Bishop Hill Captain Marvel comes unstuck
Jan 8, 2016 Climate: sensitivity 
While everyone else was out partying on Hogmanay, Bob Ward was hard at work writing tweets about global warming. Let noone say he is not a strangely obsessive personality.
A new paper on climate sensitivity that @mattwridley and other peddlers of denial will pretend does not exist: https://t.co/RJWJFNODkR
— Bob Ward (@ret_ward) December 31, 2015This was a bit of a silly thing for Bob to say though because I had written a post about the said paper, by Marvel et al, some two weeks earlier, noting that it looked a bit unphysical in places.
Anyway, it turns out that the reason that no more detailed response has appeared was that there was so much wrong with the study that it just took a very long time to collate all the problems into a single document. Nic Lewis has now published his thoughts at Climate Audit. And oh boy is the Marvel paper a shambles. There is so much wrong that Nic has had to make a condensed version available as well, and even that runs to two pages! Perhaps I should just publish his final sentence here.
Their study lacks credibility.
Reader Comments (63)
I get the impression that the gentleman resembles an attack dog who leaps into an aggressive confrontation with every sceptical publication regardless of its merits. He also trumpets warmist publications when they arise. It does seem that a large proportion of his victims are dead ducks before he savages them. Many are decoy ducks that are best ignored and the ones he promotes are lame ducks because they fail objective scrutiny.
He really should have stuck to Paleopiezometry.
Or, perhaps, flipping burgers.
O dear, Fast Fingers late to the party! Can't see Jeremy being impressed, vote of confidence? Tricky time for Bob, transfer window open and a certain BBC
climate warrior'journalist' raising his social meejah profile? Maybe Bob will be looking for a new agent?Bobby really is a strange old bird. We all know that he is paid by $100 billion sugar daddy, Jeremy Grantham to lie about global warming. However he doesn't just add his shrill, petty twittering to the dawn chorus, he tweets away to himself 24/7 and no one appears to listen.
Does he really believe his own lies. What do you think ?
Bob once re-tweeted a call to action from born again eco warrior Billy Bragg. I replied with a sarcastic observation about Billy's life. Being a true green, Billy just outright lied to me. I had to quote his own entry in Wikipedia to the little guy himself. Ha ha !
He even lies about his own personal history. I've read his autobiography, he obviously hasn't.
Bob Ward is a useful tool for Jeremy Grantham, however he is also a very good judge of what is credible in climate science. If Bob Ward likes it, there is a 97% chance it is drivel.
That'll be the same Jeremy Grantham who wants to make money from carbon-trading and bought a way to use the name of LSE in furtherance of his aims.
And yet Roger Harrabin of the so-called BBC, another chip off the old block, brazenly thinks it is important to chase the charities commission to uncover the donors to Nigel Lawson's GWPF, who he apparently imagines to be at the root of all skepticism.
Truth be told, I really just suspect Roger Harrabin is taking a leaf from Bob Ward's handbook and angling for a way to 'take himself private' in the same way Richard Black did.
michael hart
Without any shadow of doubt! Elevating his social meejah 'profile'! Rodjaah is trying to max out, the USP starting to look a little tarnished, present vehicle cash strapped, agent for Rodjaah?
Failing to submit his thesis for the paleopiezometry PhD has been the absolute zenith of Bob's contribution to science.
A meteoric career indeed, as in fizzling out in an instant and plunging to oblivion.
Doesn't the rebuttal to Marvel simply come down to:
If the assumptions in the models of sensitivity are understated, why do the models then understate actual temperatures?
https://www.activistfacts.com/foundation/1445-JeremyHanneloreGranthamCharitableTrust/
According to "Activist Facts", Grantham's charitable trust gave $10,000 to Greenpeace in 2001.
I suspect it's more active than that.
I think somehow it should be having more scrutiny.
Bob Ward is a dinosaur of his own Anthropocene Epoch, fixated on physical climate change and unable to adapt to the changing political climate. At least Naomi Oreskes and possibly Will Steffen are tryng to adapt by widening their proposed definition of Anthropocene to include concrete, plastic and "pollution", thus ensuring funding into the next decade even if it gets colder!
If Bob Ward vouches for it, the paper cuts the mustard.
Bob 'fast fingers ' Ward has not let honesty get in the way of him publicly showing how rubbish he really is at his day job . Just has well his 'master' is a very rich man , otherwise you have to ask how he can afford to waste his cash this way.
Bob 'fast fingers' Ward , sometimes right , but only by accident.
So, what does this say about Nature's system of peer review?
