David Rose has a rather depressing yet not surprising article in the Mail on Sunday that documents the hive mind mentality, or some might call it a ‘mob mentality’, of warmists.
It’s about Dr. Richard Tol, whose dared to try to distance himself from what he viewed as overly alarming claims in the IPCC Working Group II Summary for Policymakers. As a result, he has incurred the wrath of the Internet climate mob.
The article also documents some of the changes due to the political intervention into the draft review process and as an extra bonus highlights some of the all-to-predictable dishonesty from Bob Ward.
Green ‘smear campaign’ against professor who dared to disown ‘sexed up’ UN climate dossier
- Richard Tol claims he is fighting a sustained attack on his reputation
- Professor from Sussex University is a highly respected climate economist
- Criticised by campaigners after saying report summary was ‘alarmist’
- In his opinion, it focused on ‘scare stories’
The professor who refused to sign last week’s high-profile UN climate report because it was too ‘alarmist’, has told The Mail on Sunday he has become the victim of a smear campaign.
Richard Tol claims he is fighting a sustained attack on his reputation by a key figure from a leading institution that researches the impact of global warming.
Prof Tol said: ‘This has all the characteristics of a smear campaign. It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.’
Prof Tol, from Sussex University, is a highly respected climate economist and one of two ‘co-ordinating lead authors’ of an important chapter in the 2,600-page report published last week by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He has been widely criticised by green campaigners after he claimed that the much shorter ‘summary for policymakers’ – hammered out in all-night sessions between scientists and government officials over a week-long meeting in Yokohama, Japan – was overly ‘alarmist’.
In his view, the summary focused on ‘scare stories’ and suggestions the world faced ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’.
This is just another data point on the graph of CAGW’s journey to rejection, ridicule and eventual oblivion. This sort of rat shot invective against those who articulate the absurdity and fraudulence of CAGW is to be expected because that is all that is left in the ammunition locker.
“Richard Tol claims he is fighting a sustained attack on his reputation by a key figure from a leading institution that researches the impact of global warming.”
Any information on who is the “Key Figure”
When you get right down to it, the one thing that has alarmed the alarmists most has been the
lack of warming. That drives them crazy and leads to absurd claims, like that from Mann recently :
“Warming has not stopped, only slowed down.” Yeah, slowed down. As in stopped.
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
More indications of the deteriorating integrity in the academy. The days of “sifting and winnowing” http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/siftandwinnow.htm are long gone, it seems.
Smear campaign. As predictable as the rising sun. Eventually this will be their undoing. They will go after the wrong person and the public will say no more. “Sir, have you no decency?”
Everything’s right on time and according to script. A new scary, unsubstantiated report is published. Someone of conscience objects. Person of conscience is then smeared in public to enforce the dogma of fear and catastrophe. Same old, same old…
$1 billion PER DAY is spent world-wide on “global warming.” Not even “climate change” but “GLOBAL WARMING. If you were getting a piece of that money, would you really like ANY voice that says, “Ya know, maybe we’re being too alarmist”?
I like the phrase used in the Daily Mail article
Climate McCarthyism
Very appropriate.
The objective of the UN is the destruction of Western Civilization. They couldn’t care less about “climate change,” except as it gets people to accept UN dominance. Dr. Tol didn’t go along with the scare, which makes the elaborate story from the IPCC . . .
USELESS
That’s why the reaction. It’s not science. It’s advocacy. Not for “climate,” but for world hegemony.
The report was “hammered out in all-night sessions between scientists and government officials.” Guess whose opinions prevailed. And if an unwise scientist makes trouble, down the hole he goes. Like in 1935 Germany. 1939 is just around the corner.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/23/the-scientific-firmament.html
OK, …how do we help Dr. Tol?
My sympathy for Dr Tol is restrained by the observation that he has been quite content to play along with the scaremongering of the IPCC until now.
Now he is a heretic, a turncoat even, in the eyes of the Team.
Nothing new here, the mob always eats its own, until the rabid ranting of the most powerful loony dominates the scene.
CAGW will be a historic example of the recurring madness of crowds.
Herd beasts are always obsessed with dominance and pecking order, the popular wisdom of the moment, must be adhered to or the heretics be stomped.
Trouble is that popular wisdom is elusive and causes the believers to turn on each subgroup of their support in turn.
Buy Popcorn.
This is ugly, but it is to be expected. As the whole global warming scare collapses, those like Ward who cannot escape the permanent record of their shame will get increasingly vicious to those who can walk away.
Years ago I worked with an expert patternmaker for steel castings. As a teenager he had escaped from a former soviet satellite state to the west. Their village was close to the border, but any escape by young folk was met with reprisals against their remaining family by party officials and secret police. Eventually some thirty teenagers escaped on mass on the one night. The family members facing reprisals now outnumbered the oppressors in the village and no reprisals resulted.
However the wide readership of David Rose and other sceptics mean that such a mass breakout may not be necessary for some of the former fellow travellers. As the numbers dwindle, those remaining will become increasingly insane. Their foaming and shrieking will seem increasingly ludicrous and will only serve to make anyone with a chance of escape (no record of vilifying sceptics) more likely to flee.
