Updated transcript dated Tuesday 19th July 2011

Wendy Carlisle: Last week Julia Gillard finally announced the details of the carbon tax. She's got the support of the three independents and the Greens. Barring the unforeseen, a carbon tax of $23 a tonne will come into force on July 1 next year. But that hasn't stopped the public outcry.

Speaker at rally: Many people seem to think the battle's over. It's just starting. The government is shovelling millions -- tens of millions of dollars of your money to misrepresent science, tell any lie, buy any scary headline.

Wendy Carlisle: The headline her opponents want is this one:

Speaker at rally: Axe the tax.

Wendy Carlisle: People are saying the prime minister has broken her word, and they want a new election.

Woman in crowd: We're Australian. A deal's a deal, and she went back on the deal. If we want it we'll vote for it.

Wendy Carlisle: Lord Christopher Monckton has been touring the nation for the last three weeks, attacking the science, the scientists, and the government.

Christopher Monckton: So...Julia, darling, you're next. [Applause, cheering]

Wendy Carlisle: In Sydney's Hyde Park last week, Lord Monckton addressed a crowd of 600. The contempt for the media was palpable.

Christopher Monckton: Excuse me, love, are you here working?

Reporter: That's correct, sir.

Christopher Monckton: As long as you report the truth. Look, I beg your pardon, love, you're just doing your job, OK?

Wendy Carlisle: This is Lord Monckton's second visit to Australia in the last 12 months. In the last half dozen years he's become something of a celebrity sceptic, touring the States and Canada, and here in Australia his tour is supported by a handful of powerful people and groups. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart, Andrew Bolt, the Institute of Public Affairs, and the Climate Sceptics party.

In February this year a new group emerged: the Galileo movement. Its scientific advisers are the who's who of the international climate sceptics movement. Its patron is the powerful Sydney radio personality Alan Jones. The Galileo movement is aiming to kill the carbon tax, and it's aiming to do this through attacking the science of climate change.

Christopher Monckton: Alan, I've never heard such a wonderful introduction. God bless you, and how nice to be on your program again.

Wendy Carlisle: In the last few months, Alan Jones has interviewed just about every member of the Galileo movement. Only infrequently does he tell his listeners that he is the movement's patron.

Alan Jones: It's a terrible word to use, but treason is a violation of an individual's necessary allegiance to one's nation. This behaviour borders on the treasonous. What on earth is Julia Gillard trying to do to our nation and to our economy. Well may Sydney's Daily Telegraph correctly proclaim on the front page today: 'Give us a say. Voters demand an early election.

Wendy Carlisle: Lord Christopher Monckton is a controversial figure. He was adviser to Margaret Thatcher and advocated the quarantining of people with HIV. He's got a degree in classics, and finds himself scientific adviser to the US-based climate sceptic group the Science and Public Policy Institute,

Last month Lord Monckton made news when he compared the views of the government's former climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, to fascism. The fact that he was filmed doing so, standing next to a swastika, didn't help. In Perth, when Lord Monckton was preparing to deliver the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture, academics petitioned Notre Dame University to cancel the talk. They were unsuccessful. But a number of venues, including some German clubs, decided to cancel his bookings. Lord Monckton decries this as censorship.

Christopher Monckton: Now when you get that sort of behaviour, let us remember where that sort of behaviour last happened. It happened in the 1930s in central and western Europe in a country called Germany. That kind of breaking up of meetings, silencing of opponents for prevention of free speech, that is a hallmark of -- and I am proud to use the word loud and clear -- fascism. [Cheering] And that is what your ABC now represents.

Wendy Carlisle: Lord Monckton is furious at the coverage of his tour by the ABC. But his real rage is directed at scientists. So to the bogus scientists who have produced the bogus science that invented this bogus scare I say, we are coming after you. We are going to prosecute you, and we are going to lock you up. [Cheering]

Wendy Carlisle: Lord Monckton landed in Perth three weeks ago. His first engagement was as keynote speaker at the Australian Mining Industry conference in Perth. And on the question, who bankrolled the tour, he says he doesn't know.

Wendy Carlisle: Who is funding your tour?

Christopher Monckton: Ah, that's very easy to answer: I have no idea.

Wendy Carlisle: And so who paid for your airfare out here?

Christopher Monckton: I have no idea because all of that I never ask.

Wendy Carlisle: On Background Briefing this week we're on the trail of Lord Monckton's barnstorming tour of Australia, as he attacks the science of climate change and the carbon tax. Hello, I'm Wendy Carlisle.

Lord Monckton's first visit to Australia was initiated by two Noosa retirees. They approached mining magnate Gina Rinehart for support. And according to a local Noosa paper, Gina Rinehart kicked in the speaker's fee and offered to manage ticket sales to his lectures through her Perth office. Gina Rinehart declined to be interviewed for this program, but Case Smit, the Noosa retiree who organised the first tour, did agree to an interview. He couldn't say for sure who he thought was bankrolling Lord Monckton's tour this year, but he had some idea.

