Conference critics: Evidence denied

UK Independence Party activist Viscount Christopher Monckton claimed yesterday that it would cost $45,000 (€34,354) for every man, woman and child on the planet to deal with global warming – if it existed at all.

He showed the mesmerised press corps a series of complex mathematical tables – each topped by a coronet in a glowing halo – to “prove” it would be “36 times more expensive to act now, rather than to act later by a focused adaptation”.

Monckton was speaking at a media briefing hosted by the right-wing Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a Washington-based pressure group that denies there is any evidence of climate change and wants the UN process to be brought to an end.

Leading US climate change denier Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma appeared on video from Washington. He described himself as a “one-man truth squad” and characterised the annual UN climate conference as “a confab . . . the biggest party of the year” and said the “worst crisis [at the 2009 Copenhagen summit] was when they ran out of caviar”.