Wednesday
Sep282011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Dellers on Reason
Sep 28, 2011 Climate: Sceptics James Delingpole is interviewed on Reason TV, covering Climategate and the state of the global warming debate.
Sep 28, 2011 Climate: Sceptics
Reader Comments (140)
Pretty good performance from Delingpole there, he seems to have toned down the levity for that interview.
Hopefully this will really annoy the warmists with its game changing propaganda effect! I wonder where this would fit in the denier influence diagram? ;)
It's amazing how the "No Pressure" video still has so much shock factor - a useful reminder of just where the CAGW campaign had got to.
Great interview. Good luck with the book 'Watermelons'!
Dellers can expect a formal letter from a certain university in east anglia, demanding that this video be withdrawn from circulation because climategate didn't really happen and P Jones and the team are fine upstanding scientists.
28 Sept: UK Independent: Mark Lewis: World’s leading climate sceptic sees his funding melt away fast
Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and bête noire of climate change activists around the world, has been told that the incoming Danish government will cut off his £1m a year funding…
He was once compared to Adolf Hitler by the head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri. He also appears to have few friends in power after Helle Thorning-Schmidt became Denmark’s first woman Prime Minister after a slim victory for her centre-left coalition in this month’s election...
Ida Auken, who is widely tipped as the next Environment Minister in the new administration, told The Independent that Mr Lomborg could no longer expect government funding for his Copenhagen Consensus Centre.
“The reason he received funding in the first place was ideological,” said Ms Auken, environment spokesman for SF, the junior partner in the incoming coalition. “We believe that it is wrong to give funding to specific ideological researchers.”…
Mr Lomborg has denied in the past that the 2010 book represented a volte-face. He was, he says, never a climate-change denier. Rather, he was hostile to governments’ “bogus promises” to cut carbon emissions…
In his own words
“Climate change will not cause massive disruptions or huge death tolls. Actually, for the world in general, the direct impact of climate change in 2050 will mean fewer dead, and not by a small amount.”
“We have looked extensively at what we can do about global warming. It turns out that we can do fairly little at fairly high costs.”
“Many other issues are more important than global warming. We need to get our perspective back.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/worlds-leading-climate-sceptic-sees-his-funding-melt-away-fast-2362056.html
Call it "authoritarianism".
To many syllables?
Apparenly sceptics have won the political arguement. There could be a sceptic in the White House next year.
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/09/chart-climate-change-spin-cycle
The reason for this victory is that we were organised and funded by Big Oil, large corporations and right wing foundations.
If we have won how come I have yet to receive a penny for my scepticism, in fact how come I find myself out of pocket for my endeavours.
It is just not fair, how come the sceptical foot soldiers ended up as the 'poor bloody infantry' in this debate?
Mind, any or all donations will be treated in the strictest confidence. I am still hoping to get away to a sun kissed beach this year.
Whilst I completely understand where James is coming from. I detest ‘watermelons’ as yet another label, It will offend far more people than ‘warmists’ does, and worse using this world will alienate many grassroots environmentalists.
Whilst James had a point about the politics of it all, the un, ngo’s jumping on an agw bandwagon, to pursue many other agendas.. We must recognise that for many people that are scientists, activists, politicians, etc they are genuinely, sincerely concerned about AGW..
Using the label ‘watermelon’ to describe them will just make these people think sceptics are ‘climate cranks’
I really dislike ‘watermelon’ as a wholey negative label
My daughter was voted onto the Eco team, my sister in law, is a green party press officer.
How will this help.
Barry I hate the 'd ' word but yet it is in constant use by heaters ,so can you get your lot to stop abusing others with it then we can get off the labels war and start to build some form of debate!
Never happen as one side says there can be no debate but heyho!
Barry, 'Watermelons'? Seems like a good description for anything green on the outside but red in the middle. If it is green all the way through then it would not apply. Or red all the way through.
I agree labels don't always help but they can useful to convey quite complex ideas very simply and this one seems quite inoffensive too.
zx 'Heaters' - I like it!
