



Climate sceptic clouds the weather issue


Adam Morton

Lord Christopher Monckton in Melbourne.

Lord Christopher Monckton in Melbourne. Photo: Justin McManus

A NASA satellite that would have measured atmospheric carbon dioxide with unprecedented accuracy fell into the Indian Ocean in February last year.

NASA said the crash was ''extremely disappointing''. Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, dubbed the ''high priest of climate sceptics'', doubts the space agency meant it.

''Not greatly to my surprise - indeed I predicted it - the satellite crashed on take-off because the last thing they want is real world hard data,'' he told a climate sceptics' lunch in South Yarra yesterday.

NASA understood that getting the satellite into orbit would have demonstrated ''the whole darn thing'' - climate-change science - ''is nonsense''.


He said he was the first to explain the theory of global warming on British television in the late 1980s; that the United Nations wanted to use climate change policy to create a world government; that today's environmentalists were just yesterday's communists in different clothing.

His biggest laugh at the first of his two Melbourne speeches came when he said describing environmentalists as ''green'' was a misnomer. ''I tend to call them the traffic-light tendency - greens too yellow to admit they're really red.''

His interests stretch beyond climate change. He makes the extraordinary claim, one that he admits sounds ''bonkers'', that he has also manufactured a cure to a long-term illness that attacked his endocrine system and patented the cure in conjunction with a British surgeon.

Though stressing it was in its early stages, he said the drug had had positive results treating HIV and multiple sclerosis. ''It also has been used to cure cases of colds, flu,'' he said.

Lord Monckton's stump speech is built around attacks on the science underpinning man-made climate change and the scientists and those that believe them. Though not a climate scientist, he said he had uncovered flaws through his understanding of mathematics - ''the language of science''.

He described government attempts to tackle climate change as ''a plot by the rich against the poor'' that would ''kill 5 billion, 6 billion people''.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was guilty of ''systematically telling lies'' and exaggerating by up to 15 times the global warming that was likely by 2100.

Scientists associated with the UN panel dismiss his claims. Even Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, probably Federal Parliament's most prominent climate sceptic, has described Lord Monckton as being on ''the fringe''.


Yesterday he drew about 100 people -mostly retirees - to his lunch-time speech and an estimated 1000 to an evening address at the Sofitel.

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