28 July 2011

One of the world’s best known climate change skeptics is to pay a short visit to New Zealand next week. He is Viscount Christopher Monckton who is currently completing a lecture tour of Australia.

A hereditary peer, the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is a former British politician, public speaker, newspaper editor. Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, Lord Monckton has been the head of the policy unit for the right-wing populist UK Independence Party since November 2010. He was deputy leader of the party under Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He served in Conservative Central Office and worked for Margaret Thatcher's Number 10 Policy Unit during the 1980s. He also worked for The Universe, The Sunday Telegraph, Today and Evening Standard newspapers.

Lord Monckton became known in the 1990s for his invention of the Eternity puzzle, a mathematical puzzle for which he offered a prize of one million pounds to the first person who could solve it within four years. In recent years he has come to public attention for holding skeptical views about man-made climate change, and attended United Nations climate conferences in Bali, Copenhagen and Cancun.

“We commend the Gisborne-based voluntary group, Climate Realists for arranging Lord Monckton’s first visit New Zealand, and we are glad to do what we can to help,” said Terry Dunleavy, secretary of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. “He will bring welcome balance to the stream of global warming propagandists who have been here in recent times, Stephen Schneider, David Suzuki, Tim Flannery, David Karoly, James Hansen and Kevin Trenberth. It’s been hard for our own skeptic scientist members, as prophets seemingly without honour in our own country to get air time and media space, so Lord Monckton will be able to go some way toward restoring some balance in what has been so far a one-sided debate.”

Apart from media commitments, Lord Monckton will address a lunch meeting at Auckland’s Northern Club next Thursday that sold out within two days of its announcement, and public meetings arranged in Auckland (Thursday) and Wellington (Friday) by the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ)

On Saturday, Lord Monckton will be speaking in Whangarei at a public meeting hosted by Farmers of New Zealand.

ENDS

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