“Why windmills won’t wash“. British motor-mouth buffoon Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (not a guest at William and Kate’s recent wedding) guest-posts a stream-of-consciousness conversation with himself on Anthony Watts’ blog. The apparent subject is a primary school wind turbine and its implications for mitigating global warming (which, of course, isn’t happening, but would be natural if it was happening). Apparently “the warming the Birmingham Bat-Batterer [one of Monckton’s varying pet names for his chosen scapegoat wind turbine] will forestall over the next 20 years will be rather less than 0.0000000000007 Celsius.”
If one backyard wind turbine won’t stop, say, at least half of the global warming why do anything? Seems sensible.
Also, since the lonely little 33-foot high Midlands primary school wind turbine only generated 209 kilowatt-hours of electricity in its first year, the Thanet Wind Farm, consisting of one hundred 3 MW wind turbines, will be useless too. All you need to do is take a hostile economic evaluation from a denialist buddy (in this case the Daily Telegraph’s reliable Christopher Booker) and give it an extra “twist”.
Monckton spews out great swaths of bogus economics gobbledygook in his arguments here and refers to “smidgens” and “tads” when trying to obscure his assumptions. He’s learning to avoid those concrete details that keep tripping him up and stick to the cocktail party clowning that he’s actually quite good at. The estimable Viscount finishes his ‘calculations’ thus:
So there you have it. After the biggest and most expensive propaganda campaign in human history, leading to the biggest tax increase in human history, trying to stop “global warming” that isn’t happening anyway and won’t happen at anything like the predicted rate is the least cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money in human history, bar none – and that’s saying something.
Now that’s what I call climate science! Like most denialists for Monckton, after all the verbal dancing, it boils down to taxes.
Wott's Up With That? 
But wait, I thought there wasn’t any global warming anyway.
No single wind project will solve global warming, just as no single coal-fired power plant (or automobile) created it, but after efficiency, wind is one of the best hopes we have to generate large amounts of electricity rapidly without greenhouse gases. Also uses no water …
Regards, Tom Gray, Wind Energy Communications Consultant
Hmmmmmmm, check. Turns out that, regardless of whether he accepted the science, Monckton would be opposed to international, national, and individual action. Which gives a smidgen of an indication as to why he rejects the science.
Of course, the USA has seen large increases in taxes over the last ten years and this accounts for our large budget surplus. Perhaps much of these tax increases has gone into supporting renewable energy (?) Ben–Thanks for your efforts!
Interesting ‘Moncktonian Mathturbations’ of misinformation or as “potholer54” on youtube shows Lord Monckton is self-debunking as he shows in one of his recorded speeches in Debunking Lord Monckton 1/2.
Epic fail/face palm
WAIT FOR IT…………………… In the comments, Christopher Monckton mentions his (upcoming) underlying peer-reviewed paper.
“…the mitigation cost-effectiveness of any project is defined as the cost of forestalling 1 (degree) Kelvin of “global warming” in the 21st century…”
“The mitigation cost-effectiveness of any project serves… to compare the imagined… benefits of competing mitigation policies.”
“…the purpose of my research has been to demonstrate that however much cheaper [wind turbines] get, they will still make no measurable contribution to forestalling “global warming”…”
Basically it’s this May 8, 2009 paper scienceandpublicpolicy.org/…waxman_markey_wont_work.pdf “…to analyze the cost effectiveness of measures to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emissions expressed not – as now – in tonnes of CO2 emission foregone but in Kelvin degrees of warming prevented…”
The Thanet Wind Array is Case Study 3 in what might be an early draft of Monckton’s promised paper. Monckton uses a lower average rating (78MW) than the owner (105-120MW). And Monckton uses a turbine working life (20 years) that is half what others use (40 years).
This pdf can be found by googling [mitigation cost-effectiveness monckton] and selecting “Submission: The Social and Economic Impact of Rural Wind Farms”.
whatever the truth of global warming the writer has evaded the point of the article, namely that £5,000 was spent on a device that will power a reading lamp for 3 months. Not good. If that is typical global warming mitigation will bancrupt us all in no time.
While there is a case for renwables wind power as currently concieved is an expensive dead end. Especially as the wind has a habit of not blowing when power is most needed. Back to the drawing board.
[I think the point of the article is that Monckton and Watts are taking a cherry-picked irrelevant example and extrapolating it onto every wind turbine on Earth. You’re just following their bouncing ball. – Ben]
You are so quick to pick up Monckons party tricks (I know he does have them, most debaters do) but did any of you pick up Al Gores gross exaggerations or awful mis-representations of fact?
what he was probably reffering to was;
According to the UN’s own estimates on Climate Sensitivity, to keep the climate from rising one degree celsius the whole world would have to stop emitting C02 for 67 years. The whole world economy would have to grind to a halt, 2 trillion tonnes of C02 would have to be forestalled, we would have to live like cavemen without the right to even light a fire
http://mnfmi.org/2009/10/16/monckton-speaks-to-over-700-at-minnesota-free-market-institute-event/
[It seems you’re actually linking to this measured statement by Monckton:
Because just like his climate drivel, Monckton’s egregiously wrong about DDT. – Ben]
Click to access monckton_2009.pdf
[What a lame-ass, typo-laced, grade-school joke of a low-rez PowerPoint from the foes of science. I can’t believe I wasted the muscle exertion clicking on your link. – Ben]
I know this isn’t really related to your article but I coulddn’t help but comment on the one line rebbutals linked on the side of this article. They are really good and helpful to know but perhaps you shouldn’t have included this one;
skeptics: Al Gore got it wrong
Beleivers: Al Gore is quite accurate, far more accurate than contrarian books
because there is just so much they could use to rebut that with, take a look at these for example, at least half of them might be valid points
35 Inconvenient Truths: The errors in Al Gore’s movie
[I’m not really here to defend Al Gore or “An Inconvenient Truth” (although I’ll say that for a popular documentary it explains the issue well). If you decide veracity with a coin toss then I suppose Monckton’s assertions might be true, but Monckton and the SPPI are notoriously dishonest. I’d suggest these links: Is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth accurate? and An ‘error’ is not the same thing as an error. – Ben]
thank you so much, when you are trying to make up your mind this debate can seem like a mind field. I really appreciate these links.