Dangerously Dishonest Climate "Expert" at Large in Canada

Christopher Walter, the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is gamboling his way across Canada, acting like a character recently escaped from a Monty Python skit and inflaming the passions of climate change deniers and their favourite newspaper editors (at the National Post and the Calgary Herald). 

Monckton is being urged on and abetted by the Friends of Science, an oily front group, long derided for  trying to conceal its connections to the Calgary oil and gas community. Right wing think tanks the Fraser Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy are also sponsoring the tour. (Although the Fraser Institute has been a recipient of Exxon Mobil funding in the past, neither organization is acknowledging who is paying Monckton to suggest that we all have "the courage to do nothing" about climate change.)

Rush on over to Deep Climate for the full story on the Canadian tour of Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Apparently the thoroughly discredited Friends of Science are behind the tour, which includes eastern Canadian stops in Ottawa and Toronto and a particular crush of events in Calgary.

Although one of the Calgary events shows the Calgary Herald as a sponsor, Deep Climate suspects that the Calgary Foundation might once again be sluicing oily money through the "Friends" organization to help continue the campaign of climate disinformation.

The self-styled Canadian climate change expert, Dr. Tim Ball, has abandoned his libel suit against University of Lethbridge Professor of Environmental Science Dan Johnson. Ball dropped the suit without conditions, but also without acknowledging that Johnson’s original comments were accurate and were reported in good faith.

Science is a fussy profession. For example, it is generally frowned on to not disclose your funding sources or conflicts of interest – and for good reason.

Take the recent study by Yale University, which found that industry-funded studies of soft drinks are far less likely to find negative impacts.

The plaintiff Dr. Tim Ball - much maligned even before he launched his ill-fated lawsuit against Dr. Dan Johnson - is in for another thrashing in the (attached) Statement of Defence filed in December by the Calgary Herald.

The plaintiff Dr. Tim Ball - much maligned even before he launched his ill-fated lawsuit against Dr. Dan Johnson - is in for another thrashing in the (attached) Statement of Defence filed in December by the Calgary Herald.