Ward’s vile antics expose the black heart of the whole AGW machine for the world to see. Who wants to remain on team AGW when Bob Ward is on the team?
” hammered out in all-night sessions between scientists and government officials over a week-long meeting in Yokohama, Japan”
Is this what they mean by the scientific process?
Yet no one in Academia rises to the defense of Tol. The silence is defining. You hear nothing about this being an assault on “academic freedom”; or about how the mob is “anti-science”. It would seem that academic freedom means only the freedom to agree with the consensus.
Politics has always been an ugly bastard brother to scientific endeavor. We will never change that. However we must resist the attempt by anyone to co-opt science into a political endeavor. Those that do deserve and should expect the scorn and resistance of true scientist. When that has happened free men will have no longer be free and science will only be science. .
Take away their money and they will have nothing.
Well, this IS WWIV. Don’t expect rationality to prevail, or science or logic or honesty or justice, necessarily. The bombs are falling all over the world, they just don’t go BOOM when they land. Yet. The first refuge of the climate scoundrels may be ad hominem, but the last resort of will be violence. Consider the stakes. The media must be made to realize the consequences of aligning themselves with despotism, fiddling with the Mayor of Toronto while the Constitution is on fire in Washington DC.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/03/05/rat-snake-bob/
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/03/07/bob-wards-despicable-harassment-campaign/
I have been really impressed with Tol appearing on the scene with a clear voice of authority and competence. They trashed economist Lomborg too, and he then moderated his biting attacks on elitist “no development in view of my mountain lair” environmental movement supporters. Those multimillionaires (and their wives) are now failing to hold back the tide of public opinion turning against them. Only aversion to old school anti-science conservatism (stem cells, Darwin, drug war scares, etc.) now creates much inertia towards younger generations joining what is now considered to be a political movement that skeptics represent.
I have a Climate McCarthyism graphic appropriate to this thread:
http://s6.postimg.org/kdr0qt181/Climate_Mc_Carthyism.jpg
All the summaries and executive versions are fashioned to be more alarmist that the underlying reports. Dr. Tol was not aware? He is hardly the first to complain, but being an economist, his doubts are immediately dangerous to the insurance industries and various other economic parasites — the UN itself being one of the biggest with its CDM scam. Tol complaining about a UN report hyping “climate change” is like complaining about a report from Exxon singing praises about petroleum. Is this economist unaware how the UN makes a lot of its dough?
john robertson
My sympathy for Dr Tol is restrained by the observation that he has been quite content to play along with the scaremongering of the IPCC until now. …
I disagree. Dr. Tol has simply stuck to his expertise – he has accepted IPCC predictions of climate change, and used his expertise to dismantle their economic predictions.
Two observations:-
1. If we are intolerant of divergent opinions, we are just like the people we despise.
2. Dr. Tol is well within his rights to avoid commenting outside his field of expertise.
Dr. Tol has certainly not stayed silent when academically questionable statements have come to his attention, for example, when the Cook “97%” study misclassified Dr. Tol’s work as “supportive” of the IPCC, Dr. Tol put some real effort into showing what a shonky study it was.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/01/tol-statistically-deconstructs-the-97-consensus/
Perhaps this Bob Ward?
http://www.channel4.com/news/scientists-challenge-work-of-climate-change-dissenter
Bob Ward, of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the LSE, has published what he claims is a detailed account of Professor Tol’s input to the IPCC report, pledging “I will continue my efforts to have the errors in Professor Tol’s work corrected as a service to researchers, policy-makers and the public.”
‘all-to-predictable’ – minor typo – should be all-too-predictable
Dave
Why is anyone giving any weight to Bob Ward? Once he has embarrassed himself, those supporting him are merely embarrassing themselves and reducing their credibility.
Congratulations to Richard Tol for being officially inducted into the cadre of climate-related scientists with integrity. The group includes (but is not limited to) Judy Curry, The Pielkes, Willie Soon, Richard Lindzen, Anthony Watts, & William Gray. They are indeed a rare breed. He should be honored.
How dare he dissent from the “party line” of the Global Warming Religion, he will be excommunicated and burn in hell.
Why does anyone suggest this will be their undoing? — it won’t. History has proven over and over that these movements only stop after millions upon millions of lives have been lost in world-wide violent conflict. Why does anyone believe it will be different this time?
The people who are the “deniers” are those who pretend that giving ourselves and our futures over to government technocrats will result in anything other than genocide — that is “denial” as the statistical correlation is 100%, so who are the “science” deniers? These movements don’t stop until the mayhem is so terrible and prolonged that it burns out like a huge forest fire.
In the short-term, lies and propaganda win over truth. It is in our nature and our DNA, primally encoded — read Kahneman for proof. Why do we think logic and rationality will be persuasive to something that never arose logically or rationally? It is the pathology of the human condition that these things arrive and cannot be stopped. I am sorry to inform folks of this dire fact, I certainly wish it were not so.
Make no mistake, their pathological grasping is fighting a war against truth and decency to satisfy inner desires that are malevolent. To pretend like there is good faith where there is pathology, or to pretend like logic matters with respect to the course of a pathology is counterproductive — a waste of energy and resources that sets the decent back further by its dilatory and exhausting effect.
Ward is just jealous because Tol has all his hair.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
This has been the week for the Left to show its true face, hasn’t it? Gawker’s Adam Weinstein calls for climate skeptics to be jailed; Brendan Eich is hounded from his job at Mozilla for daring to hold an opinion not approved of by same-sex marriage “activists;” and now a professor in the UK is seeing his reputation slagged for criticizing the latest IPCC report on climate change as “alarmist.” He’s almost assuredly right, but truth doesn’t matter to Liberal Fascists.
As long as the media and the public buy into the “97% concensus” concept, dissenting voices of esteemed scientists will be ignored or ridiculed.
How can we combat the misleading 97% number?
How can we find a way to convince people that the debate is not over?
Until we can answer these two questions, we will continue to be ignored or ridiculed. Can anyone think of a way to engage the alarmists in a public dialogue to discuss areas of agreement. In the process, both sides can identify specific areas where there is disagreement. For example, the positive feedback of warming due to carbon dioxide can be the focus of discussion. When everyone has to admit that they really do not know, then the playing field should become more level and the credibility of the “non-alarmists” should become elevated.
Incidently, I don’t think name calling and political tangents help the cause of either side.
Dr Richard Tol has stood up. They want to cut him down as an example to others who might have doubts about their “science”. It is an important moment, he needs allies to stand beside him and help him take the strain. If he can keep his dignity and keep standing that will be a big defeat for the warmists and it will encourage others to speak out.
Is this all a cunning plan to kill Lewandowsky with overwork?
Gamecock:
If you are looking for conspiracy theories, remember the Club of *Rome* boot from all those years ago ? Read that in the early 1970’s, but afaik, none of it came true. Wonder if that was an early clumsy attempt with the same agenda ?.
The question you always have to ask is: Who has the most to gain and the most to lose from any of this ?…
The facts and data are now contrary to the Warmistas’ view and cannot be used against Dr. Richard Tol. All they have left in their armoury are ‘ad hominems’, verbal abuse and threatened violence or ex-communication from the Holy Order of CAGW. CAGW is journeying into rejection, public ridicule and oblivion.
Unlikely so. Lewandowsky doesn’t know the meaning of “work”, over or under.
This is playing out as expected. Uglier and uglier. Tol finally blew the whistle on the bad economics, better late than never. The disconnects between the WG2 report, itself insufficiently critical of many of the studies it relies upon (see crop yields) and the Politically motivated SPM are huge, most yet to be adequately disclosed. So Tol becomes this weeks target of CAGW wolfhounds like Bob Ward.
The CAGW problem is they do not control information, or people, or the Internet–although they try through co-opted MSM (Guardian and Nucitelli), deleted comments (almost everywhere, but try Sci Am for an example that should know better), and stuff like UWAs rejection of the Lew rejection and FOI.
All this is SOP. Remember Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during Vietnam? I do. They took over my University by force after staging pretend elections in which that was voted down. They weren’t students, and they did not believe in democratic society. Actions speak louder than words.
War is hell. Turning the other cheek and taking the high road only goes so far. Mr. Bob Ward, get ready for some incoming. And all other Warmists. Time the tough got going, since the going has gotten tough.
This is right out of the Alinsky playbook:
Every normal person with honest values is demonized in turn by the Left, one by one, as they make honest statements based on their own beliefs, and when those beliefs contradict the narrative. This is a truly despicable tactic, but an expected one ever since President Bush became the designated Demon. Then came General Petraeus, who made the Surge a success: he was demonized as “General BetrayUs” by the same people who are attacking Dr. Tol for expressing his honest scientific opinion.
Recall that it happened to Romney, too: within a week of his nomination, he was pictured by the Obama Administration and their co-conspirators in the media as having a foot-long nose. Mr. Romney is one of the most honest people in politics anywhere. He gave away his entire fortune to charity, because he wanted to make it on his own. He did. He adopted many of his dozen-plus kids, of all races. But being unable to attack anything of substance, the Alinsky-style smears began.
It happens to Anthony all the time: really despicable cartoons, and vicious personal slander. The people committing those atrocities do it for only one reason: they haven’t got anything of substance to say. And of course, they do it because it is tremendously hurtful to be attacked in public by hate-filled character assassins.
This will continuen to happen to anyone who dares to contradict the man-made runaway global warming scare. It is the price we pay to defend scientific probity. We know the ‘carbon’ scare is complete nonsense, and that these critics have nothing scientific to offer. They have lost the scientific debate. They resort to despicable character assassination specifically because they do not have the science on their side. If they did, they would use it.
Dr. Tol and others like him need to know that they have a lot of supporters. The alarmist crowd is in reality just a clique, and not a very big one. The OISM Petition contains thousands more names than the climate alarmist side has ever been able to assemble. Scientific skeptics are becoming steadily more numerous. Eventually the alarmist clique will fold, but not before inflicting as much personal animosity into the debate as they can.
Bob Ward = Jeremy Grantham’s man at the LSE
LSE = Fabian Socialist “economics” school promoting Keynesianism. Hey, we can print ourselves to prosperity! Famous alumni: Gaddafhi’s kid.
Keynes = Eugenicist, “economist”, roulette gambler, gay with a penchant for young boys, famous quote: “In the long run, we are all dead” (Having children was a foreign concept to him)
Jeremy Grantham = Malthusian hedge fund billionaire investing in Big Oil, hoping to kill rival coal via the CO2AGW scare to rake in the dough. Sponsoring Green smear campaigns; ends-justify-the-means influence peddler. Peak Oiler.
The problem the green hoards have is it is very easy to see they are over-alarmist by simply looking at their charts and graphs and then comparing them to observed. Theirs is a record of few successes. And when you back out their endless adjustments to the historical data their success fall to zero.
Although the facts are on our side, the perception is on their (warmest) side. Unfortunately, perception usually trumps facts. So we are back to the question of: How do we get the true facts to become the true perception? It still seems to me that it’s basically a public relations problem. As long as we are perceived as “radical” it is easy for our true facts to be dismissed. It is time for the tough to get going alright But what do we need to do specifically?
“Rud Istvan says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:09 pm
Actions speak louder than words.
War is hell. Turning the other cheek and taking the high road only goes so far. Mr. Bob Ward, get ready for some incoming. And all other Warmists. Time the tough got going, since the going has gotten tough.”
I think sentiments like these are not helpful. This is not ‘war.’ This is a debate where one side has taken the low road of trying to shut up the other side. In time it will be seen for what it is.
I think we should all take Steve McIntyre’s approach. His ability to remain civil and calm whilst arguing his case persuasively is legendary.
Bob Ward (who has been suggested by the Daily Mail and others as the source of the alleged smear campaign – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2597907/Green-smear-campaign-against-professor-dared-disown-sexed-UN-climate-dossier.html#ixzz2y9JNywzA ) got a mention in the Climategate archive:-
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4890.txt
I am forwarding an exchange of e-mails I had with David Whitehouse last week about the Met Office’s press release on 2008 global temperatures. You will see that he is persisting with his stupid argument that global warming ended in 2001 – he is still managing to sway people with his argument, and it is the same as Christopher Booker is using virtually every week in ‘The Sunday Telegraph’.
So I am planning to go public over my argument with Whitehouse and to take Booker to the Press Complaints Commission.
Given mainstream climate science now grudgingly admits the pause, I think its fair to say that calling in the press complaints commission against someone who speculated about a pause back in 2008 would have been an overreaction.
We are facing “the four horsemen of the apocalypse’! and worse – except it is through the UN and Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is the father of AGW but at least the UN is now showing its ugly head.
See my blog at http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Cheers
Roger
Prof Tol, from Sussex University, is a highly respected climate economist and one of two ‘co-ordinating lead authors’ of an important chapter in the 2,600-page report published last week by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Open question to the members of the smear campaign:
How is it that Prof. Tol had so much credibility that he was invited to be one of two leading authors on an IPCC chapter, but the moment he disagrees with something, he is deemed not to be credible?
That someone with the lack of credibility claimed by the smear campaign somehow got invited to be a co-lead author in the first place beggars the imagination. They’d essentially be claiming that their choice of Tol was incompetent to begin with.
Sleazy behavior seems to be integral, not exceptional, to the AGW movement.
Dr. Tol has been in the tank with these sharks for awhile. He should have seen this coming.
I commend him though, even as he’s being chewed apart.
It needs to be widely recognized that there is scientific redemption for those with the courage to reject “consensus” alarmism and the old way of doing business. But it also needs to be recognized that the window of opportunity to do so will be of a limited duration.
Welcome back Prof. Tol. You are at the spearhead, I think, of a massive scientific mea culpa.
Kozlowski says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:32 pm
“I think sentiments like these are not helpful. This is not ‘war.’ This is a debate where one side has taken the low road of trying to shut up the other side. In time it will be seen for what it is.”
This is a war. CO2AGW is a campaign by the UN globalists to achieve their eternal dream of global control. Do you want to live free or be a serf of an undemocratic technocratic elite, is the question.
(They use “sleep gas” in the film; in the book, H G Welles, Fabian Socialist, suggested Nerve gas, though, to subdue unruly nation states resisting the globalist takeover)
What happens when you try to leave a cult or secret society?
You get Tol’ed.
“It should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism (or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans, about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a “noble” idea. It is not an honest pursuit of “sustainable development”, a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian utopia of 1984.”
Vaclav Klaus
Appendix B, Blue Planet in Green Shackles – What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?
Competitive Enterprise Institute 2008
Kozlowski says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:32 pm
“I think sentiments like these are not helpful. This is not ‘war.’ This is a debate where one side has taken the low road of trying to shut up the other side. In time it will be seen for what it is.”
Steve McIntyre has provided a very useful service in showing that it is fraud. However, the other side remains relentless. Now that we know what it is, it is clear that we are facing a repeat of historical situations where there is a mass phenomenon of delusion serving the interests of the hubristic and malevolent side of human nature in those who have succumbed to that foible.
Yes, it most absolutely is war. War takes many different types of people to perform different functions. Perhaps SM is more like the code breakers at Bletchley, rather than Patton or a foot soldier. However, to believe that is this anything less than war is Chamberlainesque.
