James Delingpole's Blog, page 18

October 19, 2011

In praise of peer-review on Amazon

Amazon natives idiot-hunting


Some people, I know, have a very low opinion of Amazon reviews. Either they're written by friends of the author; or they're written – under a pseudonym – by enemies or bitter rivals of the author; or they're written by people who not only can't write but can't even read either: at least not in the sense of being able to absorb the nuances of a book and then comment discerningly thereon.


But I disagree. I think Amazon reviews are (generally) great, thanks largely to what you might call the "peer review" function.This means that whenever anyone writes something particularly crass or stupid, you can be fairly sure that some other doughty Amazon commenter will shoot them down in flames.


Here's a glorious example of peer review in action with my book Watermelons.


First, a review from a man named Martin Lack who kindly hopes that the book will be "a total commercial failure" based on his idea of what he thinks the book may have said, though he hasn't actually read it:


I don't need to actually read this book in order to criticise it because James has very kindly summarised its content perfectly on his blog. (So no simple dismissals, please, on the grounds that I have not read it#). Unfortunately, for anyone objective enough to investigate, every single one of the completely stupid things which he there invites readers to imagine might be true can in fact be found to be false on any number of scientifically-literate websites.


In James' amoral fantasy world, there is no cause and effect; no right and wrong. In his revisionist utopia, there is no right or left; there is only right and green. However, as someone once said, "all generalisations are wrong; including this one!" Therefore, even if environmentalism may be seen by many as a left-of-centre entity (although some scholars such as Roger Scruton and John Gray would challenge even this assumption*) it is ridiculous to suggest that all environmentalists are socialists in disguise.


All sparrows may be birds; but not all birds are sparrows! In point of fact, it is much more likely that, as the German Green Party suggested in the 1980s, "Greens are neither left nor right; they are out in front!" Therefore, no matter what Amazon may think (or people may say), I am not attacking the messenger (who undoubtedly has a perfectly good English degree from Oxford); I am attacking the message (which is totally without any legitimate foundation).


However, given that James is always trying to be funny, accepts he is incapable of reading peer-reviewed scientific literature, and admits to being ideologically prejudiced against taking environmental protection seriously (i.e. as a "libertarian conservative"), it would be a very dangerous thing indeed for anyone to mistake as serious, sensible, or objective, anything said by James Delingpole in this book. It is utterly infantile in its misconception of reality; and dangerously so. Therefore, I hope it is an absolute unmitigated commercial failure; our planet certainly deserves it to be.


Footnotes:

# A potentially-valid criticism of this review might be that I have only alluded to evidence to back up my hypothesis (rather than presenting that evidence). However, that does not mean the evidence or the websites do not exist and, in any case, as Ben Goldacre says in Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks, "You cannot reason people out of positions they did not reason themselves into" (page xii [2009 paperback edition]). Therefore, I would almost certainly be wasting my time (as if I am not doing so already) if I was to bother to elaborate further.


* See Scruton's Chapter on 'Conservatism' in Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge (2006); and

Gray's 2nd edition of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (2009)


And now, the moment of retribution at the hands of first of Octavius 1:


"I don't need to read this book in order to criticise it"…


And this is why your review means nothing.


And then, more thoroughly, from Magnumfore:


You know what's puerile, Martin? The fact that you admit that you base a scathing, irrelevant review on a paragraph-sized summary of a book and then accuse your challengers of being the same. THAT is puerile. You disregard any of his potential sources, documents, or evidence in such a dismissive wave of the hand because it's plainly obvious that you're one of those climate goons who is so locked in his own hubris pseudo-science that, at this point, reading any legitimate criticism (or any criticism whatever!) of your so-called cause raises your hackles and, much like Mr. Occidental Petroleum Al Gore himself, refuses to take in or engage in any debate on the topic.


Your position on the book based on a summary only punctuates what I've written above, placing a huge exclamation point at the end.


Want to be taken seriously? Read the book, follow the sources, check the studies, THEN come back and say it's all hogwash without a single grain of truth.


But you won't do that because you're like so many other climate goons brainwashed into thinking 0.036% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is serious business when it's been 15 times higher in human history and as high as 30% in world history…and plants and animals were still growing and we're still here.


But ignore all the conflicting evidence at your peril.





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Published on October 19, 2011 15:10

How many died in the great Blackpool earthquake of '11?

