Guest essay by Eric Worrall
James Delingpole tells us prominent British journalist and climate skeptic Christopher Booker has sadly passed.
Delingpole: RIP Christopher Booker, the World’s Greatest Climate Change Sceptic
by JAMES DELINGPOLE
3 Jul 2019Christopher Booker, the world’s greatest climate sceptic, has died.
Booker – “Bookers” as I used to call him on our regularly weekly phone chats – would have hated being called the ‘greatest’ but he was, for a number of reasons.Firstly, he wrote the definitive book on the climate change scam: The Great Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with ‘Climate Change’ Turning Out to be the Most Costly Blunder in History?
Secondly, he was one of very, very few journalists capable of getting climate sceptical arguments prominent coverage in the mainstream media – notably in the hugely influential and widely read Daily Mail and also in his weekly Sunday Telegraph column.
Thirdly, he was a figure of such journalistic eminence, who did his research so thoroughly, that he made it very hard for his many enemies on the green side of the argument simply to dismiss him as an ignorant crank.
Fourthly, unlike more than a few on the sceptic side of argument, Booker did not attempt to cover his rear or make himself seem more reasonable and moderate by billing himself as a ‘lukewarmer’. Booker told it as he saw it and for many years was in no doubt whatsoever that ‘climate change’ was the most expensive, pointless and dishonest scam in the history of the world.
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Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/07/03/rip-christopher-booker-worlds-greatest-climate-sceptic/
The Guardian also paid tribute to Booker, though they are less sympathetic to some of Booker’s views.
Christopher Booker obituary
Stephen Bates
Thu 4 Jul 2019 22.10 AESTFirst editor of Private Eye who revelled in the perversity of taking a contrary stance
For nearly 30 years the discordant sound that Sunday Telegraph readers heard each weekend was the paper’s columnist Christopher Booker barking up the wrong tree. Booker, the first editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, took iconoclasm to extraordinary, and frequently eccentric, lengths. In his weekly columns he regularly annoyed and frustrated scientists, climatologists and doctors with his assertions that asbestos was not dangerous, speed cameras caused accidents, fossil fuels were necessary, global warming was a hoax and Darwinian evolution was not proved.
But he certainly gave the paper’s readers what they wanted to be told: that bureaucrats and social workers were meddlers, that the European Union was a dangerous and unaccountable bureaucracy and that experts were conspiring to pull the wool over their eyes. That he did so with tenacity, brio and absolute certainty in his own rectitude over the apparent obtuseness of officialdom merely reinforced all their prejudices about the world. He enjoyed the perversity of taking a contrary stance, an outlook that also fuelled his satires. Ian Hislop, Private Eye’s current editor, said that “no one agreed with Christopher all the time, including Christopher himself”.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jul/04/christopher-booker-obituary
Christopher Booker will be missed. But Booker’s legacy will live on. Britain’s vocal climate skeptic and Euroskeptic movements owe much to Booker’s tireless efforts to speak truth to power, to expose the lies and corruption of the British and European establishment.
;-(((( thats the worst news I have read in quite some time
truly a nice man and a loss to us all who “dare’speak out.
damned with faint praise in the obit cheeky mongrels
Vale indeed ,C Booker.
He will be missed.
He will certainly be missed.
Just read his last? book titled global warming: a case study in groupthink. Appears to be right on the money and really shows the herd mentality of today’s greens as well as a nice overview of the entire scam.
Any Freshman highs school science department can literally prove, with testable and repeatable results thatan made global warming is real. Yet none of these antisciece douchebags actually talk about the most basic science. Yes are trivial. A death is always tragic, but at least in this case it’s one less anti science dick.
Thanks, Geekoid, you’ve just given us a perfect example of how many true believers in the global warming cult are ignorant and nasty people. Your comment about Christopher Booker’s tragic death is revolting.
Fortunately Booker’s writing on climate change has helped to create an army of sceptics, including myself. I’m a sceptic precisely because much of the science, and virtually all of the scientific data, shows that global warming is mostly natural and completely beneficial.
By the way, did you know that the planet is growing dramatically greener, primarily because of the increased CO2?
Christopher Booker’s death is tragic. He will be remembered as one who fought for the truth in many areas: climate change, the asbestos scam, the corrupt EU, and the appalling secrecy and abuse surrounding the UK children’s courts.
