Monday
Oct242016
by 
Josh
Josh Bulldog Bob
Oct 24, 2016 Climate: Ward Josh Stern To tell the truth, there has been very little that has piqued my interest in the climate scene since my long break began all those months ago.
But my goodness, David Rose's splash in the Mail on Sunday over the weekend was something else wasn't it? Those paragons of virtue at Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, overseen by our old friends Nick and Bob, have been, well, nicking other people's results and passing them off as their own, the better to fleece the taxpayer of a bob or two (or nine million).
That certainly made me sit up and take notice.
Here's Josh's take...
Reader Comments (118)
Stern's warping of the damage function is epic, and will be long remembered.
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David Rose's splash in the Mail on Sunday over the weekend was something else wasn't it
It sure was! A big shiny squirrel of an article as the hottest September on record is announced. And now a post here and two at WUWT! Based on 7 mistakenly attributed articles - out of hundreds, making up no part in the core research programme.
http://www.cccep.ac.uk/news/response-to-article-by-david-rose-in-the-mail-on-sunday/
Do get a grip.
Recycling Climate Science that has failed, is what pays Bob Ward and Lord Stern
And Phil Clarke?
The rebuttal goes straight to the heart of the matter with an ad hominem attack on David Rose, complete with the usual "climate change denial" nonsense.
@Phil:
Here's the dates for the Ecological Economics paper:
Received 1 June 2007, Revised 8 May 2008, Accepted 26 June 2008, Available online 31 July 2008
CCCEP started 30 September 2008.
There was no intellectual input into the paper after May 8, no editorial input after July 31.
If we believe his CV, Hepburn started at CCCEP only in 2010.
There are very few concepts in the green liturgy, so it is difficult for the likes of Bob Ward to actually say or write anything original. There are only so many ways you can rephrase "We're doomed" and "It's worse than we thought".
Welcome back!
Professor Tol,
Yes, Ward appears to have his facts wrong on that one. However we are deeply into mountains and molehill territory here, in my view giving 'it's fraud' quotes to a journalist of Rose's calibre over what seems to me an inconsequential error in the paperwork risks denting one's credibility.
"Recycling Climate Science that has failed, is what pays Bob Ward and Lord Stern
And Phil Clarke?"
Er, who did you say pays Josh ?
Welcome back.
Phil Clarke:
http://www.cccep.ac.uk/news/response-to-article-by-david-rose-in-the-mail-on-sunday/
I thought Bob Ward had held his hands up?
http://www.cccep.ac.uk/our-work/
"Our research objectives are to:
Undertake an ambitious, innovative and interdisciplinary programme of research, firmly grounded in theory but with practical applications, linking science and social science and combining quantitative and qualitative approaches"
Firmly grounded in theory.... I like that.
Ward's PR is something to behold. This time, some 50% by line count of his 'response' as quoted above is taken up with digging the hole he's in a little deeper regarding the Tol & Hepburn paper - as helpfully clarified by Tol himself. Can anyone check out the remaining 50%?
Oh get real. Name me one organisation with a zero error rate. Rose is an embarassment, he simultaneously wants to claim that this handful of papers were instrumental in the awarding of £millions in grant money and were on ephermeral topics such as anchovy harvests.
Can you really see how absurd this pettifogging appears to anyone with half a brain and a working sense of proportion?
On the other hand, do carry on ... ;-)
It is interesting to note Sam Fankhauser is heavily involved at this scion of the Grantham Institute. He has been on the CCC since its inception and recommends policy to government which de facto favours the industry in which he is engaged in his directorship at Vivid economics.
http://www.cccep.ac.uk/theme/advancing-climate-finance-and-investment/
The theme leader for Advancing climate finance and investment is Sam Fankhauser
Research projects
This theme is comprised of 3 research projects:
Project 2a – Political Economics of Climate Finance
Project 2b – Multilevel governance of climate finance
Project 2c – Evolution of carbon markets
What he tends to leave out of his CV is his involvement with the extra parliamentary group of "international legislators" at Globe International, with a direct line to government in addition to his CCC work:
http://www.globeinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83:acknowledgements&catid=62:climate-legislation-study&Itemid=230
Lord Deben was until a couple of years ago, the President of this Agitprop group of politicians, linked with The Club of Rome.
Ironically, in view of the CCEP revelations, Fankhauser is a former co-author with Richard Tol, in 1998, 1999 and 2005.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221678661_The_Value_of_Human_Life_in_Global_Warming_Impacts_--_A_Comment
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/38352/
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,(thank God!), The British journalist
.
But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.
