You Know It Makes Sense

Glenn

An excellent example of fighting a strawman argument (that anyone who is vaguely skeptical is a greedy oil-guzzling moron) with another strawman argument (that all liberal greens are irrationally tied to hemp and windmills)... Ah, progress...

Phil

While our competitors benefit from cheap energy, the climate change levy will be the death of what remains of British industry.

James Delingpole

Glenn, you are exactly the kind of smug, self-righteous, self-satisfied, humourless prat who ought to be banned from ever commenting on articles like mine. Do you really think that I *really* think that all greens are yoghurt-weaving nutcases who imagine that deniers like me, er, cannot pass a family of sea-otters without thinking how much nicer they'd look sticky with tanker spillage? Duh. No. Maybe I should put a little health warning at the top of my pieces for people like you: "WARNING. Elements in this article may deploy humorous exaggeration to make my case." If you want articles with no straw men, humour or interest, may I suggest you go off somewhere like Prospect.

Ian C

Well said James in answer to Glenn.

Another one for future inclusion, source the chairman of Nestle on FT.com a couple of months back:

It takes 9,100 litres of water to make 1 litre of Biofuel!

As you suggest, something does not quite add up.

wonderfulforhisage

I think I'm right in saying that only ten thousand years ago the Lake District was glacial. What I want to know how did I get where I am today, looking out over a vinyard in the Chilterns, without the benefit of gaz guzzlers warming things up a bit?

And how long ago was it one could walk to Calais from Dover without recourse to the tunnel? Then what happened?

It's all so confusing.

DPEaton

Well done, James. I would only add ClimateAudit.org to your list of websites that are challenging green orthodoxy. There they have some brilliant people examining the science that gave and gives rise to all the wild speculation about imminent climatological doom.

James Delingpole

Thanks everyone. I'm really enjoying my new "insult the irritating trolls who make crap remarks" policy. Does anyone else fancy saying something annoying that I can respond to irritably? Tell you what got me going: it was reading some of the responses to Rod Liddle's total UTTER GENIUS piece the other week on the Church of England. Some of the remarks were so pettifogging and wrongheaded and lame. And I just thought, there people out there who are stupid, wrong, have no sense of humour and can't write - yet STILL presume to diss the work of their superiors.

Nancy Albert

I could not agree more, Mr. Delingpole. Where is the scientific method of hypothesis and repeatable experimental results? It cannot be done! Gaia is too big. The lemming's predictions went wrong yet they still believe, so this can only be called a new religion busy selling indulgences.

Cousin Jack

Fancy that Mr.Delingpole having a pop at that nice Glenn like that! And another thing - I reckon the tinned tuna was better when it had those tasty bits of dolphin in it, don't you?

grant watt

In Australia the Government would send you to some penal Colony for this ridiculing of the beliefs of their Fearless "Progressive" Leader Rudd who is rumoured to have ambitions? to become Sec,General of the U.N.

The threat of being sent back to Brown's Britain may silence those who agree with you.

James of Melbourne, OZ.

Thank you James, for a ray of sanity in an increasingly crazy green world.

Mark Pollock

Love it. I'm in. My response to this nonsense is that I like the modern world and don't want to live in a mud hut. Do you?

Chris

Lovely article, reading it from Australia here. Can we swap tips? When people's brows furrow and they stutter "So..are you saying..you don't 'believe' in global warming... I say:
"I've gone one better! I don't believe, that YOU believe it either! Here, I'll prove it to you. I bet that you can't, or won't, write down on a piece of paper, a single thing, that can be disproved in your lifetime and that supports 'global warming', sign it, date it and give it me."
They either won't, or when they try to construct a meaningful sentence that fits the criterion they have a lot of difficulty, at which point you ask what is their "belief" based on.
It's a soup at the end.

Fay

also from Australia -
Rudd boasts about his 'blue chip' convict heritage (both great great - wotever- grand parents did a Romeo and Juliette on a convict ship somewhere to Oz so he tells us.
He's a shocker - liar and opportunist at any cost to anybody but himself. We just want him out of the country and our pockets permanently. The UN will do - it's as useless as him.