Of course they want you to believe otherwise, which you do, to our detriment and your discredit, no ad hominem intended. The inability to see that propaganda is being blatantly pursued and disseminated, with corrupt objectives unknown only to the perpetrators themselves, is what has set the stage for the historical precedents I fear the most. And propaganda wins over the truth because of the structure of our biologically imbued information/input processing systems.
Again, I wish it was not true and I hate that it is, but there is no virtue or value in avoiding this ugly truth, which again, I will state is 100% statistically historically accurate. Please don’t deny the science of this conclusion. The proof is too long for this forum, but it is as true as quantum mechanics.
Ward’s criticisms can be found here:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2014/March/Errors-in-estimates-of-the-aggregate-economic-impacts-of-climate-change.aspx
WSJ has an article today on IPCC reports and issues with summary. Also some far-left quotes from WG2 report.
Second Climate Thoughts http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303532704579477222157281450
I should have taken it down, but I read on the online news, the BBC have been accused of not allowing alternative arguments being published during their campaign to support climate alarmist views. This is a start.
I’ve said it before: George Mason U should be funded to rerun the survey it’s done twice already (most recently 7 years ago) of the views of AGU and AMS members on AGW. It got much less alarming numbers and asked much more sophisticated questions.
Maybe the survey should be expanded to include questions on political views. And to examine the subset of high-publication climatologists.
A poster asked, what can the tough do to get going? A lot, depending on where you are.
Not everyone need be WUWT or Climate Etc. Everyone can have at least local impact.
Everywhere, write reasoned op eds, and if none get published, let that be known through the new media like here. Everywhere, respond in reasoned fashions on warmist blogs (Scientific American’s site being a previous example.) Take screen shots, and publish how legitimate criticism is ‘disappeared’.
Vote for folks who might display rationality (US midterms are just months away). Write your representatives about ‘illegal’ acts, whether failure to dredge Somerset Levels in the UK or EPA efforts to impose carbon sequestration in contravention of a 2006 US law requiring that any remediation be previously commercially established. Write them again and again.
These are just the obvious. Get creative. Don’t just complain here. Ask for paper retractions, giving specific reasons, as I have now done three times. Not that papers will get retracted (Lews lew being an exception), rather the record of violating their own written principles gets strengthened, and their sense of impending problems will increase.Request data and code that was supposed to be archived but wasn’t.
Speak up in cocktail parties- a soft request for data or explanation (extremes, the pause, and polar bears are great fun) can work wonders- especially since it provides also reason to leave early when the challenged become offended.
Alinsky’s rules for radicals are clear. Invert and them against the radicals.
BTW, radicals hate ridicule. Which is so easy, since they know not what they do. Pause, anyone? No dead polar bears? Record winter cold/ snow caused by warming? Extremes that don’t appear? Water a future issue because of droughts and floods- often in the same place the same year? Please explain.
Eric Gisin says:
April 6, 2014 at 8:30 pm
WSJ has an article today on IPCC reports and issues with summary. Also some far-left quotes from WG2 report.
Second Climate Thoughts http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303532704579477222157281450
From which I read:
Furthermore, the version of Chapter 10 that has been published on the IPCC’s website is the draft that was distributed to governments in October 2013, and still contains at least three erroneous data points in Table 10.B.1 and Figure 10-1. The text of Section 10.9.2 remains a highly misleading description of the data: “Estimates agree on the size of the impact (small relative to economic growth) but disagree on the sign”.
Earlier in the article, Bob Ward claims he started complain to Tol and other working group members back in January, about Tol’s work. But they published it anyway according to Ward (as in I haven’t read it myself, so I am taking him at his word). Which begs the obvious question:
If the IPCC agreed with Ward that these were errors, they wouldn’t they have retracted them?
In brief, Ward is accusing the IPCC of having knowingly published errors in AR5!
Giggle, they’re turning on each other and aren’t even aware that they are doing so!
john robertson says:
April 6, 2014 at 4:34 pm
The point is that key scientific figures are finding the integrity and courage to light a candle in the Darkness of deceit and political manipulation of scientific enquiry that is the “settled science”. Such people should be applauded and supported by us, not vilified and isolated for past iniquities. I’d remind you that most of the prominent sceptics/lukewarmers had Pauline conversions along the way. Should we castigate Jo Nova or Anthony for once being warmists?
Rus Istvan;
Speak up in cocktail parties- a soft request for data or explanation
One of my favourites is to ask if they know how the ghe works and if they could please explain it to me. Most of the time that leads to one of two things:
1) they explain, get it wrong, and I can say heavens no, that’s not how it works, let me explain how it really works, and you know that it is logarithmic btw….
2) they hem and haw and admit that they don’t know, then quote the 97% consensus.
At which point I ask if they are quoting the Zimmerman paper or the Cook paper and ask if they read them because I did, and wonder if they spotted the same mistakes I did….
Now be warned, you can seriously tick people off like this. Make fools of people and they tend to lash out. Doesn’t make for repeat invitations to cocktail parties.
A poster asked, what can the tough do to get going?
Get involved politically at all levels, write leters and Vote.