Phil claims he is unbribed,
A drink to that imbibed;
On occasion
His persuasion
A joke on him is jibed.
=================
The fatcat ecocrats exposed: Web of 'green' politicians, tycoons and power brokers who help each other benefit from billions raised on your bills
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy
Seven not from heaven sent
In other words, less than 3%
The cry of fraud rises from the street
A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet
Ah, but here's a tip:
Get a fecking grip.
Hi Andrew,
It is good to see you posting again. I was just thinking about you yesterday, wondering if this round of retwardian crud would coax you out of your slumber.
Even serial doomster Phil Clarke managed to get his feckless regurgitation in.
It truly IS worse than we thought.
Phil Clarke 2:08 you are not normally panicking this late. Is there worse to come?
Is Climate Science going to throw the Hockey Stick under a bus, before Climate Science gets it's budgets cut by 97%?
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2013/10/15/bob-ward-climate-fraud/
Welcome back Anthony Watts.
WUWT also has a great cartoon by Josh
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/24/monday-mirthiness-a-new-stern-version-of-hansens-bulldog/
Thanks Josh!
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.
There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike — taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire.
The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting.
Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars and arches — dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging — was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day.
Ah, Good evening Mr Watts. Or is it Dr Jekyll? Good of you to emerge from your lair.
As one of you wrote in the Heartland Institute Report SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY-DRIVEN DECEPTION?.
But then some other Anthony Watts wrote, the following year:
George Orwell would be proud. As my posts have a habit of um, not appearing on your site, (even after the Smokey/dbstealey embarassment). I will ask just one question, respond or not as you see fit:
Do we have an ETA for the paper announced with something of a fanfare in 2012, that will demonstrate that temperature trends in the US are exaggerated? I am sure many people would like to be assured that this whole global warming thing is nothing to worry about so they can dismiss the findings of the world's science academies and get on with their lives. Excuse the impertinence, however given the stakes, a 4 year delay seems well, a little hard to forgive.
All hail the Great Automator of contrarian blog censorship !
All hail!
In my salad days, when I was green in judgement, I judged it unwise to use my real name on certain venues and so, as an anonymous coward I styled myself John Philips, which is a reversal of my middle and first names. Anthony did not like John at all
Heh.
Hello Russell
My Gawd, how clever, inverting your name. Slick.
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The Bish entitled to his slumber;
A rising tide upon the Humber,
Of alarmism
Et smarmism,
Now ebbs and leaves us all much humbler.
==================
PhilanthropyEdit
Copied from Wikipedia, Jeremy Grantham
"Philanthropy
Grantham, together with his wife Hannelore, established the Grantham Foundation For the Protection of the Environment in 1997. Substantial commitments have been made to Imperial College London, London School of Economics and to The University of Sheffield to establish the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and Environment, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, respectively, which will enable the institutions to build on their extensive expertise in climate change research.[11] The 2011 tax filing for the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment shows the Foundation donated $1 million to both the Sierra Club and to Nature Conservancy, and $2 million to the Environmental Defense Fund that year. The Foundation has also provided support to Greenpeace, the WWF and the Smithsonian. From 2006-2012, The Grantham Foundation for Protection of the Environment funded a $75,000 prize for environmental reporting. The prize was administered by the University of Rhode Island's Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting.[6][12]"
Why does Climate Science need taxpayer funding, when Big Green Blob Cheques are so easy to come by? Phil Clarke has demonstrated where the money is wasted, and on what, very well.
I don't know when this was written, but I note the money was "to build on their extensive expertise in climate change research". This is an interesting way of describing a campaign of funding liars and charlatans, but if this is how Grantham likes to waste his money then so be it.
@Phil
I am glad we agree on the Ecol Econ paper.
Fraud is fraud. There is no minimum threshold. If someone deceives you to take a penny from you, it is still fraud.
'The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which has given the CCCEP £9 million
from taxpayers since 2008, has never checked the organisation's supposed publication lists,
saying they were 'taken on trust'.
Huh! Never heard of 'trust but verify' re dolling out serious money from the public purse?
Richard,
Out of interest, has anyone spoken to Cameron Hepburn? Was the list compiled by the authors of the papers, or was it compiled by an administrator? If it was compiled by an administrator they would probably have searched the database and your paper with Hepburn would have been returned with a publication date of 2009, not 2008. Was the list sent around to all the members to check for correctness? Since you've published with Hepburn you could presumably check how the list was compiled and then checked. That way you could avoid making potentially libelous claims in public - oh, okay, I can see why you might not want to check this too thoroughly.
<q>7 mistakenly attributed articles</q>
Phil Clarke, how many 'mistaken attributions' did you include in the bibliography of your PhD?
