Del Boy And The Next Dodgy Citation

Having already found adversely on the intelligence of anyone disagreeing with him, advocated the extraction of shale gas on the say-so of a lawyer, and played the Third Reich card, Maily Telegraph blogger James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole has now decided to throw his support behind a liberal who backed Barack Obama in 2008.

Yes, the author of “Welcome To Obamaland: I’ve Seen Your Future And It Doesn’t Work”, and who despises the current Prez, has in his latest post quoted at length Freeman Dyson, veteran theoretical physicist at Princeton. The reason for Del Boy’s admiration for this distinguished Obama supporter is that Dyson has been critical of some of the climate modelling performed of late.

Sadly though, Del has once more failed to do his homework, a most unfortunate omission for one who is so quick to sneer at others’ intellectual abilities. In selectively quoting an email exchange between Dyson and the Independent, he manages to miss the odd fact, such as Dyson’s admission that warming is happening. Moreover, Dyson admits he does not know much about what he calls the “technical facts”.

Indeed, in the exchange from which Del quotes at such length, Dyson states “I do not pretend to be an expert about the details”.

And, in an interview with Yale Environment 360, Dyson says there is “No doubt warming is happening ... I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that’s where the warming is most extreme. And glaciers are shrinking”.

He goes on “I am not an expert, and that’s not going to change. I am not going to make myself an expert”.

So when Del Boy asks the question “hell, what does he know about AGW” under a photo of Dyson, the answer, in the latter’s own words, is that he is “not an expert”.

Which means that James Delingpole, who has said that he doesn’t have time for the science, is relying on someone who is “not an expert”, adding to his previous reliance on a lawyer and a Nazi obsessive.

But he’s cleverer than everyone else, so that’s all right, then.