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The Guardian reports that UK parliament recently published a letter ordering Lord Christopher Monckton to “desist” from claiming to be a member of the House of Lords. 

This is following Monckton’s interview with Australian Radio earlier this month. When ABC Sydney’s Adam Spencer asked whether Monckton was a member, Monckton answered “yes, but without the right to sit or vote,” and later repeated clearly “I am a Member of the House.”

Clerk of Parliaments David Beamish sent the letter to Monckton last Friday, declaring “you are not and have never been a Member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a Member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms.”

Beamish concludes the letter as follows:

I must therefore again ask that you desist from claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication, and also that you desist from claiming to be a Member “without the right to sit or vote”.

I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not.

David Beamish
Clerk of the Parliaments

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Willie Soon has been an individual of significant interest lately in climate circles. Last week, he spoke at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate change, or as we like to call it, Denial-a-Palooza. A recent Greenpeace report found that Soon accepted over $1 million in funding from fossil fuel interests, including Koch Industries. 

To top it off, RealClimate released a report yesterday revealing new issues with Soon’s 2007 paper on polar bears. The non-peer-reviewed paper has been cited extensively before, notably by Sarah Palin, as proof that polar bears are not endangered by global warming. The paper includes skeptical co-authors M.G. Dyck, R.K. Baydack, David Legates, Sallie Baliunas, Tim Ball and L.O. Hancocks.

While the paper’s central claims have already been disproven, the remaining issue is what appears to be Soon’s willing disregard for data. RealClimate found that Soon had cherry picked data showing the highest level of Arctic Oscillation (AO), a natural variability that he blamed for any increases in temperature in the Hudson Bay area:

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Wake up and smell the fossil fuel funding. That’s right, it’s that time of year again: the Heartland Institute is hosting its Sixth (annual?*) International Conference on Climate Change over the next two days in Washington D.C.

DeSmogBlog already revealed some of the oily sponsors behind the event. Now it’s time to take a look at the so-called scientists Heartland has rounded up to accomplish this year’s theme of “Restoring the Scientific Method.”   

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A report released by the Water Monitoring Data Review Committee earlier this month refuted previous Alberta Environment and industry studies on the serious threat of water contamination stemming from tar sands operations.

Environment Minister Rob Renner responded by promising to work to create a “better, more transparent and credible monitoring system in Alberta” that would assess the impacts of tar sands development on the Athabasca watershed. Renner’s tune has changed since declaring that heavy metals and other pollutants were naturally-occurring in the river, a view supported by the industry-funded Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) study.