The climate mob targets Tol

David Rose has another stunning piece in the Mail on Sunday, this time describing the smear campaign against Richard Tol, whose temerity in trying to distance himself from the sexing up of the WGII Summary for Policymakers has incurred the wrath of the climate mob.

The spread also features a useful analysis of the changes wrought by the political intervention into the SPM drafting process and documents some cynical and entirely predictable dishonesty from Bob Ward.

Read it here.

Update on Apr 6, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Also worth a read this morning is Christopher Booker (extracts at GWPF), who has been looking at the IPCC's history of alarmism.

Five times between 1990 and 2014 the IPCC published three massive volumes of technical reports – another emerged last week – and each time we saw the same pattern. Each was supposedly based on thousands of scientific studies, many funded to find evidence to support the received view that man-made climate change was threatening the world with disaster – hurricanes, floods, droughts, melting ice, rising sea levels and the rest. But each time what caught the headlines was a brief “Summary for Policymakers”, carefully crafted by governments and a few committed scientists to hype up the scare by going much further than was justified by the thousands of pages in the technical reports themselves.

Each time it would emerge just how shamelessly these Summaries had distorted the actual evidence, picking out the scary bits, which themselves often turned out not to have been based on proper science at all.

Comments

[Hilary Ostrov]

Apr 10, 2014 at 12:50 AM | Richard Betts

The 'trivial issue' I am talking about is the alleged errors in Richard Tol's economic assessments. As far as I can see, addressing these would have no real bearing on the overall conclusions of the WG2 report and therefore is a total red herring.

It seems to me that Bob was using this to try to undermine Richard's credibility [...]

The mileage of others might vary, but the view from here, so to speak, is that this was neither evident nor explicit (nor even implicit) in your original comment.

Not to mention that the only "[allegation] of errors" in Tol's work (albeit subsequently, for some strange reason, repeated without context - or even acknowledgement that these were mere unsubstantiated allegations by Ward - in the content in an IPCC "Statement")

Is this part of the new, improved IPCC "Communication" protocol, I wonder?!

You also wrote [somewhat inexplicably from my perspective]:

I mentioned Chris Field's response because the contrast between this and Bob Ward's shows that Bob is not acting on behalf of the IPCC. This was from the UK press conference, not the German one which you (Hilary) seem to have heard.

Sorry to disillusion you, Richard. But ...

First of all, you have not provided any source which would suggest that your bizarre claim that:

[Field's] words were something like "Richard is on the fringe, but there's also others who are on the opposite fringe"

came from anyone (except perhaps Ward in one of your 'over coffee clear the air' chats!)

And - just for the record - I do understand a relatively few words and phrases of Yiddish; but I've never learned to comprehend or speak German.

OTOH, to his credit German freelancer, Martin Fritz clearly does speak English. As he did during the only March 31 IPCC press conference of which I am aware.

You seem to be suggesting that the IPCC spliced contents from a "German" press conference (in which Fritz spoke English) into a "U.K." press conference.

Just in case you missed it, Richard, the version of the IPCC's March 31/14 Press Conference that I saw and heard can be viewed at NEWSFLASH: “Climate change is not stopping”, says WMO chief

Although, considering far too many past performances for comfort, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that the powers that be at the IPCC might have snipped Fritz's English question in the video. But - as of this writing - this does not appear to be the case. Fritz's question (in English), albeit not responsively addressed by either Field or Pachauri, remains intact.

[Richard Betts]

Hilary

When I said "German press conference", I meant a press conference for German journalists, not that it was conducted in German.

There were several press conferences that happened by phone, for journalists from individual countries, which Chris took part in along with IPCC authors from those countries. I was in the one for UK journalists, and there was one for German journalists either just before or just after. The phrase I quoted was from the conference for UK journalists.

When you mentioned a German journalist, I assumed this was in the press conference for German journalists.

[Hilary Ostrov]

Richard,

Your ability to miss the point never ceases to amaze me! But that aside ...

There were several press conferences that happened by phone, for journalists from individual countries, which Chris took part in along with IPCC authors from those countries. I was in the one for UK journalists, and there was one for German journalists either just before or just after. The phrase I quoted was from the conference for UK journalists.

The phrase you quoted was:

[Field's] words were something like "Richard is on the fringe, but there's also others who are on the opposite fringe"

So, in light of your disclosure that there was a multiplicity of "press conferences" and the context of your above recollection:

Chris Field wasn't particularly bothered about Richard T's views - he correctly pointed out that the SPM doesn't represent the views of any one individual scientist, and there's a range of views, and everyone would like to see more of their own views represented. His words were something like "Richard is on the fringe, but there's also others who are on the opposite fringe". As far as I'm concerned, it's good to have this mix of views within the IPCC author team - certainly keeps it interesting (it would be very boring if all we did was sit around and agree with each other!)

How can you possibly avoid the conclusion that Field's words were any less of an attempt "to undermine Richard [Tol]'s credibility" than Ward's - or, for that matter, the equally untruthful "framing" that was chosen for inclusion in the IPCC's April 6 "Statement" in which they tried to pretend that the SPM was a true reflection of the actual report?

So, apart from confirming that Field will say different things to different people at different times - IOW he talks out of both sides of his mouth - during the course of the "conference for U.K. journalists" in which you participated, did Field and Jarraud do their little two-step toss the pause and its cause ball into the dustbin? Or did no one ask the question at the "conference for U.K. journalists" (as opposed to the video of the Mar. 31 Press Conference posted by the IPCC)?

[Richard Drake]

Richard Betts:

I think Bob Ward has his own personal motivations - he and Richard have very famously not got on for some years, and my interpretation is that this arises from Richard's high-profile criticisms of the Stern review.
...
The 'trivial issue' I am talking about is the alleged errors in Richard Tol's economic assessments. As far as I can see, addressing these would have no real bearing on the overall conclusions of the WG2 report and therefore is a total red herring.
...
I definitely do not regard the undermining of a scientist's reputation as trivial, especially one who I work with.

These statements for me go to the heart of the issue on this thread - the attacks on Richard Tol from a 'climate mob', led by Bob Ward. I appreciate them and they clarify your position for me. No undermining of anyone's reputation is trivial - but Tol's non-trivial criticisms of the SPM made this attempt particularly important, as well as naked in motivation.

That's not to take sides on what you said about Chris Field. He was mentioned in the original David Rose report as receiving, with Doug Arent, an "email disparaging Prof Tol’s research" from Bob Ward but it's only Arent's response, dismissing Ward's criticism, that's given by Rose.

The damaging word in this case, for me, was 'trivial', and you've unpicked what you meant by that, thank you.

(I should also correct my earlier reference to Mr Bentham. Grantham would have been better. Jeremy Bentham is someone else entirely!)

[Richard Betts]

Hilary

Your ability to craft posts with loaded questions, scare quotes and negative connotations never ceases to amaze me! You and Bob Ward should meet up sometime, you've got so much in common. You'd probably get on like a house on fire.

:-)