Er, Barry, you think by not mentioning something it will all just go away and everyone will be nice to other and live happily ever after? Yeah, that worked really well with Appeasement; and the Euro; and it's now working really well with the debate on climate change. I can only assume you haven't read Watermelons. If you had, you'd realise that its thesis - that the green ideology uses environmentalism as a cloak of feel-good righteousness to advance what, au fond, is a totalitarian agenda of control - is carefully argued, cross-referenced and written less to provoke than to explain. The Watermelons concept - green on the outside, red on the inside - encapsulates this. It's not some glib, ill-considered, undeserved insult used in the way, say, left-wingers so often use the word "Nazi" in the sense of "any right wing person whose views I don't like." It's apt and accurate. This debate is NOT about "the science". Never has been about the science. In most of your excellent commentaries at WUWT you seem to have grasped this. Pity your commonsense and insight appear to have deserted you here.
Actually I don't mind either word. Watermelons isn't aimed at people who care for the environment it's aimed at people who want to control the world through environmentalism, while "denier" indicates how bereft of argument the other side are that they have to have a name for people who question the science and the ability to do anything if the science is right that connects them with the holocaust.
Barry Woods:
I value honesty more than any bogus, titular 'agreement' because I am an environmental scientist. And "watermelon" is an honest, accurate label for the anti-humanists among us.
Let's also separate the sheep from the wolves.
Orson. Please repeat this more often. I care about the environment and look forward to the demise of the AGW scam, but I fear the backlash on those with genuine environmental concerns
Hi Dellers
Looking very good in the video there. Good stuff.
The ten:ten video looks even more ghastly watching it now. Because one knows what is going to happen.
I think Watermelons and Climategate both have gravitas and clarity.
I've never liked ManBearPig, it was based on a comedy show sketch sending up Al Gore, few are familiar with it, and it lacks message, seems inappropriate, puerile, juvenile to most ears. No gravitas, no recognition, offputting.
Name calling whole groups of people just brings considerable Collateral damage.
Flimsin might understand the distinctions.
But would any of her colleagues...
James it is so embedded that change MUST come from within...
Barry you should also take into account the utter disparity of power in this if a non believer calls a heater something rude then it should remain that! just words, but in the greenish world we survive in they will be banned from sites throw off the net have his credentials /personal life raked though and any funding cut the poor greenish have only have the government/big business and media to fight with we have a few books , have to look at Bjorn Lomborg and he only voiced a slight dissent.
Ie now, Everytime @flimsin hears a colleague casually toss around the word denier, I imagine she might cringe.... Hopefully she will explain why...
My commonsense and insight consider your approach counter productive.
The extreme polarization of the debate I consider to be the biggest part of the problem..
Barry, I couldn't agree more...but... 'Watermelons' is not extreme, offensive or polarising, it is descriptive. Like Flower Power and Rock and Roll.
I think you are addressing a separate problem here and transmogrifying it into something it isn't.
Tell you what, why not come up with your own descriptor?
You can't call David Cameron a watermelon, maybe he is a PLUM.
What of those who are genuinely green on the outside as well as inside - AVOCADO.
What fruit type are sceptics? Maybe we are all BANANAS!
Mac, according to the AGW brigade, we are not fruit, but nuts
I think the term "watermelon" is useful and usable by James, and it is an entirely functional title for his book.
Conversely, I understand fully Barry's concerns about the term being appended to the already-vitriolic climate lexicon. Used there - rather than used specifically as a book title - it is out of control, is far too broad-brush and does NOT accurately reflect the breadth of politic and opinion of the non-sceptic side.
Not everyone who is "green on the outside" is "red on the inside". But if you want to truly piss off the man in the street who, regardless of his political leanings, feels an instinctive duty of ecological care, go ahead and call him a watermelon. All you'll do is ripen the resolve of the useful idiot brigade*
So I accept Barry's concerns about the broad-brush use of the watermelon term while recognising that - specifically in the context of the group identified in James' book - the term is succinct and appropriate.
* the middle-class noble-cause clan, who have become secular on the grounds of reason and rationale, but who have marched eyes-wide into a new religion, whose prophets are the scientists who tout their computer models (rather than lines of observational evidence) and their "novel" statistical methods as having "special knowledge" - they claim to *know* the god Gaia personally, have taken her pulse and who know precisely the sacrifices we lesser mortals must make to satisfy her.