Chris
Geekoid
A gnat tries to bring down a giant. Booker’s golden career – truly the ‘Holy Fool’ who speaks out when the emperor has no clothes – has done his best and beyond to try to ensure those in power hear our cries. When our towns and cities were being destroyed, and lovely old houses replaced with cardboard ‘ticky tacky’ homes and pollution, Booker was there. When the new 60s ‘permissive society’ claimed to be ‘man’s coming of age’, Booker wrote ‘The Neophiliacs’ to try to stem the suffering. And finally when the insane elevation of ‘science’ to the status of religious certainty led to tidal waves of hysteria about acid rain, global warming and even killer eggs (yes!), Booker pitched in. He defended the weak – children – from the horrors of an abusive social care system. Indeed he could never see the Great and the Powerful wield unlimited power over the weak. He would not stand by. Instead, he bore witness.
An enemy of greed, of exploitation, of hysteria and Utopian longing, he founded the once-magnificent Private Eye. Under his command it became, a ferocious tool used to brickbat fashionable attitudes, and exorcise shallow pretension. Now this once great magazine has fallen into the hands of our fashionable elite, and proscribes many of the causes on which Booker stood almost alone.
Today, we can see Booker as the reincarnation of Dr Johnson. In contrast the coming ‘Minnow King’, Boris shares the same surname, but stands for everything Booker fought. Farewell oh great one and adieu! How we loved thee!
It was Bookers column that led me to WUWT, back in 2008. Something about the biosphere “burping” with all the newly available CO2.
RIP Bookers and thanks.
You and me both John.
Many of us here Discovered WUWT only through Booker’s excellent column.
I was trying to remember what first led me to WUWT. You have reminded me; now I’m pretty sure it was Christopher Booker’s Sunday Telegraph articles, which led me on to Jo Nova and others. Many thanks and RIP, Christopher Booker.
Indeed, same for me. He will be surely miss.
RIP Mr Booker
me too.
me too
Sorry to hear this. He’ll be remembered.
Sad day for the planet. Had he a wider audience there would be more well informed people. Clear, concise articles which were a credit to him and his profession.
One of the very few journalists whose principles made his success.
HotScot
“Had he a wider audience there would be more well informed people. ”
This is the frustrating thing. Climate change sceptics don’t have a wider audience. Booker was so talented but he died without anything he warned about on the climate fraud being taken seriously by the ruling parties.
When was the the last time you saw a sceptic on the the tv or heard them on the radio in the uk? Piers Corbyn on The Big Questions on BBC? Nigel Lawson on BBC radio? Years ago.
SKY is now worse than the BBC for climate change propaganda. They regularly have representatives from loony eco-movements such as Greenpeace, WWF, FoE, the Green Party etc who can now say what they like because the program presenters are so ignorant on the subject that cannot challenge their ridiculous assertions.
The only person on the BBC who actually challenges them is Andrew Neil and that’s late at night when eco-loons are in bed.
Climate change is North Korea.
I read Christopher Booker’s Sunday Telegraph column – until it was pay-walled. His book The Real Global Warming Disaster was wonderfully instructive and led me directly to WUWT. I was/am a born sceptic who needs evidence so rejected acid rain, global cooling, CFCs causing an O3 ‘hole’, global warming and man-made climate change. Plenty of evidence but all on the sceptic side. I disagreed with him on intelligent design and evolution but then I rejected religion by age of 12 (contrary evidence) so hadn’t to square that particular circle.
Very sad he is gone but he did a good job highlighting insanity, cruelty, and injustice so he won’t be forgotten.
I’ve published on so-called intelligent design Margaret.
Title and abstract:
“On the Assumption of Design
“The assumption of design of the universe is examined from a scientific perspective. The claims of William Dembski and of Michael Behe are unscientific because they are a-theoretic. The argument from order or from utility are shown to be indeterminate, circular, to rest on psychological as opposed to factual certainty, or to be insupportable as regards humans but possibly not bacteria, respectively. The argument from the special intelligibility of the universe specifically to human science does not survive comparison with the capacities of other organisms. Finally, the argument from the unlikelihood of physical constants is vitiated by modern cosmogonic theory and recrudesces the God-of-the-gaps.”
If you’d like a pdf reprint, email me at pfrank_eight_three_zero_AT__earthlink-dot-net.
Christopher Booker combined thorough research with a fearless polemical approach to journalism. I followed him from his early days on Private Eye through to his magnificent campaigning against the scam of CAGW and the secret injustices meted out in the British family courts.
Most BBC so-called ‘journalists’ were not fit to lace his boots. A proper journalist and one that will be missed by many. He is not just a loss to the nation, he is a loss to journalism.
Sad to see so many of the best critical thinkers gone. John Daley, Michael Crichton, Richard Feynman, now Christopher Booker. I know I’ve missed a few names, this is just a first reaction.
