Source: Channel 4 News
URL: N/A
Date: 02/04/2014
Event: Ward and Newman versus Tol
Attribution: Channel 4 News
People:
Jon Snow: Now, in some rather more encouraging weather news, forecasters say they can now predict long-term winter weather patterns much better than ever before. Read our weather presenter Liam Dutton's blog on that subject, on our website.
Cathy Newman: Well, all this doesn't mean that the debate on climate change is any less fractious. Indeed a new row has broken out, after Monday's Herculean report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That was based on a seven-year analysis of the global scientific consensus on the consequences of climate change.
At issue is the impact global warming may have on economic growth. The main piece of work on this was the Stern Review, produced by the UK government in 2006. It suggested immediate action was needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic repercussions for world economies. Yet when the IPCC report was released, one of its authors, Richard Tol, an economist from the University of Sussex, withdrew his name, accusing his co-authors of being alarmist. Now Richard Tol himself stands accused of inserting misleading data into the final draft of the report, which could give the impression climate change wouldn't damage the economy as much as other academics believed.
Well, earlier I spoke to the two men at the centre of the row, Professor Richard Tol and Bob Ward, Policy Director at the Grantham Research Institute.
[To Bob Ward.} Bob Ward, this has been a hell of a spat. What is the trouble, in your view, with Professor Tol?
Bob Ward: Well, Professor Tol has enjoyed quite a lot of publicity, over the past few days, accusing 71 authors on the new climate change report of producing an alarmist summary. And I find that ironic, because it's actually Professor Tol's contribution to the report that ought to be under scrutiny. It contains a number of errors and misleading statements. For instance, in his part of the report, he states that we can't be certain whether - at low levels of warming - whether the net impacts of climate change might be positive or negative. But when you actually look at the data - there's 20 data points - there's just one study that suggests significant net positive impact from global warming, and that single study is one that Professor Tol himself produced in 2002, which I have here and it admits that there's a long list of impacts that he has omitted, such as changes in extreme weather -
Cathy Newman: Okay, let me put that straight to Professor Tol, then - errors in your work.
Richard Tol: I'm a bit surprised by these statements by Mr. Ward. There were indeed a few errors in an earlier draft, but they have been corrected, so Mr. Ward knows that they have been corrected. I've also told Mr. Ward before that my estimate is not the only one that shows positives, but there is, in fact, a number of others. So I just don't understand why he's saying these things.
Cathy Newman: The error's been cleared up. Professor Tol says - as said on Twitter today - that you're a fantasist.
Bob Ward: Well, viewers can go and decide for themselves, after this programme, and have a look at the chapter, and they can see that the errors are still there, and they can also see that there is only one study that shows net positive impacts.
Cathy Newman: If - if Bob Ward is making it up, why don't you just sue him for reputational damage?
Richard Tol: Well, suing colleagues, or people who work for other universities, is not done - it's a very drastic step. I wish that Mr. Ward would simply stick to the fact that he knows - I mean, he sent me a whole bunch of emails. I explained to him what were the errors, and what were the mistakes in his thinking. And unfortunately he keeps on making the same allegations, over and over and over again. So it's a bit unclear what - what my position in this should be, when unfortunately Mr. Ward is making fantastic claims that he simply cannot support and he actually knows are untrue.
Cathy Newman: You've got an agenda, here, haven't you - you're working alongside climate change sceptics.
Richard Tol: Why would I have an agenda? I'm an academic.
Cathy Newman: Well, you're signed up with Lord Lawson's group.
Richard Tol: I'm an advisor to a great number of organisations - the Global Warming Policy Foundation is one.
Cathy Newman: But doesn't that give you an agenda?
Richard Tol: I'm also, for instance, an advisor to the Dutch government, to the UK government, to the US government, and so on and so forth. I advise many people.
Cathy Newman: The fact that you're in bed with Lord Lawson, as it were, gives you an agenda, doesn't it?
Richard Tol: Er, Lord Lawson should speak for himself. I'm an independent advisor, honest counsel - I give him the same message that I'm giving here - you now, I'm giving him the same message as I give, for instance, the European Commission.
Cathy Newman: Bob Ward, there's a chance that - isn't there - that Professor Tol could be right and the rest of his colleagues could be wrong.
Bob Ward: Well, I want to just clarify, for the benefit of the viewers - of the 20 data you plotted in the chapter, how many of those 20 show significant net positive impacts?
Richard Tol: Well, actually that is not something that the IPCC can pronounce about, because that is information that is yet to be published in the peer-reviewed literature. There are 2 of the 21 that show net benefits, there's a number that actually do show - a confident interval that show no significance whatsoever. In yet unpublished work, we demonstrate that indeed the initial benefits are positive but not significantly so, but the same is actually also true for a lot of the more negative benefits that come later. It takes actually a good bit of warming to make these impacts significantly different from zero.
Cathy Newman: Professor Tol's going to be proved right, it just hasn't happened yet, because the work hasn't been published.
Bob Ward: Professor Tol is perfectly entitled to his own point of view, and if that's what he believes, that's fine. But he has been criticising other authors of the IPCC who put together a representative account, not just of their own points of view, as Professor Tol is promoting, but of what the literature shows as a whole, and this is the problem. They have been criticised by Professor Tol because they don't share exactly his point of view.
Jon Snow: Bob Ward and Richard Tol, debating.