A prominent British scientist, Sir John Lawton, is blaming “neoconservatives” for the current hurricane season. German social scientist Benny Peiser, based in England, comments,

The hurricane-global warming link has been extremely contentious for many years among leading experts. That Sir John explicitly picks American “neoconservatives” in this context as the villains of his tirade is thus rather revealing. After all, some of the leading voices of neo-conservatism share green concerns about fossil fuels. As Robert Bryce pointed out earlier this year, “many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles- per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.
The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney – both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998-are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular” (“As green as a neocon”; see also “Neoconservatives and greens find common cause on energy conservation”).
So why did Sir John select neo-conservatives for blame? Because the term “neocon” is widely used as a derogatory code word for ‘Jews’ – and open or disguised Jew-baiting has become very popular among Little Englanders in recent years.

Ken Clarke, darling of the Tory left, is also fond of hurling around “neoconservative” as an abusive epithet. He used it about tentative suggestions for a flat tax recently, for instance. It would be churlish at this point to mention that as a student politician, Clarke invited Oswald Moseley, leader of the British fascists, to speak to Cambridge students twice.