1. Mr Robert ET Ward BSc, employed by the London School of Economics and Political Science to promote the research of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, has engaged in a smear campaign against me.

    At least, according to the Daily Mail.

    Mr Ward was not so pleased with that characterization of his work, and complained to the Independent Press Standards Organization.

    Yesterday, IPSO ruled that a "smear campaign" is a perfectly fine description of Mr Ward's work.

    My response to Mr Ward's work is here.

    Professor John P. Abraham highlighted Mr Ward's work in the Guardian. See my response. Unfortunately, the Guardian is not regulated by IPSO. The Guardian is regulated by the Guardian.




    UPDATE
    Complaints Committee’s decision in the case of
    Ward v Mail Online

    The complainant was concerned that the newspaper had breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice. It had published an article which reported Professor Richard Tol’s allegation that he had become subject to a smear campaign by the complainant. The complainant considered that it was misleading to report Professor Tol’s allegation because he had not engaged in a smear campaign. He was also concerned that the article had contained a number of additional inaccuracies. The complaint was received more than three months after publication. As such, it was considered as a complaint against the online article only, in line with the Press Complaints Commission’s policy on delayed complaints. The complaint was on-going as of 8 September 2014, at the time of the closure of the PCC. It was therefore considered by the Complaints Committee of the Independent Press Standards Organisation in accordance with the procedures of the PCC.

    Clause 1 (i) states that “the press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information including pictures”. Clause 1 (ii) states that “a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published”. Clause 1 (iii) states that “the press, while free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact”.

    The complainant was concerned that the newspaper had reported that he “admits that the errors are ‘small’”. The complainant said that this added to the misleading impression that he considered the errors to be insignificant and that his attempts at drawing attention to them were part of a smear campaign. The Committee had sight of the relevant email exchange between the complainant and Professor Tol, in which he had described some of the errors as “small”. However, he had also clearly regarded the mistakes as significant and requiring correction: he had said that there were multiple errors, that the calculations should be checked, and that he had “very serious concerns” about accuracy. On this point, the Committee found that the newspaper had failed to take care not to publish misleading information; the article was significantly misleading and requiring of remedial action. The Committee noted that the newspaper had offered to remove the phrase from the online article and append an explanatory footnote. This was sufficient to remedy the established breach of the Code. It was appropriate that the newspaper had postponed publication of the amendments, pending the Committee’s decision. In light of the decision, the amendments should now be made promptly in order to remedy the established breach of the Code.

    The Committee acknowledged the complainant’s position that he had not been engaged in a smear campaign. However, it took the view that the claim that the complainant was engaged in a smear campaign against Professor Tol was plainly presented as Professor Tol’s characterisation of his activities. The allegation was clearly distinguished as his own comment, in line with the newspaper’s obligation under Clause 1 (iii) of the Code. It was accepted by the complainant that he had been party to an on-going dispute with Professor Tol regarding the latter’s reluctance to correct errors in his work. While the Committee acknowledged the complainant’s position that he had highlighted Professor Tol’s reluctance to correct his work as part of his role as an IPCC reviewer, it remained the case that Professor Tol considered the continued claims against him to be a “smear”, and the newspaper had been entitled to report this concern. Further, the newspaper had put the claim to the complainant, prior to publication, and included his comments on the matter in the article, noting that “he denied his actions were a smear campaign, insisting that he was merely fulfilling his role as an IPCC reviewer and claiming that he still did not know which ‘errors’ Tol was prepared to correct.” The article had also quoted the complainant as saying that “if Tol thinks I am engaged in a smear campaign because I have pointed out his errors he is redefining what a smear campaign means. It is his behaviour that is unreasonable.” The article had further noted the complainant’s position that Professor Tol had made comments towards him which he considered to be aggressive. There was no failure to take care over the accuracy of this element of the article, nor any failure to distinguish comment from fact. Further, the Committee did not identify any significant inaccuracies which would require correction under Clause 1 (ii) of the Code.

