Climate Science Skeptic Calls Global Warming a ‘Huge Exaggeration’

A well-known skeptic of climate change and the mainstream science supporting it told audience members at a speaking event in Kalispell that the models applied to track the rise of global temperatures have been exaggerated by agenda-driven “climate communists,” and the widely accepted notion that a warming world poses a persistent threat is a myth.

The Oct. 4 event, sponsored by Northwest Liberty News and Concerned Citizens of Northwest Montana, featured British climate science denier Christopher Monckton and drew roughly 130 audience members to the Outlaw Convention Center, including numerous Flathead County elected officials and local candidates for state office.

The speaking engagement was scheduled as part of a statewide tour to promote Monckton’s view that human-caused climate change is a scam, that the climate-science establishment is propagated by agenda-driven environmental groups and that global warming mitigation policies should be abandoned.

In a wide-ranging speech titled “Global Climate Change and BREXIT,” Monckton employed a slideshow intended to debunk the widely accepted theory that global warming is being caused by human activities, mainly by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels.

In 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body under the auspices of the United Nations, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impact, reported that scientists were 95 percent certain that global warming is human caused.

But Monckton has devised a model showing that the mainstream index is vastly over-scale in its prediction, and that a fundamental error is built into the IPCC’s climate models.

“So you don’t have to worry about the cuddly polar bear. They are going to be just fine,” Monckton said to laughter and applause. “Because what this means is that global warming will not affect us for the next 2,000 years, and if it does, it won’t have been caused by us. I therefore declare the climate scare officially over.”

Wearing a cowboy hat and bolo tie, Monckton called for the abolition of the United Nations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; urged the repeal of Agenda 21, which is the UN’s non-binding action governing sustainable development; exhorted a ban on environmental groups like Greenpeace; and trumpeted Montana’s right to secede from the United States.

He then turned the discussion to the burden of federal regulations on Montana industry and the EPA’s deleterious effects in communities like Butte, where he said the federal agency’s designation of the Berkeley Pit as a Superfund site — Monckton twice called the former open pit copper mine the “Beverley Mine” — has only exacerbated the toxicity of the reclaimed mine and thwarted the city’s economic viability.

He said cumbersome regulations have stifled not only mining operations, but also agriculture, and the argument that cattle operations produce an abundance of methane is fictitious — termites are the real culprit, he said, producing more atmospheric methane than any other source.

“Montana was the Treasure State. Now it is the bankrupt state,” he said.

“You’ve already got plenty of beef and bears in Montana; I don’t want to see any RINOs,” he added, referring to the derogatory acronym for “Republicans In Name Only.”

Monckton, who has said he served as a special advisor to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, though other advisers have countered that he was a low-level staffer, has ruffled feathers across the globe with his derisive comments about AIDS and homosexuality, and once said all victims of AIDS should be put on an island together to halt the spread of HIV.

He has likened climate change scientists to Hitler Youth, and the House of Lords took the unprecedented step of publishing a cease-and-desist letter on its website demanding that he stop claiming to be a member of the upper house.

Those attending the Oct. 4 function overwhelmingly agreed with Monckton’s theories on the exaggeration of global warming, though several audience members left early, and one woman spoke out, asking Monckton, “What exactly do you stand for?”

Carolynn Milheim, of Kalispell, who spent 20 years working on community sustainability, said she attended the speaking event because she was interested in gaining a new perspective on the BREXIT vote, of which Monckton was a major supporter.

“I just wanted some balanced input about what happened in the UK with the BREXIT vote, and this just turned into a one-way conversation about climate change denial,” Milheim said. “I like to keep an open mind, but this was a dog-and-pony show.”