Bob Ward is a joke. His utterances become increasingly more bizarre and inaccurate with time.
This makes him a truly useful idiot.
No professional who reads Sagan and Pollock 1960, Cess et al 1976, Wang et al 1976 and the 'bidirectional photon diffusion' claim in the 1987 edition of Goody and Yung, which references comprise the core of IPCC pseudoscience, accepts the IPCC's claims. With a bit of further reading, Ward is equipped to do such an analysis, but clearly failed to do so. Hence it appears he may be compensating for his unprofessionalism by his increasingly unhinged diatribes. Sad.
That the folks hired and retained by Jeremy Grantham under the roof of Imperial College are on the incompetent side fits comfortably within the low standards of the CO2 agitation movement, but surely Jeremy must fret a little about how badly he could come out of all this in due course? And will the College itself not, some day, decide enough is enough?
Anthropocene, suffolk boy-?
I much prefer John Shade's version : -the Idiocene
"Does he really believe his own lies. What do you think ?"
This is one of the eternal questions about people like that. It is hard to answer. I speculate that he is making sure that his "sugar daddy" keeps him on the payroll and to do that he needs to holler loudly that CO2 will kill us all. He is over the top, but he is paid to be over the top.
In addition, he is living in a delusional reality. He believes that CO2 is a danger and he is
"saving humanity", no, he is "saving all life of the planet". That mission of saving life on the planet makes him important. Nay, it makes him invaluable no matter what his "science" career looks like otherwise.Many here will discount him, but his loud, ignorant, delusional voice does add to the "consensus" that CO2 will destroy mankind if we don't all renounce our industrial society. The ignorant and the delusional outnumber us.
Your fingers slipped, "noone" should be no-one or no one.
E.o.M.
Mark Stoval, the ignorant may outnumber us, but the delusional RULE over us (at this sorry time in history). It is the incompetence and insanity of the latter (i.e., today's authorities, in every sphere) I emphasize. To paraphrase the Prince of Peace, "the ignorant you always have with you...".
I have to say that I'm slightly cheered by the number of comments on Bob Ward. It suggests that I'm not the only one who struggled to find something intelligent to say on the science. Reading the longer version helped a lot. I doubt Bob Ward will be cowed unless a warmist or the journal have something to say about Nic's takedown. He won't properly understand it either and will assume that it's wrong. Climate science will always be a waste of time until there is a proper system to determe the good from the bad.
It's magnificent that individuals are giving the concensus a grilling but it's a scandal that there aren't departments given the job and the money to do it full time.
The big problem with the Bob Ward's of this world is that they're so genuinely biased to just one side of this debate. Bob simply NEVER acknowledges any shortcomings in AGW theory or issues that may be cited by counter-papers, while mindlessly parroting anything he thinks supports the Cause as being as being carved in tablets of stone. He's unashamedly biased to the extent his word is little shy of propaganda.
Meanwhile the Matt Ridley's of this world seem to bend over backwards to be fair and impartial, agreeing that CO2 causes 'some' warming influence and discussing issues openly. On balance I know who I'd be more inclined to believe.
"If Bob Ward vouches for it it's because he's been paid to. As for cutting mustard - more like custard.
Away from all the Climate Change tittle tattle back in the real world
Saudi and Iran are at each other's throats executing each others Clerics and desparatly trying to undercut each other's Oil Price.
Love the delicous irony of Climate Change Alarm Irrelevance
trying to impose a world wide moratorium on Fossil Fuel in the middle of a Middle Eastern Oil Glut when the price of Oil has crashed to the floor a Chinese Stock Market collapse and just as the west is secretly gearing up to re invade Iraq before Putin or the Iranian Shia Militias get in and bring down a new Iron Curtain.
PS and not forgetting Migrant Sex Attacks and River Dreadging the UK Brexit Referendum.
Jamspid: "Iron curtain?" Will the new one be muslin? [sp] (cough)
@retard seems to have a mental age of 5.
@ Mark Stoval
"Many here will discount him, but his loud, ignorant, delusional voice does add to the "consensus" that CO2 will destroy mankind if we don't all renounce our industrial society. The ignorant and the delusional outnumber us."
Jan 9, 2016 at 11:36 AM | Mark Stoical
Totally agree that the people like Bob Ward are loud, ignorant and delusional - and that him and others like him make up the so called "consensus" calling for the dismantling of society.
But I have to disagree that these people outnumber us. They don't.
What they have been successful at is being loud, ignorant and delusional and that their simple scare story is very attractive to those that seek undue influence. Hence politicians who love a scare story to make the populace more manageable and those with money who seek influence without the annoyance of having to get elected.
