Here’s an idea of how badly conservatives are scraping the bottom of the barrel in their attempts to get their propaganda passed off as legitimate science and legitimate “news.” Conservative circles became very excited about the American Physical Society apparently making an about face to their long-held stance supporting the science behind global warming. The story was pushed off by Drudge Report, Jonah Goldberg, and conservative blogs on — of all days — the same day Gore is giving a speech on the subject, using headlines like “Group Repping 50,000 Physicists Opens Global Warming Debate…” and “Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate”! The title of this “exploding” news story should actually read: “Washed-Up British Viscount Manages to Publish Crackpot Theory on Non-Peer-Reviewed Online Newsletter.”

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/19/the-rights-misguided-frenzy-over-the-american-physical-society/

The editor didn’t even bother to get a scientist. “Lord Monckton” has no degrees in the subject. He inherited his title from his dead father and was a former policy adviser to Margret Thatcher. The bogus news story has forced the association to put a disclaimer on both the header of the article and the front page of their website. The front page points out the newsletter is from the “APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS.” Hardly something that represents all 50,000 members. The writings themselves are not new and have long been debunked as a “sleight-of-hand.” Quoting from the Sunday Times and the Times, Monckton’s science is “self-taught and his paper qualifications nonexistent” and “he is trying to take on the global scientific establishment on the strength of a classics degree from Cambridge.” One of the models used by Monckton was made up by himself, but another one comes from JunkScience.com, a front end for Steve Milloy, a long time tobacco, drug, and oil industry lobbyist, which has published other ‘cuckoo science’ pieces over the years.

http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/19/american-physical-society-stomps-on-monckton-disinformation-thank-you-climate-progress-readers/

Cuckoo Science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton%2C_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley

http://www.aps.org/

If you recognize the name, that’s because Lord Monckton is the same guy that the Heartland Institute was using as their resident expert when they were trying to double dog dare Gore to get into a debate with him in that ludicrously-titled article “Gore Confronted by Own Scientists- ‘Confusion Between Hypothesis and Evidence’,” which was raked over the coals in one of the first posts I made on this blog. (Although only 5 short paragraphs long, I still somehow managed to elicit 5 pages worth of explainable errors with the article.) It kind of gives you an idea about how pathetically low conservative hacks are stooping that they aren’t even bothering to switch out the henchmen they use to fictionalize the news.

Here is a good article by a real scientist:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/index.html