Case Smit: Well bringing him out from Britain I believe was Gina Rinehart's initiative, because she had him give the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture in Fremantle last night.

Wendy Carlisle: And do you know whether she was instrumental in getting him to be the keynote speaker at the Mining Industry conference in Perth?

Case Smit: I don't know, but she's obviously a major figure in the mining industry, so it is very likely.

Wendy Carlisle: And what about the corporate sector, are they throwing in money for Lord Monckton as well?

Case Smit: Yes and no.

Wendy Carlisle: Yes and no?

Case Smit: Yes and no. Very minor. Yes.

Wendy Carlisle: Are these mining industry companies?

Case Smit: I can't say.

Wendy Carlisle: Gina Rinehart has been one of the most vocal opponents of the government's proposed super profits tax, and last year she and Andrew Forrest from Fortescue Metals famously took to the back of a ute with a loudhailer, hailing down the tax. Both were big donors to the TV campaign which eventually caused the government to back down.

Gina Rinehart is equally opposed to the carbon tax. Opening one of her new coal mines in Queensland's Bowen Basin a few weeks ago, Gina Rinehart, who has now taken a stake in the Ten Network, took aim at what she called the left-wing media.

Gina Rinehart: Now left-wing media doesn't like me directing attention to the MRRT (Mineral Resource Rent Tax) and carbon tax and why they're bad for Australia's future, and argues I've already got enough money and why should I dare to greedily advocate no MRRT and no carbon tax for my own self-benefit. Because I'll tell you something, and that is: if our costs get too high in Australia, Asia will buy elsewhere.

Wendy Carlisle: Gina Rinehart wants to kill the carbon tax, and having Lord Monckton in town saying the science of climate change is bogus certainly helps. Lord Monckton's argument that scientists are divided on the science is essential if you want to destroy public support for addressing climate change.

Christopher Monckton: There is no consensus about the one question that really matters in the debate about the science of climate, and that is how much warming are we going to get if, by the end of this century, we roughly double the amount of carbon dioxide that is now in the atmosphere.

Wendy Carlisle: It's the seeding of doubt about the science of climate change which fascinates historians of science like Professor Naomi Oreskes. She says the creation of doubt is the hallmark of those who wish to stall reform on controversial issues like climate change. Her book Merchants of Doubt explains how the tobacco industry combined forces with scientists who attested that the link between smoking and cancer was unproven.

Naomi Oreskes: And of course the strategy was in many ways rather brilliant, because much of what they said was technically true. Cancer is an extremely difficult, complicated disease. Science is complicated. Nothing in science is ever proven absolutely positively. So they didn't exactly lie most of the time. Sometimes they actually did lie but most of the time they didn't lie. In fact one industry memo even says, 'Don't lie, you don't have to.' But they sow the seeds of doubt. And they do this because they realise that most reasonable people, if they think it's proven scientifically that tobacco is hazardous, then they'll try to quite. But if they think the jury's still out, then a lot of people will say, well, you know, I kind of like smoking, and if the scientists aren't even sure anyway, why should I quit if we don't even know anyway?

Wendy Carlisle: Naomi Oreskes, who, incidentally, is a former exploration geologist with Western Mining Corporation, says the strategy of creating doubt, first between cancer and tobacco, is now being employed in this current debate on climate change.

Naomi Oreskes: And in the book then we demonstrate how the same strategy is applied -- in some cases by the exact same people -- over the course of three decades to cast doubt on the science related to a whole set of issues, including acid rain, ozone hole, and now leading up the issue of global climate change.

Wendy Carlisle: As the political uncertainty around a carbon tax mounted, the government's stocks nosedived in the polls. The Galileo Movement was launched.

Alan Jones [archival]: Launching right now at this hour, the Galileo Movement. The aim of the Galileo Movement from Australia's point of view is to stop the carbon dioxide tax for ever.

Wendy Carlisle: Jones declared himself patron of the movement. He told his listeners that they'd chosen the name Galileo because, like Galileo, they were fighting religious dogma over science. In this case, the religion of climate change.

Alan Jones [archival]: Galileo is the father of science. And Italian physicist, a mathematician, an astronomer and a philosopher. He played vital role in the scientific revolution. He almost lost his life standing publicly against authority to ensure that objective science replaced superstition, ideology, ignorance and state control.

Wendy Carlisle: The Galileo Movement's number one jersey is worn by Lord Monckton.

Hi, I'm Wendy Carlisle from the ABC.

Christopher Monckton: Oh yes, very nice to see you, yes. You're expected, absolutely. Now I've just got to deal with all the technical stuff and I'll be back in five minutes. Is that all right?

Wendy Carlisle: Yes, that'd be great.

On State of Origin's finals night he bounced on to the stage of the Wests Leagues Club in Newcastle. It wasn't the best night to host a public lecture, but that didn't stop a few hundred from turning out.

Woman from crowd: Well, I never, ever thought of it until it was all brought up from the pollies. You know what I mean? I mean years ago it was we're going to all perish because we're going to freeze to death. Now it's warming up. So where do we stand on this issue? That's the way I see it. Where's the real truth? Where's the truth?

