Ridley's response to Lynas

This is a guest post by Matt Ridley and is a response to this post by Mark Lynas.

As far as I know Mark Lynas is an honourable man. He changed his mind on the benefits of genetically modified crops, going against the views of nearly all environmental campaign groups and bravely putting up with much criticism for doing so. I know how he feels, because I have done the same – changing my mind about the dangers of climate change, going against the views of nearly all environmental campaign groups and putting up with much criticism for doing so.

That Mark does not agree with my change of mind on climate (which happened gradually but was cemented by the way the green and scientific establishments reacted to the Climategate controversy) is fair enough. I don’t, however, understand why he chooses to take the low road in his attacks on me. His latest blog post is entitled “On Matt Ridley’s latest attempt at climate change denial”. He knows full well that I have never advocated climate change “denial” and that that very phrase was invented as a way smear sceptics who think the dangers of climate change are being exaggerated by associating them with holocaust denial. Yuk.

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Matt Ridley: on cheaper oil

Matt Ridley has an optimistic article in Times today [paywalled] on the benefits of cheaper oil.

His encouraging words are available at his website

Cheer yourselves up.

More retwardian discourse

Back in August, Bob Ward took a pop at Matt Ridley, berating him among other things for an alleged misrepresentation of the global record on drought. Matt's argument was, he claimed "grossly misleading". Much amusement was had when I flagged up the evidence that Matt had cited and Bob mumbled and shuffled before suggesting that the decline wasn't statistically significant. We determined that "grossly misleading" means "correct" in retwardian.

Today Bob is on the case again, spending his tax-funded time to berate...Matt Ridley. This time he is arguing about Matt's case that transient climate response - the amount of warming we will get in the short-term - might be as low as 1.35°C per doubling of carbon dioxide. This figure is sourced from the Lewis and Crok report on climate sensitivity.

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A saching

From time time to time I have noted the tendency among upholders of the climate consensus to hurl strongly worded accusations of wrongdoing or abusive epithets at their opponents, apparently without considering it necessary to provide any evidence in support of their allegations. I'm thinking here of Nigel Lawson or Owen Paterson being described as "deniers" by just about every left-wing journalist in the country, without apparently needing to justify the accusation in any way and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

There was yet another example of the same thing today, with economist and left-wing talking head Jeffrey Sachs aiming brickbats at Matt Ridley on account of his recent article about the lack of any surface temperature rise:

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Come on down - Josh 291

The hiatus is all the rage these days. Many thanks to Matt Ridley for his inspirational WSJ article.

Cartoons by Josh

The pause and its coming of age

There should be a big coming of age party for the pause in the next month or so. On one measure it's now 17 years, 11 months old, so depending what temperatures do in the near future the pause should be heading for the local boozer for its first pint.

In fact on other measures the pause is already well into adulthood, as Matt Ridley reports in the Wall Street Journal.

Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That’s according to a new statistical calculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.

It has been roughly two decades since there was a trend in temperature significantly different from zero. The burst of warming that preceded the millennium lasted about 20 years and was preceded by 30 years of slight cooling after 1940.

This has taken me by surprise. I was among those who thought the pause was a blip. As a “lukewarmer,” I’ve long thought that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions will raise global temperatures, but that this effect will not be amplified much by feedbacks from extra water vapor and clouds, so the world will probably be only a bit more than one degree Celsius warmer in 2100 than today. By contrast, the assumption built into the average climate model is that water-vapor feedback will treble the effect of carbon dioxide.

But now I worry that I am exaggerating, rather than underplaying, the likely warming.

In retwardian, "grossly misleading" means "correct"

Further to this morning's post about Bob Ward's New Statesman attack piece against Matt Ridley, take a look at this. In his article, Ward said the following:

...Ridley's article suggested that “there is no global increase in floods”, and “there has been a decline in the severity of droughts”. Both statements were grossly misleading. Climate change is increasing global average temperature, but its impact on extreme weather differs across the world. Some regions are becoming wetter while others are becoming drier.

Ridley's claim about drought was based on a paper that did the rounds of the internet a few months back. The key graph is this one:

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Oi, Lord Stern! Your boy took one hell of a beating

Bob Ward has one of his tedious disinformation pieces at the New Statesman blog, yet again attacking Matt Ridley.

Bob is getting something of a pasting in the comments.

All change for Lords SciTech

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has had some personnel changes. The reliably AGW-consensus figure of Lord Krebs has stepped down, along with Lord Perry. Viscount Ridley and Lord Hennessy have been appointed. Matt Ridley needs no introduction of course. Hennessy - the constitutional historian Peter Hennessy - seems to have said nothing on in the past on climate change (or very much on science for that matter, so I'm not sure why he has had the nod).

The committee is now to be chaired by the Earl of Selborne, whose other interests include his chairmanship of the Living With Environmental Change programme.

The ecologist view versus the economist view

Matt Ridley has an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal about the different ways economists and ecologists look at the world.

How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population? The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil, clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption.

"We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund).

Cue outrage

For those that can get behind the Times paywall, Matt Ridley has a good review of the state of play on the climate debate in the aftermath of the IPCC reports.

These IPCC and OECD reports are telling us clear as a bell that we cannot ruin the climate with carbon dioxide unless we get a lot more numerous and richer. And they are also telling us that if we get an awful lot richer, we are likely to have invented the technologies to adapt, and to reduce our emissions, so we are then less likely to ruin the planet. Go figure.

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Creating perspective

Matt Ridley has braved the brickbats of the vested interests and the greens with another hard-hitting piece in the Wall Street Journal, this time looking at the forthcoming Working Group II report, its downgrading of alarm and the new perspective of climate change among a number of issues facing the world.

Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population "bomb," pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different.

This, I think is likely to enrage those whose livings depend on the maintenance of a state of alarm and the reaction will therefore be aggressive. Let's make sure that the voices of reason are heard too.

A Peer reviewed - Josh 263

 Evidence gleaned here.

Cartoons by Josh

The works of Lord Deben

This is a guest post by Matt Ridley.

Lord Deben is chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, a body funded by the British taxpayer. He draws a salary of more than £35,000 from you and me. On the masthead of its website the committee claims to give “a balanced response to the risks of climate change” and “independent, evidence-based advice to the UK government and Parliament”.

Yet the committee consists entirely of people who think climate change will be dangerous; no sceptics or lukewarmers are on it, even though most hold views that are well within the “consensus” of climate science. Under Deben’s chairmanship since 2012 its pronouncements have become increasingly one-sided. Deben himself is frequently highly critical of any sceptics, often mischaracterizing them as “deniers” or “dismissers”, but has never to my knowledge been heard to criticize anybody for exaggerating climate alarm and the harm it can do to disadvantaged people. These are not the actions of an impartial chairman.

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Walport and his evidence

Updated on Mar 12, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Another entertaining episode in the hearings this morning was where Mark Walport was asked about Matt Ridley's suggestion that global warming would bring net benefits over 40-50 years. This conclusion is based on Richard Tol's metaanalysis of mainstream economic studies into such questions (see key figure below).

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