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’.
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)