Wendy Carlisle: As show time approached, Lord Monckton made himself available for a few quick words.

Lord Monckton, are you seeing a lot of people you know here?

Christopher Monckton: There's quite a few who came last time, and are very sweet to come again, which shows that there are gluttons for punishment everywhere. Or as one of the US presidents said, you can fool some of the people all the time.

Wendy Carlisle: And so who paid for your airfare out here?

Christopher Monckton: I have no idea, because all of that I never ask, because what I say has to be entirely free of any connection to someone having paid me to say it. And as far as expenses and so on, on a trip like this, I leave it to those who organise it. They organise it, they find the funds, or borrow them, or put their houses up to mortgage which is what happened last time.

Wendy Carlisle: Because there have been some reports that Gina Rinehart brought you out here.

Christopher Monckton: Well I think that's extremely unlikely. You know how careful most of the mining magnates who are at all prominent have to be, in this no longer particularly free country, to be seen to do any such thing. In the old days they could have done such a thing quite cheerfully and nobody would have batted an eyelid and everybody would have understood that if their workers' jobs were as directly under threat as they now are, that would have been a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But not these days. And so I very much doubt whether she had anything to do with it, and that is a question, in any case, for her and not for me.

Wendy Carlisle: Well, it's very difficult to find out who is actually backing your tour, so I thought it would be a great idea to talk to you.

Christopher Monckton: Look around you. Si monumentum requiris circumspice.

Wendy Carlisle: I'm sorry, what did you just say?

Christopher Monckton: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. It is the obituary slab in St Paul's Cathedral for Sir Christopher Wren. If you want a monument, look about you. These are the people who have paid for it. Notwithstanding the rather clumsy attempts by a group which began planning this some months ago, and I began getting wind of it, that they were going to try to bully venues into not allowing free speech in Australia.

Wendy Carlisle: I think the German clubs decided to cancel your speaking engagements because of your reference to Ross Garnaut as being a fascist.

Christopher Monckton: Is that what they've told you?

Wendy Carlisle: Well that's what's being reported in the paper. They couldn't countenance you given that you stood in front of a swastika.

Christopher Monckton: I see. And so let me just get this clear. You said that it's been reported that I compared Ross Garnaut to a fascist?

Wendy Carlisle: Correct.

Christopher Monckton: I did no such thing. I suggest you listen to the tape and think again.

Wendy Carlisle: Why did you apologise?

Christopher Monckton: I apologised because even the slightest suggestion that one of his opinions was a fascist opinion is, these days, regarded as intolerable in circles other than the particular circle to which I addressed it. And it shouldn't have gone out from there, but somehow it did. And of course, in those circumstances the only thing to do...

Wendy Carlisle: So was your apology genuine?

Christopher Monckton: It's always genuine.

Wendy Carlisle: Thank you very much. I think you've got to get up on stage.

As the crowd filed in to the Starlight Room, Jo Nova, author of a booklet called The Sceptics' Handbook, took to the stage.

Jo Nova: Welcome to the Orwellian world of climate in wonderland.

Wendy Carlisle: With a science degree from ANU, Jo Nova said the traditional way that scientific knowledge is advanced, through peer review, is broke.

Jo Nova: And we sceptics are not calling for anyone to be silenced. Let the other side speak and let the best argument win. But give us a chance to give people the other side of the story.

Wendy Carlisle: Science, she argued, should be put on trial. Knowledge should be advanced through prosecution and defence, and then the public -- or the jury -- would be free to reach their own verdict.

Jo Nova: A trial without a defence is a sham, ladies and gentlemen. We all know that business without competition is a monopoly and it's wrong. And science without debate is propaganda. Thank you. [Applause]

Wendy Carlisle: The argument was an intriguing one. Was Jo Nova really saying that the public should decide what was scientific true or untrue?

[To Jo Nova] You're saying that peer-reviewed science is broken.

Jo Nova: Yes. Which doesn't mean that all peer-reviewed science is bad, but the system is unreliable. It's not a proper audit.

Wendy Carlisle: OK, so what you're calling for is more of a public debate about science. Is that how you believe it should get sorted?

Jo Nova: Yes, absolutely, a public debate, yes. Put all the facts forward. Let the public decide. Explain them well. We need documentaries going both ways.

Wendy Carlisle: So is it a kind of like science settled in the town square?

Jo Nova: In as much as it relates to public policy, yes, absolutely. People should be aware of how uncertain it is, of how much evidence is suggesting that we don't need to worry about carbon dioxide.

Wendy Carlisle: But what I'm trying to get at is do you think that people should be able to decide the truth about science through a kind of town square debate. Is that how you think it ought to get sorted?

Jo Nova: No, I think we need much better than that. I think we need real science journalists putting both sides of the story forward, so that when there's a headline about Arctic ice being at record lows, there's also headlines about Antarctic ice being at record highs, so the public gets some -- over the years -- gets some sense of what points matter and what points don't matter.

