Thank God for James Delingpole

The Oz saga continues:

Thank God for James Delingpole

by Tim Blair

James Delingpole, currently in Australia to promote his book Killing the Earth to Save It, routinely lands more than his share of blows. You want confidence? His massively-read blog at the UK Daily Telegraph opens with cheery lines about ‘a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything’. Delingpole, who is not crippled by shyness, builds from there.

Truth be told, most anti-global warming books are as boring as books that push the warming cause, because both tend to argue weird data and are written either by scientists or by people who write like scientists. Or, in a third, very large category, by people who should be studied by science (how does Bill McKibben even work?). Killing the Earth – published elsewhere under the grabbier title Watermelons – is blessedly graph-free, as arts graduate Delingpole correctly realises that global warming is overwhelmingly a political issue. And also a rich target for jokes.

‘The debate was never about “the science” in the first place,’ he writes, which explains why non-scientists like Al Gore and scientists working outside of their specialist area like Tim Flannery came to be so prominent. Understanding that politics drives ‘the science’ of global warming rather than the other way around is key to grasping why, in Delingpole’s words, this subject grew from ‘a minor cult followed by a few tousled eccentrics’ in the 1970s to ‘the world’s most powerful religion’ today.

Yet, thank God, it’s a religion now under serious threat.

Source: The Spectator Australia