Rich Carman says:
April 6, 2014 at 5:47 pm
The CAGW movement is a political tangent disconnected from physical reality.
davidmhoffer says:
April 6, 2014 at 9:37 pm
Beating people—softly—over the head with their own BS made them mad?
Colorado Wellington says:
April 6, 2014 at 10:28 pm
Beating people—softly—over the head with their own BS made them mad?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Absolutley. Not all of them of course, Strangely, if you can get a high school teenager involved in a this kind of conversation, they’re more receptive than most adults. Their math is current, and I can frequently get the to go “…. wait a sec, but that would mean….” and you can see the lights coming on.
Adults have more entrenched belief systems, and will lash out much harder if challenged. You have to choose which battles to fight, and which tactics to use with people who have different educations and political leanings. Sometimes best to leave well enough alone. If you become ostracized form your circle of friends, you’ll have no impact on them at all. Sometimes I wait for someone to complain about the recent winter, and I just quietly mumble something about it being global warming accompanied with a wry smile. I get lots of blank stares, and a few friendly nods, even winks. The blank stares are the people trying to reconcile their belief system with their just voiced complaint about the cold. Slow and steady wins the race. No need to crush them with a single argument.
But circling back to your original question, I once moved into a new neighbourhood, which, as it turns out, had more than its fair share of houses of worship. A competition ensued in which members of the various houses of worship approached the new family hoping to recruit new members. One erstwhile young minister suggested to me that I should attend his house of worship because of something that the bible said. I pointed out that the bible said no such thing. He became agitated, so I pulled form the book shelf my copy of his bible and asked him to locate the passage from which he was quoting. The more he searched in vain for it, the angrier he got, and a physical altercation nearly ensued.
So yes, beating people who have strong belief systems over the head, even softly, with their own BS, even by presenting to them the evidence they are quoting from, provokes strong reactions. The more entrenched the beliefs, the stronger the reaction to contrary evidence, even when it comes from their own book.
Pick the time and place and tactics for each battle. There’s no one size fits all strategy here.
I think you can contact Dr. Richard Tol via this website for voicing support:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/economics/people/peoplelists/person/289812
Don’t know what else to do…
I emailed him
JPP
Tol just refused to sign, he hasn’t resigned as far as I am aware. Resigning would be a mistake, he can then be simply replaced and forgotten about, and the IPCC will have easily and comfortably sanitised their ranks of disbelievers. Better that he remain inside the system and fight its excesses from there.
Small pedantry all-to-predictable all-too-predictable.
@Jer0me
In fact, I’ve lost a lot of hair.
Felix: Ward’s criticisms can be found here:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2014/March/Errors-in-estimates-of-the-aggregate-economic-impacts-of-climate-change.aspx
_________________________________________________________________________
Maybe Richard Tol would like to take the opportunity to deal with the Ward criticisms on a point-by-point basis in this forum. As an “innocent by-stander”, Ward’s comments seem to me to have some substance. If they do not, it should be a simple matter for RT to demonstrate why Ward’s criticisms lack substance.
@TC
See http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/mr-wards-fantastical-claims.html
@others
The “key figure” is of course Lord Stern of Brentford.
Thanks for that Richard – puts things into perspective.
Thankfully reality will bring CAGW crashing to Earth as the data rolls in. The clinevitability of the calendar j s a CAGW redistributionist’$ worst enemy.
There’s an excellent piece by Charles Moore in today’s printed Daily Telegraph (“The game is up for climate change believers”). Moore is a previous editor of the Telegraph – I wish he could be editor again!
It’s actually a review of an interesting book by Rupert Darwall ( “The Age of Global Warming”). Moore is very close to being a convinced sceptic. If only there were a few more like him….
Chris
Most of these arguments between Richard Tol and Bob Ward (and the IPCC) is about how the economy changes as warming occurs. Tol argues it will be beneficial up to more than 2.0C.
He quotes a number of studies in his 2013 paper which Bob Ward now says had errors in it.
Let’s face it, nobody can actually model what is going to happen to the economy if it warms 1.0C or 1.5C or 3.0C. It would just be a bunch of assumptions that are meaningless.
We do know that the economy and humanity’s standard of living has grown by massive amounts during this period of 0.6C in warming. Agriculture is 4 times more productive. Humans are living a longer, healthier, more rewarding lives. Nature is now recovering after the excesses of the 50s, 60s and early 70s.
Why is warming perceived to be a negative thing. Anything up to 2.5C should be beneficial. We are on track for just 1.5C so all is good.
——
The warmists sure like to keep their people in line. Totalitarian on Tol.
Off-topic but related:
On the BBC News in the UK is a weekly programme called ‘Newswatch’, in which members of the public give their (sometimes crushing) opinions of how BBC News has covered the previous week’s news items. It Is fronted by a BBC anchorwoman who introduces the various topics; letters from viewers; and sometimes interviews qith disgruntled viwers. Usually a BBC producer is wheeled in to defend the way a particular news item has been presented.
Anyway – last week included of course the IPCC ‘Doomsday’ summary. One viewer, who clearly watches a whole different set of tv channels to the rest of us, wrote to complain that climate ‘deniers’ were getting TOO MUCH airtime (I know, I know), because ‘facts should take precedence over opinions..’
Oh, my Lord – isn’t this precisely what we want..? Climate models and IPCC political assessments are not fact; what you get when you look out of the window is FACT.
Money and funding can be a most corrupting influence.
• Who funds the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change?
• The Grantham Foundation For The Protection Of The Environment.
• Who set up the Grantham Foundation?
• Hannelore Grantham AND a hedge fund businessman and environmentalists called Jeremy Grantham of GRANTHAM, MAYO, VAN OTTERLOO & CO. which manages investments in many areas including oil companies, coal mining, gas and tobacco companies. They had over $100 billion in assets under management as of September 2013.
Here is a small sample of some of their investments from just over 1 year ago. HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS!
The above link also has investments in tobacco companies such as BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO, ALTRIA GROUP INC, PHILIP MORRIS, REYNOLDS AMERICAN, LOEWS CORP, LORILLARD INC, UNIVERSAL CORP VA, There are also car manufacturing, metals & minerals mining, chemicals, drug companies and so on.
We must act on climate change and the causes of climate change by accepting money from profits from oil, coal & gas companies in order to fight climate change. LOL. It’s not about global warming at all, don’t be fooled, check for your back wallet now.
Here is a more up to date list from NASDAQ on Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co.
Report Date: 12/31/2013
http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/institutional-portfolio/grantham-mayo-van-otterloo–co-llc-698786
Here are some of the recipients of funding by the Grantham Foundation. This really is Alice in Wonderland.
• Imperial College: Grantham Institute for Climate Change
• London School of Economics: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
• Center for Public Integrity: environmental investigative journalism
• Yale University: Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media
• Proyecto Mirador: clean cookstoves in Honduras
• Environmental Defense Fund: clean air programs, corporate partnerships and smart grid advocacy
• World Wildlife Fund: President’s Strategic Launch Fund
• Rare: training local leaders in environmental campaigns
http://www.granthamfoundation.org/grantees.html
David Rose’s last paragraph says all we need to know about the current poisoned debate.
The reasons for the anger and desperation is the 17 year surface temperature standstill, their failures to curb global co2 output, their failures to put in place all the institutions, treaties and regulations before the jig is up. The jig is almost up and the fat lady is inhaling.
Once again the Catastrophic Global Warming movement has demonstrated it is not science it’s a cult. And again they wonder why 80% of Americans don’t believe them.
As I have shown above Bob Ward is a recipient of money gained from investments in coal, oil and gas.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/06/going-totalitarian-on-tol/#comment-1607511
Tol offered the corrections and was still smeared. See the Mail article.
It’s like the IPCC’s long delay in correcting the Himalayan 2035 melt error. When it was pointed out it took a very long time before it was acknowledged. Alas it became known as Himalayagate. There were numerous other errors by the IPCC such as Africagate.
2007 to 2010. Even Tol did better than that and the IPCC error made it into the final report of 2007!
Even SkS thinks they took way too long to acknowledge the error.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/IPCC-Himalayan-glacier-2035-prediction.htm
Kozlowski says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:32 pm
“Rud Istvan says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:09 pm
Actions speak louder than words.
War is hell. Turning the other cheek and taking the high road only goes so far. Mr. Bob Ward, get ready for some incoming. And all other Warmists. Time the tough got going, since the going has gotten tough.”
I think sentiments like these are not helpful. This is not ‘war.’ This is a debate where one side has taken the low road of trying to shut up the other side. In time it will be seen for what it is.
I think we should all take Steve McIntyre’s approach. His ability to remain civil and calm whilst arguing his case persuasively is legendary.
=====================================================
This. Very much this.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
To Tol it tolls for the IPCC.
{my apologies to John Donne & Ernest Hemingway}
John
dbstealey says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:18 pm
This is right out of the Alinsky playbook:….
Dr. Tol and others like him need to know that they have a lot of supporters. The alarmist crowd is in reality just a clique, and not a very big one. The OISM Petition contains thousands more names than the climate alarmist side has ever been able to assemble. Scientific skeptics are becoming steadily more numerous. Eventually the alarmist clique will fold, but not before inflicting as much personal animosity into the debate as they can.
Good post. I see most of the problem right now as being related to funding, particularly government funding. Leftists rely upon government money, i.e., our money, for life’s blood. Without it they have no sustenance because they offer no private value. The Alinsky-like attacks are becoming increasingly shrill, and dishonest, lately because the Left has convincingly failed to gin up the level of fear amongst the public to justify maintenance of the present level of funding.
Anyone who threatens that funding, as Mr. Tol most certainly did with his significant move away from the IPCC report, will be savagely attacked. However, because the public remains unmoved, the funding game will eventually draw to a close. That could come as quickly as January of next year when a new Senate convenes in the U.S.
What’s happening now is that the alarmists are desperate, but the game is up. More and more you’re seeing them “led” by the silliest among them. Newspaper editors have long realized that if you print repeated comments from certain people day after day you will lose readership of the editorial page because you will lose contributions from serious people. Serious people don’t want to be seen in the company of loons.
