UPDATE: it seems that Mr. Ward doesn’t confine his accusations of dishonesty to concerned members of the public like Donna Laframboise, he’s going after Dr. Richard Tol as well, complaining to journal editors about Tol’s publications made years ago – see update below.
It seems the irascible Bob Ward from the Grantham Institute just couldn’t handle having climate skeptics allowed to give an opinion before the UK Parliament, so he filed rebuttals to every witness. I’ve been sitting on this over a week, and Donna Laframboise reports that the cat is out of the bag now, along with the skeptic response to Bob Ward, who she labels a “rat-snake” for his intolerance.
Parliament has just published the point-counterpoints, and Donna has let loose with a video response.
- Bob Ward, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment | PDF version (
79 KB) 
IPC0060 | Ordered to be published 04 Mar 2014 - Richard Lindzen – written evidence | PDF version (49 KB) IPC0068 | Ordered to be published 04 Mar 2014
- Nicholas Lewis – written evidence | PDF version (115 KB) IPC0069 | Ordered to be published 04 Mar 2014
- Donna Laframboise – written evidence | PDF version (73 KB) IPC0071 | Ordered to be published 04 Mar 2014
Source of Links above: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/the-ipcc/?type=Written#pnlPublicationFilter
Here’s Donna’s video response:
and her blog post about this matter:
Bob Ward says I uttered a “a number of inaccurate and misleading statements” when I appeared before a UK parliamentary committee in January 2014. His accusations have no basis in fact.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/03/05/rat-snake-bob/
========================================================
UPDATE: From Dr. Richard Tol’s website, we have this.
Nick Stern’s attack dog PR person, Bob Ward, has reached a new level of trolling. He seems to have taking it on himself to write to every editor of every journal I have ever published in, complaining about imaginary errors even if I had previously explained to him that these alleged mistakes in fact reflect his misunderstanding and lack of education.
Unfortunately, academic duty implies that every accusation is followed by an audit. Sometimes an error is found, although rarely by Mr Ward.
Here is an example. The left figure was in the Final Government Review Draft of IPCC WG2 AR5. The right figure will be in the published report. Spot the difference?
For all the millions of research pounds at Nick Stern’s disposal, the impact is, well, minimal.
=================================================================
Andrew Montford comments at Bishop Hill that:
Bob’s main problem is that he has only one card to play, namely to accuse his opponents of dishonesty, usually at the top of his voice. In this case, he has accused no less than three people: Nic Lewis, Donna Laframboise and Richard Lindzen.
…
The committee are going to find themselves thinking that he is a bit of a wally. Or a lot of a wally.
See: Whole lotta wally
As regards the complaint that Donna shortened “most significant” to “significant,” if someone says that they are discussing the most significant error in their work then they have implied that there are significant errors in their work. Donna’s point stands.
Rhys – your patriotism is commendable. To minimize your expense, use Amazon – they have it.
that, in the farming fraternity, is called getting sliced off at the knees. But Bob hasn’t got any knees, he’s a Rat Snake. Hilarious. Good on Ya Donna.
The problem with Ward’s critique about Donna is not being a rat snake, but being extremely stupid. “Being successful overall and having served society well” does not contradict “having significant shortcomings in every major step”. And, from the former, you are entitled to think in closing the IPCC as the best solution, or to praise the IPCC. Is a matter of opinion – for everybody except the most stupid.
@ur momisugly sc says:
March 5, 2014 at 9:19 am
‘that you might wish it said, but that unfortunately it does not’
You are 100% right sc that’s a mistake.I felt a bit uneasy watching the vid’ and on reflection I don’t think it becomes a person of Donna’s stature at all.
Let’s have a look at what the text says below that, shall we?
First:
Scoping transparency. Does it invalidate anything? Not that I can see.
What else? This:
Oh, hell. Just read the whole thing yourself. If you can find and summarize any truly significant issues, you’re more patient than I am. What I’ve read so far looks more like analysis meta-issues than actual analysis issues.
I always preferred “Rat Bastard”.
Pardon the formatting. It looked ok when I copypastaed it.
Slartibartfast says:
March 5, 2014 at 9:03 am
“Ok, the problem I have with her video is this:
She excised the word most from most significant.
The most significant shortcoming isn’t necessarily significant on an absolute scale; it may be just the most severe out of a list of relatively minor shortcomings”
Then they should not have used the word ‘significant’. If one says that he is discussing the least important significant shortcoming ever discovered, he/she still has implied that there are significant shortcomings. You are doing the wishful interpretation, not Donna.
Old Josh cartoon of Bob Ward:
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/download/Right_of_reply.jpg
BOB WARD IS NOT A SCIENTIST: HE IS JUST A MOUTHPIECE FOR CLIMATE HYSTERICS
Bob Ward does this all the time: popping up like a bad smell on TV (he practically lives in the Newsnight studio) and radio and now in committee whenever a rent-a-quote spokesman is needed to talk about “Climate Change” “global warming” or whatever it is they’re calling it this month. He’s a PR man, let us remind ourselves, not a scientist (although he can claim an unfinished PhD thesis in Palaeopiezometry). His job – for which he no doubt receives a salary much bigger than any of his opponents, is by its very nature about swaying public opinion using traditional PR techniques like exaggeration, blustering and economy with the truth. It’s not like Ward spends his days poring over radiosonde data or measuring ice caps or poking around in polar bear poo. He’s a hatchet man. He’s quite good at it. That’s probably why they chose him. Because he looks a bit like an angry pit bull and he’s quite a scary thing to confront when you’re up against him in a debate, trying to get awkward scientific truths across like the fact that so-called “Global Warming” hasn’t actually happened since 1998.
Bob Ward is not afraid to play dirty. One of his favorite tricks is to deploy the Press Complaints Commission weapon. He has inflicted this torture device more than once on Christopher Booker, reporting him for some doubtful inaccuracy or other which the PCC almost certainly won’t have either the intellect or the ideological neutrality to judge fairly, but which will result in his unfortunate victim being tied up for days answering pointless questions about tiny details for the PCC’s kangaroo court.
For further stories about Bob Ward in action, read Bishop Hill – another victim of Ward’s vicious campaigning. The Bishop also rightly condemns Ward’s disgraceful – and quite possibly actionable – assault on the distinguished and thoroughly decent Professor Bob Carter on the above-mentioned ABC radio suck-up.
It’s about time someone complained about the Grantham Institute’s pathetic inability to provide anyone – other than the inevitable Bob – to debate with them about climate.[ Are you listening,BBC?] If the Grantham Institute insists on having Bob Ward going around in blogs and in the media seeking to criticize anyone’s work so recklessly — then they have an obligation to come out from behind him to actually engage in intellectual debate. The alternative would be to inform Mr. Ward that they do not wish to back up his various attacks.
Apparently, they can’t or won’t put someone up. I have debated Mr. Ward before and, not surprisingly, he was unprepared to actually debate. So I won’t bother repeating that experience again.
This is more than I ever wanted to write about Bob Ward. Why did I do so? Because as we approach endgame in the the biggest fraud in history, people will understandably want to know how this massive fraud was able to penetrate so deep into the public psyche.
My initial response was: “That is a very attractive snake who looks nothing like Mr. Ward.” In fact, I don’t think it’s a rat snake at all. Here’s a pic of a rat snake:
It obviously bears a much closer resemblance.
But an even bigger problem with the video is that rat snakes are beneficial creatures that reduce the population of disease-carrying rodents. Physical appearance aside, Mr. Ward is NOT a rat snake.
Theo Goodwin. Agreed but regrettably this is not the problem. Donna concludes her piece with the following sentence.
“Rather than double-checking what Chapter 2 of the IAC report actually says, rather than spending five minutes with Google investigating how the IAC report was widely perceived, Ward is capable of imagining only one possibility: opinions not shared by him are wrong.”
Under Chapter 2 is a clickable link that takes you to page 13 of the IAC report which is what she relies on. The full sentence reads as follows:
“This chapter identifies and recommends ways to address the most significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process, based on the Committee’s analysis of current IPCC practices, of the literature on assessments, and community input.”
She highlights in yellow “significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process”
It is clear that, however you spin it, this cannot be read as: “There are significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process” (even if there are).
I will not comment further because, despite appearances, I am not interested in supporting Bob Ward.
I just don’t understand the tactics. Why use part of the sentence in this way when there was so much more that could have been used instead – not least the way in which the IAC report was perceived?
Ulick Stafford (@ustafford) says:
March 5, 2014 at 8:52 am
“A bit unfair to rat snakes to compare them to as despicable a creature as Bob Ward. You might attract ire of WWF!”
Some years ago (1986) the “WWF” changed its name (except in North America). Wildlife is not the focus of the group, now known as the World Wide Fund (for Nature). This is an elitist group formed by European royalty and money changers that need a cause for their guilt-relief efforts. They are more familiar with “funds” than with animals. If the animal isn’t cute and cuddly (Panda, baby Elephant, Dolphins) it is unlikely to be a concern of these people. A survey of WWF’s leaders would likely show that greater than 97% could not identify a rat snake. I’m not saying I could either before trying to figure out why Donna choose this particular snake. They are not noted for venom or fangs.
The Royal Society has put up a forum to receive questions about climate change, which they will then answer. They are searching for a way to dialogue with the public at large. It sounds like they will also use this to refine their answers/spin in a new move to ‘inform’ the world of the need to act immediately. Here are the two links. The one to the Google moderator has already closed for comments as of today….http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/
http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=20f7fa
Rat snake Bob meets mongoose Donna.
Hmm, looks like an IMG tag gets stripped out. How about a link?
http://wallgood.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Albino-Texas-Rat-Snake.jpg
@nutso fasst – Your picture looks like a Sesame Street character! 😉
http://www.amazon.ca/Deliberate-Corruption-Climate-Science-ebook/dp/B00HXO9XGS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394042400&sr=8-1&keywords=the+deliberate+corruption+of+climate+science
From Merriam-Webster.com. Look it up if you want the other meanings.
If you’re going to note that which word (of many possible) was used as being more important than a dropped modifier, I think we’re done here.
Here’s the conclusion from that report, in full:
This sounds more in the line of offering improvements to a work in progress than raising the red flag that something is badly broken.
Feel free to offer your own interpretation.
Bob Ward is a wilful idiot and a bully. Donna is (IMHO) attempting to get him to let loose an even more intemperate tirade. When he does this, it will be with even less thought, and with more techniques from the bully’s playbook… at which point she’ll have the opportunity to pull his alleged arguments apart.
As for leaving out the word “most”… you’re kidding, right?
None of the above is meant to suggest that the IPCC review process is good or bad. Just that the report that Donna is reading doesn’t come to the conclusions she does.
You’re kidding, right? I mean…right? I did offer an example that illustrated just what the excision of that word could mean, in terms of the meaning of the quoted passage. You did read that, right? I mean…right?
Yeah, leaving out “most” does nothing, other than to completely change the meaning.
Great, Donna!!:] But I like snakes and rats are smart, hw How about we just call him a$$hole!:]
I love all this,
Mr Watts,
Donna,
Jo Nova,
Steve Mcintyre
and all the others, you have become a well oiled machine.
[let’s not go there – Anthony]