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
Harry: Laframboise omitted the word “most” in her original testimony to the Parliamentary Committee (see the text at 0:47 of her video). Moreover, in doing so she misrepresented the IAC’s statement of objectives (from the beginning of the document) as their findings or conclusions. I hope you understand the deception now.
Grant A. Brown says:
March 6, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Wow.
50,000 people will die over 2013-2014 winters in the UK alone specifically and directly due to the high-energy policies demanded by the CAGW religion, and all you can address is the one word “must” in one witnesses’ testimony that condemns the policies that led to those deliberate deaths.
Rather, you claim that one word then becomes a “deception” ??
Well done Donna — I recently asked my 9 year old grandaughter how much CO2 she thought was in the atmosphere , as she has had ” natural disasters” lesson ( !?) and after a pause said 50% ?
@Grant Brown
3/6/14 1.46
The most significant shortcoming in your comment is the use of the word ‘deception’. Of course it was not the only significant shortcoming in your comment. Therefore I could easily have written that your comment contains significant shortcomings although I choose to address the most significant shortcoming. It could not be clearer from the IAC report, to anyone who understands the vernacular, that it found shortcomings but only addressed the most significant. Donna is right and for Bob Ward to misinterpret her words is something which MP’s will now have to consider. The only deception is one which misrepresents Donna’s words in a defamatory manner.
As you can see from my quotes and business references Jeremy ‘BIG OIL & GAS’ Grantham is concerned about climate change / global warming. So much so that he has, through his investment company, invested hundreds of millions in fossil fuel companies and rakes in the profits. I don’t know why people find this so discomforting, what’s there not to like? He follows the money while I actually do get power outages for being and I am a sceptic.
DirkH, as you know I don’t listen to a single thing the bloody hypocrites have to say. Jeremy Grantham is among the worst hypocrites this world has ever known. He really is that bad. Just because he makes a lot of money he thinks the rest of us are stupid and can’t see his brazen double standards. He should be ashamed of himself. His grandchildren will cower in shame. 🙁
“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?”
Yes. The right most AR5 data point moved from about 4.8 to about 4.7 degrees.
But I don’t know what that means.
Late to the party as usual. I will try to return tonight or this weekend to do this properly, but for now a relatively brief comment to Slartibartfast et al. Slart challenged us to find and summarize any truly significant issues and then tried, along with others, successfully I might add, to pretty much whitewash the report’s findings. For starters, here’s a link to the full report. Your link was just to part of it. Anyhow, as you requested, here’s a summary of the “most significant” findings I wrote back in 2010:
• High confidence in statements for which there is little evidence
• Strayed into advocacy
• Not adhering to IPCC mandate to not be policy prescriptive
• Excessive reliance on unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature
• Not following procedures for citing grey literature over 99% of the time
• Failure to make avoidable revisions
• Lack of transparency in many IPCC processes and procedures
• Failure to adhere to established IPCC processes and procedures
• Critical review comments on controversial issues not adequately reflected
• SPM is too political and unduly emphasizes what is known, sensational, or popular
• SPM process can be influenced by political motivations and vulnerable to manipulation
• Confidence scales to characterize uncertainty used inappropriately
• Uncertainty guidance applied to vague statements that cannot be falsified and for which there is little evidence
• Unwillingness to share data with critics and enquirers and poor procedures to respond to FOI requests
Do any of those qualify as “truly significant” to you Slart? This is déjà vu. I spent way too much time 3+ years ago commenting here on the contents of the report (probably 10,000+ words in 40+ comments wasted on the largely irretrievable). The bottom line is there are very “significant shortcomings” throughout the IPCC’s assessment process. I actually bothered to read the report (I’m starting to think Donna and I are the only ones who did) and in that first comment I made you’ll see that I offer 28 quotes from the report regarding significant issues highlighted by the IAC (in one of my later comments I offered the summary above). Here are just two of them:
Authors were urged to consider the amount of evidence and level of agreement about all conclusions and to apply subjective probabilities of confidence to conclusions when there was high agreement and much evidence. However, authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements. The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.