From the MoS:
'On Friday, the CCCEP – based jointly at the London School of Economics and the University of Leeds – will host a gala at the Royal Society in London in the peer's honour. Attended by experts and officials from around the world....'
One assumes they walked to the event.
@Ken Rice
How should I know?
I regularly talk with Cameron -- we're still to finish another paper not funded by Stern -- but the quality control procedures of CCCEP are never on the agenda.
Richard,
Because you're the one making the accusation of fraud. I had assumed that you had all the relevant information. As I think I've explained to you already, fraud implies intent to deceive, which would seem to require that you have some understanding of how the list was complained and the intent behind presenting it. I accept that it was probably silly for me to have assumed that your accusations were well-founded.
Safe space warning:
Re that Gala Dinner at the Royal Society, guests are advised
to sup with a long spoon.
@wotts
Again, there is no lower threshold on fraud. Intent refers to gain, rather than to deception. Grant applications are intentional.
Lord Stern claimed a paper, that he might have known was not his to claim [deception] in a grant renewal application [gain]. That is fraud.
Quality control within the CCCEP is irrelevant for the case. It helps in understanding why the deception took place, but cannot absolve the CCCEP's deception.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be writing here alongside Phil Clarke and aTTP, but I can do no other. I wrote yesterday a post on Unthreaded which I reproduce below.
"This is really OT. Continued funding will be based on what is promised for the future. This is based on the proposals and by the outputs from previous work done. With a bibliography of several hundred items there is more than enough. The very few contentious items would not affect the outcome.
Some of the criticisms are unjustified. Inclusion of papers not on climate is easily explained. A reseach group will employ young researchers. The roles of the chief investigators is twofold, first to guide the researchers to do the contracted work, but second to encourage them to do things that will help them find continued employment when their current contract ends. Part of this will be to publish past work. Time and maybe other assistance will be offered. When such work is published, the writing up is a legitimate output of the researcher's current employment.
There is no question that in the main example detailed [Tol's paper]there was some very sharp practice, even illegality".
This is no Climategate, but it should be an embarrassment.
If you read ten research papers, you will find errors in the reference lists - references omitted, references present but unused in the paper, errors of citation and so on. They are notoriously difficult to get right.
Bish, I am so glad this topic has brought you back, but IMO it's rather thin gruel.
O
I should have added that Ward's attempts at a defence are beyond the pale. A simple acknowledgement of error plus an apology for those adversely affected would have been the best procedure. And Ward is supposedly employed in this area?
My kudos also to Richard Tol for seeking acknowledgement for an injustice.
Might have known? You're throwing out accusations of fraud on a 'might'?
ACK 8:55, I don't think "thin gruel" is quite the right description when you look at the millions of pounds involved, and the regular pattern of behaviour.
There is no suggestion that Jeremy Grantham has committed fraud, or been defrauded.
Richard,
No, it does not. The "intent" refers to the "intention to deceive", not "the intention to gain". Of course a grant application is submitted with the intention to gain (otherwise why bother), the question is whether or not the errors were intentional and had a substantive impact on the outcome.
Personally, if we discover that the grant was funded mainly on the basis of the assessment of a five-year publication list, then the bigger issue would be why we are basing funding decisions on a simple list of publications, rather than on an assessment of the actual proposal.
dennis's
Firmly grounded in theory.... I like that.
I think that we all would prefer it if the theory was firmly grounded!
golfCharlie the "thin gruel" is the relatively small number of contentious papers. I make no comment whatsoever about the proposal for continued funding, which appears to be what you are referring to.
@wottsywotts
You can read for yourself: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2
@ dennisa
Firmly grounded in theory.... I like that.
I think that we all would prefer it if the theory was firmly grounded!
Richard,
Have you read it? If you have, have you understood it? For example
Professor Tol, you just beat me to it. For the sake of total clarity, the Fraud Act 2006 says, at s 1(1):
"A person is guilty of fraud if he is in breach of any of the sections listed in subsection (2) (which provide for different ways of committing the offence)."
One of the sections listed in subsection (2) is section 2 (headed "Fraud by false representation"). Section 2 (1) says:
"A person is in breach of this section if he -
(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b) intends, by making the representation -
(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss."
Section 2 (2) says:
"A representation is false if -
(a) it is untrue or misleading, and
(b) he person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading."
So ATTP is sort of correct. The dishonesty relates to the representation, the intention relates to the making of the gain.
I'm with ACK on this one. It's bad behaviour, but not the storm that some are making it out to be, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, welcome back from me to our host.