Twelve years ago, on this day, June 12, 2011, Christopher Monckton is forced to apologise for throwing around swastika slurs in his “Big Footprint Is Green the new tyranny” rant.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 394ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Monckton was on one of his periodic tours of Australia, lapping up the attention that he was getting for his swivel eyed lunacy contesting the science of climate change with half baked nonsense. And unfortunately for him, he got high on his own supply, and went too far. With an allegation that Schellnhuber was a Nazi, or that Ross Garnaut was a Nazi. This then created a reputational issue for his sponsors and the Liberal Party, then led by Tony Abbott, and pressure was clearly applied, and Monckton apologised. For what that was worth, not that anyone particularly believed it.
What I think we can learn from this
What we can learn is that culture warriors often get triggered, have peaks and go below you and go too fast, and then have to try to claw back their position. See, another example of this would be the Heartland Institute and its Unabomber billboards.
Another would be with Oregon Petition and NAS saying “please don’t do this.”
What happened next
At a climate conference in Melbourne, in July, the Lyndon LaRouche lunatics held up a noose and called Schellnhuber a Nazi. It was so classy.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.