Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 10:32, 6 August 2007

Editing of this article by new or unregistered users is currently disabled. See the protection policy and protection log for more details. If you cannot edit this article and you wish to make a change, you can submit an edit request, discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or create an account.

Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (born 14 February 1952) is a retired British international business consultant, policy advisor, journalist, broadcaster, and inventor.

Biography

Christopher Walter Monckton was born on 14 February 1952 as the eldest son of the 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Monckton was educated at Harrow School, Churchill College, Cambridge and University College, Cardiff, and is currently studying for a degree in mathematics at the Open University. On 19 May 1990, he married Juliet Mary Anne Malherbe Jensen. Upon the death of his father in 2006, Lord Monckton inherited his father's title.

Career

Journalist

In 1974 at the age of 22, Monckton joined the Yorkshire Post. From 1977 to 1979, Monckton worked at the Conservative Central Office as a press officer, providing experienced advice on how the Office might maintain a positive public image and avoid negative media coverage. In 1979, Monckton became the editor of the Catholic newspaper, The Universe, and then as managing editor of The Sunday Telegraph's Magazine in 1981.

In 1983 he returned to the Conservative offices again, this time as Margaret Thatcher's policy advisor. Three years later, he became assistant editor of the newly-formed (and now defunct) newspaper, Today. His final job in journalism was as a consulting editor of the Evening Standard from 1987 to 1992.

International business consultancy

In 1987, Monckton founded the international business consultancy company, Christopher Monckton Ltd., where he served as a director until ill health compelled him to retire in 2006. In 1999, he created and published the Eternity puzzle, a geometric puzzle which involved tiling a dodecagon with 209 irregularly shaped polygons called Polydrafters. A £1m prize was won after 18 months by two Cambridge mathematicians. By that time, 500,000 puzzles had been sold. A second puzzle, Eternity II, was launched on 28 July 2007, with a prize of $2 million.

Associations

Lord Monckton is a member of the Worshipful Company of Broderers, an Officer of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a member of the Roman Catholic Mass Media Commission. He is also a qualified Day Skipper with the Royal Yacht Association, and is a Trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic.

Philosophical and/or political views

Lord Monckton considers that anthropogenic "global warming" is unlikely to prove catastrophic. In November 2006, he published in the The Daily Telegraph an article critical of extreme and alarmist climate change opinions. After U.S. Senators Rockefeller and Snowe wrote a letter to the Chief Executive Officer of ExxonMobil asking him to stop funding think tanks that reject global warming, Lord Monckton wrote a letter to the senators reminding them of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and calling on them to reverse their position or resign. In February 2007, he published an analysis and summary of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on climate change, which pointed out errors in the published text (some of which have since been corrected). His calculations concerning climate change have been supported by some climate scientists, including Dr. Vincent Gray, an official reviewer of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, but challenged by others, including Gavin Schmidt of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Stephen Harrison, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography at the University of Exeter and Senior Research Associate at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment., . He won £50,000 libel damages from The Guardian, a UK newspaper, in respect of an article by George Monbiot falsely claiming that he had incorrectly treated the Earth as a blackbody in his calculations. The Guardian was compelled to print a correction drafted by Lord Monckton.

In March 2007 Monckton challenged Al Gore to an internationally televised debate on climate change, to which the former U.S. Vice President did not respond.

References

Published works

Lord Monckton is the co-author (with Ivan Fallon) of "The Laker Story". He has also published five books of Daily Mail Sudoku X puzzles, of which the first sold 100,000 copies. The Science and Public Policy Institute, Washington DC (www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org), has published eight papers by Lord Monckton on climate-change science.

See also

• Gilbert Monckton, 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

External links

The following include list official websites, organizations named after the subject, and other interesting yet relevant websites. No spam.

• IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007 Analysis and Summary Monckton's critique of the IPCC report
• Apocalypse Cancelled
• Climate Chaos? Don't believe it, The Daily Telegraph, Nov 5th 2006.
• Uphold Free Speech or Resign
• This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong - Comment on Monckton's report by George Monbiot.
• Monckton's response to Monbiot
• Bluffers' Corner: Christopher Monckton
• Real Climate: Cuckoo Science
• Observer Interview

Template:Persondata

• 1952 births
• Alumni of Cardiff University
• Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge
• British journalists
• British newspaper editors
• British Roman Catholics
• Global warming skeptics
• Knights of Malta
• Living people
• Officers of the Order of St John
• Old Harrovians
• Viscounts in the Peerage of the United Kingdom