Speculation alert.
As one tries to understand the behind-the-scenes manoevres that are driving the climate change campaign, I find myself looking at the actions of bureaucrats far mor often than I do the actions of politicians.The BBC's coverage of today's announcements on science spending is a case in point.
In response to the announcement of deep cuts in capital budgets for science, our old friend Bob Ward pops up:
Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change said that the Chancellor's announcement was misleading:
"Government spending on research will in fact be about 14% lower in real terms," he said.
"Today's announcement confirms that the government is planning to slash capital expenditure for research. It looks like we could be returning to the dark days of the 1980s and early 1990s when researchers were forced to work in laboratories and facilities that were starved of investment."
Other people have questioned Ward's role at the Grantham Institute - it is unusual in the extreme for a university to employ someone to denigrate anyone who might question a particular point of view, as Pielke Jnr has pointed out. Yet here we have a different aspect to Ward's role - attacking the government cuts with a degree of vigour that even the official opposition don't seem to have managed yet.
How then to make sense of this dual role - climate rottweiler and public spending doberman? One feasible explanation is that he is employed to denigrate climate sceptics, but is a "concerned citizen" as regards the public spending round. But then again, perhaps this is all just part of a single role - one in which Ward is simply paid to defend the considerable vested interests of the scientific bureaucracy.