Wendy Carlisle: Professor Naomi Oreskes says science isn't a matter of public opinion.

Naomi Oreskes: Sometimes we see them raising issues that scientists have actually already examined. Scientists know that it's rubbish but ordinary people say, 'Oh, well that's an interesting point.' So it's in their interests to take the arguments out of the scientific community and bring them in to the town square. And that is a major part of their strategy: how they keep the debate alive, how they get journalists involved, how they get journalists to quote them, because no scientist would quote them because scientists know that these arguments are by and large invalid, but ordinary folks, and many journalists, don't know that.

Wendy Carlisle: On stage at his North Sydney lecture, the Galileo movement's Malcolm Roberts was preparing to introduce Lord Monckton to the crowd, and he began with a familiar chant

Malcolm Roberts: Axe the...

Crowd Tax.

Malcolm Roberts: Love the...

Crowd: Planet.

Malcolm Roberts: Guard our...

Crowd: Freedom.

Malcolm Roberts: The next speaker generated quite a bit, hasn't he? Broncos -- cancelled. A club known for its integrity and courage, pulled the pin after they were got at. Fifty academics trying to protect who knows what? Scared. And the media: have you had a look at those academics? The ABC keep parading advocates on the TV and the radio who have been guilty of misrepresenting the science. Control. Why do people control? Underneath control there is fear. Why would you be afraid of a man who's done so much research? I'll tell you why you'd be afraid. He's got a long list of qualifications, a long list of proven successes. You can Google them and have a look.

Listen to this, though. He's respectful of other. I've watched him clean up someone absolutely in a debate in Brisbane. Entirely respectful, gracious in victory. I want to introduce to you a man, very strong in character; very strong and knowledgeable. I welcome Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

Christopher Monckton: My lords! That's me. Ladies and gentlemen. G'day! I'm back! [Applause]

Wendy Carlisle: And back he was. Lord Monckton stood in a spotlight, behind him a giant hot pink version of the British parliament's portcullis, which he says he can legitimately use because he is a member of the House of Lords

But just yesterday the House of Lords warned Lord Monckton that this assertion was false.

In a letter from Clerk of the Parliaments David Beamish, Lord Monckton was requested to cease and desist with this claim.

The letter said Lord Monckton is not and never has been a member of the House of Lords.

A self described comic and an entertainer, Lord Monckton's enormous PowerPoint of cartoons and graphs and polar bears is a giant satire on Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth.

Christopher Monckton: Well here are the polar bears we mentioned earlier, and Gore for once actually cites a scientific paper. He cites it wrong, of course, but he does cite it. And what he says is a scientific study shows for the first time they're finding polar bears that have drowned swimming long distances to find the ice. And so here is the actual map from the paper. Four dead polar bears. Oo-er. Golly gosh. Shiver, shiver. Hold the front page. And what have we got, in fact? Four dead polar bears. Did any of these polar bears, according to the paper he was quoting, die because they were trying to find the ice -- or, I should say -- farnd the arse. No. They died because there was a big storm with high winds and high waves, and they got swamped. Or, as we scientists call it, shit happens. [Crowd laughs]

So there's no basis, at any point, for Al Gore's story. It was complete fiction from start to finish.

Wendy Carlisle: The scientific paper Lord Monckton cites does not say that the polar bears drowned because of a big storm. The paper suggests that the polar bears most likely drowned because there was less sea ice for them to seek refuge on because of climate change, and that the drowned polar bears could be statistically significant. The paper goes on to say 'We further suggest that drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack-ice and/or longer open water periods continues.'

Lord Monckton is not one to let the facts stand in the way of a show.

Christopher Monckton: And here's a further evidence of this, because in those parts of the Arctic where the temperature on the left had got warmer -- in this case red means getting warmer, which is a fairly normal use of it -- then on the right the polar bear populations increased; where it got cooler, in blue, they decreased. So this appears to suggest that the polar bears quite like warmer weather. Why would that be? Because they evolved from black bears who came from the land and they are warm-blooded creatures, just like us. If the Arctic gets warmer they're just gonna love it. They're gonna have a ball. [Crowd laughs]

Wendy Carlisle: The evidence that Lord Monckton cites for polar bears having a ball in warmer weather was a report produced by Greenpeace in 2002. Trouble is, the report doesn't say what Lord Monckton says it says. It's not temperature per se that's the primary concern for polar bears, but sea ice loss. Here's a reading from that report.

Reading from 2002 Greenpeace Report: Polar bears in Hudson Bay are being impacted by climate change. As sea ice is being reduced in the area the polar bears' basis for survival is being threatened.'

Wendy Carlisle: And the show continued like this for another 50 minutes, with Lord Monckton repeatedly misconstruing the scientific evidence.

Christopher Monckton: Because Al Gore says in his movie that because of the melting of two ice sheets, Greenland and the West Antarctic, sea level is going to rise by 20 feet, imminently. But in fact the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that because of those two ice sheets the amount of contribution to sea level rise will be, over the whole of the next 100 years six centimetres, which is two and a half inches; not 610 centimetres, which is 20 feet.

