Former PM Tony Abbott brought down by U.N. - Monckton

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was brought down because of his anti-global-warming views and would have pushed back against plans to form a world government at the Paris climate summit if still in the job.

These are the views of leading sceptic Christopher Monckton who, in an interview with Fairfax Media, also said Australian institutions such as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO were being examined by "a formidable team of scientists and lawyers" for possible fraud over manipulating their climate data.

“It's naive to assume that [Malcolm Turnbull] has not been in contact with the UN” - Lord Monckton, climate sceptic

Lord Monckton claimed fellow sceptic Ian Plimer​, now an emeritus professor of geology at the University of Melbourne, phoned Mr Abbott in 2009 as "the final persuader" to urge him to run against the then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Paris UN Climate Conference 2015:Tony Abbott was brought down by the UN, Christopher Monckton says.”

Climate change denialists and the media

Interesting piece by Robert Manne in The Monthly entitled “Lord Monckton and the Future of Australian Media” that tells about the intrigue between one of the most extreme climate change denialists, Monckton, and the Australian coal and iron ore billionaire, Gina Rinehart.

Christopher Monckton

Rinehart, now one of the wealthiest people on the globe and the devoted daughter of the Western Australian mining magnate, the late Lang Hancock, one of the most right-wing Australians of the postwar era, has bought her way into Fairfax Media (14 per cent) and television’s, Channel 10 (10 per cent).

Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University and has twice been voted Australia's leading public intellectual. He is the author of Left, Right, Left: Political Essays, 1977-2005 and Making Trouble.