Nature Communications published a paper last week that argues that the media pay undue attention to people who do not worry much about climate change. The journal and authors are now in all sorts of trouble because they identified those people, smeared their name, and released personal data.
Elsevier Weekblad plaatste een interview met ondergetekende op 23 Maart 2019. Het gesprek ging over van alles en nog wat. Op de titelpagina roep ik dat een "CO2-heffing [op] bedrijven het domste [is] wat je kunt doen".
Research used to be open access. To read a learned paper, you went to a university library. Academics had privileged access because that library was near their offices. Papers have now moved online, often behind a paywall.
Dear Professor van Dijck,

In November 2017, Professor Jeffrey Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, a KNAW institute, was the lead author on a paper published in the journal BioScience.

I requested the data behind the paper, and was pointed to the data archive.

Dear Professor van Dijck,

In November 2017, Professor Jeffrey Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, a KNAW institute, was the lead author on a paper published in the journal BioScience.

I requested the data behind the paper, and was pointed to the data archive. Unfortunately, the data released was incomplete.

The paper classifies blogs as “yellow” or “blue”. This classification is hardwired into the R code used to analyse the data. The paper only vaguely describes the procedure for classification: The content of the blogs is compared to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unfortunately, the data released only contain the home page of the blogs investigated, rather than the specific blog posts examined. Some of these blogs consists of hundreds if not thousands of posts. Similarly, the IPCC has published many reports running to thousands of pages, with positions that change over time and chapters that contradict one another. Agreement or disagreement with the IPCC is therefore a meaningless concept, unless chapter and verse are specified.

I have repeatedly asked Professor Harvey and his co-authors to be more explicit, but to no avail. Specifically, I have asked, in vain, for the list of blogposts examined, for the IPCC statements assessed, and for the score per post and statement.

This may appear to be a detail, but it is a key contribution of the paper. Professor Harvey argues that a blog’s position on the IPCC predicts its position on polar bears. However, not knowing how the IPCC position is derived, it cannot be excluded that Harvey fitted the data to match the conclusion.

In the same paper, Professor Harvey and colleagues analyse the contents of a list of published papers. The released data specify the list of papers, but replicating their query to the Web of Science obtains a different list of papers. I have asked Professor Harvey, in vain, to specify the criteria by which certain papers were excluded; and to specify the query through which papers were added.

This point may seem mundane, but it is the other main conclusion of the paper. Professor Harvey claims that blue blogs agree with “the literature”, and yellow blogs do not. Unfortunately, as Professor Harvey will not explain how “the literature” was delineated, the validity of this conclusion is unknown.

As indicated above, I have repeatedly asked Professor Harvey and his co-authors to release the full dataset. They have refused to do, suggesting that they have something to hide.

I have contacted Mr Melle de Vries, the head of information policy at the KNAW. KNAW data policy is clear: All data should be released, and exceptions specified. My experience with Mr de Vries was frustrating. He kept blandly repeating that all data had been released, which is not true as described above and repeatedly explained to Mr de Vries.

I apologize to have to bring this to your attention. KNAW data policy sets a good example: Scientific data should be open to outside scrutiny. Unfortunately, KNAW researchers do not follow this policy, and KNAW officers do not enforce it.

I would be grateful for your intervention in this specific case, and for your efforts to make sure that KNAW data policy is maintained.

I look forward to your reply.


Yours sincerely,



Richard Tol


A detailed commentary on the paper is available here.
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Charles Mountbatten-Windsor BA, known for being heir to the throne and his barmy views on intensive agriculture and homeopathy, has teamed up with Tony Juniper BSc, an environmental activist, and Dr Emily Shuckburgh, an atmospheric scientist, to write a book, the Ladybird Book of Climate Change.
A journalist asked me about the latest report by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. Her questions are in blue, my answers in black.
Dear Ms Caulfield,

Yesterday you voted against a motion that would guarantee the right of EU citizens already in the UK to continue to live and work here.

I am one of a family of four of such EU citizens.
The news that the government is considering turning the Nissan plant into a bonded warehouse -- essentially ceding part of Sunderland to France, much like part of Calais is governed from the United Kingdom -- so that Single Market rules continue to apply, reminded me of a more radical but ultimately
The IPCC has published an erratum for our chapter in the Fifth Assessment Report.

Four data points were changed. Two relate to a paper by Roberto Roson and Dominique van der Mensbrugghe.
Nick Stern produced another review, this time about the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

In REF2014, and in the preceeding Research Assessment Exercises, research output was evaluated by an individual's 4 best papers in the last 6 years.
My comment on Cook 2013 was published at last, together with a reply. I responded earlier to Cook's responses to my substantive critiques: In a nutshell, Cook evades three out of five critiques, including that the data collection was not blind.
Frank Ackerman found another outlet for his tired and wrong claims. Here's my response.

Ackerman and Munitz (2016) offer a critique of estimates of the economic impact of climate change and the social cost of carbon in general, and the FUND model in particular.
While ERL is taking its time type-setting my paper, Brandon Shollenberger has uncovered Cook's draft (?) response. It is an interesting read. Just like the journal did not want me to talk about Cook's paper, Cook's responses to the questions raised are hidden in an appendix.

I raised five points.
There is another consensus estimate in ERL. Carlton et al. interviewed 698 natural scientists at 10 universities in the USA about climate change. The paper is called "[t] climate change consenes extends beyond climate scientists". This undermines the earlier papers by Anderegg et al.
I submitted the following to the Climate Spectator on Nov 13, after several attempts to get in contact with the editor.

On October 3 and again on October 23, the Business Spectator published articles by Mr Robert E.T. Ward BSc criticizing my work.
This is beginning to feel a bit like the Stern Review, with its endless appendices and postscripts, and addenda (with appendices) to the annexes.
Mr Robert E.T. Ward BSc, Policy and Communications Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, recently published a piece about my work under the title “Flawed analysis of the impacts of climate change”.
I grew up in an environment where people were deeply Catholic but did not like the Church very much. I guess that rubbed off on me.

The Pope has released an Encyclical on Care for our Common Home. It is rather long. It has good things. It has bad things.
In de aanloop naar de onderhandelingen in Parijs wordt er weer veel over klimaatbeleid geschreven.
I enrolled in Denial101x, partly to see what MOOCs are all about and partly to see what Cook and co were up to now.

Production values are high. The videos are slick, and well-integrated with surveys, discussion forums and quizzes to test how well you understood the material.

The contents are poor.
A full reconstruction of Cook's 97% nonsensus is still lacking. However, Sou of Bundanga may have unraveled one further mystery.

In the data that Cook made available, abstract IDs run from 1 to 12,876.
Now almost two years old, John Cook’s 97% consensus paper has been a runaway success.
Ben Dean succeeded where I failed: He got a comment on Cook's 97% published at ERL. Dean's trick is simple: Ask a question.
The Guardian has written a series of articles about me and my work, a veritable smear campaign.
Back in the day when John Cook claimed he was too busy to release the data of his flawed consensus study but had time enough to photoshop pictures of me, I filed a request to see what U Queensland employees were writing about me.
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.
Abstract

While earlier research had exposed severe problems with the data quality and analysis of the 97% consensus paper (Cook et al, 2013, Environmental Research Letters), this note finds the authors have contradicted themselves and that the data gathering invalidates all results.
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