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’.
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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.
@Tony Cole
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.