James Delingpole is full of sheet

Banner to my old ‘James Delingpile’ blog

Hi folks. Sorry for the distinct Lack of blog posts over the last 12 months (it’s a long story I will not bore you with). James Delingpole is the reason that I started blogging four years ago. (If this is news to you, please see Background.) I have therefore been drawn out of blogging hibernation by the fact that James’ name features on the winning exhibit of this year’s Anglia Ruskin Sustainability Art Prize. The award-winning piece, by third year BA (Hons) Fine Art student Ian Wolter, is a supposed memorial inscribed with the names of a (hopefully) dying breed of individuals who – entirely illegitimately – claim to be climate change ‘sceptics’. That is to say, they claim to be ‘sceptical’ about the fact that humans are the primary cause of post-Industrial climate change. Thus, I say “entirely illegitimately” because, as I have often said before, true ‘scepticism’ is the foundation of modern science: It is the reason modernity emerged from the mysticism of the Earth-centred Universe wherein the Roman Catholic Church attempted to hold back the progress of scientific enquiry. True scepticism is the willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads you. This is in stark contrast with supposed climate change ‘sceptics’ who choose to believe in scientific and/or political conspiracy theories – and reject all the evidence that conflicts with their ideological prejudices. The prize-winning artwork includes the names of many of those that featured in my MA dissertation and my book – and who have featured on this blog (see ‘Peddlers of Doubt – monkeys or organ grinders’ (20 Feb 2012) and the posts that followed it). Whereas the third Viscount – and former Lord – Christopher Monckton of Brenchley has described the artwork as a “death threat” , it is simply an optimistic assertion that the days of pseudo scepticism are numbered… As, indeed, was a recent post on the Yale [Unversity] Climate Connections website – entitled ‘Climate Warnings: Heard, but not Listened to’ (subtitled “With all that climate scientists have cautioned us about over the past three decades, we’ve forfeited all rights to say ‘nobody saw this coming'”), which began as follows:

Twenty-seven years ago, when the world briefly awoke to the threats of global warming and tropical deforestation, scientists could only speculate on what changes might come in the future. Now, one need only look and observe.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil

The trouble is, of course, that these supposed sceptics refuse to accept the validity of any evidence that conflicts with what they want to believe (i.e. that humans are not primarily responsible for ongoing climate disruption): They are like the ‘Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil’ monkeys. The really crazy thing in all of this – and the primary reason for this blog post – is the length James Delingpole has gone to defend the self-confessed ideological basis of his rejection of the fact that climate change is an inevitable consequence of pumping 300 million years-worth off carbon into the atmosphere in about 300 years… I say James Delingpole is “full of sheet” because of the two full pages that the Daily Mail newspaper allowed to cover with his Watermelon conspiracy theory – that dismisses all those who assert that human-caused climate change is a reality that must be faced as “climate zealots”. Indeed, rather than accepting that the majority of relevantly-qualified scientists might actually be right, he prefers to dismiss them all as part of…

“…[a] powerful climate alarmist establishment — which includes everyone from the UN, Nasa and the Royal Society to the BBC and The Guardian [newspaper]…”

So, as I said, James is a self-confessed conspiracy theorist and – since he also admits to being completely incapable of – and uninterested in – assessing science for himself, I am not going to waste any more time refuting his cognitive dissonance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0

Advertisement