Armed only with a keyboard, some balls and a picture of a man with an impressive moustache, I ventured into the dragon's lair, and, as some of you may have gathered from my "The End is nigh" post, I have now been officially banned, by the man himself, from James Delingpole's blog. I think he got a tad grumpy when I mentioned the depletion of the world's fish stocks, or it could have been when I revealed that Robin Ince had openly mocked him at the Palace Theatre.
"Pot. Kettle. Black.
You only have to look at realityreturns’ boorish lists of scientists who deny AGW to realise that the ’sceptics’ are similarly seduced by doctorates and academic bodies.
I was at ‘The Big Libel Gig’ last night, and it was nice to hear Robin Ince bring up our James (to a few boos from the audience I might add – who’d have thought!) Apparantly they had a little exchange via Twitter which went something like this:
‘James, on what basis do you refute AGW’
‘I refute it because I’m good at sniffing out things that are wrong’
‘But what’s your actual evidence’
‘[block]'
So good to know Jimbo’s making a stand against non-evidence based hearsay.
Not."
Who knows? I don't. But grumpy he got, and thus, like the Beelzebub that I am, I have been banished to the fiery pits of the Guardian pages, which are sadly much less entertaining. I may have only been commenting for a few weeks, but my what a few weeks they've been, so in the spirit of education, I thought I would recount my oft times hilarious experiences to you all.
Well let us begin with the name calling, it's as good a place to start as any. Over the past few days I've been called growcunt, grock, grockie, gronutts, greenshirt, troll, young troll, arsehole, grot (grott), john grotti, davidgrowbag, a type rather than an individual, petulant, dispicable (sic), the new slimeball on the blog, grotty, davey grotty, grottosaurus, greenshirt grotty, junior greenshirt, grotbag, arsewipe, angry, frustrated, pratt (and when I corrected the spelling, it became "Surely Prat*), fantasist, wanker, cowardly, juvenile, and childish.
In fairness, I have been no shrinking violet myself. I did encourage one man to give up conspiracy theories in favour of matchstick shipbuilding:
"@ captainsherlock
I’ll ignore all your fruitcake conspiracy bumf, and get right down to answering your ‘pithy’ proof.
If you don’t think CO2 can drive temperature, you might want to acquaint yourself with the following historical events.
You are quite right, changes in temperature can also drive CO2, and for this you deserve a gold star. So your graph (http://www.john-daly.com/press/lag-time.gif) is quite correct. When changes in the Earth’s orbit affect temperatures, this causes an increase in CO2 emissions.
If this ^^ is the information you base your retirement hobby on, I suggest you take up matchstick shipbuilding etc."
I then called the same gentleman "nuts":
"Dear captainsherlock
You’re nuts. Seek help, stop wasting space on the comment thread; you’re giving me a RSI from all the scrolling I have to do.
Yours,
davidgrocott"
I called someone else an "angry little man":
"@ realityreturns
Gosh, you are an angry little man aren’t you?"
I accused someone of "blindness and stupidity":
"“What is so important about preserving the planet in its present state? It’s not as if we are vandalising nature for no good reason. Everything we do has some impact on our environment, but these are the costs of human progress. And sorry, but I think that improving our lot is the most important thing of all. Certainly more important than preserving a pure, unspoilt environment.”
I’m saving this wonderful paragraph as an example of pure blindness and stupidity.
Perhaps one day aliens will visit what becomes of our earth, find my hard drive, and say ‘ahhh, so this is what happened’"
And told someone else to "get some backbone":
"@ msher1
It was not your question which surprised me; it was your contradictions.You make out like you’re some trend-bucking environmentalist cum global warming “sceptic”, by questioning whether restrictions should be placed on plasma TVs. Yet, when you ponder the possible reasons and solutions for California’s brownouts, you ask “whether that means California should be upgrading its electrical capacity or whether indeed some reasonable restrictions make more economic sense”. Note “economic sense”; you’re not talking about conservation or ecology, you’re purely concerned with the financial implications of energy sucking technology.
