Evidence debunks 'contemptible' climate lies

A climate science denier who claims he advised Tony Abbott now says regions such as North America were warmer about a century ago. Steve Bishop checks his claim.

NOTORIOUS CLIMATE SCIENCE denier Viscount Christopher Monckton couldn't help himself.

While boasting on a climate science denying website that a lecture he gave at Oxford University had been viewed 200,000 times, he told a Trumpian lie — that the world is cooler today than temperatures recorded in the USA and elsewhere about a century ago.

As with Donald Trump, a multitude of people believe his lies, to the detriment of support for policies to reach net zero to stop the planet roasting.

It is important to expose Monckton as a fraud because he has fooled many institutions into listening to his lies. They include, he says, testifying four times before the U.S. Congress and speaking at United Nations conferences in Bali, Bonn, Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban, Rio and Qatar.

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Viscount Christopher Monckton has become notorious for his climate change denial, despite scientific evidence proving him wrong time and again.

And he claims he briefed former PM Tony Abbott when he was Opposition Leader.

In an attempt to counter scientific measurements that show man-made climate change is responsible for record high temperatures this century, this Lord of the Lies alleged in an article in Climate Depot – an American Right-wing, climate science-denying website – that the USA was warmer about a century ago.

He referred in the article to the ‘dustbowl years of the 1920s-1930s, when North America (to name but one region) was warmer than today’.

Is there any evidence to support such an absurd claim?

The United States’ climate records are kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through climate.gov. They show the frightening pace of global heating, demonstrated by the fact that 43 of the 48 U.S. contiguous states have all had their hottest 12-month periods in the 17 years since 2007.

Only Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, Utah and Wyoming had their hottest 12-month periods in the last century, all in the 1930s, which doesn't mean much because Nebraska also had its coldest year two years after its hottest. New Hampshire also had its coldest year in the “dustbowl years”.

So on what does Monckton base his furphy?

He may have believed a Sky News lie that the USA's hottest years were in the 1930s.

Or he may have been parroting an article in a major purveyor of climate fiction, the Heartland Institute, which claims:

‘The Dust Bowl years of the mid-1930s retain the title of hottest decade in recorded history.’

Monckton is a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute.

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Viscount Christopher Monckton, who describes climate science as a ‘monstrous hoax’, has taken his bandwagon of lies around the world on lecture tours.

There is no doubt that a 1936 North American heatwave was spectacular.

Skeptical Science reports:

‘1934 used to be the hottest year on record in the USA.’

But according to the Statista website, even in the USA, it's now an “also ran” in tenth place.

The only set of statistics that bears any resemblance to Monckton's fake news is for one-off freak temperature extremes in some states.

In other words, these high temperatures do not refer to the hottest years in states, nor months or even weeks, but merely to one temperature recorded at just one weather station in each state on one day at a particular time.

As the NOAA website makes clear:

‘The records are for single-station or single-point phenomena (that is, not regional or statewide averages).’

These freak peaks occurred in 25 of the states between 1925 and 1936, with 11 of them being in the July 1936 heatwave.

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But ten states had their coldest days on record in the '30s — California, Idaho (-60ºF (-51.1°C) first recorded in 1933), Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.

Just one state, Idaho (1934), had its hottest year on record in the same year in which its highest temperature was recorded.

The official statistics for each state’s hottest years are plainly available on the NOAA website.

How ludicrous is Monckton's claim?

It is a very simple task to check the facts.

NOAA boasts:

‘Both the temperature data record and NOAA’s analyses of the temperature data have been peer-reviewed by other, independent teams of scientists in the U.S. and internationally. No reasons have been found to question the integrity or the quality of the GHCN [Global Historical Climatology Network] dataset.’

The hottest year recorded in the contiguous USA was 2012, beating the previous hottest, 1998. The second hottest year in the U.S. was 2015, beaten then by 2016.

By 2021, official statistics revealed:

‘The six warmest years on record have all occurred since 2012.’

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And on a global basis, Monckton is hopelessly wrong in claiming North America was warmer about 100 years ago.

Climate.gov reports:

‘The ten warmest years in the 174-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2014–2023). Of note, the year 2005, which was the first year to set a new global temperature record in the 21st Century, is now the 12th-warmest year on record.’

If Monckton had any climate credibility he would have performed what he himself has described as checking “meticulously and boringly”, which is exactly what I did. Failing to do so, Monckton said, is propaganda.

So here is the result of the maths to calculate the average temperatures of the 1920s and 30s in the USA compared with the last full decade, using the Statista website which has the average temperature for all of the years involved.

The average temperature for the 1920s in the USA was 51.78°F (11°C), for the 1930s it was 52.64°F (11.5°C). The decade to 2023 was 53.9°F (12.2°C) — clearly hotter now than in the '20s and '30s.

Another quote from Monckton: