Is this what you want, Matt Ridley?

It's not just deniers who have sunk to a new low. Scientific American has too. The magazine made something of a mockery of a collection of in-depth articles about climate change by including an article from science disinformer Matt Ridley. I'm told Matt's article is only in the online edition, not the print edition, but it shouldn't have been in either. Matt claimed (despite all evidence that already we are seeing extreme weather disasters from global warming) that "Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time".

The misleading headline is really bad and something I'd never expected to see at the once admired magazine. Matt Ridley's article is full of the sort of nonsense you'd expect to read on climate conspiracy blogs. It starts with:

The climate change debate has been polarized into a simple dichotomy. Either global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous,” as Pres. Barack Obama thinks, or it’s a “hoax,” as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe thinks. But there is a third possibility: that it is real, man-made and not dangerous, at least not for a long time.

Matt Ridley spins Lysenko conspiracy theories and more in a classic denial of science

Was it Pope Francis who pushed deniers over the edge? Is it the climate negotiations taking place this year? Matt Ridley, a science denier from the UK who claims to be a "lukewarmer", has written a Gish gallop worthy of Tim Ball. It's as if he collected up all the worst WUWT conspiracy theories and rolled them into Quadrant.

Quadrant is a right wing outlet for the extremists. It publishes dumb articles from deniers fairly often. Today Matt Ridley, a denier turned defamer has written an article (archived here). Anthony Watts has published bits of it on his blog, too (archived here).

Matt Ridley's Lysenkoism conspiracy theory

Matt lurched from one conspiracy theory to another. To illustrate how far he's gone he starts out with the Lysenko conspiracy theory that deniers call upon when they run out of ideas. The conspiracy goes something like this. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was an agricultural official who rose to prominence under Joseph Stalin. He denied genetic inheritance in plants (as described by Gregor Mendel in his famous experiments with peas in the 1800s). He even managed to outlaw research in genetics. It set plant breeding back a lot in the Soviet Union. Well, the climate conspiracy theorists claim that Lysenkoism is alive and well throughout the entire world, and has been for the past couple of hundred years. I've never seen anyone name a person who is supposedly filling the role of Lysenko and banning climate science research of any kind. Nor have I ever seen anyone say just what aspect of climate science is forbidden.

I wonder if Matt will be calling upon Hitler and Osama bin Laden next (like Tim Ball has done)?

Matt Ridley can't make up his mind about the future he wants

Anthony Watts has posted part of another article by Matt Ridley (archived here). This time he's dug out an OECD report, which was prepared as an input to the IPCC AR5 report.

Long term projections based on key drivers

The report is a description of economic projections for different scenarios of economic development. It is based on long-term projections of five key drivers of economic growth:

1. physical capital; 
2. employment as driven by demographic trends, labour participation rates and unemployment scenarios; 
3. human capital, as driven by education; 
4. energy demand, as driven by energy efficiency; 
5. the patterns of extraction and processing of natural resources (oil and gas); and 
6. total factor productivity (TFP) as an indicator of exogenous technical progress.

The models don't allow for climate change shocks or environmental feedbacks

The report states that the projections ignore a number of important factors (as far as climate change goes). In particular, they don't allow for "major external shocks, for instance in the form of natural disasters or military conflict [which] can occur abruptly and affect projections severely for prolonged periods of time, and in some cases even affect economic growth trends permanently. 

More particularly, the projections ignore terms of trade effects, changes in PPPs and feedbacks from environment to the economy. 

The scenarios

There are five scenarios, which are represented in Figure 1 in the paper:

The worst we could choose would be SSP3, which presents the greatest challenges for both mitigation and adaptation. The best we could choose would be SSP1, which poses the least challenges for mitigation and  adaptation.

The Matt Ridley Con

What Matt Ridley was trying to argue was that:

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. 

He's wrong. We can ruin the climate with carbon dioxide without getting a lot more numerous and richer. All we have to do is keep going the way we are going.

In regard to his Pollyanna optimism, it's not rational or consistent with his previous messages.  Matt is on record arguing that governments don't take any action to mitigate and that we should simply adapt to global warming.  Remember, the OECD report doesn't allow for any "feedbacks from the environment to the economy", nor does it provide for "major shocks".

Magical thinking

Once again Matt is wanting to have his cake and eat it too.  He doesn't want to take action to reduce CO2, but this time he has shifted his position slightly to magical thinking:- "the future will take care of itself".  We'll get richer so that:

More trade, more innovation and more wealth make possible greater investment in low-carbon energy and smarter adaptation to climate change. 

Note his "smarter adaptation" is still stuck in there. While what he writes may be true, it still relies upon a deliberate effort to shift and that action is taken quickly enough.  Electricity production isn't a short term thing, it takes time to plan and replace ageing, dirty technology with new clean technology. It takes time, money (and almost certainly) government intervention to develop an infrastructure that supports electric transportation. And we're running out of time.

What happens when we get to 2030 if Matt's "do nothing but adapt" policy were adopted?  Well, the earth will no doubt be in a different climate regime to now.  That could well mean civil unrest and a shift to one of the other scenarios.

One big problem with Matt Ridley's approach to "adapt" and let the market take its own sweet time in shifting to clean energy is - what happens if the market doesn't shift quickly enough?  Another big problem is his contradictory argument. He says that all past dire warnings (eg about acid rain, smog, the ozone hole etc) didn't eventuate. What he doesn't say is that they did eventuate but governments stepped in and took action to limit the damage.

So if we correctly apply Matt's analogies with past environmental problems then we'd be pushing harder for governments to step in and put in place measures to mitigate global warming.  Especially since climate change is a much bigger problem than, say, acid rain and smog.

By the way, if you look at the OECD scenarios, by 2100 the average Chinese citizen will be wealthier than the average US citizen under the highest growth scenario (SSP5) and almost on par with the most sustainable scenario (SSP1).  That in itself could raise international tensions or it could lower them.  Who's to say.

From the WUWT comments

A lot of comments are making the false assumption that past problems identified didn't eventuate. Moreover most people commenting refuse to acknowledge that it was only because of the early warnings that we addressed and alleviated some of these problems.

Gene Schmick ignores the huge investment in government-funded research and foreign aid that allowed for continued improvements in agricultural productivity, in education and in family planning and says:

April 21, 2014 at 10:38 am
According to the “consensus” (in the 60′s) we are currently starving because the World’s population has exceeded both the food and water supply. Of course we’re doing it in the dark because we ran out of oil 30 years ago.

Our old friend who I haven't seen for a while, pops in to state the obvious.  ferdberple says, without acknowledging the importance of government regulation in this regard (excerpt):

April 21, 2014 at 11:06 am
travel the globe. third world countries have rubbish lying everywhere because there is no money to clean it up. rats and flies are the norm. It is only as countries become richer, that surplus funds become available to clean up the environment. 

If phlogiston seriously thinks that Matt, Richard, Roy and John are their "most important" assets, the fake sceptics are in a sorry old state.  And Matt isn't a climate scientist:

April 21, 2014 at 9:31 am
Mat Ridley is always worth reading, he is one of the most important skeptical scientists up there with Lindzen, Spencer, Christy etc. Solidly argued common sense and sound science.

Who to believe - wattsupwiththat or WUWT?

It was only yesterday that Anthony Watts commented about the IPCC WGII report that it signalled:

Ouch. Game over for climate alarm.

That comment from Anthony was based on an article by Matt Ridley, which Anthony liked so much he made it a "top sticky post".  Matt Ridley wrote about the WGII report (that should be out tomorrow) that "Even while it exaggerates the amount of warming, the IPCC is becoming more cautious about its effects."

How opinions can turn in an instant.  Today Anthony is urging his readers (archived here):

The Working Group II IPCC report from the big shindig in Japan this week will be making headlines shortly, but take those headlines with a grain of salt.

Anthony copied the article in which Richard Tol said: "The drafts became too alarmist,".  Richard has a different reaction to Matt Ridley when faced with reality. Matt denies, Richard hides.

The dumbo's at WUWT will be more confused than ever.  Which is it? "Too alarmist" or "game over for climate alarm"? The GWPF will be in a tizz, too.  Both Richard Tol and Matt Ridley are "academically advising" them!

If you want to read more about these contrarian contradictions, I wrote about them yesterday.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't many comments yet.  I'll post one which probably referred to this excerpt from the WUWT copy and paste:

He [Richard Tol] said, for instance, farmers could grow new and different crops to offset any negative impacts from climate change that impacted food supplies.

“They will adapt,” Mr. Tol said, Reuters reported. “Farmers are not stupid.”

bushbunny, who is probably from Australia, says:

March 29, 2014 at 10:59 pm
Oh, yes, like the suggestion Australians should dump sheep and cattle, and farm kangaroos.

On contrarian contradictions and the newest IPCC report, featuring Matt Ridley and Richard Tol

Anthony Watts on Nicholas Stern

On WUWT today, Anthony Watts reported a segment of the ABC Lateline interview of Nicholas Stern by Tony Jones.  I've already mentioned it a couple of times briefly. Anthony seems stuck for words.  All he said about the interview was a leading headline and a rhetorical statement (archived here):

Now even Australia’s ABC is asking questions about the new IPCC report and why Dr. Richard Tol asked his name to be removed from it

h/t to WUWT reader Pat. We are witnessing the crumbling of the consensus mindset. Stern looked like a deer in headlights.

Nicholas Stern is challenged by ABC’s Tony Jones on China/coal/renewables propaganda, and comes out looking very foolish indeed. The Richard Tol stuff is predictable:

Richard Tol spat the dummy - last September

While to Anthony Watts Australia might seem like a backwater, our current affairs programs rival most of what I've seen in the USA.  Richard Tol's dummy spit was mentioned by Peter Hannam of the Sydney Morning Herald and Matt McGrath at the BBC and a few other places.  There was no big fuss made about this in the US media. Even Fox News just reprinted the Reuters blurb, which makes him out to be a lone voice of muted dissent rather than a whistleblower.

Eli Rabett has more on the subject. Apparently Richard pulled out of the SPM core writing team last September, according to this press release and confirmed by Richard himself on Twitter.  He was still invited to the current Yokohama meeting.  I don't know if he went. His name will remain as one of the two coordinating lead authors for Chapter 10.

The second thing is that Anthony doesn't explain what he means by "the crumbling of the consensus mindset". As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a major shift in thinking of anyone.  Richard Tol sometimes tries to argue "it won't be bad". His association with the GWPF says it all.  But that's nothing different.

Other people mentioned in the media lately have been Bob Ward and, now, Nicholas Stern. Both of them are with the The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and both are firmly in the camp with mainstream climate scientists that continued CO2 emissions is high risk.  "Business as usual" is extremely dangerous.

So whose mindset is "crumbling"?  Anthony didn't explain what he meant by that and there's absolutely nothing in the Lateline segment he provided that would suggest a crumble.

Nicholas Stern on coal and China

As for Nicholas Stern looking "very foolish" in regard to China, that wasn't how it would have appeared to the average viewer.  He was more knowledgeable about what's happening in China than was Tony Jones, since as he said, he'd just returned from a visit to China.  He'd had discussions with people in the know over there.  He didn't try to present anything other than his take on the situation - that China is rapidly adding energy generation.  That this means that a lot more coal will be burnt.  The use of coal is not growing as quickly as the growth in electricity generation.  In other words, coal is declining as a proportion of the mix of energy sources but is still increasing in absolute terms.  The powers that be in China are very concerned about a number of related matters including climate change and pollution.  Both of these are driving the push towards nuclear power and hydro-electricity.

