The Acolyte Rizla

This from Wikipedia:

"He is the son and heir of Viscount Ridley, whose family estate is Blagdon Hall, near Cramlington, Northumberland. Ridley is married to the neuroscientist Anya Hurlbert and lives in northern England; he has a son and a daughter.[2] He is a great grandson of Sir Edwin Lutyens".

I cannot help what Monkton calls himself, he is popularly known as "Lord Monkton", though I do believe there's been some delicious controversy over that.

But onto your charge:
"these facts are irrelevant, and by raising them you have committed an ad hominem fallacy: arguments stand or fall on their own merits, not the titles of those advancing said arguments".

These facts are not irrelevant, nor ad hominem falacy. In the context of my post they are vitally important. I was accusing Ridley of monumental confirmation bias, vested in the fact that his "optimism" and "scepticism" just happen to serve his considerable material interests in life.
Ridley happens also to be an economist, whom I accuse above of being a neoliberal; this from the wiki link:
"In every age and at every time there have been people who say we need more regulation, more government. Sometimes, they say we need it to protect exchange from corruption, to set the standards and police the rules, in which case they have a point, though often they exaggerate it...
... The dangerous idea we all need to learn is that the more we limit the growth of government, the better off we will all be."

He also presided over the failure of Northern Rock, wherein his confirmation bias kept him oblivious from that too. Read the whole exchange: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley

Apart from being an aristocrat, Ridley, like his friend Dawkinns, is a neoliberal rationalist.

I would be delighted if you or anyone took issue with the substance of my post--or do you have a bias?

And yet, and yet...
The arctic sea ice is melting, the glaciers are shrinking, major weather events are more common and so on.
It may be a natural occurrence come back again, but then again it may not. The point that we will probably not reduce our reliance on carbon-based energy, and hence our descendants will be able to answer this question, is a good one.
It's also a scary one.
Sourcing this carbon is proving to be a dirty business, and it grows in dirtiness as the carbon gets harder to source. Do we really think that oil spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico have no long term effects?
And this coal-seam gas extraction with its very real danger to our short and long term water supply? How short sighted is that?
There are too many of us on this one planet to turn off the lights.
Perhaps the best outcome from this climate debate is that we look carefully at how we source the power we all use, and that we all want, and need, to keep on using.

Squeers
Since you disclaim rationality as an intellectual method - it's just an ideological tool of those bourgeois running dogs - how could anyone prove or disprove your allegation of confirmation bias, or anything for that matter?

But thanks for so candidly exhibiting the method and standard of argumentation that underlies policy action on global warming.

If only government had control of everything, then what a paradise of environmental sustainability we would live in, eh?

Talking of confirmation bias....George Monbiot asserts that Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist" is telling the rich and powerful what they want to hear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/18/matt-ridley-rational-optimist-errors

Squeers,

"He is the son and heir of Viscount Ridley"

Exactly: he is not Viscount Ridley himself until the current Viscount Ridley (his father) shuffles off the mortal coil. This really isn't rocket science, although I can see why you'd struggle with it*.

And no, you cannot help what Viscount Monckton calls himself. But you can help what you call Viscount Monckton, can't you?

But their peerages can only be considered relevant, and your comments non-fallacious, if one can demonstrate a logical connection betwixt their peerages and their ability to formulate sound scientific arguments; i.e. if your argument was of this form:

(1) Hereditary peers are incapable of formulating sound scientific arguments.
(2) Dr. Matt Ridley is a hereditary peer.

Therefore: Dr. Matt Ridley is incapable of formulating sound scientific arguments.

Which is a rubbish argument: both the premises are false. Being granted a peerage does not somehow render folk incapable of formulating sound scientific arguments, or poor old William Thompson would have had a very rough time of it when he was made Lord Kelvin. And as I've pointed out, Dr. Ridley doesn't get even get the title until his old man is finished with it.

*Because you're not very bright.

Strictly speaking, if he hasn't inherited, he's not an heir, he's an heir apparent.

A very important point in the global warming argument apparently.