James Delingpole

Thu, 2013-04-04 12:22Graham Readfearn
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Climate Science Denier James Delingpole Calls For "Alarmists" To Face Court With Death Penalty Powers

I IMAGINE only a small percentage of people reading this have had any journalism training, but don't let that stop you from pondering the following ethical question.

If you read a newspaper story that included a direct quote from someone - let's say, for instance, UK climate scientist Dr David Viner - would it be acceptable to put quotation marks on the headline of that story and claim it was a quote from Dr Viner? You can have a minute to think about it.

It might help you to know that the headline was not written by the reporter who interviewed Dr Viner and wrote the story, and certainly not by Dr Viner himself. In short, a third person - a sub-editor - wrote the headline.

You don't need a minute? Of course not: it would be unprofessional, unethical and factually wrong to pass off a sub-editor’s made-up words as Dr Viner’s.

The Australian newspaper has just published a column from UK-based climate science mangler and anti-wind farm activist James Delingpole that tries to argue that Australia's recent unprecedented heatwave and hottest month on record wasn't all that hot and that global warming "alarmists" should be answering to a court with the power to issue a death sentence (no, I don't exaggerate, but we'll get to that at the end).

Thu, 2013-03-14 21:55Graham Readfearn
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Research Finds Wind Farm Health Concerns Probably Caused By Anti-Wind Scare Campaigns

ANTI-WIND farm activists around the world have created a silent bogeyman they claim can cause everything from sickness and headaches to herpes, kidney damage and cancers.

This "infrasound" exists at frequencies too low for the human ear to detect but is present almost everywhere from offices and roadsides to waves tumbling on ocean beaches. These low frequencies can crawl menacingly from the back of your kitchen fridge or from your heart beating.

Despite the ubiquitous nature of infrasound, anti-wind farm groups such as Australia's Waubra Foundation like people to think that it's only inaudible infrasound from wind turbines which might send residents to their sick beds.

But two new studies suggest the cause of health complaints by people living near wind farms could in fact be down to the scare campaign of the anti-wind groups and reports about such scares in the media.

Fri, 2012-12-21 21:27Graham Readfearn
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Australian Press Council Finds Against Climate Sceptic Columnists

IT'S the new must-have accessory for any self-respecting climate science denialist commentator in Australian newspapers - their very own "Australian Press Council" adjudication showing exactly how they stuffed up the facts and misled their readers on their stories.

Whether they like it or not, serial climate science misinformers James Delingpole and Andrew Bolt are the latest News Ltd contributors to have their online articles furnished with freshly-added hyperlinks to APC judgements finding against them.

Earlier this week, the APC found that Mr Delingpole's article "Wind Farm Scam A Huge Cover-Up", published in the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Australian back in May, had misled readers on several points.

Thu, 2012-12-13 23:08Graham Readfearn
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Major IPCC Report Draft Leaked Then Cherry-Picked By Climate Sceptics

A CLIMATE sceptic blogger Alec Rawls has taken it upon himself to leak the current draft of an entire major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which is not due for publication until September next year.

For those not au fait with the machinations of the IPCC (I mean, what do you lot do all day?) historically this United Nations organisation has produced reports every five years or so which pull together and summarise all the scientific research into climate change.

The next one - Assessment Report 5 - will begin to be published next year. They're undeniably important reports because practically every government on the face of the earth has used them to help inform their policies and their position domestically and internationally on climate change.

The AR5 comes via three working groups. WG1 looks at the physical science on climate change and its report will be first out of the traps in September 2013. WG2 looks at climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and comes out in March 2014. WG3 looks at ways to mitigate climate change and comes out in October 2014.

But back to the leak.

Wed, 2012-09-12 17:00Graham Readfearn
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James Delingpole Raising Cash for Australian Climate Sceptic Think Tank

JAMES Delingpole is a UK columnist waging a long personal jihad against wind farms, environmentalists and climate science.

A resident blogger and columnist at The Daily Telegraph, Delingpole is probably best known for being among the first mainstream columnists to declare, wrongly as it turned out, that emails illegally hacked from an influential climate research unit showed scientists were trying to con the public.

So he is the perfect person to be appealing for people to donate their cash to the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank which has been working for about 20 years on a campaign to mislead the public about climate science and the impact of carbon pricing.

In the appeal, Delingpole lauds the IPA's campaign against climate science and action on climate change. Readers of the appeal might be forgiven for thinking the IPA is struggling for cash. Says Delingpole: "Their budget is always stretched. If you don’t give them money they’ll go broke."

Yet the IPA's most recent financial returns to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission suggest that rather than scrambling around for spare change, the think-tank is in fact in rude financial health.