IPCC’s mandate is to be policy relevant, not policy prescriptive. However, as noted above, IPCC spokespersons have not always adhered to this mandate. Straying into advocacy can only hurt IPCC’s credibility. Likewise, while IPCC leaders are expected to speak publicly about the assessment reports, they should be careful in this context to avoid personal opinions. The opinion of an IPCC representative can be interpreted as the official IPCC position, regardless of how the representative voices his or her views.
I took on an admittedly nasty persona in that thread, but having dealt with that cast of characters for several years, it’s routine to fight fire with fire. Now back then, and at that particular joint, I expected almost exclusively misinformed participants, but I am not used to visiting here and seeing false claims made without someone having correctly and directly call it out with the easily available evidence, in this case, the report itself. WUWT?
Having read the comments above, I conclude Slartibartfast et al. have missed the mark widely with their assessment, and worse, it seems none of you bothered to read the report and instead hung your hats on minutia and conjured conclusions. Donna simply highlighted the near verbatim correlation and, I repeat, here’s the bottom line:
THERE ARE “SIGNIFICANT SHORTCOMINGS IN EACH MAJOR STEP OF IPCC’S ASSESSMENT PROCESS.”
She was well aware of the “significant shortcomings” when she made her comments and comparisons. You were not. And by the way, read the snake’s full quote. What you are quibbling with isn’t even Bobby’s beef. He labels her reply as “extremely misleading” because it “is not a mild criticism” and “suggests that there are serious reasons to be careful about the conclusions of the IPCC process.” Damn straight there are “serious reasons” (otherwise known as “significant shortcomings”). One man’s whitewashed recommendations to ensure “future success” is another woman’s “scathing critique” I guess. If you’re honest with yourself though, I think you know whose assessment better mirrors reality, and that’s the AGW story in a nutshell. Delusion vs. Reality.
So much for a relatively brief comment. Just one more bit. Since Miss Laframboise is the subject of this post, I repeat my related observation from that 2010 thread:
On a related side note, I am guessing that Donna Laframboise is wildly cheering the IAC report as her effort has been apparently vindicated. She received much grief for her citizen audit report card on IPCC usage of grey literature. If the IAC numbers are correct, it turns out that she was being too conservative in her numbers (WG1 she had 7% grey vs. 16% for the IAC; WG2 she had 34% grey vs. 41% for the IAC; WG3 she had 57% grey vs. 64% for the IAC). For all three groups she and her group underestimated the use of grey literature, yet her report was met with ridicule and scorn. Go figure.
Sorry for the snark. I’m just frustrated seeing her knocked about unjustifiably. Cheers!
This implies a sinister motive that doesn’t, in actuality, exist.
Thanks for that. I simply Google-searched the string in question. It didn’t occur to me, frankly, that I needed to expand the scope beyond that section.
That is as may be.
I read the section I linked to. Obviously I didn’t read the whole report.
I was in fact hoping for a more informed response than mine, because the part of the report I read issued what sounded like a very mildly phrased set of recommendations for improvement. Perhaps that, to academia, is a stinging rebuke. I really can’t tell. I am an engineer, and not working in academia. We tend to bring the smack a bit more obviously when someone is wrong.
Thank you for your response, though. I will give it more consideration.
Don’t know if anyone’s observed this, but the rat-snake analogy with Bob Ward is an insult to rat-snakes everywhere. After all, rat-snakes can’t help what they are. Bob Ward has choices.
Jeremy Grantham is like a Hollywood actor: someone who presumes they know about science because they’re surrounded by fawning sycophants who tell them they are right about everything.
In Grantham’s case, he is one of those fortunate individuals who has a knack for picking good investments. So he believes it follows that he understands the plante’s climate drivers. Pure hubris. Grantham presumes that because he is fortunate enough to be right in one area, that he is right about everything. But the real world never works like that.