Get some backbone."
I have mocked people's grasp of spelling and punctuation:
"@ pointman
When you’ve worked out how to spell ‘testimony’, I suggest your next job to be getting to grips with the ‘hide the decline’ email. The interweb is virtually bursting with explanations."
"@ realityreturns
Now that you’ve discovered punctuation, the next step in your education is to look up the meaning of ’synopsis’. Let me know how it goes."
I attacked the state of someone's memory:
"@ msher1
Your memory fails you. Here’s your original post:
“Do you have an opinion about California’s upcoming restrictions on plasma TV’s? These restrictions are being imposed by the Energy Commission because the big plasma TV’s consume more energy. I’m not asking about whether the TV’s do or don’t consume more energy – but about your view as to whether restricting consumption of energy is called for (or making manufacturers re-engineer the TV’s). In previous years, on hot days in summer, at peak hours there were rolling brownouts. I don’t know much about whether that means California should be upgrading its electrical capacity or whether indeed some reasonable restrictions make more economic sense. Could you give me your thoughts?
My question might surprise the AGW believers. I.e., believing AGW is a hoax doesn’t mean that one automatically rejects every conservation measure.”
Now, here’s my question. Why would YOUR question surprise AGW believers? You are not asking it with conservation measures in mind. You don’t mention putting restrictions on plasma televisions, to cut down on electricity usage, which largely relies on disappearing fossil fuels. By all means, dismiss global warming, and still be an environmentalist (the two aren’t mutually exclusive), but don’t try and claim green credentials when you’re not expressing any."
I have laughed at people:
"What you gonna do? Quote the petition project at me again? bahaha"
"Haha! He’s at it again! Great."
I have been painfully sarcastic:
"Sorry, that was for realityreturns. I’m mighty impressed with his last post. You know, until I came here, I simply had no idea there were scientists out there who disputed AGW. It’s all a revelation to me."
"@ captainsherlock
Sorry! I thought you were the king of working out the unworkoutable. Apologies, I’ll explain. Basically, the impact of the asteroid vaporised carbonate-rich rocks, releasing large amounts of CO2. Scientific paper here – http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7836.abstract"
"@ realityreturns (does it?)
YES. Joanne Simpson! That’s the one! Did you want to give the quote in full? Or would you rather select the bits you like?"
patronising:
"@ realityreturns (irony?)
I see you’ve discovered natural variation! Well done you."
"@ realityreturns
You can read about those events on ‘real’ science websites. I just wanted to keep it simple for you guys."
condescending:
"@ ozboy
Never said they were caused by anthropogenic global anything. They simply demonstrate that a rise in CO2 levels (caused in this case by natural events) can drive a rise in temperature.
Do bother to read the posts before you reply to them.
I hope you realise we can measure temperatures going back further than 150 years."
"Oh James, you could have at least done your research, the RSA stands for the “Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce”, not the “Royal Society of Artists”."
and irreverant:
"@ captainsherlock
Gosh you guys are angry tonight. Time for a cold shower?
Neither the KT Boundary or the Late Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum were caused by an ‘El Nino type phenomenon’."
"Would you like a gold star also? I’m nearly out. Snap them up."
At times I have simply been whimsical:
"@ Detective Inspector Walt O’Brien/realityreturns (really?)/pointman (got one?)
Just wanted to let you know that the office is LOVING the banter. We just finalised a massive deal in which we take all your taxes (which are invested in the BBC, through a pension fund managed by Al-Qaeda, the Bullingdon Alumni, some Rhodes Scholars, and the Jonas Brothers, and then finally funnelled to Marvin Gaye to fund his huge appetite for Cadbury Dairy Milk, under the guise of protecting a waterfall in the Madagascan rainforest which allegedly feeds a lake containing the only remaining fresh water hamster – check out the full story here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khSIYmTzt6U, anyway, so we take all your taxes and we invest them in …my new Mercedes SL65! Wheeyyyyy! Check it out
"Sorry guys. Just an update for anyone making pension contributions. Basically, what’s happened is, little slip up, I sort of accidentally on purpose funnelled all that money through my private hedge fund (CEOs David Dimbleby and Boris Johnson), into a holding account based on the Cayman Islands. Err, and from there I ran it through my investment company (www.henderson.com) and spent it on a windfarm. Well a windmill. For me. To live in. It doesn’t actually go round or anything, I just think it looks nice.