So there is a hundredfold exaggeration by Al Gore. 'I'm gonna do this big, baby!'

Wendy Carlisle: On this occasion the exaggerations cut both ways. Yes, Al Gore did overstate his case, but Lord Monckton's assertion, that the UN's climate change panel says seas will only rise by six centimetres this century, is pure fiction. According to chapter five of its report on sea levels, the sea is expected to rise between 20 and 50 centimetres this century.

The Galileo Movement, which refuses to reveal who its donors are, citing privacy, claims to have a board of 'independent scientific advisers'. Amongst them David Archibald, a Perth-based geologist. Like many in the Galileo Movement David Archibald is convinced that the climate change the earth is witnessing is not caused by humans but by the sun.

David Archibald: Now what really drives climate is solar activity. And another thing I'm famous for is that I predicted that these two next solar cycles -- or the current solar cycle 24 and the next one, 25, would be a repeat of the Dalton Minimum from 1798 to 1822 -- solar cycles five and six, which were quite weak and resulted in a temperature decline in the mid latitudes of the order of two degrees centigrade, and thus the Thames freezing over in winter and all that sort of thing.

Wendy Carlisle: When you say that you're quite famous for predicting that, where are you famous for that?

David Archibald: Well, basically in the climate science community.

Wendy Carlisle: The Galileo Movement doesn't disclose that David Archibald is a resources entrepreneur with a number of oil exploration licenses in the West. He's been a CEO and director of companies Oilex and Westgold Resources, and he has a company called Backreef Oil. In 2007 David Archibald published an article in a small journal called Energy and Environment.

David Archibald: The editor of that particular edition, which is Bob Foster, who lives in Queenscliff, Victoria.

Wendy Carlisle: He was the guest editor, was he? How do you know him?

David Archibald: I've known him since the mid-80s when he was involved in BHP Petroleum.

Wendy Carlisle: David Archibald's article, called 'Solar Cycle 24', was actually commissioned by Bob Foster, one of the founding members of the Lavoisier Group, which was established to oppose the Kyoto Treaty. Amongst its founders is major Liberal donor Hugh Morgan, and Ray Evans of Western Mining Corporation, who called climate change 'the mother of all scares'. David Archibald claims his article was peer reviewed. But it's not something he's terribly worried about.

David Archibald: I wouldn't worry about peer review. Anybody can get their stuff peer-reviewed. I wouldn't actually be hung up on it, Wendy. What's the gold standard is when your research is replicated by someone else. And thankfully my research has now been replicated by three Norwegian scientists who were publishing in a physics journal with that prediction of a .9 degree temperature decline for the northern hemisphere.

Wendy Carlisle: What peer-reviewed journal is that?

David Archibald: I have no idea yet. It'll have to come out. I might email them soon and find out how things are going.

Wendy Carlisle: David Archibald is also involved in the Coal-to-Liquid Association, which aims to promote the conversion of coal to liquid fuel. Background Briefing asked David Archibald what his involvement is.

David Archibald: Um, very nascent I'm afraid, Wendy.

Wendy Carlisle: Well, can you elaborate on that, because the Coal-to-Liquid Association is registered at your personal home address.

David Archibald: That's right. Um, I believe that coal to liquids is going to be a big industry in Australia once the carbon tax is dead; that Australia's running out of oil very rapidly; we're going to be scrambling to get oil to run our farms and factories on. We have plenty of coal here which can make liquid fuels at between $80 and $100 a barrel and that's quite commercial now.

Wendy Carlisle: He doesn't see a conflict of interest.

David Archibald: What I'm driven by is trying to do the right thing by Australia, in the first instance. And secondly, it's intellectual curiosity.

Wendy Carlisle: OK, but if a carbon tax is brought in, your dream about converting coal to liquid would be affected, wouldn't it?

David Archibald: No, not really. The carbon tax won't last very long, if it is brought in, because Australia's going to face a enormous oil supply crisis.

Wendy Carlisle: David Archibald says his passion for advocating an alternative fuel in the event of an energy crisis has nothing to do with his climate scepticism.

David Archibald: Wendy, how long are you going to spend on trying to get me to admit to some personal interest, financial commercial interest beyond a purely, well, beyond the scientific enquiry that I'm involved in and the science of what I've done.

Wendy Carlisle: A few years back, David Archibald gave a speech at a Lavoisier Group conference and it made for interesting reading.

David Archibald: I'm a member of the Lavoisier Group.

Wendy Carlisle: You gave a speech at, I think, a conference a couple of years ago now and -- can I quote? -- 'My reward for this work, as it is for every member of the Lavoisier society, will be in heaven. For the forces of darkness control the science journals, government departments, public institutes and universities.'

Did you say that?

David Archibald: Yes, I did, and I'm quite proud of it, thank you. And thank you for bringing it up for your listeners.

