Ward versus Tol
Apr 3, 2014
Bishop Hill in Climate: Sceptics, Climate: WG2, Climate: Ward, Media

I am somewhat in awe of Channel Four news. I mean, Bob Ward writes a post criticising Richard Tol on an obscure page on the LSE website and Jon Snow, Cathy Newman et al leap into action to interrogate Tol on air. Not only that, but Ward is invited on to put his own case to Tol and Newman repeatedly accuses Tol of "having an agenda" because he is an unpaid adviser to GWPF while Ward, the paid mouthpiece for a wealthy environmentalist, is given a free ride. All that from a blog post!

I must say, the interview was distinctly uninformative, with Newman and Ward apparently trying to suggest that because Tol's paper is the only one showing benefits from warming (there are only two that have examined the case of warming of 1°C), his allegation of scaremongering by the IPCC is wrong. If ever there was a non-sequitur this is it. As Tol points out, the other studies for warming of a few degrees show net harm that is indistinguishable from zero. Calls for panic are indeed over the top.

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