Again, really really sorry to anyone caught up in that. Hate to be the bearer of bad news."
"Re: CIA, Bullingdon Alumni, Rhodes Scholars, CERL, Sidley Austin, Basque boys, and von Bismarck, I’d like to add the following point:
But generally I have just been exasperated:
"“I think that improving our lot is the most important thing of all”
How long do you think we can improve our lots for when we’re leeching off the planet’s capital rather than its interest. This isn’t a case of, ‘oh those guys are just killjoys who want to ruin the pollution party’; if we don’t change the way we live, then there won’t be a planet to have a party on.
I’m not talking about climate change; I’m talking about energy, oil, coal, gas, soil quality, forests, fish stocks. The whole lot.
Don’t you understand that? It’s the most basic idea. If you want to succeed and progress, you can’t plunder the very thing that sustains you. You have to manage it.
Jesus wept, I don’t know what to say."
Yet, with all that said and done, the vitriol which has been chucked my way has been quite remarkable in the low level of provocation it required. It was of course Rousseau who said "Insults are the arguments employed by those are in the wrong".
Seriously, it always helps to do a bit of net research on posters here. At least Growc*nt has the fortitude to post using his own name, as do I.
I am wondering if this new product development manager for an investment firm has anything to do with carbon trading activities development for his firm, specifically as relates to wind farms and renewables, hm?
Here’s also a smaple (sic) of his equally successful blogging activities. Please read the responding posts.
I would be willing to bet he helped package the Tata carbon deal which closed Redcar, or wishes he did. Nice piece of change for filling out a few forms and laying off a couple of thousand British steelworkers, wot? Drinks all round."
Oh, that's right; a blog about East German trams was also ascribed to my fair hand. Anyway, cue further "research". It gets better; it now turns out that I'm actually partly responsible for the deaths of a group of Spanish exchange students!
"davidgrocott – “I .. funnelled .. money through my private hedge fund (CEOs David Dimbleby and Boris Johnson) into a holding account based on the Cayman Islands .. from there I ran it through my investment company (www.henderson.com) and spent it on a windfarm”
Thanks Grockie; many a true word spoken in jest.
So we follow your money route through the Henderson private equity group, through the bogus Lloyd’s $64 trillion CDP syndicate, through the snuff-film network operated by Bullingdon-SS (Sidley Saboteur) agents to arrive at mens rea such as the late Gottfried von Bismarck and late Gavin Henderson, 2nd Lord Faringdon.
A little homework shows that your Henderson private equity is deeply ‘rooted’ in Gavin Henderson, 2nd Lord Faringdon, who was, in turn, deeply rooted at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford in the 1920s by members of the set known as the ‘Bright Young Things’ [Bullingdons' blood and sabotage oath takers] immortalised in the novels of the deeply rooted Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley.What happened to the Basque children mentioned below? I hope they didn’t become deeply rooted victims of investors in the Henderson private equity group.
“But by the time he [Henderson, 2nd Lord Faringdon] succeeded to Buscot he had developed a strong interest in public affairs, had joined the Labour Party, and had keenly supported the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Walter Leonard, son of the famous German singer Lotte Lenya, was himself a fugitive from the Nazis before becoming involved with the Basque children. Trained as a restaurateur in Switzerland, he helped to open the first foreign-run hotel in Tossa and early in 1937 met W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender (”a bickering lot, they were”) during their brief civil war forays. When the hotel closed he came to England and was chosen to supervise a Basque colony housed in a cottage on Lord Faringdon’s estate at Eaton Hastings, Oxfordshire. “The Oxford committee, mostly university people, were very good about fund-raising, and the government made a pound-for-pond grant. Lord Faringdon supplied milk, eggs and vegetables, but our anarchist cook accused him of exploiting the older boys as slave labour and had to be sent away. Rosa, the only girl in the colony, asked for a transfer. That’s how I met my wife Peggy, who came from Birmingham to collect her; and, through Peggy, Fausto Garcia met Rosa and later married her. There were many such romances.”"
