Crowds queue at The J to hear Lord Monckton's views on climate change.

IT WAS the day the Climate Change Sceptics Travelling Show hit town.

Eagerly awaited in the enclave of Noosa from whence the show’s Australian tour was concocted, the event drew nearly 600 people to The J, a theatre with a legal capacity of 380.

The venue may have been too small, but a theatre was nevertheless appropriate for what was to follow.

The star, minor British peer Lord Monckton, a former economic advisor to former British PM Margaret Thatcher, whose canny political nous has cannon-balled him to the forefront of the global climate change denial movement at astonishing speed, showed his expert crowd-reading ability from the start by holding up the event proper in order to address more than 150 disappointed late-comers who huddled in the theatre car park.

At first glance, the overall audience appeared to consist primarily of well-heeled self-funded over-50s, leading a cynic to wonder more whether their presence was less out of concern about one-world-government conspiracy theories than the future price of blue-chip resource stocks.

At any length, it was clear they came not to bury the good lord but to praise him.

And whatever else one might say about this extraordinary man, he knows how to put on a show or, perhaps, that should be a rally.

For undoubtedly, Lord Monckton is as aware as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that climate change is far more about politics than it is about science.

And Lord Monckton’s use of graphs, obscure references mixed with funny and occasionally snide comments on all the usual bogeymen of the so-called left wing showed that, other than the venue and the budget, the tools of his trade are little different from those former US vice-president-turned climate change guru Al Gore used in his doco-movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Neither side in this debate can find easy traction in trying to explain the scientific merits of their arguments to a mainstream audience uneducated in that discipline, so it is inevitable people will turn to their political preferences in their quest for assurances.

There was the almost-obligatory reference to the mainstream media which, in his view, refuse to report “the truth”, for a reason not readily explained.

His reference to an article published “by a Marxist news paper in the UK called the Guardian” raised an eyebrow or two, for example.

And some of the audience were left scratching their heads over a reference to some mythical creatures called “commissars, as the Germans would call them, able to make laws which neither the UK Parliament nor the European Parliament can challenge”.

He performed an indifferent Al Gore accent and his caricature of an Indian was bordering on racist.

The man was rapturously received, however, and clearly enjoyed his deified status among the mainly converted in the audience, although whether in the long-term he will prove truly to be a climate change denial messiah rather than just a very naughty boy remains to be seen.

The only “snake oil” in the show was introduced indirectly by a post-speech questioner, querying Lord Monckton on his directorship of an obscure pharmaceutical company.

The company claims it is close to having the cure to two-thirds of all diseases and had already overcome a goodly number.

Lord Monckton, who said he had suffered from Graves’ disease for nearly 20 years – hence his low public profile – until treated by the company’s medicines, said it had already cured three or four people of multiple sclerosis, “one inside six hours”.

Tellingly, there were no current serving politicians in the audience, although one former National Party identity was among the throng.

Audience members later said the event had been informative.

“He makes a lot of sense in his arguments," said one Noosa woman.

“He’s very knowledgeable and not afraid to back up his arguments with fact.”

One said people should be aware that “a lot of the information said to us is not necessarily based in scientific fact, but if it teaches people to question what they are hearing, that’s all good.”

“There’s a lot of information not being given out,” another said. “The media is being very selective about it.

“There is more information on the internet because the media are not reporting it all.”

Another said the debate was “falling into the hands of people who want to introduce a tax.

“Most people don’t realise that introducing an ETS won’t make the slightest difference to climate change.

“And there will be a huge human cost to reducing the use of fossil fuels.”