You're back with the nation. Well, controversy comes with the territory for high profile climate change, skeptic Lord Christopher Monkton. The former newspaper editor and policy adviser to Maggie Thatcher's government attracts plenty of attention for arguing that man-made climate change isn't warming the world anywhere near as fast as many scientists will tell you it is. The hereditary peers says he's happy to debate climate change with anyone, but most scientists here won't. For example, we invited Wellington climate scientist Martin Manning onto the programme today, but he declined. He said a debate with Lord Monkton would be pointless as he misrepresents more than 40 years of science. Shortly, we will talk to Professor Glenn McGregor, Director of the School of Environment, at the University of Auckland. But first, Lord Monkton joins us to discuss his views. Welcome to the nation. Thanks for being here. You do accept that there is such a thing as global warming, indeed you do accept that some of it is man-made. Why then do you campaign so vociferously against those who advocate global policies to reduce climate change or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? There are two main reasons. One, the world is not warming as fast as the usual suspects said it would. This is a matter of easily verifiable fact. Secondly, even if it were about to warm as fast as the usual suspects say it would. That means we'd have to see it warming at least three times as fast as it has been over the last 60 years. There's no physical reason why it should do that. Even if it were to do that, if you're the sort that does science by consensus, like Martin Manning, whom you've just quoted, 40 years of science and how dare he bloody, bloody, bloody block, if you do science by consensus, then the economic peer-reviewed literature, rather than the reports written for socialist governments around the world like Stern or Garno, is near unanimous in saying that it is many times cheaper to sit back, do nothing and enjoy the sunshine, and adapt in a focused way to any consequences of global warming that may occur if, when, where, and only to the extent that they may occur. Then it is to spend a single cent now on doing anything at all about it. That's the economic consensus. So you say concentrate on immeliorating the problems it causes rather than trying to stop it? It's adaptation rather than mitigation to use the language of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. The intergovernmental panel wants to justify its continued existence by saying we must mitigate no economically speaking, we most certainly mustn't. We must simply wait and adapt as and if and where, as I say, only to the extent necessary. There's actually no likelihood of any damage arising unless we get at least two Celsius of warming above where we are today. And the likelihood of that happening in 100 years is very small. So essentially you are suggesting that a massive conspiracy or con has been perpetrated on many people, in fact, of the majority of people one would say in the Western world or the developed world. And this whole thing is a fast and a fallacy. Be very careful not to use words like conspiracy or con, because otherwise the usual suspects will say, well, there you are, he's just a rabid conspiracy theorist. No. You're honest opinion, do you think it is a conspiracy? No, I know. I think there's a small element of conspiracy among the climate gait emailers. We now know they were indeed linked together. We all knew who they were doing the bad signs. But they started a cry on the bogus date to talk to other people in the city. Well, to start saying we're going to suppress data or a few other people to check it into fear with the editors of peer review, journalists to bully them not to accept results that they don't like. No, that's not right. That's what they were doing. And you can read the climate gait emails online and be as horrified as everybody who has read them. So there's an element there of what one might call conspiracy. It's small scale, but it's there. But no, I think what has happened is that governments have found it socially convenient, politically expedient and above all, wickedly, financially profitable to take advantage of this scam. And the media, of course, are profiting by saying world to end shock rather than the truth, which is very boring and doesn't sell very many newspapers, which is climate continuing, changeable, no shock. All right. What is the motivation then? And you may have hinted at some of them. What is the motivation for this misrepresentation, as you would have us believe, of the science? And I'm looking for the group that makes millions out of it or for the person that suddenly rules the world as a result of this. And I can't really find them. Well, you would need to read the September 15th, 2009 draft of the Copenhagen Treaty to see that they were indeed planning to set up a world government using the climate as an excuse. And this government was going to have powers to shut down the free market. OK, who are they? They, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Secretary-at. They drafted this treaty. It was put up online on a very obscure UN website where they hoped nobody would see it, but they could later say it's been there all the time if anybody challenged it. It failed, I'm glad to say, because we did publicise it. And when I publicised it in America, in a speech that received a million hits in its first week, and eventually two and a half million hits, the other side immediately said, well, it's just conspiracy theory. He's made it all up. But a radio presenter in Melbourne actually took the trouble of taking what I said and the draft treaty to a QC in Melbourne, who said that every word I'd said about the treaty and the world government they were planning was absolutely so with this. So, is climate change a climate change a creation of a group of people that the UN who want to have a one-world government? No. As you very fairly said at the outset, the theory that if you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, you will get some warming is, of course, correct. What has happened is that some of the usual suspects have decided to push it beyond that. And then having pushed it beyond that and having realised, I think, many of them now, that they have pushed it too far, they find it rather difficult to back off again. So, I don't think it's so much a conspiracy, as really a kind of worldwide embarrassment. Like they've gone too far, they've got it wrong, but they dare not say so because they were made to look silly. Okay. In New Zealand, we are introducing, or in the process of introducing, an emissions trading scheme, cap and trade scheme, essentially, that will include agriculture much to the dismay of many and the agriculture. And rightly so. Do you think we are ahead of the world following the world being silly in our response to our being silly? You have the European emissions trading scheme, which is now, as we speak, failing for the fourth successive time. You have one in Australia, which they're trying to bring in, and is going to bring down the government that brought it in, and probably throw the greens into the outer darkness forever, to which I would say good riddance. You are going to be among a very small group of countries in the world who are committing economic hierarchy, by introducing. Because I'm going to talk later today to the United Farmers of Wong-A-ray, and I'm going to be saying to them, there is no scientific need for any sub-scheme. There is no economic justification for it. All they're doing, if you push this through, is to shoot your own economy in the foot. Don't go there. Finally, I know that there is, if you like, an unwritten strategy now amongst those who advocate climate change policies and are active in this area, saying, let's not debate the science anymore. Let's say the scientific debate is over. The fact, perhaps, that you couldn't find anyone from the other side to debate you in New Zealand, might indicate that that is the strategy. Do you believe that in terms of public opinion and public perceptions, that scientific debate is over? Very far from it. It's gone very much the other way. After all, it was the Institute for Public Policy Research, a Marxist think tank in the UK, which in the late summer of 2006, first wrote round to all its fellow think tanks around the world, saying, come on, Chaps, the left must unite in saying that the science is settled, the debate is over, and now we must act. Within weeks, they were all saying it, and they've been saying it, like robots ever since. But the public are no longer buying. If you look at the opinion and public figures here and in Australia, the support for this notion that global warming is terrible is plummeting. That answers my question. I thank you very much indeed for your time, Lord Monkton. Enjoy the rest of your time. I'm sure, and thank you, you see God bless you, and God bless New Zealand.