Sherelle Jacobs

Credentials

History, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.¹

Background

Sherelle Jacobs is a British journalist, currently Head of Online Comment at The Daily Telegraph and a former contributor to The Guardian.² ³ ⁴

Jacobs is a Brexit supporter and a self-described climate sceptic, having called the consensus on climate change “invalid”.⁵ ⁶ ⁷

A critic of the BBC, Jacobs described the broadcaster as “diversity-obsessed” and having an “unconscious bias against the world beyond the metropolitan bubble”. She has argued that the BBC is “out of touch” and is heading for “self-destruction”.⁸ ⁹

In November 2019, Jacobs was a speaker at the Battle of Ideas Festival. The annual event is produced by the libertarian Academy of Ideas – its director is Claire Fox, a former Brexit MEP and formerly a prominent figure in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Fox, along with other members of the RCP, now contributes to libertarian magazine Spiked – funded largely by the largest privately-owned energy company in the US, Koch Industries.¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹²

In February 2020, Jacobs spoke at the Change Politics for Good conference, another event organised by the former Brexit MEP, which aimed to “kickstart public conversations on how Brexit can be a catalyst” for new and better politics. Other speakers of the event included Global Warming Policy Foundation trustee and member of parliament Graham Stringer, Spiked writer Frank Furedi, and Global Britain’s director of communications Brian Monteith.¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶

Stance on Climate Change

January 2, 2020

Jacobs wrote in the Telegraph:¹⁷

“The “consensus” on climate change – based on the statistic that 97 per cent of scientists agree – is not only groupthinkishly unscientific in spirit, but also invalid. It is traceable back to a paper by an Australian researcher, which a later paper showed was not only unsubstantiated but outright contradicted by its own data.”¹⁸

The 97% consensus statistic comes from a 2013 study which has been frequently attacked by climate science deniers – the authors continue to stand by their results.¹⁹

December 3, 2019

Jacobs wrote in the Telegraph:²⁰

“The climate change “emergency” is fake news. Many will roll their eyes in exasperation at the conspiratorial bombastry of yet another “denier”. But for years I have been a plastic recycling, polar bear cooing middle-grounder. In fact, Aristotle would probably turn in his grave at the logical fallaciousness of my long-held presumption that the truth must lie somewhere between those two mutually loathing opposites – Scepticism and Armageddon.²¹

“But as the doom-mongering acquires the rubber-stamped smell of instutionalised illness, it is impossible to ignore that the “woke” are the new “slept” – too deep in their sugar coma of confected hysteria to realise they are being duped by disinformation.”²²

Later in the article, Jacobs wrote:²³

“The climate “emergency” is the most electrifyingly effective propaganda exercise of the 21st century.”²⁴

Key Quotes

March 5, 2020

She went on to compare environmental policymakers, with bureaucrats at the European Union:²⁶

“Just as the EU establishment derives its legitimacy from the teleological assumption that the future is borderless universalism, the green establishment poised to take its place sees the planet rather than the people as the highest authority. As a result, the country is heading in a direction at odds with the ambitions of ordinary people.”²⁷

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial group, subsequently reshared Jacobs’ article on their website.²⁸

December 3, 2019

Jacobs shared a Telegraph article she had written on Twitter, and said:²⁹

“I used to be a ‘middle-grounder’ rather than a sceptic on climate change…until I realised the scale on which science is being manipulated into alarmist fake news. Me for @Telegraph.”³⁰

August 1, 2019

On Greta Thunberg’s activism, Jacobs wrote in the Telegraph:³¹

“Ms Thunberg’s green solutions are regressive. She desires total elimination of carbon emissions by 2025, even though such an endeavour would cause world economic carnage. This latest venture, which vulgarly combines super-rich lifestyle advertising with the impotent modern activist’s weakness for pointless stunts, only highlights further that Leftie campaigners can offer us no practical solutions.”³²

DeSmog have not found evidence to suggest that Thunberg has called for carbon emissions to be eliminated by 2025 – although protest group Extinction Rebellion have called for this as part of their three demands.³³

June 11, 2019

On veganism, Jacobs wrote in the Telegraph:³⁴

“I have always been suspicious of veganism. To provincial carnivores like me, it seems something of an anti-food phenomenon: a drift towards a herbivorous dystopia of malnourished metropolitan sanctimoniousness and virtue signallers with tofu breath. And, my, what a minefield of culinary ironies. Fat-riddled, pine forest-destroying avocados are to the “ethical” vegan what pasta is to the Italians.”³⁵

Key Deeds

June 11, 2020

In an article for The Telegraph, Jacobs argued that dubious scientific modelling relating to the COVID-19 crisis could also apply to climate change predictions, writing: “Years from now historians will write books about how a mickey mouse discipline crept across Western universities like a cancer, spawning new fields (like climate modelling), and corrupting old ones (like epidemiology).”

