20 February 2013
Release: immediate

Monckton booked for nationwide NZ speaking tour in April

Well known climate sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton will be returning to New Zealand for a nationwide tour in April.

Lord Monckton was last in NZ in August 2011, when a handful of hastily arranged functions made possible at the end of an Australian speaking tour drew large crowds to hear an alternative point of view in the climate debate.

Esther Henderson, co-founder of the Climate Realists (NZ) network, says there have been repeated requests to have Lord Monckton return and undertake a more comprehensive tour with longer lead times.

“We are delighted he has agreed to visit again and this time he will travel the length of New Zealand from Whangarei to Invercargill, speaking at sixteen different venues so people can hear for themselves what he has to say,” she said.

“It is particularly heartening to see a number of service and farming organisations facilitating meetings around the country, keen to get some balance into the debate as the messages he brings gain more currency with everyday New Zealanders.

“Lord Monckton has done extensive research over many years on both sides of the climate debate and we believe he can demonstrate clearly that global warming caused by man is minimal and will not create the chaotic events on our planet suggested by so many ‘experts’.

“As well as being extremely entertaining, his presentation is vitally important as it gives people the chance to hear the other side of the climate debate – and explore the idea that the costs and future effects being imposed on us at this moment are significant and most probably unnecessary.”

Mrs Henderson says she does expect some lively discussion in mainstream media as well as on blogs and social media.

“Lord Monckton is a controversial figure who has pushed the envelope in a number of areas to draw attention to his cause.

“A regular visitor to the annual climate conferences held throughout the world, he took the opportunity to slip into the vacant Myanmar chair at the recent Doha conference, and informed the assembled delegates that there has been no statistically significant global warming for the last 16 years – which resulted in him being banned from attending any further climate talks,” she said.

“At the end of the day, the last word will be his. He is always keen to remind us that to know which side is right, all we need to do is wait – and watch what happens.

“In the meantime, we are sure many New Zealanders will take the opportunity to hear him, and to be entertained as well as challenged in their thinking about climate change.”

Monckton’s full itinerary can be found at the Climate Realists’ website: www.climaterealists.org.nz

ENDS

Lord Christopher Monckton – backgrounder

Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is a British politician, public speaker and former newspaper editor.

Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Conservative Central Office and worked for Margaret Thatcher’s Number 10 Policy Unit through the 1980s.

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 challenging views about man-made climate change.

He has authored more than 100 papers on the climate issue for the layman (many of them published at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org). His 8000-word paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, published in Physics and Society in July 2008, shows that a doubling of CO2 concentration, expected by 2100, will probably be harmless, causeing 1 degree C (2 degrees F) of warming.

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