“ERL rejects Richard Tol’s comment on Cook et al 2013, but won’t say who rejected it” (2013-06-16). A little while ago Anthony Watts was greatly irritated by an Environmental Research Letters paper by John Cook, et al. which quantified the widely stated consensus that 98% of qualified climatologists agree that human industrial activity is having an undeniable warming influence on our climate. Much unsuccessful wailing and nit-picking by Anthony and Co. ensued.

Now we have word that Dr. Richard Tol, a denialist economist, submitted a killer Comment on the resented article. Sadly, declaring that he’s angry and doesn’t like Cook fails meet the threshold for scientific publication. For that he has to actually find something significantly wrong with the original paper.

Sez the ERL reviewer, “It reads more like a blog post than a scientific comment.” Swing! And a miss. But cue Anthony and his blog of disgruntlement, the natural home for things that don’t offer “a real contribution to the development of the subject, raising important issues about errors, controversial points or misleading results”.

Anthony Watts says that the editorial board of ERL contains thieves and suggests that right-thinking people “query” the journal’s editor-in-chief, offering a helpful link to their e-mail address. “Citizen science” becomes thug science in one easy step.

2013-06-18 Update: Richard Tol is flailing about trying the “he said, she said” defense over at Wotts Up With That Blog, a new website that shares my disgust with Anthony Watts’ antics.