Lord Monckton Visits MD

Environmental summit presenters discredit PlanMaryland

The message coming from presenters at the Carroll County Board of Commissioners' environmental summit was clear: the state's proposed growth doctrine, PlanMaryland, is very, very wrong.

The summit, which was held Monday at the Pikesville Hilton, featured five presenters who disputed the environmental and economic information in the plan. The speakers covered a wide range of topics, including global warming, the impact of mass transit, septic systems, the Chesapeake Bay and compact development templates.

PlanMaryland, developed by the Maryland Department of Planning, provides a framework that brings the state and local jurisdictions together over which areas are best for growth, preservation or other specific purposes, according to MDP Secretary Richard Hall. The plan includes references to global warming and the impact humans have in changing the climate.

Lord Christopher Monckton, who has previously served as the science policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, started the summit with a presentation breaking down the economic and environmental consequences associated with PlanMaryland.

Heavy with statistics and scientific equations, Monckton's presentation provided information demonstrating the extremely high costs of implementing all proposals in the plan. Monckton concluded that it would be 1,844 times more expensive for the state to make global warming go away than it would be to "sit back and enjoy the sunshine."

A large portion of Monckton's presentation focused on rebutting environmental premises in PlanMaryland. Those premises included rising sea levels, worsening coastal storms, temperature change, changing precipitation patterns and increasing temperatures. Monckton described the plan as "ludicrous" and "crazy."

For those not familiar with him, Lord Monckton is an English Lord well known in the global warming controversy as a strong proponent of the idea that global warming as a human problem is, well, not.  That warming is largely natural, largely beneficial, and not worth the effort to try to choke by CO2 to prevent.  He is a tough debater, and well schooled in data and its uses (and abuses no doubt).  An example of his taking on some poor advocate on the street: