Bob wants Benny to break law
Sep 29, 2010
Bishop Hill in Climate: other

Bob Ward, the PR guy from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics has responded to Lord Turnbull's article in the FT with a letter to the editor that is standard fare for afficionados of the Ward oeuvre.

Turnbull's article called, you may remember, for an overhaul of climate science. Ward's response has two main thrusts:

I'm frankly amazed that the FT would publish a letter criticising a logo - I can't believe their readers are impressed by this kind of thing. The second point, however, is worth a closer look. Here's what Bob said:

The public and policymakers need robust and reliable information about climate change. They also expect openness and transparency from researchers in order to have confidence in their integrity and to be sure that they are not being influenced by vested interests. Yet Lord Turnbull does not mention this, and does not explain why the foundation refuses to reveal its sources of funding.

This has actually been explained to Bob before. He knows that GWPF vets donors to ensure that they have no connections with energy companies. But more significantly, he also knows that a charity cannot just reveal the identities of its donors without their permission. This would be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

What we see here is an employee of LSE - a civil servant paid for with our taxes - knowingly calling for someone to break the law in the pages of a national newspaper.

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