As the true loons (we mostly know who they are) keep shouting to the masses, sounding more and more ridiculous each day when compared to the public’s view of the matter, we will eventually see fewer and fewer reputable scientists willing to associate publicly with them. The loons will, in effect, isolate themselves by going too far. First, though, the funding has to start drying up and I believe the public is about to take that matter in hand here in the U.S. In other, “greener,” countries, the public has already begun to rebel against the resultant higher prices of energy, loss of reliable power, and failure to plan for far more likely emergencies than the earth warming a degree over the next century.
We are witnessing the end game of the global warming scam and its leaders are becoming increasingly desperate and shrill. It won’t be long now before they’re broadly recognized for what they are, self interested charlatans with their hands in the public trough seeking sustenance.
The IPCC’s report says
Same thing with surface temperature between 1910 to 1940. What is unprecedented?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/j/l/warmingtrend.gif
See Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, a true vermicular entity, based on his current deeds.
The “revolution” is devouring its children.
David Rose compares these attacks as McCarthyism. There is, of course, one thing wrong with this metaphor – McCarthy was right. Or at least prescient.
Unfortunately, he who controls the perception controls the facts. The simplest technique (cf dbstealey’s quote from Alinsky, earlier) is to constantly demonize your opponent and impugn his motives. If he is a ‘bigot’, a ‘racist’, a ‘neanderthal’, ‘anti-science’, ‘bought by big oil’, etc., then how can you believe anything he says? ‘Evil’ cannot ever speak truth.
How do you combat this technique? Humor and detachment can help, as can a thick skin. But in the end, it takes mobilization. Ten men are harder to demonize than one, a thousand harder than ten. The Climatists are well-funded, well-paid, and able to seduce recruits with lofty-sounding motivation (‘saving the Earth’) and earnest back-patting. Can we defeat them with a rag-tag army of individualists, armed only with the truth? Maybe, by making common cause with our fellows. There are nascent communities forming around sites like this one. Can they be the nuclei of a new movement for Common Sense and Good Science? For turning our attention back to the benefits of plentiful, cheap energy and world prosperity? For giving the word Progress back its original meaning?
/Mr Lynn
Here’s a slogan for the anti-Climatists:
CO2 IS GOOD FOR PLANTS, GOOD FOR THE EARTH, AND GOOD FOR YOU!
/Mr Lynn
TomR,Worc,MA,USA says:
April 7, 2014 at 8:13 am
……….
This. Very much this.
“This” is terrifically naive wishful thinking. Oh that it were as you wish it were.
Have you ever heard of “history”? While facts are, so far, not on the side of CAGW, there are even fewer facts on the historical side of your wishful thinking as to what will be effective.
Keep it up Neville.
Stand your ground Richard Tol. Major elections are approaching. They will wake up Théoden and knock Gríma Wormtongue off his feet also elsewhere than in Australia.
Well done Richard Tol. It’s always nice to see someone with principles and integrity. It would probably have been less stressful and more lucrative to toe the party line. Nothing to gain, lots to loose, I would like to wish you well.
Also, as Davidmhoffer has said, I find that, asking those who believe in man made global warming, to explain their understanding of it, and how it all works, always causes them some difficulty. Though mostly they can’t actually explain, but just believe it to be true because that is what they have heard on TV or read in the papers.
Eric Worrall and Kevin Loshe, fair comment, my sympathy is with Richard Tol.
I do admit to being a little poisoned toward all actors of CAGW hysteria, far too many have produced policy documents based on the assumption that Global Warming is dangerous.. therefore.
Richard Tol is a significant… defection?, I am not sure what to call his coming to his senses, but I applaud his doing so.
Hang in there Dr Tol, Australia has already turned, Canada is stalling quite nicely, the USA should turn this November.
The increasingly rabid behaviour of these PR hacks like Ward, will be very beneficial to the public debate, which is only just beginning.
As homeowners digest their every increasing energy bills, public awareness grows.
Once the hysteria hits the pocket book, the public pay attention.
We who have been engaged in the entrails of this nonsense often mistake the disinterest of our friends and family, they are busy and will only engage when these kinds of fads interfere in their lives.
That time is now, in North America the bills are coming in.
Once the voters turn, the politicians scurry.
So brilliant timing on Dr Tol’s part.
This is one alarmists opinion of Dr Tol;
“Dr Tol is *not* a climate scientist – he is an economist and I very much doubt that he is professionally competent to assess the physical science issues involved in climate change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tol
Commenter Dr Kiwi Location Date and time March 31, 2014, 7:46PM”
Posted at the SMH, Australia.
He stuck to his knitting and objected when he could see that they’d dropped a stitch or three. You can’t blame him for not objecting to a lot of other climate stuff that he has no expertise in.
[snip – fair warning sir, one more off topic complaint and you’ll be in the troll bin -mod]
Patrick,
Dr Tol was on the IPCC. That makes him credible.
But you? Are you credible? Or are you part of the smear campaign?
Post your CV, and we will decide…
rogerthesurf says:
April 6, 2014 at 6:35 pm
We are facing “the four horsemen of the apocalypse’! and worse….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The IMAGE
(That last rider needs to be mounted on a minature donkey.)
If you are going to kick me into moderation how about putting the image up?