Conclusion of Lord Monckton’s address
to the
8 October 2007
AL GORE says, “I believe this is a moral issue.” So it is. To “announce
disasters” or “scary scenarios” or “over-represent factual presentations” in
place of adherence to the scientific truth – that is a moral issue.
To let politicians insert data into official scientific documents; to alter
those documents so as to contradict scientific findings; to manipulate decimal
points so as to engender false headlines by exaggerating tenfold – those are
moral issues.
To exaggerate by 2000% not only the atmospheric lifetime of a trace gas but
also the effect of that gas on temperature; to reduce the magnitude of its
predicted influence on temperature without reducing the predicted temperature
itself – those are moral issues.
To claim scientific unanimity where none exists; to assert that catastrophe is
likely when most scientists do not; to exalt theoretical computer models over
real-world observations; to misstate the conclusions of scientific papers or
the meaning of observed data; to overstate the likely future course of climatic
phenomena by several orders of magnitude – those are moral issues.
To reverse the sequence of events in the early climate; to repeat that reversal
in a propaganda book intended to infect the minds of children; to persist in
false denial that past temperatures exceeded today’s; to state that climate
events that have not occurred have occurred; to ascribe these non-events as
well as specific extreme-weather events unjustifiably to humankind – those are
moral issues.
To propose solutions to the non-problem of climate change that would cost many
times more than the problem itself, if there were one; to advocate measures to
mitigate fancifully-imagined future climatic changes when adaptation would cost
far less and achieve far more; to ignore the real problems of resource
depletion, energy security, bad Third World government and fatal diseases that
kill millions – those are moral issues.
To advance policies congenial to the narrow, short-term political or financial
vested interest of some mere corporation or faction at the expense of the
wider, long-term general interest of us all – those are moral issues.
Above all, to inflict upon the nations of the world a policy of ever-grimmer
energy starvation calculated not merely to inconvenience the prosperous but to
condemn the very poorest to remain imprisoned in poverty forever, and to die in
their tens of millions for want of the light and heat and power which we have
long been fortunate enough to take for granted – that is a moral issue.
Sir, this House is the House of youth. Here high ideals are shaped and
sharpened. Here of all places, it is surely understood that in each of us,
however far apart in mere distance or origin or wealth or achievement, there is
the image and likeness of our Creator; that by this intimate communion with our
Maker each of us, however poor, is of unique and precious value; that therefore
there is only one race, the human race; that the suffering children of Africa,
of Asia and of south America, imploring us with their hopeless, hopeful eyes,
are our people. They cannot look to their own. They look to us. We must get the
science right or we shall get the policy wrong. We have failed them and failed
them before.
We must not fail them again!