Wendy Carlisle: His motive, he says, is truth.

David Archibald: For people on our side, there is no financial reward; we're all doing it out of love for country and love of humanity and all that sort of thing.

Wendy Carlisle: Do you believe that the 'forces of darkness' are running universities?

David Archibald: Yes, I do.

Wendy Carlisle: The 'forces of darkness' are running science journals?

David Archibald: Yes, I do.

Wendy Carlisle: Government departments?

David Archibald: Yes, I do.

Wendy Carlisle: Public institutes?

David Archibald: Yes, I do.

Wendy Carlisle: Who are the forces of darkness?

David Archibald: Those who wish a carbon-constrained economy on Australia.

[Music]

Wendy Carlisle: Amongst the other scientific advisors to the Galileo Movement is a retired Canadian academic, Professor Timothy Ball.

Alan Jones [archival]: Professor Ball is fighting to keep scientific integrity alive. Julia Gillard's government is a mouthpiece for scientific untruth. Professor Timothy Ball is on the line. Professor Ball, good morning.

Professor Timothy Ball [from archival interview]: Good morning, Alan and thanks for the opportunity...

Wendy Carlisle: During the interview, on Sydney's 2GB, Alan Jones did not disclose to his listeners that he is the patron of the Galileo Movement.

Professor Timothy Ball [from archival interview]: So that you were attacked like I was, 'Oh, you're paid by the oil companies,' and all these other things.

Wendy Carlisle: Professor Ball came to prominence after his role in the BBC's Great Global Warming Swindle. In that film and in dozens of newspaper articles, media appearances and lectures, Professor Ball asserts that he was a professor in the department of climatology at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. The only problem with that is that there is no department of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. In an interview with Background Briefing, Professor Ball disputed this.

Professor Timothy Ball: As I explained to you, that's not true! You took that off the internet. You took that off the internet.

Wendy Carlisle: No, Background Briefing received that information from the university itself. In email correspondence, which we'll post on our website, the university says, 'there is not and never has been a department of climatology'.'

Professor Timothy Ball: And they say, 'Oh, there was no climate department.' Yes there was. I had a complete lab, a separate office two floors up from the geography department on the seventh floor of the building.

Wendy Carlisle: The University of Winnipeg confirmed to Background Briefing that Professor Ball has been a professor in the geography department. Professor Ball disagrees.

Professor Timothy Ball: And then, and today, that department of climatology is not there. It was there and it folded when I left. And I took over from Professor Bell, who set it up and I helped him set it up. And I took over when he left to go to work with the, ah, State of Georgia as a climatologist.

Wendy Carlisle: Professor Timothy Ball has never published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal on the topic of human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Alan Jones [archival]: Now, I want to say to my listeners, I'm talking to one of the world's most eminent climate scientists, acknowledged as such. Do these figures mean that CO2 is nothing more than an aberration and does it mean that human beings couldn't possibly be upsetting the balance?

Professor Timothy Ball: Well, yes.

Wendy Carlisle: You're listening to Background Briefing on ABC Radio National. I'm Wendy Carlisle.

A few weeks ago, a representative of the Galileo Movement contacted Background Briefing to offer another climate sceptic for us to interview. They suggested Dr Wes Allen, a GP from the Tweed Shire who'd written a book criticising Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers for being alarmist and unreliable.

Wes Allen: I've always had a passion for truth and justice and objectivity, absolute passion for science, and I see that potentially science could be the casualty of an alarmism that if it becomes too rampant could reflect very badly, in the future, on science itself.

Wendy Carlisle: While Dr Allen doesn't necessarily dispute the science behind human-induced climate change, where he parts company is on the question of action.

Wes Allen: Well, first of all I don't have any quibble with the scientists who say that the globe is warming and that human activity has got a part to play in that. The scientists who then go on to say that we must do something, otherwise there's going to be catastrophe, they're scientists who've left science and become advocates.

Wendy Carlisle: Dr Allen references some of his criticisms of Tim Flannery to Professor Fred Singer, who's another advisor to the Galileo Movement.

Wes Allen: I don't know Fred Singer personally. I've read some of his articles and he's certainly published quite a few papers in peer-reviewed journals. He's been well respected from his scientific perspective.

Wendy Carlisle: But you would be aware, would you not, that he was one of those scientists to basically cast doubt on the link between smoking and cancer?

Wes Allen: Yes, I've read that.

Wendy Carlisle: You're a GP. That would appal you, surely.

Wes Allen: It would appal me, yes, if he'd done research that was deceptive.

Wendy Carlisle: Dr Allen says that even if Professor Singer had contrarian views on the link between cancer and smoking, that does not mean he should be dismissed on climate change.

Wes Allen: If a scientist comes out and expresses opinions that he didn't think there's a relationship, well he's entitled to that opinion. That does not mean that every bit of research that that person does has no basis or validity. And particularly it doesn't say that he has no scientific credibility in the area of climate.

Wendy Carlisle: Professor Singer didn't respond to requests for an interview.