    The complainant considered that the article had given the clear impression that Professor Doug Arent had described an error found by the complainant as “a tiny, statistical error”, which was inaccurate as Professor Arent had not made this comment. The Committee acknowledged that attributing this comment to Professor Arent was inaccurate. However, this comment was one of a number of assertions in the article that the errors in question were minor. The Committee took the view that this inaccurate attribution was not significant in the context of the article as a whole, such that a correction would be required under the terms of Clause 1 (ii).

    The complainant was concerned that it was misleading to report that he had sent “an email disparaging Professor Tol’s research to several leading IPCC scientists and officials,” as it suggested that the email was sent out of malice. The complainant said that this email was sent as part of his duties as a registered reviewer for the IPCC. The Committee found that the article had appropriately established the complainant’s role as an IPCC reviewer, and had noted the “disparaging” emails in this context. The Committee was satisfied that the article was not misleading on this point.

    The complainant was concerned that the article was inaccurate to report that Professor Tol had volunteered to correct “a handful of highly technical, minor numerical mistakes”. He said that Professor Tol had not “volunteered” to the complainant to correct these errors, and that the errors were significant, rather than minor. The Committee took the view that the article had not suggested that Professor Tol had communicated his willingness to correct the errors to the complainant. Further, it was agreed that some errors had been corrected. While the Committee recognised that the complainant had an opposing view on the seriousness of the errors, and had established a breach of the Code in the way the article had reported the complainant’s view, the newspaper had been entitled to characterise the mistakes as “minor”, and the Committee considered that whether an error is serious is, to a certain extent, open to interpretation. This phrase identified by the complainant did not raise a breach of Clause 1.

    The complainant expressed concern that it was inaccurate of Professor Tol to say that “the errors made no difference to his conclusion that global warming of up to 2.5°C may have a net beneficial impact on the world economy”. The complainant’s view was that the error did affect Professor Tol’s conclusions and that this was demonstrated by the correction Professor Tol subsequently published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. While it acknowledged that Professor Tol may have made some amendments to his report, and that Professor Tol and the complainant disagreed about the significance of the errors, the Committee noted that there was no suggestion that the article had been inaccurate in its reporting of Professor Tol’s comments as at the date of publication. The Committee was satisfied that there was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

    There were no further matters for the Committee to consider.

    UPDATE2:
    From Ward's letter of 2 Oct 2014 to IPSO
    "[The managing editor of the Mail on Sunday] claims that the newspaper simply reported an allegation against me made by Professor Tol, and that its only duty was as follows: “We explained the reasons for Prof Tol’s allegation and enabled readers to form their own view of whether or not Mr Ward’s actions constituted a smear campaign.” I do not believe that this is a reasonable interpretation of the Clause 1(i) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, which states: “The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.” I believe the Code required ‘The Mail on Sunday’ to try to establish the veracity of Professor Tol’s allegation that I was conducting ‘a smear campaign’ against him, rather than just to regurgitate it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a smear campaign as “a plan to discredit a public figure by making false accusations”. I think the evidence shows very clearly that my actions have never constituted a ‘smear campaign’ against Professor Tol."

    From Ward's letter of 24 Oct 2014 to IPSO
    "I am afraid that Mr Wellington’s letter does not provide any evidence to support the allegation that I was carrying out ‘a smear campaign’ against Professor Tol."

    UPDATE3:
    Bob is cwoss.

    No article about Bob Ward is complete without Geno.

    8

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  2. Things used to be simple. The Church taught how the world worked and how to behave. The positive and the normative were united. The Enlightenment put an end to that. We are supposed to follow evidence rather than dogma. In the early days, an intelligent person could comprehend all of science. Not any longer. Experts master a small subfield only.

    We recently replaced our audio system with a Bluetooth one. When my daughter asked how it worked, the best I could offer was “it’s magic”. For most of us, it does not matter that we do not know how our smartphone works. We know what it is supposed to do. We know when it does not work. We know how to read online reviews. We rely on experts, but we know how to tell a reliable one from a charlatan.

