Delingpole: Wrong and bitter on DDT

November 21, 2010

The Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole got suckered by the anti-Rachel Carson propaganda, and wrote a bitter piece complaining about how environmentalists are ruining the environment and people’s lives (double whammy:  environmentalists worry about people over profits, and the environment over corporations, so Delingpole hoped to tweak ’em at both ends).  Lots of discussion, too much to read and most of it nasty and off target.

It was a smaller part of Delingpole’s generally anti-science, contrary-to-fact rant about global warming.

Chris Goodall fixed all of Delingpole’s errors on DDT at Carbon Commentary.

Being pro-DDT has become as religious an exercise as being for creationism taught in public schools.  There’s no good evidence to support the point, but there are a tiny handful of people who are gullible enough to spread whatever they say.  That tiny handful of advocates never gets the facts on their side, nor they on the side of the facts, but they appear deluded enough that they get their panties in a wad if you point out that their claims are false.  “I’m not a liar!” they’ll retort with indignation good enough to make them rivals of the Portugal soccer squad’s acting, or just crazy enough to fail to recognize their errors.

And so the falsehoods spiral on virally.

Rachel Carson’s ghost should get busier.  DDT can’t stop malaria, and now rarely slows it at all.  Rachel Carson was right — and had we listened in 1962, malaria might be a lot less prevalent today.

2 Comments | DDT, Global warming, History, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell