A truly Wardian performance by the LSE man at the Grantham Institute site today, taking a pot-shot at Christopher Booker because of his (entirely correct) observations about the inaccuracies in the science in Sir Paul Nurse's Horizon programme. No true statement should ever go unchallenged it seems:
Dr Bindschadler indicated that human activities emit the equivalent of about seven billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, whereas natural sources, such as volcanoes, only produce about one billion tonnes. Christopher Booker, whose weekly column in The Sunday Telegraph regularly recycles the content appearing on 'sceptic' blogs, attacked Dr Bindschadler's statements, describing them as "mind-boggling" and "a grotesque misrepresentation". Mr Booker claimed that natural sources account for more than 96 per cent of annual emissions of carbon dioxide. So who is right? With a typical flourish, Ward then proceeds to avoid the question he has just posed and embarks on a lengthy discussion of various aspects of the carbon cycle, but one that never quite gets back to the ratio between human and natural carbon dioxide emissions. As readers here know, Bindschadler got it wrong and Booker was right. The ratio is nothing like 7:1. Unfortunately, Ward just can't quite bring himself to say that truth.