Those of us with thinking ability are the majority - the back-lash against the spin doctors like Bob ward will be harsh when the majority finally finds its voice. Time is on our side and the likes of Bob ward knows this but his gravy train is still running too fast for him to do the honourable thing.
The ever more strident tone and abuse exemplifies this.
The Marvel paper was supported by Ward, but one of the authors was Gavin Schmidt.
In any normal science, such involvement with disaster might have some consequence for a science expert's credibility, possibly damage his ability to get grant funding, or reduce the attraction of having his name attached as a co-author on cutting edge research papers.
As this is Climate Science, Gavin Scmidt is looking forward to another great year, funded by taxpayers. Wouldn't it be better value for US taxpayers to have an independent statistician check the papers that Schmidt has apparently verified first, as he seems to be getting even more careless, as he gets richer and more famous?
Political idiocy, fossil fuels are cheaper than dirt and is Bob Ward one of the major culprits?
Bob Ward, weirdo loon and full of creep fest effluvia by order of the green Mafia Capo - out of the government botherers and climate lobbying harpies also known as Grantham Jezza's Research Institute, shroud wearer in chief, "pray wot doth ye runes sayeth this week oh
wisevery stupid one?" Who cares, apart from Bob?As jamspid (above) points out, the climate loons have had their day.
But now, the world is facing some combination of factors which will alter everything we once held dear. An existential battle on so many fronts, Iran and Saudi are squaring up in the middle east. Europe, is being overrun with barbarians as we witness the planned obsolescence of the nation state , we are now run by a federal bureaucracy of incompetent fools and political errand boys [Westminster] whose economic competency can only be likened to Jeff Skilling [ENRON] + Bernie Madoff running the Fed.
While, the UK's future leaders (God help us) in senior Universities are at each others throats. The Fascists of equality indeed! clawing eyes and pulling out hair - fighting each other to be more 'on message' wanting statues of historical figures removed from campuses and modern iconoclasts too [Germaine Greer to name but one]. YET and in the same moment, ignoring the real Hydra, a monster in their midst, notwithstanding its misanthropic creed and misogynistic primacy of monotheism, which in founding new faculties are duping very stupid or, bribing gullible academics into rewriting history and reshaping these islands via sovereign Gulf finance, a transmogrification of the face; culture and traditions of Britain. And mass immigration and birth rates approaching 80% in inner Boroughs of Londonistan.
Call it Armageddon, call it a cluster****, whatever it is, it ain't anything to do with man made CO₂ and what Bob desires - more than aught else - for Britain to continue on the road to financial catastrophe via ending all usage of fossil fuels....just as the world prices of such plummet on world markets - holy mother of mercy.
STFU Bob and get thee gone.
I wonder if Bob Ward sets his thermostat according to how cold he is, or according to what the models tell him to set it at
EternalOptimist, his office is airconditioned, so it would be more interesting to establish how many days a year he pumps out carbon dioxide, to prevent his brain overheating.
“Climate science has transformed itself from a research backwater a few decades ago into one of the greatest public-good scientific cash cows ever devised” (Garth Paltridge).
“Huge sums of government and private funding have become available to what was initially a small backwater field” (Richard Lindzen).
Twitter account: Kate Marvel@DrKateMarvel
“Climate scientist, ex-cosmologist. Sometimes writes stuff. Likes kale, books, outdoors, puppies. In NYC for some reason. Misses California”.
If Climate Change™ science has indeed peaked Dr Kate can always go back to cosmology her original field of study, but it may get a bit crowded.
Of course she could go back to California and write.
It's an interesting question though, golf Charlie.
We all understand the issue of hypocrisy where moonbat flies to pick up a minor award, or a senior Greenpeace official commutes by air, or 40,000 anti flying zealots fly to Paris to achieve less than nothing.
But how may people will go further and stake their life on the theory ? I am not talking about hypocrisy now, I am talking bravery, like Neil Armstrong or the first person to throw themselves out with a parachute and say, 'yep, this will work'
I won't link to it, but ATTP is cross with us again. The comment section is funnier than the post - basically they don't like science being checked on things like sums and accuracy. Going through things like calculations and facts isn't how scientist carry on you know. I say old bean, the correct proceedure is to officially rebutt it or publish your own paper. Harumph!
The money quote is "Even though some of what Nic Lewis says may be valid, overall it simply comes across as the rather standard pedantic nitpics that are the hallmark of blog science. Auditing isn’t really part of the standard scientific method."