….Exactly same number of people killed in the terrible nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, funnily enough. And with just the same result: masses of manufactured green outrage; demand by a highly vocal minority of anti-capitalist activists (Eg that living argument for never sending a boy to Westminster, Huhne C) that still more extravagant precautionary measures be adopted to ensure that producing energy is even more costly and difficult than it was before. (H/T GWPF)


This is what's happening now in Blackpool with shale gas:

CONTROVERSIAL gas drilling DID cause Fylde coast earthquakes.


And now energy chiefs have sent a stark warning to shale gas company Cuadrilla Resources – stop the tremors or we will shut you down.


It comes as the company this week held urgent talks with the Department of Energy and Climate Change…


(to read more, click here)





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Published on October 19, 2011 00:56

October 17, 2011

Romney's Bad Judgement

Not that you needed another reason to prefer Cain over Romney, but this is a good one, I think: (H/T Marc Morano at Climate Depot)


The GOP front-runner for 2012 sought advice on global warming and carbon emissions from the president's current science czar — an advocate of de-developing America and population control.


Politics is said to make strange bedfellows, but no coupling in our view is more bizarre than when John Holdren, now President Obama's assistant for science and technology, once advised GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on environmental policy.


Holdren's bizarre views are best suited for an adviser to someone like, say, Pol Pot.


And if you think the Pol Pot analogy is extreme you should look into Holdren's history sometime. I did for my book Watermelons and the thought that this guy…


(to read more, click here)





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Published on October 17, 2011 04:58

October 16, 2011

Chicken Little jumps the shark


When I heard Chris Huhne's proposal that the new 80mph speed limit should apply to electric cars only, I knew it could only be a joke. No one, not even an alleged economics "expert" who had argued so wholeheartedly for the Euro a few years back, could be quite that wilfully perverse, surely?


Apparently, though it's true.


Just like the story about him comparing Baroness Warsi to Dr Goebbels for her extremely Nazi-like crime of, er, saying "No to AV" was true. And the story about him being caught on Twitter briefing against Theresa May was true. And the one about him casually trying to smear another of his cabinet colleagues Phil Hammond (in the same weekend) was true.


All this might be more amusing than it is if Huhne…


(to read more, click here)





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Published on October 16, 2011 09:51

October 13, 2011

When the world ends, will I know how to cook our cat?

 'Oh God, you realise if it gets really bad we might have to end up eating that,' I said, meaning our fat cat Runty.


The Fawn started making upset noises. She's very fond of Runty. My problem wouldn't be so much the sentimental aspect as the practical one. Just how do you go about skinning and cooking a cat, when the power's most likely to be gone and you're long since out of barbecue charcoal? Which bits are safe to eat? Does it taste like chicken?


'Don't be ridiculous. It's never going to get that bad,' she said.


'How do you know?' I said.


'Well London would need to be under siege for that to happen.'


'Not necessarily. They ate cat in France during the War. Lapin sans tête.'


'There's not going to be a war.'


'How do you know?' I said.


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Published on October 13, 2011 08:00

Australia commits suicide

 


What's that you say, Skip? They've all topped themselves?

What's that you say, Skip? They've all topped themselves?


One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse.


Take Australia, an island built on fossil fuel with an economy dependent on fossil fuel. What would be the maddest economic policy a place like that could pursue as the world tips deeper into recession? Why, to introduce a carbon tax, of course. Which, for reasons just explained above, means a tax on absobloodylutely everything. Which is exactly what Julia Gillard's Coalition (why is it that word always makes me want to reach for my Browning?) has just gone and done, obviously.


What must be particularly galling to all the…


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Published on October 13, 2011 07:47

October 11, 2011

My incredible Big-Oil-funded life

My perfect life: funded by Big Oil


As you all know by now, my Evil Climate Denialism (TM) is funded by Big Oil. That's why I don't have to waste any of my time scrabbling around doing new blog posts any more. I just lounge around quaffing MDMA-laced Cristal from 17th century Venetian glass while my harem of Estonian nubiles giggle coquettishly as they speculate excitedly on which three of them are going to play the "jeegy-jig" game with Mister James today. Then I have some foie gras. Special extra-cruel foie gras as supplied to me by the Koch Brothers ultra-lux rare breed torture farm. Because that's the kind of guy I am.


Anyway, I wanted to share with you some interesting correspondence generated by a sceptic who is much, much nicer than me called Russell Cook. I write about him in Watermelons:


Let me cite, by way of illustration, the work of a man from Phoenix, Arizona, named Russell Cook, who describes himself as "a complete nobody". One day Cook set himself the task of tracing the "funded by Big Oil" story to its source—and he discovered some interesting facts. One was that Ross Gelbspan, "Pulitzer prize-winning reporter" (as he was described by Al Gore and several others) has never won a Pulitzer Prize. Another was that the blanket smear about the alleged corruption of science under the direction of the fossil fuel industry can be traced to just one line of one memo, produced as part of a public relations campaign by the coal industry in the early 1990s with the aim of showing—not unreasonably, you might think—that the debate on AGW was anything but settled.

