Neo-fascist puppet for the fossil-fuel industry's Climate Denial Machine, Monckton, tries to incite Dr. John Abraham's college against him for debunking Monckton's lies and made up laws of physics

Monckton tries to incite academic hearing against author of devastating science-based evisceration of his disinformation

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, June 7, 2010

In the ongoing saga of The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley vs. reality, TVMOB tosses up an air ball in response to Prof. John Abraham’s evisceration of his standard talk.  Maybe the better analogy is one of bad sportsmanship, a basketball thrown directly at the head of Abraham.

TVMOB is, of course, a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see TVMOB hate speech shocker: Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists and links below).  [Please note that the picture on the right is not TVMOB nor do I think he would ever participate in this.]

So it is no surprise his ‘response’ devolves into a nasty threat:

Now you will understand why I have already initiated the process of having Abraham hauled up before whatever academic panel his Bible College can muster, to answer disciplinary charges of wilful academic dishonesty amounting to gross professional misconduct unbecoming a member of his profession.

It is of course laughable that TVMOB questions Abraham’s or anyone else’s honesty — or their credentials.
Should you be interested in learning more about TVMOB, go to the Science & Public Policy Institute website where he is Chief Policy Adviser.  In a bio that presumably he himself wrote, he relates his astonishing scientific credentials such as a “Nobel prize pin” because he commented on the IPCC Fourth assessment report.  This has “earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York.”  Also “his limpid analysis of the climate-feedback factor was published on the famous climate blog of Roger Pielke, Sr.” I kid you not.

Here is Abraham’s reply to TVMOB’s ‘response’:

[Readers, that letter is posted in my blog below.]

I would add that the Beaufort Sea is probably home to the most rotten ice  in the Arctic (see Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice:  New study supports finding that “the amount of [multi-year] sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009″; see also “Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009” by Barber et al.)

Note also that TVMOB writes:

Abraham says that if either Greenland or the West Antartic ice sheet were to melt sea level would indeed rise by around 20 feet, and that, he says, is where Gore got his figure.

Just two problems with that. First, the IPCC also says, on the very page quoted by Abraham, that even if there were a major collapse of the ice the Greenland ice sheet would not entirely disintegrate for millennia, a phrase that was also used in the IPCC’s 2001 report, where it was made plain that surface temperatures at least 2 Celsius degrees higher than today’s would have to persist for several millennia before either the Greenland or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could melt away.

True, the British Antarctic Survey disagrees with the IPCC and maintains that the WAIS is in imminent danger of collapse, but so far even the IPCC has not bought that alarmist story.

Well, here is what the IPCC in ins 2007 Synthesis Report Summary for Policy Makers.  True it starts here:

Contraction of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100. Current models suggest virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7m if global average warming were sustained for millennia in excess of 1.9 to 4.6 °C relative to pre-industrial values. The corresponding future temperatures in Greenland are comparable to those inferred for the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when palaeoclimatic information suggests reductions of polar land ice extent and 4 to 6m of sea level rise. {3.2.3}

Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and gain mass due to increased snowfall. However, net loss of ice mass could occur if dynamical ice discharge dominates the ice sheet mass balance. {3.2.3}

But then it concedes:

There is better understanding than in the TAR that the risk of additional contributions to sea level rise from both the Greenland and possibly Antarctic ice sheets may be larger than projected by ice sheet models and could occur on century time scales. This is because ice dynamical processes seen in recent observations but not fully included in ice sheet models assessed in the AR4 could increase the rate of ice loss.

Duh.
And, of course, the scientific literature since AR4, which TVMOB knows but other ignores or distorts, has made increasingly clear that the ice sheets are losing mass much, much faster than the IPCC had thought possible:

• Satellite data stunner: “Our data suggest that EAST Antarctica is losing mass…. Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise.”
• Nature: “Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized.”
• Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: “Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier.”

And given that unexpectedly fast ice melt, it’s no surprise the science now projects much higher and much faster sea level rise than just a few years ago:

• Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100 [see figure]
• High Water: Greenland ice sheet melting faster than expected and could raise East Coast sea levels an extra 20 inches by 2100 — to more than 6 feet.
• West Antarctic ice sheet collapse even more catastrophic for U.S. coasts
• Nature sea level rise shocker: Coral fossils suggest “catastrophic increase of more than 5 centimetres per year over a 50-year stretch is possible.” Lead author warns, “This could happen again.”

For completeness’ sake, here is more on TVMOB:

• Lord Monckton meltdown: “I’m not going to shake the hands of Hitler youth.”
• TVMOB shocker: Activists decried as “Hitler Youth” for crashing Americans For Prosperity’s global warming event in Copenhagen
• How to diss-a-peer: Real Climate Scientists take on TVMOB
• Deltoid at ScienceBlogs: Monckton’s triple counting and here.
• Irony-gate 2: Modern day Tea Partiers outsource denial to Lord Monckton — a British peer!
• Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton aka TVMOB
• Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton, Part 2