More Tol Gaffes

In a prior post, I examined how Tol claimed to find evidence that was "...indicative of the [poor] quality of manuscript preparation and review" in Cook et al, (2013) - evidence that upon examination consisted entirely in Tol's superficial reading of that paper.  Embarrassing enough, I guess, in a blog post, but that gaffe by Tol was in a "Comment" Tol was preparing for academic publication.  Tol is now in draft three of his comment, and has largely removed eliminated that blunder from the text. (He is still insisting that information from a co-author of the paper is irrelevant to his analysis.)  Draft three still contains several outright blunders, indicative of Tol's antagonistic intent and superficial analysis in his comment.  I examine two of those blunders below.

Tol on "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature"

Richard Tol has been turning a series of intemperate and poorly supported criticisms of Cook et al (2013) into an intemperate and poorly supported comment, currently in its second draft.  Taken to task about the negativity of the criticisms, Tol responded that he did not have the option of constructive criticism because he does not have the resources.  Willard points out how absurd this excuse is.  In fact, I think he is over generous.  A constructive criticism need not formulate a better approach.  It need only show the likely impact of the relevant factors on the results of the paper being criticized.

In fact, it takes minimal resources and time to be constructive in this way.  Tol, however, at avoids every opportunity to lift above pure negativity in this way.  The consistent bias in his approach shows his claim that he does not have the resources for a constructive criticism is sheer bunk.