It's amazing what "a little homework" can do. As I'm sure you can guess, I had great fun with this...
"Haha, this is great, I’ve acquired a cushy virtual job, where I make LOADSA MONIES! But yet I’m also a spotty adolescent who should be in bed. And according to some reports I own a haulage company. Murky. One for the Captain?"
Yet, despite my protestations, some people continued to labour under the illusion that I was a high flying hedge fund man...
"davidgrocott
Questions for you:
1. De Montfort University
Combined Studies, Accountancy, Marketing, Law, 1995 — 1998
Is that an undergraduate degree in marketing? (In U.S., CPA is at least one post-graduate year, law is 3 post-graduate years, MBA is 2 post graduate years and MBA-JD is 4 post graduate years.)
2. You’re a product development manager for an investment firm. What product are you developing? I think someone on the previous thread asked you that. I didn’t catch whether you answered.
3. Your web site has a video under the following title: “Economic growth only benefits countries upto a certain level of development. Beyond that, it’s destructive.” I didn’t watch the video. But do the clients of your firm agree thattheir economic development should be capped? Doesn’t that philosophy put you in a conflict of interest with your firm’s clients?
4. Is your time on this web paid time and/or part of your job?
5. How is Henderson Global Investors going to do when the City is under regulation by Brussels?"
My new job description did, however, lead to some lovely backhanded compliments:
"Sort of explains the snappy technical comebacks, dunnit? All you have to do is go into your corporate reference department’s files. You’re good. I’ll give you that. How mcuh they pay you for this, I wonder?
Kiss Pachauri goodnight for me."
But sadly, I was later demoted to tea boy, on account of my inherent stupidity, which, to be honest was galling, because I was just getting used to my new found wealth:
"captainsherlock on Mar 16th, 2010 at 1:17 am
Cap’n, davidgrocott isn’t David Grocott. He’s a junior in the office. If the real Grocott ever finds out, someone’s job is toast …Pointman"
And our Great Leader was not afraid to get involved either. After one commentator declared that rather than aliens finding the reason for mankind's decline on my hard drive, they would simply find large quantities of downloaded porn, Delingpole himself chipped in:
"@crownarmourer top post!"
It was immediately following this zenith of embarrassment that I was banned from further comments. Of course, predictably, having been banned, I was roundly abused for my cowardly silence:
"All,
Well, there we have it. Despite multiple requests eg
“Surely Prat*. I’m STILL, STILL waiting for your proof that plastic bags harm the environment.”
He refuses to provide any proof and he’s too cowardly to even try to reply.
He makes assertions explicitly or implicitly and asks you to disprove it. NO. You ask him to prove his assertion and there’s silence. Don’t waste your time trying to disprove negatives – it can’t be done. His silence is damning because if he can’t even prove plastic bags are bad for the environment what chance has he to prove AGW? Simple really.
As I said in a previous post, the science is toast. If you’re convinced of that statement then why bother arguing the “science” with an imbecile like davidgrocott. He’s only here on this blog because he’s a stage 2′er who absolutely needs to vent his anger. He’ll argue black is white or the reverse simply because he’s angry.
Take the time to review his posts on this blog entry. Look at the mood swings, momentarily reasonable, the next juvenile, at once seeming to engage then swinging wildly onto the personally offensive, at one moment adult and the next childish.
We’re going to see a lot more of this type in the coming months. Learn to recognise them.
Pointman"
For those less observant readers, perhaps I can highlight that 'pointman' calls me childish, and accuses me of 'swinging wildly onto the personally offensive', while calling me 'Surely Prat*' and an 'imbecile'. Which in my rather lengthy book, is hypocrisy of the crassest form.