On this wafer-thin foundation, the environmental movement has managed to construct almost its entire propaganda edifice.


What does this tale prove? On its own, very little. Cook—a graphic artist, not a scientist or a reporter—is just another ordinary citizen who has harnessed the powers of the internet to find information which, a decade or two ago, might well have remained buried. The "funded by Big Oil" meme would have spread through endless repetition. And no one would have been in a position to question it.

But now they can. Anyone can. Out there right now are hundreds if not thousands of Russell Cooks tapping away on their keyboards, following hunches, satisfying their idle curiosity, not taking "no" for an answer, and generally living up to the motto of the (now sadly discredited: see next chap-ter) Royal Society "Nullius in Verba." Take no one's word for it.


Anyway, here's Russell in action again – this time engaging, very politely with a Warmist professor at Oxford called Myles Allen. And getting somewhere:


Prof Allen,


No doubt you are receiving both praise and harsh criticism about your Guardian article yesterday. I have a more basic question to ask regarding the disservice being done science when politicians such as Gore tell the public that criticism or questions asked about the conclusions of man-caused global warming by skeptic scientists should be ignored.


You do agree that this is a larger if not egregious disservice than Gore's attempts to equate extreme weather to AGW, do you not?


Al Gore has famously said that skeptic scientists are in the pay of fossil fuel companies. He pointed that out most notably in his movie near the end, comparing their efforts and an alleged leaked coal industry memo to older efforts by tobacco companies hiring so-called experts to sow doubt about the harm of cigarette smoking. Gore has quoted both the tobacco memo's words, "Doubt is our product" and the coal industry PR campaign memo – spelled out full screen in his movie, "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact".


Did you know you can find the Brown & Williamson tobacco memo in its full context on the internet within mere seconds of starting a search for it?  Did you know the "reposition global warming" memo cannot be found in its complete context in a single magazine or newspaper article, or book, or web site where accusers quote it for proof that skeptic scientists are corrupt and untrustworthy?


Are you aware this bit of so-called 'proof' is the singular source for that accusation, that not a shred of evidence has otherwise been found to prove skeptic scientists have received payments from fossil fuel companies accompanied by instructions to fabricate false climate assessments? Does it not trouble you that no less than IPCC Vice Chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele relied on a person who repeats this unsupportable accusation when he claimed in a 2010 Guardian  article "Attacks on climate science echo tobacco industry tactics" ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment... ) and that he called for people to ignore a prominent US skeptic scientist last month based on this same accusation?


These aren't superficial talking points I toss out, these are from my own 21+ months of research into the accusation, I wrote about van Ypersele's recent accusation relative to his ties to Greenpeace here  "Climate Science and Corruption"  http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2...  and I've detailed Gore's contradictions in his own accusation narrative here  "Smearing Skeptic Scientists: What did Gore know and when did he know it?"  http://www.climatedepot.com/a/11168/C...


As an ordinary citizen, I applaud your efforts to point out distractions which undermine the understanding of science. I have no expertise to say which side is right on AGW, thus I expect scientists to work out their contradictory observations and accurately report on what the situation actually is. If you truly strive to reach that goal, will you write another Guardian article telling how Gore does a disservice to scientists by accusing one side of corruption in the face of no evidence to prove it?


Here's Professor Allen's reply:


Dear Mr. Cook,


I personally don't feel it is particularly relevant where people's funding comes from. The accusation that sceptic scientists receive money from fossil fuel interests is just as irrelevant as the (probably more frequent, and even more laughable) accusation that mainstream climate scientists like myself only find the results we do because we are in the pay of governments who want an excuse to raise green taxes.


Myles


Now I think if I'd been Cook, I would have been a lot snarkier in my response to Prof Allen's ludicrous straw man claim. Fortunately Cook is made of politer stuff:


Prof Allen,


Indeed, what you say is true. It is entirely possible that an otherwise reprehensible scientist who is a tax cheat, animal abuser, spouse beater, and receiver of money from the Russian mafia could still conceivably write a paper that upholds a critical aspect of AGW.  We are in thorough agreement on that, I believe.