James Delingpole

James Delingpole

Credentials

  • Degree in English Literature. [1]

Background

James Delingpole is and English columnist who primarily writes for The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. Delingpole describes himself as a "libertarian conservative" and climate change skeptic.

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Sun, 2012-07-08 18:40Graham Readfearn
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Donna Laframboise Flown To Australia By Climate Science Denying Think Tank

CANADIAN blogger and climate science sceptic Donna Laframboise has flown off for a tour of Australia to tell anyone willing to listen that the world's foremost body on climate change, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is something resembling a shambling mess.

Laframboise's trip has been organised by free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, which has a long history of promoting doubt about the science of human-caused climate change and the risks of the unmitigated burning of fossil fuels.

The blogger, who describes herself as an investigative journalist, gets to visit Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to promote her book "The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken For The World's Top Climate Expert - IPCC Expose."

The IPA describe's Laframboise as a "world renowned author" which is stretching credibility to breaking point. This "world renowned author" has written just two books. Her first was about feminism published in 1996. The Delinquent Teenager is her second, and is currently ranked #17952 in the book seller Amazon's Kindle store [#41,202 in the U.S. Amazon Kindle Store.]

Essentially the book makes three central claims. The first is that the IPCC has engaged several young scientists which Laframboise says goes against the IPCC's claims that they use the world's top scientists. A second is that some of the scientists working on some of the reports have links to environmental groups which are not always made clear. A third is that the IPCC reports use too much non-peer reviewed literature.

All of these arguments are used as a proxy to question the science. Yet the IPCC's main climate change reports (the latest being the 2007 Assessment Report 4, the next being AR5 currently being worked on by more than 800 authors and expected some time in late 2013 or early 2014) don't actually do any science.

They are reviews - albeit almighty ones - of research being conducted at institutions around the world and of scientific papers published in journals.  This means that even if the IPCC was found to be run by a small group of mentally-challenged llamas, this wouldn't affect the science on human-caused climate change. In essence, Laframboise's book is one giant strawman argument.

Tue, 2011-01-11 10:37Richard Littlemore
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"CIA Vet" Kent Clizbe Stalking Hockey Stick-Author Mike Mann

Spook's antics would be creepy if they were competent

A self-proclaimed counter-terrorism expert and former CIA case worker is soliciting for "whistleblowers" who will make allegations of impropriety against Dr. Michael Mann, director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center and author of the apparently bulletproof Hockey Stick climate reconstruction.

Kent Clizbe has been sending letters, annually, to Mann's colleagues promising them a big payout if they can offer any evidence that Mann has been misusing his federal research funds. In the first such letter that Clizbe sent, more than a year ago, he reported that the U.S. False Claims Act stipulates that whistleblowers can claim up to 30% of any recovered money and that Mann has received $50 million. Clizbe adds: "30% of $50 million is more than $12 million."

In this single sentence, Clizbe reveals all you need to know about the man: he doesn't care about the accuracy of his facts; and he can't wrangle a calculator effectively enough to establish that 30% of 50 is 15. (Neither do his math skills improve over time, in this year's version, he writes: "Up to 30% of $50 million (the total Dr Mann claims to have received for climate research) could net a whistleblower more than $10 million.")

Wed, 2010-06-02 12:47Brendan DeMelle
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Climate denial activists’ parallel to anti-relativity movement of 1920s

This is an excellent piece by friend of DeSmogBlog Joss Garman, cross-posted with permission from JossGarman.com:

“This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.”

So wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his one time collaborator, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann in 1920.

Jeroen van Dongen of the Institute for History and Foundations of Science at Utrecht University in Holland, writing in a recent edition of the journal, ‘Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics,’ describes the effectiveness of the movement that grew up to oppose Einstein’s theory. There are some striking parallels with today’s climate debate.

At a time when The Guardian just reported another poll showing a drop in concern about climate change, and a New York Times front page this week described Britons’ growing doubts about the science, its worth taking a look at that anti-science campaign, which was waged by Einstein’s critics because like today’s climate denial movement, the anti-relativity movement had some success too.

Mon, 2010-04-05 09:08Jim Hoggan
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The Smoking Guns and Blue Dress Moments of Climategate

In the days and weeks following the theft of climate scientists' emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in November, climate change skeptics and deniers flooded the blogosphere and mainstream press with reactions suggesting that the 'scandal' had proven global warming was a myth. 

In many instances, the reactions sounded like a choreographed choir singing from the same sheet of talking points, or at least the same sheet of of well-worn memes and cliches, like 'smoking gun' and 'final nail in the coffin.'

The Desmog team took a look at several unique phrases that flew around the denier echo chamber in the aftermath of the CRU email hack, and how those memes were often adopted by the mainstream media as a result.  Here is a sampling of what we identified:

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