Christopher Monckton, who served as a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, argues that modern-day politicians should not fool themselves into thinking that humanity is having a big impact on climate.
Monckton, along with other high-profile global-warming skeptics, are gathered in New York this week for a conference aimed at challenging the idea that a scientific consensus exists on climate change.
Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank, the session poses a stark contrast to the near-unanimous chorus of concern expressed by top U.S. politicians and most of the scientific mainstream.
While the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore last year, this cadre of critics has formed a counter group called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, which issued a report this week arguing that recent climate change stems from natural causes.
The IPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports. The NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors, some of them not scientists, from 15 nations.
“We reached the opposite conclusion” of the IPCC, said University of Virginia professor emeritus S. Fred Singer, who edited the report. The effect of human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions, he said, is “not a cause for concern, at least not yet. If the evidence changes, I’ll change my opinion, OK?”
