Will Heaven

Imagine a Premier League of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Who do you reckon would top it? It’s a tough call. I think Holocaust deniers would lift the cup, with 9/11 truthers not far behind. But there’s a new lot on the rise, recently promoted from Division One: global warming sceptics. Fuelled by the hype surrounding Climategate, those who believe that climate change has nothing to do with mankind’s release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere have had a storming week – led, in case you hadn’t noticed, by our very own James Delingpole.

Well, brilliant though he is, Delingpole’s about as much of a scientist as he is the captain of the England rugby team. So I was delighted to readHugo Rifkind expertly ribbing him in this week’s Spectator:

Where has it come from, this sudden consensus among Britain’s right-wing punditry that there’s some kind of scam going on here? Yes, Delingpole, I mean you, and plenty of others, too. What gives you the right? It’s like your hairdresser diagnosing multiple sclerosis… I’ve watched it develop and spread over the past couple of years, first with amusement, then with alarm, and now with a sort of horrified panic. Guys, you’re not just fiddling while Rome burns. You’re actively going out and smashing up the fire engines. You’re terrifying me.

Rifkind is also spot on about Climategate: “So some of them are crooks. It’s like giving up on doctors because of Harold Shipman.” There’s no point, in other words, pretending the Climategate emails aren’t very dodgy. But that doesn’t completely nullify the science behind global warming, which overwhelmingly points the finger of blame at mankind. (It really, really does, by the way – and no British scientific body or international body of any standing disagrees. Forget East Anglia, we’re talking about Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale…)

It was something of a relief, then, to see David Cameron’s most recent email, which affirmed that the Tories haven’t been taken in by the rubbish spouted by sceptics: the Conservative Party rightly sees Copenhagen as a summit of “historic importance” and “an opportunity for the world to take bold action to deal with the real danger of climate change.”

But recent events – as well as the list of environmental best-sellers – show that the science hasn’t been successfully translated for the man on the street, and this is truly worrying. Even George Monbiot (Delingpole’s opposite number) admits that climate rationalists “are losing”, but he doesn’t recognise that the Delingpoles and Bookers of this world aren’t the only ones to blame.

We climate rationalists have to be honest: it’s also the Al Gore-style doom-laden depictions of climate change, the disingenous “climate models”, and the Left-wing myths which have helped to badly damage the climate change debate. It’s their nonsense that the sceptics and cranks feed off – climate porn, as Simon Retallack defined it in 2006, which unrealistically depicts climagte change as “an 18-rated horror film”.

So here’s what needs to happen. Lefties need to stop pretending that half of Florida is about to be submerged under rising sea levels, because no scientist really believes that to be the case. Righties, on the other hand, should stop ignoring the science, and should drop the conspiracy theories and the scientific pretence.

You know why this is so important? Because if we submit to the science, we can then properly start by far the most important debate: what we need to do about global warming. The Left is winning that one by a very long way indeed, and they’re laughing, because Delingpole and co. have led the Right to completely the wrong battleground.

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