James Delingpole's Blog, page 33

Homeopathy: not as bad as genocide

Last week in the Spectator I wrote a piece which I knew was going to get me into trouble. And indeed, to read some of the reaction since, you'd think I'd been advocating military intervention in support of Col Gaddafi or compulsory puppy drowning classes at primary school. Actually though, all I was doing was questioning the bizarre witch-hunt atmosphere that now surrounds the subject of homeopathy. Here's what I said:

But as a general principle, when it comes to complementary medicine my sympathies are with the Prince of Wales (unusually) and with another, more famous prince: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

For Horatio, read any number of celebrity debunkers of religion, magic, pseudoscience and superstition, from Ben Goldacre and Richard…

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How the green lobby smears its enemies

To those of us who were children between the early 1960s and and the early nineties, Johnny Ball was always something of hero. First he presented Play School, later he presented the maths entertainment series Think Of A Number. We liked Johnny. He was always smiling, always engaging. He was one of us. Then later, he went on to enjoy even greater credibility by being the dad of Radio 1 (now Radio 2) DJ Zoe Ball and therefore the father in law of DJ Norman Cook aka Fat Boy Slim.

So it saddens me greatly to read today how his career has been blighted as a result of smear campaigns over his climate change scepticism…

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Grandfather's footsteps

In the good old days, when Hackney still had a proper swimming pool, I used to do lengths every morning with an old boy called Bob. And, because I recognised him as a man of a particular generation, I used to prod him in the changing room afterwards to tell me his war stories.

But Bob only ever told me one and it was rather depressing.

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Why do I call them Eco Nazis? Because they ARE Eco Nazis

A fascinating article by Mark Musser in American Thinker on one of the pioneers of apocalyptic global warming theory. Turns out – whoulda thunk? – that he was a eugenicist and a Nazi.

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Climate scepticism: not just the new paedophilia, but the new racism and homophobia too!

Uh oh. Just how evil must I be? Not only it seems are we "climate sceptics" the equivalent of Holocaust deniers and paedophiles, but also of gay-bashers and racists. (H/T Barry Woods)

We have this from no less an authority than the Government's chief beardie-weardie science advisor Professor John Beddington.

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Are climate change deniers worse than paedophiles?

Michael Buerk made a remark on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze last week which has excited a lot of comment. (H/T Stephen Haxby)

"Not long ago, to question multiculturalism…risked being branded racist and pushed into the loathesome corner with paedophiles and climate change deniers…."

Like Bishop Hill and Archbishop Cranmer, I don't think he was being serious. As the Archbishop has noticed, Michael Buerk is far more likely to have been having another dig at the BBC's culture of political correctness.

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Why save libraries?

Tomorrow in South London I shall be joining various more-famous-than-me authors including Sarah Waters, Edmund De Waal, Julie Myerson, Stella Duffy and the world renowned Itinerant Poetry Library at a Read-In at my beloved local library which is threatened with closure.

And I expect the question on at least some of your lips is: "What the hell is someone like you doing sharing a platform with a bunch of arty-farty pinkos trying to save an institution as clapped-out and pointless as a local library? What has happened to your classical liberal principles?"

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What did our grandchildren do to deserve the Prince of Wales?

Yesterday, in that bastion of liberty and open markets the European Parliament, the Prince of Wales argued fervently for the inalienable right of our children and grandchildren to enjoy a worse standard of living than their parents.

Not, of course, that he put it quite so explicitly:

"There is, surely, no way round the fact that we have to move away from our conventional economic model of growth, based, as it is, on the production and consumption of high-carbon intensity goods.

"We need to meet the challenge of decoupling economic growth from increased consumption in such a way that both the well-being of Nature's ecology and our… (to read more, click here)

RealClimategate hits the final nail in the coffin of 'peer review'

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep

them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Climategate emails, July 8th 2004.

If you can't spot what's wrong with this email, don't worry you're in great company. Among the numerous luminaries who can't are environmental activist and filmmaker Rupert Murray, celebrity mathematician Simon Singh, celebrity Nobel Prizewinner Sir Paul Nurse and celebrity Guardian doctor Ben Goldacre to name but four. To each one of them I have tried on occasion to explain why the corruption of "peer-review" is the issue that matters above all else in the Climategate emails. But none of them, sadly, was bright enough to get it.

Sigh.

Let me have… (to read more, click here)

I thought I was having a Nobel laureate for tea. Instead, the BBC had me for lunch

Last week I was stitched up like a kipper by the BBC. Perhaps you saw the programme — a Horizon documentary called Science Under Attack. Perhaps you were even among the dozens whom it inspired to send me hate emails along the lines of, 'Ha ha. Think you know more about science than a Nobel prizewinner do you? Idiot!' Perhaps it's time I set the record straight…

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