The critical problem here is that a large portion of the population has been led to believe by politicians, policymakers, and enviro-activists that (alleged) fossil fuel funding of skeptic scientists renders them completely untrustworthy. As a case in point, I asked the spokesperson of the largest electric utility corporation in New Mexico for their opinion of Fred Singer's NIPCC 2009 report in relation of their decision to suspend their membership to the US Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's skeptical viewpoints on global warming. The spokesperson replied that her company agreed with a national US news program repeating the words of three scientists from Climate scientists from NASA, Stanford University and Princeton who said the NIPCC was "fabricated nonsense."


You see the problem there? An electricity provider to several million people relied on a single media source for a literally unsupportable accusation.


To the best of my knowledge, the funding sources of AGW scientists is not the primary point of concern of skeptics, but rather that AGW is not a settled matter in the face of skeptic science assessments. Careful examination widespread AGW narratives indicates accusations about the funding of skeptics is the overriding reason used for telling the public to ignore skeptics. Besides IPCC Vice Chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele's recent repeat of this unsupportable accusation, Michael Mann said of Sherwood & Craig Idso in a 2003 ClimateGate email to a reporter:  ( http://web.archive.org/web/2010092218... )


"An objective reading of our manuscript would readily reveal that the comments you refer to are scurrilous. These comments have not been made by scientists in the peer-reviewed literature, but rather, on a website that, according to published accounts, is run by individuals sponsored by ExxonMobile corportation, hardly an objective source of information."


Again, I applaud your efforts to point out distractions which undermine the understanding of science. If you truly strive to reach that goal, will you write another Guardian article telling how Gore does a disservice to scientists by accusing one side of corruption in the face of no evidence to prove it?


Here's Professor Allen again, clearly a mite uncomfortable about the correspondence. (Hence his remarks about the cc list: I know what he means – if I were a Warmist I wouldn't want my letters going straight to Morano either. It would be like sending your children swimming with great white sharks). Still, fair play to Prof Allen for replying.


Dear Mr. Cook,


And a large portion of the population has been led to believe that climate scientists as a community massage their results for political or self-interested ends. Unfortunately, two wrongs don't make a right. I would not deny that there is legitimate social science to be done analysing the scientific process, but much of the "evidence" in this area, on both sides, seems to me to be largely anecdotal — it is not a field I work on, so I don't think I would have much to add to what has been said already.


We should probably not drag lots of busy people into an e-mail debate — apologies to the cc-list.


Regards,


Myles


Cook writes back:


Prof Allen,


I do thank you for the time and consideration you've taken to respond. You of course had the option to remain silent, as many on the AGW side have done with my direct questions in the past, so I do appreciate your responses.


With all due respect to your first sentence, I am tempted to ask what evidence you base the assertion that 'a large portion of the population' has even heard about, much less 'believes', such accusations leveled at AGW scientists. I've read extensively in opinion commentary that the rest of the world accepts AGW with the US lagging behind, having perhaps only half of the population as non-believers. Now, your statement appears to have one of two potential explanations:  'a large portion of the population' has actually heard the accusation that AGW scientists are politically or monetarily motivated and have dismissed it out-of-hand, or else the population you speak of is instead a significant minority.


You see how the situation might prompt social science questions here. If indeed a sizable portion of the population does not believe AGW scientists alter data for self-gain, what then prompted you to make such a statement? My underlying question – after having asked so many politicians, policymakers, and environmental journalists about the justification to proceed with GHG regulations in the face of apparently legitimate criticism – is why I receive literally nothing but evasive answers, combined with outright efforts to marginalize skeptic scientists.


Long story short, I've done this since 2005, with a greater frequency after 2008. To have a lead author of a GHG regulation bill in Washington state tell me he considered and rejected skeptic scientist assessments, and fail to tell me which specific ones he rejected and for what reason, is simply amazing. To have a prominent board member of a society of environmental journalists tell me the corruption of skeptic scientists has been documented by many journalists starting with Ross Gelbspan, and then fail to tell me specifically who the others were, is inexcusable. To have a reporter of an ocean acidification devastation article be unable to tell me what the overall oceans' pH level is, or another reporter refusing outright to tell me who actually quantified the 'scientific consensus', is inexplicable.


You are of course under no obligation to write another article on the Gore politicization problem that threatens to vastly undermine public opinion of AGW. I included Dr Curry and Mr Lynas in this as I've written to them before on the same topic, particularly in regard to Dr Curry's appearance on the US PBS NewsHour program, which has had IPCC scientist guests on for a combined total of 14 appearances, and not a single skeptic scientist to view his assessments. Curry and Lynas have expressed concern about the politicization of the issue, and your 9/7 Guardian article certainly implies that the AGW issue may be needlessly eroded by political twisting of weather observations.


