By James Delingpole
Before commenting on the BBC Trust’s report into the BBC’s science coverage, I thought I’d take the trouble of reading the actual document rather than the press previews. I’m very glad I waited because the finished product is an absolute corker. Let me take you through some of my favourite moments.
The report, as you may be aware, was written by my fellow Telegraph columnist Steve Jones. Besides being a fine and engaging writer, Dr Jones is a geneticist of distinction and I would certainly never dream of questioning his judgement in his fields of expertise (notably Drosophila and snails). Fortunately, as becomes quite clear reading the report, climate science isn’t one of them.
Dr Jones sets out his ideological position fairly early on when he strives to bracket global warming “denialism†with a range of other syndromes: believing that “AIDS has nothing to do with viruses, the MMR vaccine is unsafe, complex organs could never evolve, or even that the 9/11 disaster was a US government plot.†I’d love to see his evidence for this casual slur-by-association.
The distinction he tries to make between “scepticism†(good, up to a point, he thinks) and “denialism†(bad, obviously) is in any case a straw man argument. Of all the sceptics I’ve ever met or read, not a single one has ever striven to deny that climate changes nor that modest global warming has been taking place since 1850 (when we began emerging from the Little Ice Age).
Never ceases to amaze me of no comments. Now know why we have the conundrum we are in.
I wasn’t going to comment on this one because it is practically the same story as the article that preceeds it, albeit a bit of a different angle from Delingpole. But aside from that there are lulls here that can last for a little while. Just give it some time, they’ll be back.
I agree and am awaiting their responses.
Go to the site and look at the Blogs there. Mr Taylor is getting beat up but he his holding fast.
Mr. Knot, someone has to put the finger in the dike.