James Delingpole

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*[http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/ Delingpole's blog]
 
*[http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/ Delingpole's blog]
 
*[http://theclimatescum.blogspot.com/2010/06/ode-to-james-delingpole.html Ode to James Delingpole]
 
*[http://theclimatescum.blogspot.com/2010/06/ode-to-james-delingpole.html Ode to James Delingpole]
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*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8549674.stm <s>Moonbat</s> Monbiot vs. Delingpole]
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*[http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/delingpole-pwned-by-sir-paul-nurse-but.html Delingpole pwned by Sir Paul Nurse, but can the media convey science?]
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*[http://sciblogs.co.nz/hot-topic/tag/delingpole/ Delingpole category at Hot Topic]
  
 
== Footnotes ==
 
== Footnotes ==

Revision as of 18:52, 20 September 2011

James Delingpole is a right-wing British novelist and blogger. He identifies himself as "libertarian", which in his case translates as free market and anti-science.

He likes to describe himself as "writer". He eschews the more accurate term "blogger", presumably because too many people associate the term with "ignorant tosser with big opinions and no knowledge", which is an uncannily accurate description in Delingpole's case.

Delingpole has appeared on Alex Jones' programme,[1] suggesting a willingness to accept paranoid and conspiratorial views of government. Subsequent delusional blogs - which he presumably views as "satire" - only reinforce this suspicion.[2]

Contents

Spectator

Delingpole has a fortnightly column in the Spectator magazine entitled You Know It Makes Sense, where he writes about current events, global warming, and himself. He also has a television review column in the same magazine, which he uses to write about himself and, if there is one on, documentaries about the Second World War. At one time he wrote another column for the Spectator entitled War Life, where he would interview an old ex-soldier and then write 800 words about himself; however, only a handful of editions were published before this column was dropped.

In February 2011, Delingpole wrote in the Spectator about his own positive experience with homeopathy, noting the contradiction between the remedies' efficacy in his own case and the admitted seeming illogicality of the 'science' behind it.

An inveterate self-googler, Delingpole will probably find this page eventually and, if there is sufficient abuse here at that point, complain and/or write a column about it.

Telegraph

He has a popular blog on the Daily Telegraph. He adopts an extremist libertarian approach to just about everything. He tends to focus on climate change, various other anti-environmental subjects (DDT, for example), anything against the European Union and anything in favour of an untrammelled free market. He occasionally adds more personal posts such as his opinion on the closure of public libraries. Although in favour of public libraries in principle, they are clearly against the principles of the free market, so they can be closed.

Since most sensible people do not agree with his views, he frequently refers to non-sensible people to back him up. Thus, scientists are regarded as unreliable, while denier blogs such as Watts Up With That are praised as the future of advancement.

His writing style is racy, readable and incendiary. Combined with his list of accepted libertarian dogma and conspiracy theories, it seems he has looked at the lessons given by Glenn Beck el al and learned. Assuming he is serious, he is either madly deluded or has seen the money to be had from the stupid mines and wants some of it for himself.

Unlike the proverbial broken clock, Delingpole appears to be wrong on anything he turns his attention to. At first sight, this would appear to be of great value in predicting the correctness of any given subject; however, browsing through the archive of his blogs shows that his wrongness is frequently so bizarre as to be unintelligible.

BBC Horizon

Horizon is the flagship science programme of the BBC. In 2011, they aired a programme, "Science Under Attack". Understandably, they invited Delingpole as a representative of the anti-science faction. Delingpole, who doesn't know that he doesn't know anything about science - and presumably saw this as his ticket to becoming general spokesbeing on all things "sceptical" - readily accepted.

On the actual programme itself, when he was pitched against an actual Nobel Prize winner, Professor Sir Paul Nurse, he came off second best.[3] He said that "it is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers." Fair enough - it's not my job anymore either. However, he admits that he doesn't "have the scientific expertise" to deal with the contents of the peer reviewed literature. Instead, he sees himself as an "interpreter of interpretations" when spreading ignorant bullshit about subjects that he doesn't understand and can't be bothered to find out about. He has since decided that peer review is nonsense anyway.[4]

Amusingly, he then whined on his blog at great length about being "stitched up".

Conspiracy on global warming

It is standard fare for climate change deniers to blame consensus on a conspiracy. To his credit, Delingpole has at least looked around enough to see who is behind this conspiracy. In his own words:[5]

"Heads are going to roll for this, they’ll have to. But however many heads do roll it won’t be enough. Always remember this: the Warmist faith so fervently held and promulgated by the Met Office is exactly the same faith so passionately, unswervingly followed by David Cameron, Chris Huhne, Greg Barker, the Coalition's energy spokesman in the Lords Lord Marland, and all but five members of the last parliament. And also by the BBC, the Prince of Wales, almost every national newspaper, the European Union, the Royal Society, the New York Times, CNBC, the Obama administration, the Australian and New Zealand governments, your children's schools, our major universities, our minor universities, the University of East Anglia, your local council...[his ellipsis]"

Seemingly everybody in the world except Delingpole (including Wikipedia).[6] This sort of ranting insanity is actually typical of his output.

Not one for giving up on flogging tired tropes until they're beaten to a pulp, Delingpole decided to write a book called Watermelons.[7]

See also

External links


Footnotes

  1. James Delingpole on Alex Jones Tv (part 1 of 5), video on the official Alex Jones YouTube channel
  2. Delingpole's Telegraph blog
  3. Video snippet from the Horizon programme
  4. RealClimateGate Hits the Final Nail in the Coffin of Peer Review He included Scientific American in his list of "peer-reviewed journals". This is the lulz highlight in the article. The rest of the article is generally also wrong, but in a tediously stupid fashion.
  5. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069327/climate-change-there-just-arent-enough-bullets/
  6. Climategate: The Corruption of Wikipedia
  7. Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors
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