Subject to Gaia

Reading this on Saturday evening in Australia -- thank you for the laugh I needed it after a crappy day -- I firmly believe in climate change because that's what climate's done for at least 4 billion years. Here in Australia we have a newly resurrected Court of King Cnut and all his courtiers and of course courtesans --- unfortunately the new incarnation of King Cnut like his courtiers seems to believe that mere mortals are a match for Nature while the believers in climate change laugh at the lunacy --- I think there should be some sort of compact where those who promote this baloney and spend our hard-earned to fix a problem that doesn't exist- are held to account and have the money they've thrown down the toilet re-couped from their overly generous superannuation packages be they corporate types or the political class.

Tom

I don't know what it is about global warming that entitles people with no specialist knowledge to express such strident opinions? It makes sense for James to do so - he's getting paid, and as he implies, nobody's going to publish a serious article about global warming written by an amateur, hence the knockabout tendentiousness of his piece.
When global warming began to be talked about as a serious proposition, those people who first took up the cause probably did deserve some of the characterisations Mr. Delingpole reheats for us. Reading the comments below brings home to me how far the pendulum has swung the other way, and how far those who doggedly oppose the mainstream view are composed of the lunatic fringe; their love quite untempered by rationalism.

James Delingpole

Aussies, if you keep on being as delightful this, I'm sorry, but I may have to come and live with you - and Sydney Funnel Webs, Box jelly fish, Fierce snakes, Taipans, Great Whites and Salties be damned. xx

Cousin Jack

To the Australian contributors: Mr. Howard ran a very tight ship and paid off the national debt. His reward was the Order of the Boot, and replaced by Mr. Rudd. That's politics for you.

melanie

YOU SURE ARE RIGHT ,THEY ARE PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE AND NOTHING MORE THAN A FRAUDULANT GROUP WHO ARE USING POWER TO CONTROL OUR ENERGY WITH FAKE SCIENCE ,THIS IS NOT RIGHT THAT THEY TEACH FRAUD ,THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A GIANT MADOFF .

johnRobert

of course its all lies - the environmental movement was taken over by Marxists in the eighties - ask the founder of Greenpeace if you don't believe me.
The whole purpose now is to make capitalism the devil and destroy it - replacing it with a social - caring world government - kinda like the UN is today - aaarrrggggg!!!

Shaun

And you did not even get into the illogicality of carbon credits and carbon offsetting! Did you know that all government departments in the UK should be carbon neutral by 2012? In other words, we will pay for all the energy they use and then we will pay the government for all the offsetting they have to buy to bring that those CO2 emmissions back to zero. You couldn't make it up. Public enemy number one!

Hereward

I'm from East Anglia and am looking forward to the re-flooding of the fens so I can get in some decent punt gunning.

John Mallen

Absolutely right! These greens are todays manifestation of those Victorian missionaries who rammed down the reluctant throats of the natives their version of universal truth (cosmic and sartorial).If they had not been such bully boys we would all be on safe, green, cheap nuclear energy.

Alexander

Chris:

That's a great idea. I will use it going forward. "How can you insist that Climate Change is science, not religion, if you won't use the scientific method?"

Of course, I've always know that modern environmentalism is a religion. I will respect the religious beliefs of others -- I just won't accept their forcing those views on others.

Ralph Perry Robinson

James

I'm in Wiltshire, not Dorset.
It's an MSc; I've got an MA already.
I was actually looking at energy efficiency in public buildings, not specifically Boris.
I'm not cross, just seeking after truth.

Anne

We would welcome you in Australia James where reason, humour and commonsense seem to have gone out the window.

Darren

Great article. Thinking people should also check out "Heaven & Earth" by Prof Plimer as well as lavoisier.com.au & jennifermarohasy.com.

Pete

My mate says organic icecream tastes crap without the "E" numbers. He lives near loads of windfarms and says when the bearings go duff on one of these devises they give out an irritating noise which doesn't get fixed for ages and drives those nearby mad.