Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
9 Experts as ideologues
James Delingpole
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the
traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been
expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and
have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific
equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
—C.P. Snow
1
Whenever someone wants to demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that an evil,
climate-change-denying, kitten-strangling, Big-Oil-funded ignoramus like James
Delingpole has nothing useful whatsoever to contribute to the debate on global warming,
what they usually ask is this: what are his scientific qualifications?
Well I'll come clean now and admit that mine are close to zero. Sure, I did once grow
copper sulphate crystals in a chemistry lesson; yes, I believe I may once have dissected a
frog;granted,IdoactuallypossessagradeBinPhysicsOlevel.Butmyuniversityeducation
was in the arts not the sciences. I have an MA in English Language and Literature from
Oxford, which many of the trolls who lurk beneath my climate change blogs seem to think
is damning evidence of my unutterable stupidity.
And perhaps they're right. One of the most disturbing things I've noticed during my
years in the Climate Wars trenches is the quite terrifying correlation between possession of
an English Literature degree and off-the-scale ignorance about the environment.
Take, for example, Roger Harrabin, the BBC environment analyst who so tirelessly bigs
up every eco-scare going. Guess what he read at Cambridge.
And Caroline Lucas, Britain's first green MP, who once claimed—in all
seriousness—that flying on holiday was as bad as knifing someone in the street because
at university?
And what about Tamsin Omond, the Westminster-educated baronet's
granddaughter-turned-hardcore activist who once dumped a truckload of horse poo on
Jeremy Clarkson's doorstep in protest at his environmental incorrectness?
Or Bryony—now Baroness—Worthington, the activist from hard left environmental
group Friends of The Earth who was the architect of the most expensive and pointless green
legislation in British parliamentary history, the 2008
Climate Change Act
which commits
Britain to spend over £18 billion a year every year till 2050 'decarbonising' its economy.