Someone who has closely followed the career of Professor Fred Singer is Naomi Oreskes.

Naomi Oreskes: Fred Singer is the most extraordinary, he has had the most extraordinary career, because he has essentially made a profession out of doubt-mongering. I sometimes think of him as being a serial contrarian. So this is a man who has challenged the scientific evidence of the harms of second-hand smoke; in the 1990s he worked with the Philip Morris tobacco company -- and there are many, many documents that attest to this -- he denies it in public but the historical documentation is overwhelmingly... overwhelming to demonstrate that this is factually correct. He challenged the scientific evidence relating to acid rain, tried to minimise it. He cast doubt on the science related to the ozone hole.

Wendy Carlisle: In our Sunday broadcast we said Professor Fred Singer ran the Science and Public Policy Institute. That was incorrect. In fact Professor Singer founded the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which these days has switched its attention from tobacco, acid rain and the ozone hole to climate change.

Naomi Oreskes: And over the last ten years or so, he's been deeply involved in challenging the scientific data related to climate change. Again in our book we tell the story of an extremely vicious, hostile and completely unprincipled attack that he and two other scientists launched against Ben [Santer]*, who's one of the scientists that really did the critical work that demonstrates that climate change is caused by human activity, it's not natural variation; this is some of the most important scientific work of the twentieth century. Singer attacked the work; he attacked the man; he launched attacks not in the scientific literature, but in places like the Wall Street Journal. He said things that were demonstrably false and other scientists tried to refute it, showed how his claims were false. He said them again. But it doesn't stop him. He just goes on and on and on and on and on.

So given his track record of opposing science, no one argues anymore about tobacco, right? No one argues anymore about the ozone hole. In every one of these cases, we've seen that his previous position was not correct; it was not on the side of science.

Wendy Carlisle: The day Julia Gillard secured the support of the independents and the Greens for the carbon tax, Lord Monckton fronted another rally in Sydney's Hyde Park. Someone had hoisted an Australian flag and the banners read, 'No Carbon Tax'. There was the 'Ditch the Witch' image: Julia Gillard on a broomstick. The rally had been organised by a group called nocarbontax.com. The Galileo Movement's Malcolm Roberts told the crowd that the ABC was out to silence Lord Monckton.

Malcolm Roberts [sound from the rally]: Why is the ABC avoiding him? And that's your money going to spend on the ABC.

Man in crowd [sound from the rally]: Sell the bloody thing!

Malcolm Roberts [sound from the rally]: Why are they afraid? Because it's controlled and underneath control there is fear; fear that you will think.

Lord Christopher Monckton [sound from the rally]: So they thought that they could silence me by trying to pull the plug.

Wendy Carlisle: Lord Monckton said his treatment by protest groups like GetUp!, the clubs that had cancelled his appearances, and the ABC, were an attack on his free speech.

Lord Christopher Monckton [sound from the rally]: Will we let them?

Crowd [sound from the rally]: No!

Lord Christopher Monckton [sound from the rally]: Will we let them?

Crowd [sound from the rally]: No!

Lord Christopher Monckton [sound from the rally]: Will we let them?

Crowd [sound from the rally]: No! Mongrels!

Lord Christopher Monckton [sound from the rally]: What we have here is naked, left-wing, political interference in the right of somebody who is invited to your country to speak freely at various venues all round the country. Now when you get that sort of behaviour, let us remember where that sort of behaviour last happened. It happened in the 1930s in Central and Western Europe in a country called Germany. [Crowd applauds and cheers]

That kind of breaking up of meetings, silencing of opponents, for prevention of free speech, that is a hallmark of -- and I am proud to use the word loud and clear -- fascism! [Crowd applauds and cheers]

And that is what your ABC now represents. [Crowd applauds and cheers]

Let me tell you how they have treated me since I came here. First of all, you may have heard the interview with somebody who I believe is called Adam Spencer. [Crowd boos] He was not very polite, was he?

Crowd: No!

Lord Christopher Monckton: He did at least have the courtesy to apologise the following afternoon and I'm grateful for that. And yesterday, for the second time, an appalling woman called Wendy Carlisle appeared and she started asking deliberately offensive questions until in the end I said, 'Madam, if you're going to be deliberately offensive, you can go and ask your questions to somebody else. [Crowd applauds and cheers]

And on top of that, a TV crew who first of all said they were from ABC and then they said they were making a program for ABC, turned up in my hotel room to interview me. And it became clear after a bit that the interview was a spoof and I believe this is for some program called The Chaser...

Woman in the crowd [sound from the rally]: Are you from the ABC, dear?

Wendy Carlisle: Yes I am.

Woman in the crowd: Yes, I saw your ... You'll just ... from this. Yeah, enjoy.

Lord Christopher Monckton: ...and that is just four incidents in less than a week in which the ABC has shown its credentials as supporters of utilitarianism, socialism and of fascism.

