Mr Delingpole’s Embarrassment

by David Wemyss (August 2012)

Sitting with a beer, and with the benefit of a few seconds of unflustered thought, I formulated a variation on the analogy that had left Mr Delingpole stumped. The next morning, I put it to my son. What would he do, at the age of 21, if a doctor were to say to him that new research suggested strongly that he would develop a particular form of cancer in forty years time, when he was 61, and that he should enter hospital as soon as possible for a major operation to avert his fate?

Unsurprisingly, my son thought it highly unlikely that he would go along with such a proposal.

Always breaking the mould of, well, consensus.

But sceptics still think that the consensus-talk points to scientistic politics and politicised science.

I think that charge is barely plausible, but thirty years in local government in the UK left me in no doubt that, for a variety of reasons, people in the public sector deceive themselves about the worth of what they are doing, and so, in theory, there could be comparable self-deceit about green issues in the scientific community. But I think it would be altogether likelier that it existed as a sub-plot, not as the main narrative.

And then there are greens who believe particular policies to be incoherent. Quite a few of them now seem to think that wind farms are a waste of time, and that they scar landscapes and seascapes (I actually think wind farms are very beautiful) for the sake of policies that have been distorted by financial chicanery, and by the desire of governments to create jobs.

I think I know what he meant.

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