Skeptic

Over the past two weeks, we have been attending informative events on many different facets of climate change. Thursday, I attended a session that was like no other. The event was a press conference with Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley. Lord Monckton is one of the world's most well known skeptics of climate change - specifically doubting the correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature change. Monckton sees climate change as something that would only need to be dealt with if something significant happened in the future, but he thinks that nothing needs to be done now to prevent disasters from happening. At the press conference, Monckton expressed his belief that the scientific statistics presented by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) were completely false. He pointed out "false" predictions on temperature increase in the world in an attempt to support his claims. One memorable moment from the press conference was when Monckton described how bad wind turbines are for the environment. He said that for the energy wind turbines are saving, they are actually destroying more valuable things. He said that wind turbines were killing birds left and right and would eventually wipe out great majorities of them. He described this as a "true environmental catastrophe".

Later on Thursday, we found out that Monckton had been removed from COP18. The UNFCCC said, "Lord Monckton has been debadged and escorted out of the COP18 venue for impersonating a Party Member and violating the UNFCCC code of conduct".

I, for one, was pleased that I was able to see someone that possessed such a high degree of skepticism. Our delegation as a whole did not believe what Monckton said but, nonetheless, he gave us an experience at COP18 that reminds us of the diverse range of opinions that exist regarding climate change.

Monckton at the press conference.