Lord Christopher Monckton doesn’t believe in global warming. And when the former British government official brought that view to campus Monday, students lined up after his presentation to press him for additional answers and to voice their own viewpoints.

Monckton decried global warming for an hour and 45 minutes in a crowd of about 40 people in the Hall of Languages Monday night.

‘Why are we talking about global warming as a problem day after day?’ Monckton asked the audience. ‘Listeners and readers deserve to be told that there have been over seven years of unremitting global cooling.’

Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow, a new student organization dedicated to promoting environmental issues, sponsored Monckton’s trip to Syracuse University.

‘I heard Lord Monckton speak a month ago at a convention in New York City and when the national headquarters of CFACT asked if we would be interested in hosting him at SU we could not have been happier,’ said Ivory Hecker, a sophomore broadcast journalism major and member of SU’s chapter of CFACT.

Monckton referenced the decreasing number of sunspots on the sun over the past few year as one reason global warming doesn’t exist. Sunspots create additional heat that radiates from the sun. Monckton said a similar cycle like this one occurs frequently.

Monckton said he believes other organizations’ graphs and statistics are corrupt and that there is no way to scientifically prove that the greenhouse effect is responsible for global warming because it would take all the computers in the world working more than 20 years to compute those numbers.

‘It will not happen,’ he said. ‘It will cause more work than it would produce good.’

Monckton said he continues to believe that natural forces are the dominating cause of global warming. He said he believes that Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet are both fine, and pictures of the arctic sea from 1980 and today look almost identical, in his eyes.

After his talk, students began questioning his presentation. They lined up and asked him one by one to further explain what he had talked about.

‘Monckton brought up a new way to look at global warming,’ said Jessica Kitzman, a freshman policy studies major. ‘It’s shocking to see how data can be manipulated to say just about anything. I’m not about to just dismiss all the evidence that has been provided in support of global warming, but it’s definitely a new perspective.’

Monckton remained fixed on his position throughout the entire talk, even as students continued to question it.

‘Don’t believe what I say,’ Monckton said, finishing the speech. ‘Go look up anything you don’t believe. I am always open to debate.’

rltoback@syr.edu

Published on April 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm