Monckton is coming to Australia in late June and we've been discussing a myriad of ways to respond. One way is humour and we know one of the Chaser team who is interested in discussing ways Chaser could poke fun at Monckton. So there may be some discussion with Chaser mid-to-late this week about possible ideas. I've come up with a few potential ideas but would very much welcome other sources of humour to show the general public the intellectual vacuum that is Monckton to put the climate denial movement in perspective. So to all SkSers, please put your creative hats on, get both sides of the brain functioning and see what we the SkS community can come up with over the next few days.

Here were my initial thoughts:

One is finding humour in Monckton's lack of qualifications in climate science. Last time he was in Australia, on Aussie TV, he challenged an Aussie climate scientist Ben Neill (http://youtu.be/PTY3FnsFZ7Q) what his qualifications were, implying he wasn't qualified to talk climate. He's slagged off John Abraham's qualifications in writing. Both are deeply more qualified than Monckton. So it would be worth using humour to show how unqualified Monckton is, as a self-appointed climate expert, while also pointing out the 97% consensus among climate scientists (which is not commonly known among the general public).

Another idea - this one is possibly too tech and geeky, but Monckton did a hilarious thing in trying to "hide the incline" in sea level rise by rotating a graph:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-16-bizarro-world-sea-level.html

This technique could be made fun of - rotate a series of graphs (with funny sound fx to go with the rotation) to hide Greenland ice melt, ocean warming, temperature rise, etc. Eg - reinforces the many lines of evidence for global warming while using humour (and turns the "hide the decline" meme on its head).

There are a few YouTube videos about Monckton (eg - http://youtu.be/fbW-aHvjOgM, http://youtu.be/fpF48b6Lsbo,
http://youtu.be/C3giRaGNTMA) that might yield more ideas.

BTW, to get an idea of the Chaser brand of humour, they're all over YouTube.

Okay, just had another idea. In the documentary 'Meet the Climate Sceptics', Monckton slurs John Abraham and where he gets his money from. Meanwhile, Monckton gets money from fossil fuel interests - his last tour of Australia was underwritten by Gina Rinehart, mining billionaire. He receives funding from thinktanks funded by fossil fuel corporations. So this would be another irony to explore.

Once those creative juices start flowing. How can we forget Prawngate?! Gotta be plenty of humour potential there. Here is Monckton's original words:

"So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abraham’s artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face — he looks like an overcooked prawn), that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies."

Just can't get over accusing John A of "venomous ad homs" then likening him to an overcooked prawn in the same sentence.

Monckton is the gift that keeps on giving.

(note - for reference purposes, Monckton deleted the prawn reference from his response to John Abraham but the original version with prawn reference has been archived).

UPDATE: or did he delete it? This original article still has the prawn reference. Is Monckton so arrogant, he can't even see how bad this makes him look?

Maybe the prawn could be a recurring icon, at the top of each rebuttal article.

Or maybe the individual items could be bullet-pointed by prawns.

Wow.

Monckton

Prawn

I think that if we are going to have an icon, Pepe should be it.  And he's Pepe the "King" Prawn too, it's absolutely perfect.

Will pass this idea along. I have to admit, I did LOL at the comparison between Monckton & Pepe:

I would stress though that the mockery is not that Monckton looks like Pepe the Prawn but his hypocrisy of accusing someone else of looking like a prawn while, well, you know...

What about getting a whole bunch of students to go to one of his presentation as devotees of Monkton ... sort of fan group - outside with their pro-Monckton placards ... 'we love lord Monckton'; 'I want Lord  Monckton's baby'  etc.  Monckton really loves attention - once Monckton comes outside to greet his adoring crowd, they take down those placards and put up some simple facts about his funding, the facts of climate change, his complicity with fossil fuel industry, and his fraudulent behaviour.  Anyway, I am sure that you and your followers will do a lot better than me in coming up with ideas! 

Another might be to present him with a fake Nobel Prize for solving cancer and for advising Margaret Thatcher (maybe second Nobel Peace Prize) during the Malvinas war - all of which he claims to be true but are fake.

Recently, Gina Rinehart, mining billionaire and richest person in Australia, said:

"I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change."

Steve Lewandowsky suggests this quote might be useful Chaser material: they could do a stint trying to deliver a truck full of peer-reviewed literature to her doorstep.