Simon, very useful thought.
And 'ripen the resolve'... a definite harvest of edible metaphors on this thread.
GC a nut is hard shelled fruit.
Maybe politicians like David Cameron are just waxed fruit - looks good in the fruit bowl but you wouldn't want to pick it up and eat it.
Can you have a debate on climate based on fruit slang?
Maybe we should be more inclusive and include vegetables and raw meat!
Mac, wax figures would have a rational fear of raised temperatures. Waxers?
So a greengage would be an assessment of your environmental credentials?
Barry,
"....so embedded that change MUST come from within..."
That would be a start, but repeal of the act will need to follow and that requires involvement of the EU and its capitulation or our withdrawal. Bryony's Simply Super New Law will be a devil to repeal short of a collapse of the EU. And while that spectre may be attractive to some, it will come with major pain to most. The bankers having apparently been immune from attack during this battle for control of the means of production and possibly fellow-travellers to it, may well bring that about. Then the SSNL would be at risk but the pain may well remain the same.
It is said that the *Left always fail because they inevitably run out of other people's money. If that is a truism then it surely is being tested right now.
*using the Delingpole rule.
GC - 'greengage' really threw me - had to Google it. Is it a posh fruit? Could it be used to describe Nick Clegg?
Idiocy reaches new lows as eSkeptic publishes article describing "the entire 'climategate' email kerfuffle" as "nothing more than careless use of language" and claiming that "global warming denialism is entirely a PR campaign and a right-wing/energy company conspiracy"..
It includes the usual rubbish, from threats to Australian climate scientists to an incredible definition of one of Paul Krugman's analyses as "non-partisan".
If I were an astrologer or chiropractor, I'd be celebrating.
Well you're all right except Barry. Barry there's an order of difference between "denier" and "watermelon." The first and most obvious point being that denier is simply inaccurate: no "sceptic" denies the reality of changing climate. Watermelon, on the other hand, is specific and apt. You worry about what, say, your Green press officer sister-in-law might think or your daughter on the Eco team might think. These are emotive irrelevances. My son too - fyi - was on his school's Eco team. It's how schools are nowadays. So what? Your sister in law works for a party whose leader stated on TV that she was proud to be a Watermelons. Read the green party manifesto and try to discern how it differs from the communist party manifesto: not a great deal I'd suggest. The point is, as you'd know if you'd read the ruddy book - hint, hint, HINT - that the book does not say all greens are watermelons. Indeed, it is at pains to point out that most are in it for the best of reasons, because they care, etc. But the people behind the underlying philosophy that gives the green movement its impetus most definitely are Watermelons.
MM - Donald Prothero has always been a bit of a lemon.
Oh, and Pharos, about ManBearPig. One of the arts of public speaking is addressing your audience. Reason is a US libertarian think tank whose following would probably more or less qualify as South Park conservatives. I wouldn't use ManBearPig if, say, I were talking to an audience on a Hillsdale College cruise. May I suggest, cheekily, that your real problem with ManBearPig is that you're not a South Park fan and therefore can't relate to something which to you seems arch, in-jokey, obscure, trying too hard. Yet to a South Park audience it would seem natural and delightful and apt, giving them a satisfying buzz of recognition.
I used to object violently to the words "moratorium" and "hegemony". Whenever I heard people use them I hated them for being insufferable show offs. Then I found out what the words meant and was soon using them a lot myself.
James I agree with very many thing you say, including your analysis of the politics, ngo's, etc.
Look at the other Bishop Hill article today, about Bryony Wortington.. cast iron proof of what you describe.. and my thoughts a year ago about bryony at the bottom....
But, James who is going to buy and read your book, just your existing audience?
I am aware you do not mean all environmentalist, i just forsee sceptics tossing around the word watermelon, in much the same manner that denier has been amongst climate scientist,environmentalist, 1010 ers spring to mind.. even with me. You are coming across as agressive.. and I'm onside, and have even written very favourable about you twice at Watts up, as i no doubt will again.