Grantham surrounds himself with servile flatterers like Ward [and Zeke Hausfather, of the Grantham-financed Yale Media propaganda outlet].
But these people will never get into a real, moderated debate with anyone who knows a little bit about science. Like Hollywood actors, they are entirely motivated by their True Belief. They believe; that is enough for them, and the real world be damned.
But that is not enough for scientific skeptics, who have plenty of questions that Grantham and Ward hide out from discussing. Because their Belief is enough. They don’t need facts.
Slartibartfast,
Late returning again, but hopefully you’ll see this. I appreciate your thoughtful response. I did not mean to imply a sinister motive, but did mean to imply that you and others had not exercised due diligence in your assessment of this situation and had offered unsubstantiated criticisms. I had seen you make comments such as these:
This sounds more in the line of offering improvements to a work in progress than raising the red flag that something is badly broken.
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.
Examining the conclusion of the report, it seems that none of the most significant issues are critically important, but the report emphasizes they should still be addressed.
“Cherry-picking” is a particularly inapt possible accusation, here, because my only argument is that Ms. Laframboise has mischaracterized the document she’s quoting. As I have read said document, and completely viewed her response, whatever else she has to say about this or any other matter is irrelevant.
Others said much the same. Of those quotes of yours, the theme that is most bothersome to me is the matter-of-fact statement stating the report doesn’t come to the conclusions that Donna offers and that she mischaracterized it. And since you said you had “read said document” I felt that labeling your efforts to “pretty much whitewash” its conclusions was thus warranted. In your reply you said it was obvious you hadn’t read the whole report, but as noted above, you said you had.
I am glad to hear that you will give the matter more consideration. In my opinion, the report was indeed a stinging rebuke and her descriptions of it were spot on. I feel that, given her tremendous efforts, she has not gotten the credit she does deserve, so I found it impossible to sit on the sidelines watching her receive criticism she did not deserve. Thanks again for your response.
I wanted to communicate this information to Donna and Richard but could not find email addresses. Perhaps someone here can help.
It appears that Grantham exists entirely within the LSE. It is not a separately incorporated entity. Hence its employees are actually employees of the LSE and bound by the LSE’s conditions of employment. One of those conditions is contained in “The Ethics Code and Ethical Guidelines” available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/intranet/LSEServices/policies/pdfs/school/ethCod.pdf
Excerpts from this policy document include the principles:
” Intellectual freedom: we will defend and promote the
freedom to pursue, advance, and disseminate
knowledge and ideas.
• Respect: we will treat people with dignity, promote
equality of opportunity, and celebrate diversity.”
Ward’s attack dog treatment of Tol would seem clearly to be inconsistent with these principles (although, consistent with previous bullying tactics of Mann, Jones et al).
The policy also states:
“Every member of the School community is responsible for upholding the Ethics Code. Breaches of
the Code may be treated as offences under the existing disciplinary mechanisms for students and
staff.
Those in leadership positions have a particular responsibility to set an example in their conduct and
to promote and support good ethical behaviour.”
If Ward is acting as reported by Donna and Tol, then he is getting very close to the wind with regard to the LSE’s ethics policy. Any allegation of misconduct would need to be treated seriously under the LSE’s disciplinary mechanisms. Stern himself, being in a leadership position, has “a particular responsibility”.
I read the entire section I linked to. That’s all I ever intended to lay claim to. I thought (laziness on my part for not checking) that’s all there was to it.
Your conclusion is that the entire report amounted to a stinging rebuke. Mine was that it seemed pretty mild. If you’re right, I submit that my cultural translation isn’t very good, because my idea of a stinging rebuke would have been worded a bit more forcefully. Possibly that’s how things are in academia, though.
I’m now considering giving Ms Laframboise’s works a read.
Thanks for your time.