Lots of hilarious Pepe footage that could be used if the Chaser went down that route. I particularly like Pepe in a white coat at 1:14 (invokes the tobacco industry's Whitecoat Project and the climate denier tactic of raising fake experts such as Monckton):

I like the ideas about Prawngate, the rotated graphs, any the Nobel Prize for the cure-for-everything. I’m not sure how the truck of peer-reviewed literature would work. There’s a potentially rich source of humour in Monckton’s hypocrisies and contradictions.

Another idea is to make fun of Monckton’s wackier political views:

• UNFCCC is a plot to set up a world government.
• All scientists should be required to adhere to a major religion.
• Although he claims any limits on pollution are totalitarian, in 1987 Monckton advocated “all those found to be infected with [HIV], even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently”.

Should get Moth involved in this.  He's  wicked funny.

Plenty of Material looking back at past posts of

http://theclimatescum.blogspot.com/search?q=monckton

http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/search?q=monckton

http://friendsofginandtonic.org/files/6dec77bc1a16a24c724fb91e13781fc0-293.html

The photos above.......which one is Monckton?.

Silly!  It's...umm...

Try to get permission from the makers of District 9 to use some copyright materials.

Since Monckton likes to put the coronet and portcullis on everything as an 'official' mark of quality, respond in kind with the District 9 logo.

Dress some people in 'prawn' costumes.  They could heckle Monckton with adapted quotes from the movie:

Prawns demand clean air!

Does cat food cause acne?

How many moons does our planet have?

(To interpreter) Are you translating properly? I could swear Monckton said CO2 is good for shareholders.

In all seriousness, people need to keep asking Monckton for proof that he was a scientific adviser to Prime Minister Thatcher.  I am confident that there is no such proof.  At the time in question Monckton was a news reporter.  He became a member of the Downing Street press corps.  Later, he was asked to take the minutes of a think tank.  That's it.

On the other hand, the evidence that Prime Minister Thatcher was a proponent of action on CO2 and global warming is irrefutable.  Her many speeches on the topic are available on line here:

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/

I suppose a band of teens could follow him around dressed as Nazi youth or a Joseph Goebbels lookalike touting for a job as his propaganda chief.  Or how about masquerading as a snake oil salesman with a bottle of black crude? 

Perhaps he should be asked if he agrees with screening the entire human population for defective memes, and to quarantine all carriers of these diseased ideas for life? (parading his views on HIV carriers of course).

http://friendsofginandtonic.org/files/b272371f0c74060c0d0c86755c32dda2-191.html

Lotta Monckton stories at FoGT.

Latin.

He is the funnest of all climate deniers, IMHO.

I feel like pointing out that he obviously genuinely believes climate change is a plot to install a communist world government is quite useful. 

He got 4 times less votes than the green party in recent UK local elections. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/election2011/region/html/36142.stm

This is just lifted from our profile - http://www.carbonbrief.org/profiles/christopher-monckton

Claims to have been a confidant of Margaret Thatcher. She does not mention him in her autobiography.

Monckton invented the geometric puzzle known as the "Eternity Puzzle," with a £1 million cash prize offered to anyone who could solve it within four years. The puzzle was completed within 18 months by two Cambridge mathematicians. At the time Monckton stated that he would have to sell his house to fund the prize, but later admitted he had said this for publicity purposes.

Monckton had claimed to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as a contributor to the IPCC process, and stated that he has the status of 'Nobel Peace Laureate' for his contribution to the IPCC process, but when challenged later said that these claims were a joke.

christianhunt: he can't claim the Nobel Prize claim was 'just a joke'.  He made that claim in his cv as part of a letter to Senator McCain.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/letter_to_mccain.html

Note the complete lack of proofs for his multifarious self-aggrandizing claims. :-)

And, on top of all of that, the good Lord invented FM radio waves in 1986 and discovered Lot's wife, a finding that not only corroborated the tellings of the Book of Genesis, but also contributed greatly to the culinary art in all eight continents.  The eighth of course being the lost city of Atlantis, to which Lord Monckton led an expedition, which was recorded and later turned into a cartoon documentary by the Walt Disney Studios, "Atlantis," in 2001.

Re: Oves idea of fawning Monckton fans.
I suggest that instead of revealing the opposite after a while, just carry on fawning and become more exagerated.
At some point Monckton will realise that they aren't true fans and it will ridicule his own fans at the same time.

I belive this thread is quite out of line. It is well known that Monckton has cured aids, dungue fever, politeness, lies and selfishness by his relentless position to follow the truth.