March 26, 2020

Jacobs donwplayed the threat of climate change when criticizing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “panicked” strategy on the Covid-19 pandemic in a Telegraph column:³⁶

“In puffing about climate change while ignoring threats like bio-engineered pandemics and nuclear war, UN junketeers, EU sycophants and Westminster charlatans and all the other globalist risk managers have shown themselves to be incapable of prioritising risks.”³⁷

March 12, 2020

In a Telegraph column about the Covid-19 pandemic, Jacobs argued that we should “redirect university financing away from climate change predictive modelling, into the scientifically uncontested problem of pandemics”.³⁸

She also appeared to refer to Extinction Rebellion who recently dug up the lawns at a Cambridge college as “anarchists” – in the article she referred to those who “dig up Oxford lawns”.³⁹

February 6, 2020

Writing in a Telegraph column, Jacobs described Boris Johnson’s announcement of a 2035 ban on the sale of new petrol cars as “bureau-catastrophism”.⁴⁰

January 23, 2020

Jacobs wrote an article for The Telegraph where she argued that “Western civilization has ditched evidence-based rigour for adolescent hysteria”.⁴¹

Describing attendees of the World Economic Forum as “Davos Doom-mongers”, Jacobs acknowledged that global warming is happening, but suggested that the science of climate change is “messy, mystifying and ambivalent”.⁴²

Jacobs argued that the year’s Australian bushfires were not uniquely linked to a changing climate, and that instead climate change was one factor among many.⁴³

The columnist also cited findings that suggested the sun may have a large effect on climate change, referencing a study conducted by Nir Shaviv – an associate professor of Physics and an advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Shaviv’s analyses have been described as “ill-founded”.⁴⁴ ⁴⁵

Jacobs went on to describe the green movement as “eco-catastrophism” and “managerialism” and asked the question, “when did Western civilization enter this new Dark Age?”⁴⁶

Later, Jacobs took to Twitter to argue against being described as a climate change denier by Bob Ward, a policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. She accused Ward of smearing those who “question whether it’s healthy to talk about the issue with such unwavering certainty”, calling the “denier label” chilling.⁴⁷

January 2, 2020

Jacobs claimed that Greta Thunberg was “rewriting truth” in a Telegraph column.⁴⁸

Describing the 17-year-old climate activist as “both the fake news messenger and the fake news”, Jacobs argued that elites like “Stormzy and Thunberg are the eerie pin-ups of an anti-rational age.”⁴⁹

Jacobs also went on to write:⁵⁰

“The child oracle is yanking us by the hand, not out of the eco-apocalypse’s jaws but into the jowls of vegetable-brained oblivion.”⁵¹

December 3, 2019

Jacobs argued that the consensus on climate change science is “fake news” and, referencing the UN and the IPCC, said “the experts don’t seem quite sure”.⁵²

In the Telegraph column, Jacobs went on to describe her frustration over the debate between the consensus and researchers who offer alternative findings:⁵³

“This post-truth scam is having a chilling effect on science. Experts are locked in a race to the bottom to make detailed and disastrous premonitions. And despite the fact that disciplined debate is the motor of scientific discovery, eco-extremists are shutting down discussions that dissent from the Apocalypse narrative. CO2 emissions may not be the only reason for warming. So sidelining studies that have, for example, found the natural climate system can suddenly shift, and ridiculing researchers who explore other possible variables – from solar changes to volcanoes – could be driving us further from the truth.”⁵⁴

“Laymen like me sense that something is amiss, because we grew up assuming science is more about possibility than limitations. But so it goes that, in this messed-up world, the optimists have become sceptics; and those unradicalised by global warming delirium, the extremists.”⁵⁵

Jacobs replied on Twitter to an account who expressed their disagreement to the article:⁵⁶

“No doubt the planet is warming, nor that CO2 is contributor. The rub for me is that projections are now routinely presented to the public as firm predictions. There are children on psychiatric drugs because they genuinely believe the world is about to end…”⁵⁷

The Global Warming Policy Foundation shared her article on its website.⁵⁸

July 10, 2019

In a tweet, Jacobs seemed to defend a speech by Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe’s in the European Parliament where she likened Brexit to the emancipation of slaves, by comparing it to the words of David Attenborough:⁵⁹ ⁶⁰

“Ann Widdecombe compares Brexit to ‘slaves’ rising up ‘against their owners’ and she is condemned as a ‘bigot’. David Attenborough compares the plastics revolution to the abolition of slavery and he is lionised as ‘a legend’.”⁶¹