Climate 'denialism' is about politics (money) - Margaret Thatcher - 'ism' is an ideology - dialectic - rhetorical traps

Source: guardian.co.uk; Bob Ward


Thatcher becomes latest recruit in Monckton's climate sceptic campaign
Monckton's use of Britain's former PM illustrates that climate denialism is about politics, not science

Margaret Thatcher once stunned the UN in 1989 with a call to action on global warming. But she later cooled her position on man-made climate change. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex

Climate change sceptics last week co-opted Margaret Thatcher into their lobbying campaigns, illustrating once more the strong ideological streak that drives their efforts.

Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley has posted, on the blog operated by former TV weatherman and prominent "sceptic" Anthony Watts, a personal account of his influence on Lady Thatcher's views about climate change during the 1980s. Thatcher shocked the UN in 1989 with a call to action on man-made global warming, but has since made sceptical public statements about anthropogenic climate change.

As we have come to expect, Viscount Monckton's recollection of events makes for interesting reading.

He begins with the claim that: "I gave her advice on science as well as other policy from 1982-1986, two years before the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] was founded", pointing out that the prime minister's policy unit at that time had just six members and that he was "the only one who knew any science". Monckton then goes on to suggest that "it was I who – on the prime minister's behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisers to the government, from the chief scientific adviser downward".

This revelation might be news to Lady Thatcher. On page 640 of her 1993 autobiography Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years, the former prime minister describes how she grappled with the issue of climate change, referring only to "George Guise, who advised me on science in the policy unit". Indeed, given Monckton's purportedly crucial role, it seems to be heartless ingratitude from the Iron Lady that she does not find room to mention him anywhere in the 914-page volume on her years as prime minister.

Viscount Monckton also modestly notes that he was responsible for bringing in "the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street", on which he "did the first elementary radiative-transfer calculations that indicated climate scientists were right to say some 'global warming' would arise as CO2 concentration continued to climb".