    Not so in environmental policy. Experts make predictions of the future that are hard to verify. Indeed, public policy advice is full of self-defeating prophesies. Bad things will happen if we don’t change our ways. We often act on such information, and thus deny ourselves the opportunity to check whether the prediction was accurate. We trust the expert, take her word as gospel.

    The Church held sway over what is right and wrong for long after the Enlightenment, but it has been losing terrain. Others have stepped in to fill the moral vacuum. The environmental movement is one. There sure are environmental problems that should be solved, but some environmental organizations take it one step further. On offer are guidance how to live your life, a tribe to belong to, a feeling of superiority over outsiders, and even a looming Armageddon, lest we atone for our sins, in the shape of climate change.

    Environmental scientists are cast in the role of priests, the trust in their narrow expertise extended to other areas of fact and value. Most scientists don’t like that. Some quite enjoy it. The concept of planetary boundaries seems to be designed to make environmental scientists the final arbiters in politics, much like the Pope was once in Europe and the Guardian Council is in Iran.

    Religion brings with it unbelievers, apostates, and radicals. The debate on climate policy has long been polarized. Asking an utterly sensible question – which of the many options is the best course of action – is met with howls of derision from both sides. Some protest the idea of taking climate change at all serious. Others are convinced that the maximum action is not enough.

    Polarization is not conducive to sound policy. In Europe, the alarmed have the upper hand, climate policy is hardly scrutinized, and special interest groups are gorging on subsidies and rents. Anyone who questions this is put on par with those who deny the Holocaust. The consensus police patrol the media to isolate, ridicule and smear anyone who dares to raise a question. The Royal Observatory and the London School of Economics employ people, Ken Rice and Bob Ward, whose day job it is, or so it seems, to attack others* for their climate heresy.

    Every movement has its nutters. Climate warriors have long ago stopped being civil. But we seem to be entering a new level of radicalisation.

    The Buddhas of Bamiyan were blown up by the Taliban in 2001. In 2014, Greenpeace activists damaged the Nazca Lines. Greenpeace has often broken the law, but their actions have always been directed against those who harm the environment. They appealed to a moral authority higher than the legal ones. Nazca, however, was wanton vandalism. And it was not a solo action. Twenty people trampled over ancient heritage. The Greenpeace media team happily beamed pictures across the world. And when it emerged that the world was not amused, Greenpeace' response was closer to damage control and cover-up than remorse and cooperation with the Peru government.

    In January 2015, a Greenpeace activist called for the beheading of a member of the House of Lords on the website of the Guardian. When challenged, he repeated the call, and again. People who questioned the wisdom of these remarks were attacked or banned. The Guardian actively moderates its comments, but even though Gary Evans’ calls to behead Matt Ridley caused a bit of a stir, it took the editors 32 hours to realize that death threats against political opponents is not really how we like to do things in Britain nowadays. (The Guardian has since worked hard to try to erase the past.) As if on cue, Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader, called for the decriminalisation of belonging to a violent terror group. The Guardian simultaneously carried stories about the beheading of a Japanese hostage by Islamic State.

    There are now elements in the environmental movement who are so worried about the state of the planet that they have lost all sense of proportion. This is alarming for those at the receiving end of their mindless wrath. It does not help to protect the environment either. Just like Boko Haram does not endear anyone to Muslims, green radicals taint all environmentalists. But whereas Islamic leaders immediately distance themselves from any new outrage, environmental leaders pretend nothing happened.

    Environmental protection has come a long way since the early 1970s. Pollution is much reduced, and care for the environment is widely shared and supported – at least in Europe. Sensible policies and respectable pressure groups are the best way forward to solve the remaining environmental problems. Green radicals risk throwing that away.

    UPDATE Readers have volunteered other reports of radical greens:

    1. Example
    2. Example
    3. Example
    4. Example
    5. Example
    6. Example
    7. Example
    *not physically
    This work is licensed as CC BY-ND
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