Everyone needs to chill
Mac, green outside and inside, sour and bitter. You choose!
By all accounts a greengage is a dessert plum and sweet to eat.
A Granny Smith however !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Take a look at the Watts Up article with Your interview, take a look at the comments, and I think you'l see some of my concerns laid out, ie in USA.
As if by magic my garden has produced a fruit just for Barry - see
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/cartoon_tomato2011scr.jpg
I would call it the Peacemaker but that would not go down well in the US, how about Kiss-n-Ketchup?
Tomato - a fruit that is used as vegetable - does that clear things up???
Well.......................
No point in arguing about who is insulting whom, and with what words. That horse has long since bolted. Stick to the science. And the politics, of course, which cannot be ignored.
Dellers, I've just downloaded a copy of your Booker Prize contender "Watermelons" to my iPad. I could no longer stand the sobbing noises emanating from your posts. I'm sure it will be a fine read.
geronimo
Mac -
That reminds me of some Jewish jokes.
To call the Greens "watermelons" is to play their game. We should be better than that.
Although there is a scintilla of truth in it as a label. the story is more complicated than that.
The origins of the green movement with Rachel Carson, Erlich and the like pre-date the fall of communism. Their basic tenets were formed then and haven't changed that much since.
In the beginning they were often pointing out genuine problems and had arguably a useful role in tempering market excesses.
The trouble is they got rich and influential and so enthused by their own righteousness that they felt they could manipulate the science and trample over any objection, whether valid or not, in the cause of what they saw as the greater good.
At that point as with communism, Greens became the enemy of individual freedom, liberal tolerance, free markets, laissez faire and all sorts of values to which we in western society have aspired to and on which our prosperity has depended.
You can't call David Cameron a watermelon, maybe he is a PLUM.
What of those who are genuinely green on the outside as well as inside - AVOCADO.
What fruit type are sceptics? Maybe we are all BANANAS!
Sep 28, 2011 at 1:58 PM | Mac
No, he is just a very silly eaton and Harrow child. Niave and easily fooled. What he is not is BLUE. Yellow, green (yellow and blue) maybe but NOT blue. He is closer to oblimey than thatcher.
Dave - you're mistaken. From Greens.org:
Dave
The Greens have always been "... the enemy of individual freedom, liberal tolerance, free markets, laissez faire and all sorts of values to which we in western society have aspired ..." This is the main reason why only now have they succeeded in the UK in getting an MP (and I doubt she'd have got anywhere except in Brighton!).
Elsewhere in Europe (especially in Germany) they have been stronger, but only because of the electoral system which also gave them five (?) MSPs at Holyrood first time round and it didn't long to reduce that to one. Nowhere have they ever had a coherent answer to any of the problems of the time.
Rachel Carson was wrong: Ehrlich was and continues to be wrong.
I am not a fan of Delingpole, though I happen to agree with most of his arguments. I do agree with Barry Woods that the term "watermelons" is not helpful though it is a fair enough description of many of those who are backing the green agenda. I would argue that most of those who post here are environmentalists. We are not hell-bent on the destruction of Earth as a home for the human race but neither do we believe that its flora and fauna should take absolute priority. We are certainly green(-ish) on the outside but could never be considered red on the inside.
There are, however, a number of those whose lifelong ambition to control everyone else was flushed down the pan with the fall of communism and have found the green movement ripe for infiltration. If Delingpole's book keeps that fact uppermost in people's minds then I'm prepared to live with his description of them.
PS Barry -- I agree with you about the comments on WUWT. I'm afraid Antony is starting to attract some of the swivel-eyed loons. Leaping on everything, good bad or indifferent, that casts any doubt on AGW or attacks it directly and seeing that as the beginning of the end for the "scam" does no side any favours. Triumphalism is sorely misplaced.
Buy and read Watermelons, then get angry, get very angry.
This book should be read by everyone who doubts that we have been lied to and conned by the ecogreenietards.
You tail off just a bit at the end, Jimmie, me boy. You've got to understand that the mistaken noble cause of saving the earth pales in comparison to the noble cause of cheap energy for the poor worldwide.
Besides, CO2 is plant food, and we are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn't know.
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