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.

2

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.

2

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.

1

In their eagerness to discredit a colleague[1] Harvey et al. (2017) got ahead of themselves.

3

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.

1

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

1

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.

2

Cook 2016 includes 14 previous studies, and omits 2. For 10 of the previous studies, Cook 2016 shows the consensus rate including don't know / no position. For 3 (Cook 2013, Verheggen, Rosenberg), Cook 2016 excludes don't know / no position.

Cook's latest paper claims that there is a consensus on the consensus. I will let the data speak for themselves.

Fig. 1: Fraction agreement by sample size. Large, dark dots refer to the complete samples of the underlying studies, small light dots to subsamples.

Fig.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

2

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”.

The Cook saga continues.

Inspired by Ben Dean's success in getting an ever-so-mildly critical comment published in Environmental Gatekeeping Research Letters, I submitted a short note with a few critical questions myself.

It took 6 months to review this, a week to revise the comment.

3

This September marked the 10th anniversary of David Pearce's death. He died as I was in transit to Princeton. I recall the shock. Just the week before, I had spoken to a very lively Pearce about what turned out to be his final paper.

1

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.

6

In de aanloop naar de onderhandelingen in Parijs wordt er weer veel over klimaatbeleid geschreven.

2

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.

12

Now almost two years old, John Cook’s 97% consensus paper has been a runaway success.

25

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.

1

The Guardian has written a series of articles about me and my work, a veritable smear campaign.

Shub Niggurath alerted me to the second ratings of rater 4194. In 88% of cases, his second ratings are equal to the first ratings. Averaged over all raters, that ratio is only 68%. What's more, in his first ratings, rater 4194 deviates more from the average than anybody but one.

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.

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.

8

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.

12

It is ironic that the left-of-centre newspaper the Guardian has withdrawn from press regulation. They appear to think that companies are in the best position to judge their own behaviour.

1

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.

1

Nick Stern was on Hard Talk, talking about the Stern2.0 report. A number of things struck me.

Stern argues that renewables are competitive with fossil fuels, citing Al Gore as an authority. I don't believe that. Stern himself seems to have some doubt as well, as he also argues for "strong policy".

3

There is a new Stern Review. Colloquially known as Stern2.0, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate released its report last Tuesday. Since his 2006 review, Nick Stern has been regularly in the news, claiming it is worse than we thought. The new report fits the mould.

Frank Ackerman wrote a new piece. It was covered here and here.

Ackerman makes three points, all relating to my 2013 JEDC paper. The points are red herrings.

Red herring #1

Ackerman notes that only 16 studies were used to calibrate the total impact function.

1

My rejoinder to Cook's response to my comment to Cook's paper is out at last.

I had expected this to be my final contribution, but that was before Brandon Shollenberger found part of the hidden data and Simon Turnill's FOI request revealed that Cook has perhaps not been entirely truthful.

8

In the first days of rater bias, I note that Cook's ratings were done over two periods with a break in between. Ratings are different before and after the break, and raters had the opportunity to inspect the results of the first period during the break. This would invalidate Cook's data.

I wrote earlier about the latest data release from the Consensus project, highlighting the frantic ratings by one of Cook's helpers, the lack of inter-rater reliability, and the systematic differences in ratings between days. I explored the latter a little further.

The saga of the 97% consensus continues. My re-analysis was based on a partial data release. Notably, rater IDs and time stamps were missing. The former are needed to test inter-rater reliability, the latter to test for fatigue.

To Peter Sutherland, Chairman of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Dear Mr Sutherland,

One of the employees of the London School of Economics, Mr Robert ET Ward BSc, has been waging a smear campaign against me.

Cook and co (C14) have a glossy document claiming that I made 24 errors in my recent comment on their work (C13).

Here are some responses. More in a few days:

1. See forthcoming rejoinder. Healey (2011) undermines C13.

2. C14 do not dispute the key claim: non-representativeness of the C13 sample.

4

The Guardian has published six hatchet jobs impugning me and my work. The first four are under investigation by the Press Complaints Commission.

For hatchet job #5 and #6, the Guardian granted me the right to reply by return email.

5
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