Now don't be mistaken. I didn't write on Delingpole's blog in an attempt to wind people up or get myself banned, so that I could gather fodder for my blog. I wrote because I believed I had a valid opinion to express, and I wanted to refute some of the claptrap that James and his merry men were producing. The idea for this little note only came once I had faced the firing squad. However, I should probably not have been surprised that this would be the standard of "debate" at the bottom of a Delingpole blog. This is what Spectator and Times columnist Hugo Rifkind recently wrote concerning the matter:
"I don’t mean to be abusive here. I’m certainly not suggesting that everybody who comments on an article, ever, is sitting at home in their pants, tinfoil on head, basically being batshit doolally. I’m just saying it worries me. Pretty much any journalist I know would say the same. I know of one who describes the comments below her articles as ‘the bottom half of the internet’, which pretty much captures the sort of distaste we’re talking about here."
And George Monbiot contributed this observation:
"His [James Delingpole's] blog posts for the Telegraph consist of the kind of ill-informed viciousness provided for free by trolls on comment threads everywhere, but raised by an order of magnitude. He puts a wrecking ball through any claims the denial lobby might have to being civilised, intelligent or serious. His followers act as an echo-chamber, magnifying his nastiness. Between them they succeed in alienating anyone who might want an informed debate."
Perhaps the point is best demonstrated by quoting another commentator who failed to toe the Delingpole line. A user going by the name 'izen', posted the following recently:
"It may not be a fact that ‘THEY’ are a unified group with a single agenda. It is probably mistaken to think that any agenda would not be riven with internal contradictions. There are historical precedents for the conflict between those parts of the ‘real power’ to shape the world who believe their industrial/financial activities are legitimate, and those who wish to extend their regulatory control over such enterprises.
Asbestos, CFCs and acid rain were real scientific problems that motivated part of the ‘real power’ to regulate those engaged in activities that engendered these problems. But the activities were pursued by other factions of the ‘real power’ who denied, disputed and delayed action using THEIR power to obstruct change.
The resultant of these forces evolves as the extent of the power each faction has interacts with the material reality they operate in. A sufficient proportion of the ‘real power’ have the scientific insight to be rightly worried by the environmental risk of AGW, and the experience of change and destabilising ecologies reinforces their hand. Meanwhile other factions with immense wealth, and the strings of the energy supply resist with the tried and tested methods of doubt and diversion.
The NWO is not a carefully planned outcome of a coherent agenda, its the emergent property of the internal conflict of a splintered power structure."
All that seems fairly innocuous to me; an individual expressing their opinion. It was countered with the following complex and well thought through responses from two different posters:
"Izal…Bum scrape. Please lend us your enlightened hand as to how the future must / might be…with particular reference of how you might go about keeping your own sorry arse from a damn good thrashing."
and:
"scud1 on Mar 16th, 2010 at 11:57 pm
The only proper way to take out an Izal ‘aerosol wipe:’
Air strike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8tUdwKyWk&feature=related"
Which really says it all. Here's another example though, in which a commentator going by the username 'thecultsings' dares to criticise James' interview performance:
James,
Your claim, that you have no idea whether Plimer is right or wrong about volcanoes, indicates, at best total laziness, and criminal incuriosity on your part. I find it almost impossible to believe that you have not heard of him being picked up on this on numerous occasions, for instance, by George Monbiot in a televised interview. Are you saying you never bothered to check? Unbelievable!
I’m going to go back through it and check (later, I’m off to celebrate St. Patrick’s night now), but I suspect you managed to exhibit all five denialist strategies listed here:
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/19/1/2.pdf
in that short interview.
That got the following response:
thec*ntsings – When you do your radio interview let us know – meanwhile why don’t you just go and stick your tiny head with its tiny brain up your backside – no-one’s interested in you stupid witterings and those who bother do it in the spirit of lions playing with a sewer rat.
and then:
yaosxx on Mar 17th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Oh right, Mr Niceguy today, yaosxx. The cultslinger has not evolved to a mamal (sic). Eeee…sewer rat indeed…what a compiment (sic). He is a maggot of the Ku Klux Klimate….lol.
