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’.
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?