investigators had called for it; and that many of the lives that have been lost could have been saved. [81]
Article on homosexuality (2014)
Monckton returned to the subject of homosexuality in a November 2014 article for the WorldNetDaily website describing the campaign of Councillor Rosalie Crestani in the City of Casey, near Melbourne, Australia. In the article, he claims that "official survey after official survey had shown that homosexuals had an average of 500-1,000 partners in their sexually active lifetime, and that some had as many as 20,000." [82] He rejected the use of the LGBT acronym for the order of the alphabet on QWERTY keyboards. "That ought to cover every real or imaginary form of sexual deviancy they may dream up," he wrote. [82]
"Now, I'm not sure where Viscount Monckton is getting his statistics," wrote UKIP leader Nigel Farage in The Independent , "but to frame these comments as he has is both deeply offensive and fundamentally wrong." [83]