[Crowd chants, 'ABC, ABC']

Wendy Carlisle: As Lord Monckton spoke, I stood in the crowd not far from the stage, my microphone held high to catch his words. My ABC ID badge was clearly visible and a young man in the crowd turned and started to point at me and mouth, 'A-B-C'. It was then that people started to deliberately push me.

Lord Christopher Monckton: ...not interested in giving people a fair go. So I do have a message for your Liberal and National coalition...

[Sound of crowd jostling and taunting Wendy Carlisle as Lord Monckton continues in the background]

Wendy Carlisle: I'm now being jostled by members of the crowd.

Man in crowd: Don't use force against her. Do not touch her! Excuse me, coercive force is the hallmark of...

Wendy Carlisle: I'm now being harassed by people in this crowd...

[Crowd applauds and cheers Lord Monckton]

Men in crowd: Leave this woman alone... Piss off!... Just leave this woman alone... She's free to stand here... She's free to be here...

Wendy Carlisle: I've actually never encountered this in a reporting job ever before.

Announcer: ...Guard our freedom! Our next speaker: come on up, Jo.

[Crowd noise, including, 'Sell the ABC', 'Ditch the witch!', and applause]

Wendy Carlisle: It was a scary few minutes and I decided to leave.

On the website of the UK Independence Party, to which Lord Monckton is deputy leader, there's a long resume outlining his colourful career. It says Lord Monckton has invented a cure for multiple sclerosis, influenza and herpes simplex. During a recent BBC documentary, Lord Monckton went further. He also claimed to have a cure for malaria.

What you're about to hear is an unedited excerpt from that documentary.

Lord Christopher Monckton [from interview]: And then, 18 months ago, I cured myself with an invention which shows much promise where curing people of everything from HIV to malaria to multiple sclerosis. I mean, quite extraordinary. It sounds barking mad when you say it like that...

Wendy Carlisle: As the last people filed out of one of Lord Monckton's lectures and workers cleared the hall, Background Briefing caught up with Lord Monckton to ask about his miracle cures.

Wendy Carlisle: I just wanted to ask Lord Monckton... One question, Lord Monckton.

Lord Christopher Monckton: Yes.

Wendy Carlisle: Um, how is your cure for HIV and malaria and MS going?

Lord Christopher Monckton: Right. No, what I've said was, though I was inaccurately reported by the BBC, that we have found a way which shows promise of treating a wide variety of infections, which may include those but until we've done clinical trials we won't be able to say exactly...

Wendy Carlisle: I've seen you on film saying that you have found a cure for HIV.

Lord Christopher Monckton: Yes, I know you have, and you didn't see what was said immediately after they cut the film. And the complete quotation was, 'Yes, we can cure these things, subject to,' and this is the bit they cut out, 'the clinical trials which will confirm the indicative results we already have on individual patients.' Now it is a very slow...

Wendy Carlisle: And what are these clinical trials?

Lord Christopher Monckton: Clinical trials are what are called...

Wendy Carlisle: I know about those.

Lord Christopher Monckton: ...double-blind, randomised and prospective. Randomised because we choose two groups who fit into certain...

Wendy Carlisle: Where can I find out information about that?

Lord Christopher Monckton: ...criteria and then at random, one group is the control sample and one group is the sample that will have the thing tried on.

Wendy Carlisle: Yes, where can I get some information about your trials?

Lord Christopher Monckton: Well, once they're published is the traditional place for that and they will be published in due...

Wendy Carlisle: Where are they being conducted?

Lord Christopher Monckton: We don't know yet. We have offers from one, two, three countries and a fourth has just come in. We will then be deciding which parts of the trial go to which countries. And we will then -- I have a very eminent team investigating in the shape of a professor at King's College, London.

We cannot claim that we can cure anything. Yes we have had some very heartening initial successes, but as far as scientific evidence is concerned those successes would merely be counted as what is known as anecdotal evidence. They are pointers to the fact that we might be onto something, but in themselves they are wholly insufficient to constitute proof of the concept.

Wendy Carlisle: Lord Monckton has a company called Resurrexi, which has over the last few years filed patents for his miracle cures with the London Patent Office. It is true, however, that one of the directors of Lord Monckton's company Resurrexi is Professor Klaus-Martin Schulte, a climate sceptic but also endocrinologist and consultant to the King's College Hospital.

Wendy Carlisle: Can you tell me who the scientists are who are working on this?

Lord Christopher Monckton: I could but I'm not going to.

Wendy Carlisle: Why is that?

Lord Christopher Monckton: Because your attitude has been unpleasantly and indeed malevolently hostile throughout and I don't want them pestered.

Wendy Carlisle: OK, thank you very much Lord Monckton, thank you for talking to Background Briefing.

Background Briefing's coordinating producer is Roi Huberman; research from Anna Whitfeld. Our executive producer this week is Joe Gelonesi. You can follow us on Twitter and leave your comments on our web page. I'm Wendy Carlisle and you're listening to ABC Radio National.

* In the audio of this program, Naomi Oreskes refers to Ben Singer. This was an error, the correct name is Ben Santer. This has been corrected in the transcript for accuracy.