Yes ATTP, we've picked up on that. Now when are you going to understand that climate science is no longer in the school room and has to start playing by the big boy rules?
I say that, firm in the knowledge that neither ATTP nor I are qualified to referee the Marvel and Lewis fight but that peer review isn't fit to do it either.
TinyCO2, I think it is in the Climate Scientist's Code of Conduct and Professional Ethics, that no climate scientist is allowed to express any criticism of another climate scientist if it may have any impact on climate science as a whole, or professional reputation, or their future earnings.
It is similar to one solicitor making public accusations about another.
Sadly the quote aptly describes the present day bastardised 'standard scientific method'. However the beauty of this situation is only scientist can be responsible for the bastardisation of their own precious (as I was taught) 'standard scientific method'. I doubt history and/or an awakening populous will look favourably upon such a self imposed lowering of safe guards. The clock is running!
golf charlie
Indeed, this is even more standard practice in medicine.
I watched (from the back row) my brother give a speech to Toronto Sick Kids hospital's senior management saying that if he got any more letters from the hospital's lawyers 'asking' to him to lie to cover up the death of a child, he would put them in the bin. This was related to highly expensive, experimental treatments sold to the frantic parents of burns victims, necessitating maverick drug regimes.
He got away with it b/c he was an academic star.
esmiff, I almost added 'Doctors' after solicitors, but as I have no personal or professional experience of Doctors involved with fraud and 'cover-ups', I decided not to.
Very few climate scientists have been able to criticise anything about climate science, without attracting all sorts of critical comment. A sinister climate of fear has been created, and funding simply disappears.
Interestingly, aTTP can't seem to explain what he knows to be wrong with the Holy Hockey Stick of Mann. He would have to accuse himself of being a Denier.
All of GISS lacks credibility. Their climate model has been found to be the least-spatially correct among the entire failed crop, their temperature reconstruction is the biggest outlier because they invent numbers in the Arctic, warm the present and cool the past in order to buoy up said crap model (in a blatant conflict of interest) and their overly vocal staff are easily the most obnoxious and hubristic in a very competitive field. GISS gives NASA a bad name.
golf charlie
The reality is that a climate scientist is
1. A wage earner
2. A scientist
All it takes to make someone to toe the line is to threaten number one. I saw it happen to Pielke Jr. Some low life from the depths of RealClimate complained to his faculty..
Bob Ward is awesome. Literally.
Troll comments and follow -ups removed
Golf Charlie: "As this is Climate Science, Gavin Scmidt is looking forward to another great year, funded by taxpayers."
Could be his last year "swimming in honey". I suspect that Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) settled for some e-mails from NOAA (but not scientists) as he concluded that he would be better spending his time and energy on his presidential campaign as if he won he could achieve all his aims at reigning in the CAGW flow of money from US tax payers. That would lead to withdrawal from the Paris "Agreement" and revision of NOAA/GISS records of global temperatures (if Republicans also retained control of Congress). This might even have repercussions here as Met Office and CRU's "homogenized" statistics might then also be subject to closer scrutiny. Personally I think the outcome of the US presidential election is the most important event for the future of CAGW promotion globally. Cruz is my man by far.
John Peter, I try not to get involved in tribal warfare politics, particularly overseas, but I do get annoyed when 'politically correct Green Dogma' becomes the top priority. Provided a student of Paul Ehrlich is not a trusted advisor to the next US President, humanity has a chance.
JamesG, it is over 40 years since NASA placed a man on the Moon, but now they are more interested in replacing the temperature records on Earth. Placing a man on the Moon represented better value for tax payers money.
how much does a FAILED Phd in paleopiezometey earn?
i think i am also capable to fail a pp phd..so can my goldf8sh
sure it does not earn you a position at a "distinguished" uk institute??
Nic Lewis lacks credibility. Before he starts throwing accusations like that around you would do well to remember his embarrassing episode with respect to Bjorn Stevens and ECS last year anyone where the following was stated...
"Soon after, he took the unusual step, for a climate scientist, of issuing a press release to correct the misconceptions. Lewis had used an extremely rudimentary, some would even say flawed, climate model to derive his estimates, Stevens said." (Quote from Sci Amer).
FAmiliar? No? Thought not. Given that there is so much out there to read I guess I'll not waste my time with anything this time as well...
OBY:
I'm sure if you pop over to Nic's posting at CA you'll be able to tell the man yourself. From my reading of the comments I can't say that you've shown any abdominal fortitude to make your point there."FAmiliar? No? Thought not." said Onbyaccident
Well, it was to me having been discussed here on Apr 23, 2015