(Incidentally, the commentator who wrote that particular post goes by the name 'realityreturns', and claims to be, in his own words, 'a minor local politician', which says a great deal about local councillors, and very little about our hopes as a species).
Still, even forewarned of the likely dubious output you will be exposed to on such a blog, when you read things like this beauty (posted recently by 'tayles')...
I think you're justified in choking on your tea in mild surprise.
Most worryingly for James' future career, he actually appears to be relying on this stuff to write his new book:
@flatpackhamster – great stuff. I’ll try to incorporate it into my book….
@tayles By the way, it still goes without saying that when I discover I’m secretly gay and decide to abandon my wife and children I’m definitely planning to make you my civil partner. Obviously I’d kind of prefer it if you look like Liv Tyler. But your mind is enough. Can I rip off your progress meditations wholesale for my upcoming book?
That's the same 'tayles' I just quoted above by the way, slamming those nasty Fair Trade people...
Perhaps it's no bad thing I've been banned. Entertaining as it has been, I should really be getting on with something more constructive. At times it's frustrating; in absentia I have been accused of poor punctuation, by a man who spelt punctuation without a 'c'. I would relish the chance to advise him of this. But alas, the thought police have spoken; I have been silenced.
I think 'pointman' summarises my thoughts on the matter nicely (for the record he was commenting on Prof. Ian Plimer being 'uninvited' to the RSA Prince Philip Lecture):
"davidgrocott on Mar 10th, 2010 at 12:33 am
Being “barred” is the operative word. That’s science is it? Nope, [that's] political..."
What an irony that a journalist who has railed so vehemently against the suppression of dissenting voices should suppress a dissenting voice of his own. Of course, I will go on reading Delingpole's renal diatribes. If it wasn't for the activities of second-rate, Littlejohn wannabe, aristo-fetishistic hacks, then I would simply be at a loss as to what to do with an evening. So thank you James (and I know your reading this, your ego's too large not to).
I'll leave you with what I feel was a particularly insightful and sensitive post from one commentator:
"What is so important about preserving the planet in its present state? It’s not as if we are vandalising nature for no good reason. Everything we do has some impact on our environment, but these are the costs of human progress. And sorry, but I think that improving our lot is the most important thing of all. Certainly more important than preserving a pure, unspoilt environment.
It’s not as though we are going to pollute the planet into ruin, either. As we progress economically and technologically, we become cleaner and more efficient. Just compare today’s air quality to that of a British city in the 1950s.
The danger is in thinking that there is some innate value in nature, and that we should preserve it for its own sake. That way madness lies. Man is the measure of all things. Without us to put value on things, this planet would just be a rock spinning pointlessly through space. It might suit the interests of those who are fixated with the ‘arrogance of man’ to dispute this view, but I would question their logic and their motives."
I particularly love "The danger is in thinking that there is some innate value in nature". I can describe it as nothing short of genius.
My thanks to msher1, tayles, captainsherlock, pointman, realityreturns et al, who have blessed me with such an enjoyable week.
Almost all content taken from the following blogs:
"Third World countries are not made poor because we don’t pay enough for our coffee. If we decide on the value of something arbitrarily we only mask its true value, which is determined by factors like supply and demand. Anything we pay over and above its true worth is a waste of money.
I know the natural reaction is to say “It’s not a waste for the people who receive that extra cash,” but that’s a very short-sighted view. By paying sellers over the odds, we take away the forces that encourage them to be more efficient and productive. The extra money they receive through Fair Trade would otherwise have to be earned by adding value to their goods; by working smarter. Their prospects will be much brighter if they are able to grow as a company than if they are reliant on Western subsidies.
But hey, you don’t want to hear this. It’s too dry and logical. If you have to explain why something is compassionate then can’t be, eh?"