When will you people grow up!

His next book will follow up on invading alians, curing green skin, breathing on the moon and other important issues.

Would the Monckton deniers please step forward and confess to the truth?

Withdraw all this shameless Hitler youth ideas and confess to reality!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOb4s3ETUQc

Late June you say?

Not the b'day present I'd hoped for... one can only hope that unseasonable weather holds him back at some port (preferably one on communist shores to scare the hell out him).

The Amish rejected technological advances beyond a certain point (somewhat hypocritical, I know, when they require that wizardry to save a life) because they feared it was evil and pulled people away from the true cause.

I’ve always seen Monckton to reflect this same mentality. He rejects innovation and improvement beyond the 20^th century largely because he fears it separates us from the true cause – in his case, business as usual. Rather than letting the demons out, in his case, it lets the commies out!

I've also put the boot in on Mad ol' Monckton in the following Warm Fuzzy Forecast comic strips;

And probably my favourite shot at the dope;

I've got higher quality versions of these and have them saves in layer format, so that I can easily modify them if needs be. As Monckton is nuts about suing anything and everything (not unlike the nutters behind scientology - another group who also pretend to be legit and knowledgeable), I named the bloke Mr. D. Nial.

Ove's idea about the fake nobel prize - we could even take Potholer's approach and develop an award that is granted to people who demonstrate "Monctonian Brilliance" in the face of overwhelming evidence - that way putting the boot in, not by addressing Chris himself, but through association with other nutters who demonstrate like behaviours

Cheers Daniel for the compliment and sorry all for my quietness of late - numerous projects on the go, even my blog is a little ignored (those who know my history would know that a post or two a week, for me, is slo going).

I'm usually around though and will reply to my email: wow.the.moth@gmail.com - please don't hesitate to bug me :-)

Has Monckton attempted to suggest a snow storm disproves AGW, as Trump did? If so, the following joke / retort to Trump I used could be applied;

A snow storm disproves AGW just as a must as a toupee (in Monckton's case, comb over) disproves male pattern baldness.

There are a number of flimsy "proofs" he uses, so I suspect it could apply elsewhere!

Maybe we need to cash in on the whole Twilight thing.

"I suppose a band of teens could follow him around dressed as Nazi youth"

or Oh So Stylish Anaemic EMO's.

Picture it. Monckton followed by his loyal coterie of adoring 15 year olds in black, pallour, abrasions and angst.

Monckton's Minions.

.... Stop right there. This getting too weird. Unless you have some 15 year old daugthers out their who are passionate about saving the world (and taking the piss).

Oh, and Hitler youth isn't a good idea. Sure, he accused people of being Hitler youth, but that's because he's an immoral liar and fraud. We're better than that.

I would caution against making fun of his appearance. Monckton is very good at playing the persecuted victim. Best not give him any ammo.

My favourite tactic is focusing on his supposed cure for AIDS and the common cold.

 It might not have anything to do with climate but I think it resonates better with the general public a lot more than a fake graph.

From there I would go into the more extreme claims he has made (fake Nobel, or hitler youth). The more obviously wrong his claim the better.

Then we finish him off with his self contradictions (claiming to be the target of ad hominem while launching into an ad hominem attack, or claiming we are alarmist while saying regulating CO2 will lead to a one world government).

The comedy angle is tough, and could easily backfire. Might be best to leave that to the professionals... comedians that is. At least we should avoid making fun of the person; instead we should focus on the ridiculous things coming out of his mouth

Surely his claim to have won the Falklands War has to be in this list.

I like the idea of a "Golden ________ Award."  Maybe present him with a Nobel Prize.

I can understand where you're coming from Dan regarding attacking him rather than his statements.  However, I think that in that case we should focus on his statements on climate rather than AIDS, or other non-related topics.  I can also easily imagine him saying "See?  They don't have anything to say about climate to prove me wrong, so they attack my other views and past statements."  Actually, I would be very surprised if he admitted to such statements.

A side comment, I like the WMAP shout out in the fourth A Warm and Fuzzy Forecast (the kid's bed sheets).  Another topic I'm a bit geeky in, though not as much as this.....

 Something  I saw several  years ago  ....   whenever I've shown this as part of my day job  it always lightenens up the audience  and makes a message  .... (   google  ' the front of the boat fell off ' and see the U-tube video)  -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdV5-0ip6XY