I too will miss him. A thorn of truth in the thick skin of the green scam. Such a shame that there are so few journalists these days with the guts to say it as it is in like manner.
When, not if, the green scam hits the buffers his part in the history will be remembered with honour.
The disrespect felt by the “group” thinkers towards Christopher’s enlightened views comes out in the obituaries like the one above claiming he knew asbestos was harmless. On the contrary he knew blue and brown asbestos are very toxic whilst white asbestos, known to most of us as talcum powder, is harmless. It was grouped together by bureaucrats with the toxic forms because it shared the same name. For more information go to asbestoswatchdog.co.uk.
I remember these articles well. It was grossly impertinent to suggest he thought all asbestos harmless.
His work was always fully referenced and highly credible. He was the source for my opinions on both climate change and the EU. A shame that not more people read his work.
I miss his Sunday Telegraph articles. They were a must-read over Sunday breakfast.
The Guardian obituary seems to have been intentionally misrepresenting his views on asbestos, where he was the first to declare that blue and brown asbestos were lethal. It was white asbestos where he felt that people were over-reacting and causing unnecessary alarm and expense, although care was still needed when handling items such as roof sheeting which incorporated white asbestos.
As for speed cameras, my understanding was that he considered that they did not reduce accidents, not that they caused accidents.
Celebrate his integrity!
Not much left in tax hungry governments!
Christopher Booker’s co-author, Dr. Richard North, wrote a heartfelt eulogy on 4th July. See link.
http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87288
How many young sceptics are there ? If there is no new generation taking over his job in 10 or 20 years it’ll be all over. How many here are under 40?
Yup
Thats because a “science” cant live on “falsification” alone
at some point you have to offer a BETTER explanation.
and then the better explanation allows others to build on your work.
Yup, it starts with the Null, and does not rely on models. Or lies. Brett
Christopher Booker died on July 3, 2019. A fitting tribute would be to call attention to the remarkable 109 page report (plus notes) he wrote on Global Warming and Groupthink for the Global Warming Policy Foundation last year. The report illuminates the craziness that has led to the current obsession with man-made climate change.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/02/Groupthink.pdf
Christopher Booker — Global Warming: a case study in groupthink
Rest in peace. You will be missed. May the good Lord comfort your family and friends.
Sad news indeed – his articles were a beacon of sanity among all the climate hysteria that pervades the media.
A sad day for free thinkers in the UK. My thoughts are with Christopher’s family and friends.
“Booker did not attempt to cover his rear or make himself seem more reasonable and moderate by billing himself as a ‘lukewarmer’.”
A strange transformation seems to be taking place with many former lukewarmers having shifted to more radical “consensus” positions.
Hey, with the unworrisome observations, a two decade ‘pause’ that is showing signs of resuming, the shifting of goalposts, uncovering the Climategate Follies, data tampering, deballing of the name from Catastrophic Anthropo Global Warming to the numbing emolient “Climate (small) Change, you folk could have said you had it right all along!
Saddened to learn that Booker has died.
I must have read hundreds of his articles over the past 10 or more years.
Indeed! His attention to detail and extensive research on topics helped inform me on both the global warming scam and the devious machinations of the EU. On the latter, particularly, he educated me enormously and I am forever indebted to Mr Booker for that. A sad loss. RIP
Christopher’s exposure of the Great Asbestos Scam saved thousands of ordinary homeowners a great deal of expense and unnecessary terror . He helped to save the compensation from genuine victims being stolen by greedy no win no fee law firms as well as the massive overcharging by removal contractors .
A truly great intellect and a loyal friend
So very sad…condolences to his family and friends – he will be missed.
I am waiting patiently to see an obituary on the increasingly embarrassing Guardian. It can’t be too much longer now. The current tabloid incarnation is a purely temporary phenomenon embarked upon in an effort to bleed cash a bit more slowly.
Like many here it was Christopher who got me to look at this site and others giving me so much information and help to understand the lie that is the UN backed CAGW scam.
He was always a good read and did meticulous research which others couldn’t knock holes in so like many others they just called him names.
History will remember him as a seeker oi truth not something that you can say about too many journalists!
James Bull
A man of courage . RIP .
He is one of a select few who were not bullied by perpetrators of the alarmist
global warming industry .
A true scientist who will be missed .
His family should be very proud .
The Guardian obit is a nasty piece of work. Just to point out one piece of spin, the threats from the IPCC head to sue IIRC were about the serious conflict of commercial interest that Booker and North exposed, not the science as the G passively imply.