James Delingpole, the champion of online climate conspiracy theorists, claims he was ‘intellectually raped’ on television on Monday night, reports Joss Garman.
James Delingpole, the champion of online climate conspiracy theorists, was ‘intellectually raped’ on television on Monday night by the new head of the prestigious Royal Society. (Reportedly Delingpole’s own words.)
In a must-watch interview for the BBC’s Horizon, the Nobel-prize winning Sir Paul Nurse gently questioned the columnist about his forthright views on climate change science, which he espouses regularly for The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph and in the regular TV and radio spots he is offered by, amongst others, the BBC.
Here’s the video clip of the interview on YouTube:
Surprisingly, the question that tripped him up was one he should surely have seen coming. Delingpole, who had just been attacking the use of consensus in science, was asked if he would submit to a consensus scientific opinion if he needed treating for cancer. Stumbling wildly, he eventually feebly tried to change the subject, saying:
“Erm, shall we talk about climategate?”
Having been (unusually) simply lost for words, later he says:
“It is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers because I simply haven’t got the time, I haven’t got the scientific expertise… I am an interpreter of interpretation.”
But he apparently does have the time to obsessively blog misleading information about climate change and smear scientists in the process.
Anyhow, perhaps the most beautiful thing about his embarrassing interview is that Sir Paul clearly didn’t try to set him up. Delingpole needed absolutely no help in making himself look stupid. Sir Paul ended his programme urging scientists to speak up. He said:
“Scientists have got to get out there… if we do not do that it will be filled by others who don’t understand the science, and who may be driven by politics and ideology.”
As Left Foot Forward has previously noted Delingpole has admitted how his obsession with climate change is driven by “ideological warfare”.
39 Responses to “Telegraph columnist ‘intellectually raped’ by Royal Society scientist”
Ben Niblett
chuckling at this climate sceptic interview http://tinyurl.com/6apxn79 it cheered up my morning
Ben Clowney
RT @BenNiblett: chuckling at this climate sceptic interview http://tinyurl.com/6apxn79 it cheered up my morning < this is brilliant
Cherie McClintock
RT @BenNiblett: chuckling at this climate sceptic interview http://tinyurl.com/6apxn79 cheered up my morning < brilliant cc @benclowney
Jamie Woolley
@Robert: while medicine and climatology are very different areas of research, the same scientific principles are used in both, and I think that was the point Nurse was trying to make. Scientific methods are universal – you can’t accept them in one case while rejecting it in the other.
And I have to confess I’ve not read a peer-reviewed paper in any field, but then I’m not trying to rubbish them.
Onya Bags
Telegraph columnist 'intellectually raped' by Royal Society scientist | Left Foot Forward: http://bit.ly/hxVD5A via @addthis