Professional orator, who admits he has no academic qualification on climate science, today addressed a Perth mining conference and will tonight deliver a speech at Notre Dame University which has been sponsored by West Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
More than 50 Australian academics have signed a letter urging the university to cancel the speech on the basis that Lord Monckton ''stands for the kind of ignorance and superstition that universities have a duty to counter".
Lord Monckton was this week forced to apologise to the Gillard government's chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, for comparing him to a Nazi during a recent speech in the US.
Today he lashed out at the Australian media for failing to accurately represent his views.
After addressing the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies annual conference, he said journalists should be asking climate scientists why they were predicting a rate of warming up to five times greater than experienced over the past 60 years.
The media should also be asking how much money it would cost to mitigate global warning compared to the cost of the climate damage that may arise if no action was taken.
''If you were more curious about those questions you would find just how fascinating this whole scam that has been put together to lead people away from those questions,'' he said.
''You should start asking these questions because great damage will be done to your economy if you go down the road of a carbon tax and the MRRT. Both of these are disasters in the making and will drive Australia straight into the third world.
Lord Monckton said on his side of the climate change debate, when people "screwed up" they didn't pretend they hadn't.
His comments came amid pressure from 50 Australian academics who are calling on the University of Notre Dame to cancel his talk tonight.
Lord Monckton is being sponsored by mining magnate Gina Rinehart to deliver the Lang Hancock Lecture at the university.
But postgraduate student Natalie Latter has written to Notre Dame saying it is inappropriate for him to speak and infringes on its academic credibility.
Lord Monckton said he was not fazed by the push, but said if it only involved 50 academics then Australian academia "is in a better state than many parts of the world".
"I'm glad to see a free country where we are allowed to speak out and the university very gladly resisted the blandishments of those who say 'no you mustn't listen to this man'," he said.
"All credit to Notre Dame for saying 'no, we will hear both sides of this cause'."
Lord Monckton said academics should not be threatened by a layman like him, but by scientists who shared his view.
During his speech at the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, Lord Monckton said the cost of trying to reduce the effects of global warming far outweighed the cost of inaction.
He said the carbon tax would also put Australian companies at a severe disadvantage in competing with China.
No comments:
Post a Comment