James Delingpole's Blog, page 20

Gore fakes 'proof' of Man Made Global Warming shock

Watts Up With That has achieved a truly astonishing scoop. It seems that the world-renowned climatological expert Al Gore may have faked a "high school physics" experiment "proving" that Man Made Global Warming is fact, not fantasy.

Oh all right, I'll turn off the sarcasm.

What I think is most interesting is not so much that Gore has been caught out telling porkie pies, nor that the TV crew faked every last detail of the experiment. Faking it is what TV does all the time, I'm afraid. As for Al Gore and extravagant untruths well, it's scorpions, frogs and rivers, is it not? No, what's so thoroughly cherishable about this story is the forensic attention to detail which Anthony Watts has brought to…

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Killing Ugandans to save the planet

I've been urged by many readers to report on this disgraceful story: (H/T Tom Nelson and others)

KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company's proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a "peaceful" and "voluntary" manner.

People here remember it quite differently.

"I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside," said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. "The houses were being burnt down."

Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.

…

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a…

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Why aren't there more rewards for being right?

A Conservative friend of mine has a favorite exasperated phrase for our political class: "There just aren't enough bullets." He doesn't mean it literally. Like me – more or less – he's a peace and love kind of guy. What he's expressing is frustration that the fools in power who make mistakes which impact on all our lives never seem to pay any real price for messing things up.

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Meet Finland's answer to Vaclav Klaus

'Finland, Finland, Finland — the country where I want to be. Po-ny trek-king or camp-ing. Or simply watching TV.' But Monty Python got it wrong. Finland is more than just a cold, comedic nowheresville near to Russia. Not only is it the land of Nokia, bear pâté, the Moomintroll, and one of the few countries in the eurozone still doing business (one of only seven with an AAA credit rating) — but it may also save the world from the approaching euro armageddon.

For this last, we must thank an implausible hero named Timo Soini: implacable Eurosceptic, leader of Finland's fastest-growing political party (the True Finns) and a diehard fan of Millwall Football Club. We meet in Eastbourne, shortly after he has given a rapturously received address to the Ukip conference.

Here are some of the lines that so delighted the punters.

'You are so lucky to have the pound. You are so lucky — keep the pound!'

On the illegality of the bailouts.

'This crisis has turned us into criminals. Who will respect politicians anymore after this? Who will trust the law if the law is not obeyed by us? We should be governed by the rule of law and by the members of the parliaments who we have ourselves chosen.

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How to behave

'I don't suppose the war will leave any of us alone by the time it's done,' prophesied one of the characters in the new series of Downton Abbey. Oh, dear, I'm sure she's right. So I wonder which will be the character who comes back with shellshock, which one with no legs, and which one a hero.

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How the BBC fell for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within

When you mention to a Muslim or Hindu that the year is 2011, do you ever feel a twinge of guilt about your closet religious chauvinism? When you watch the old Raquel Welch film One Million Years BC, do you blushingly avert your gaze from the title sequence? When you catch your children reading 2000AD, do you furiously insist that they read something less offensive, such as The Beano or The Dandy, instead?

Well, the BBC thinks you should and it is taking action on your behalf.

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Global Warming: the Guilty Men

I don't always agree with Peter Oborne, but I think his diatribe (written with Frances Weaver) against the Guilty Men responsible for trying to drag us into the Great Euro Swindle may be the most brilliant piece of sustained, righteous invective I've read all year.

Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons. They foresaw with lucid, prophetic accuracy exactly how and why the euro would bring with it financial devastation and social collapse.

You can download a longer version here from the Centre For Policy Studies.

But possibly even more brilliant than Oborne'…

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20 Reasons Why Britain is Great

AS a new campaign begins to promote the UK… 20 reasons why Britain is Great:

Our weather

No, not the weather itself, obviously. Our weather's rubbish. But it also happens to be one of the main things that has made us great. Its changeability has made us adaptable, its cold misery has made us stoical, its remarkable ability to confound all forecasts has given us a wonderful sense of humour…

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Watermelons v the Shale Gas Miracle

God knows we could all do with some good news right now. And as it happens, from Oop North near Blackpool this week, we had good news in spades.

Sure, it was known Britain was sitting on some pretty sizeable shale gas deposits. What hadn't been announced before though, was just how sizeable.

An area in northwest England may contain 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, putting it in the same league as some of the vast shale-gas plays that have transformed the U.S. energy industry.

The figure for the area near Blackpool, released Wednesday by Cuadrilla Resources, a small oil-and-gas company with operations in England's Bowland Shale, highlights the U.K.'s emerging position as a new frontier for unconventional gas exploration.

I said "good news" but that seriously understates the case. It may be the…

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Al Gore's five loaves and two fishes

Not content with having invented the internet, the great Climate Science communicator Al Gore appears to have developed still more miraculous skills of late: the ability to turn 17,000 into 8.6 million – just like that.

The figures refer to the number of "views" for Gore's special "24 Hours Of ManBearPig" which this column helped celebrate the other day. Gore claims that as many as 8.6 million flocked to his thrilling festival of climate fear; but a nasty cruel man called Charles the Moderator at Watts Up With That? has "done the math" and reckons the figure is probably more like 17,000. And that, he believes, is a generous estimate. (H/T John from CA).

So whom are we to trust? An evil climate denying website run by evil climate deniers? Or a loving family man who has selflessly made…

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