I'd think if Al Gore takes on the appearance of having libeled/slandered skeptic scientists, you'd view it as even more critical for him to either cease and desist on that tactic, or bring out irrefutable evidence of skeptics' guilt.


Professor Allen, increasingly terse:


I repeat, two wrongs don't make a right. The whole issue of who is motivated by what is irrelevant. I don't care if the author of a paper I am reviewing is an "IPCC scientist" (whatever that is) or a "skeptic scientist" (which we all are) or has horns and a tail: I care if they have done their stats right. Myles


And Cook:


We are in agreement on that fundamental point of the irrelevancy of funding, and I trust that you do care that all scientists get their info right. This, however, is not a common ground shared by legions of loyal followers of Al Gore, who repeat in viral form that skeptic scientists should be shunned.


What I am driving at is that you opened the door by noting how Al Gore overplays an arguably smaller aspect of the issue. In presenting you with links to my own detailed articles pointing out a larger disservice Gore is doing to science with his apparently unsupportable corruption accusation, I leave it to you, as a scientist trying to pursue proper overall analysis of the global warming phenomenon, to decide whether you feel it is necessary to point out this larger problem.


Al Gore, anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan, and most recently IPCC Vice Chair van Ypersele, say skeptic scientists operate in a tobacco industry-like conspiracy with fossil fuel companies. If you yourself cannot readily find proof that such a conspiracy is actually taking place – money given in exchange for false fabricated climate assessments, how do you react this problem?


Ignore it, or describe how it is not good to make conclusive statements without supporting evidence? This seems to have been exactly what you did with Gore's extreme weather overreach, and is entirely the reason why I've written to you.


Dr Curry used a quote from someone else in her email response to you about "misinformation is being actively promoted by the fossil fuel lobbyists and their growing multitude of dupes and minions." What assurance do we have that enviro-activists, along with their 'dupes and minions' are not the ones skewing the AGW issue, considering their portrayal of skeptic scientists as crooks while oddly refusing to show their central bit of evidence – those 1991 coal industry memos made famous by Gore and Gelbspan – in their complete context?


It's the terrier-like tenaciousness of amateurs like Russell Cook which is ultimately going to win the Climate Debate. That's because, much as men like Myles Allen might be loath to admit, this debate has long since ceased to be about science. It is about politics, spin and arguments from authority. The Warmist establishment has the bluster, the money and the big institutions, that's for sure. But ultimately, these are going to be no match for the little guy with a lap top and a ruthlessly polite regard for the naked truth.

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Published on October 11, 2011 09:19

October 10, 2011

Family photos, paedophile scares and the Stasification of Britain

No doubt you're as shocked as I am by the story of the photographer in Scotland questioned by police after taking pictures of his 4-year old daughter eating ice-cream in a shopping mall:

Staff at an ice cream stall in Braehead shopping centre, near Glasgow, became suspicious when they saw Chris White taking pictures of his four-year-old daughter Hazel with his mobile phone at around 4pm on Friday afternoon.


'He [the security guard] said I had been spotted taking photos in the shopping centre which was "illegal"… and then asked me to delete the ones I had taken,' White told Amateur Photographer (AP).


When White said he had already uploaded two images to Facebook, and refused to delete them, the guard called police.

But what's more depressing is the…


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Published on October 10, 2011 20:04

October 8, 2011

Nice Mr Fry

Whenever I find myself dreaming about how awful things would be under a red/green dictatorship — increasingly often, these days — the one person who gives me a glimmer of hope that I might get out of the hell alive is Stephen Fry.


He's a leftie, of course — but, like Frank Field and Kate Hoey, he's the right kind of leftie. Even when appointed Minister for Culture in the new regime, as he inevitably would be, you just know that he…


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Published on October 08, 2011 20:59

October 7, 2011

Who funds the Climate Alarmists?

A few days ago, none of you will have noticed, the New York Times's tragically well-meaning environmental columnist Andy Revkin ran a flow chart on his blog – produced by two US academics with evidently an awful lot of time on their hands – showing the mechanisms of the EVIL CLIMATE DENIAL MACHINE (TM).


I personally was very disappointed in it. For one thing, it did not show the $10 million per day the Koch Brothers funnel directly into my account for the deliberate lies I tell on their behalf about Man Made Global Warming. For another, it did not include a picture of the splendid hooded purple velvet cloaks, nor the elaborate Blood-Diamond-encrusted cod pieces which we Deniers sport at our orgiastic convocations where we ritually sacrifice at least one polar bear cub, one snail darter and…


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Published on October 07, 2011 09:12

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