Nicholas Stern didn't have the numbers at his fingertips. He spoke in generalities. What he said was not inconsistent with what you can find on the internet.

Fake sceptics up to their usual tricks...

The WUWT article followed on from a copy and paste (archived here) of part of an article by Matt Ridley from the Wall St Journal (archived here).

Matt announced that the impending IPCC AR5 WGII report would state that global warming will "overall cost at less than 2% of GDP for a 2.5 degrees Centigrade (or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature increase during this century".

I don't know if that's a fact or not.  The report has yet to be released.  I will say that this breathless announcement by Matt Ridley is similar to what happened just before the WGI report was released.  The deniers try to get in early to control the message.

It didn't work then and it won't work now.  The main difference this time is that the earlier attempts to control the WGII message haven't got any traction.  And Matt Ridley has left his run a bit late.  The actual report will be released in a couple of days, so there's little time for him to make his disinformation stick.

Matt Ridley leaves out half of the equation

In Matt's article he makes the same mistakes he's made before.  I guess he's preaching to people who aren't too hot on critical thinking.  For example, Matt once again goes through some of the warnings of the past and claimed they were alarmist.  What he doesn't say is that because of the warnings, the world acted and changed direction.  He leaves out half the equation.  Matt lists a ragtag bag of issues:

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.

The population explosion - it's real.  I can't believe that Matt Ridley doesn't know that the world population has increased rather a lot in the past few decades. It's been tempered to a great extent by education, family planning, emancipation of women and modern contraception.  There have been vast sums spent on family planning education and support throughout the world.  China took the drastic step of imposing a "one child" policy.  Without all these measures, the world population would have risen a lot more quickly than it has.  If no-one had sounded the alarm and there'd been no resulting action, we'd be in a fine mess struggling to feed, clothe and house many more people.

Pesticides - is Matt Ridley really ignorant about the harm caused by some agricultural chemicals that have since been banned or had their use strictly controlled? That's hard to credit. Just one example - the risks from and results of exposure to organophosphates has been well documented.

Acid rain - again, the warnings resulted in action.  One of the actions was to filter out SO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants.  According to the US EPA:

Since its inception in 1990, the cap and trade component of the Acid Rain Program (ARP) has reduced SO2 emissions from power plants by 10 million tons (more than 60 percent). The program is currently at full implementation, with a permanent cap on SO2 emissions at 8.95 million tons, or about a 50 percent reduction from 1980 levels.

Ozone hole - Again, I don't believe that Matt Ridley really believes that the ozone hole was not a clear and present danger. If not for the Montreal Protocol it would be growing with potentially disastrous consequences.

Falling sperm counts - that might be a problem particular to Matt Ridley.  I don't know much about it. Seems to me it would have helped counteract the population explosion.  If you're interested, here's an article on the subject.

Genetically engineered crops - I think Matt just threw that one in there for the heck of it. Genetic modification is still a fairly new field.  In many parts of the world genetically engineered plants are subject to regulation.  I don't share the concern that some people have but agree that genetic engineering does need to be monitored and in some cases regulated.

Killer bees - sounds like something from Hollywood.  However I think Matt is probably referring to Africanized honey bees, which are a hybrid of various Western honey bee species with African honey bees.  Apparently the hybrid bee is very defensive and can invade and take over hives of European honey bees. Matt probably doesn't take honey on his morning toast and isn't concerned about any ramifications for pollination.

I'm surprised that Matt didn't list the famed London smogs as something that didn't last (because of clean air regulations). He could have listed over-crowding of English prisons (solved by shipping prisoners off to the colonies and, ultimately, amending the law).  He might also have listed the spread of TB, smallpox, measles, whooping cough and other diseases (addressed by massive investment in medical research and development of immunisation programs). Or perhaps the threat of flooding in low lying areas (temporarily addressed in some regions by massive engineering works and relocating people).

In short, humans have so far responded to threats and acted.  In the case of global warming, Matt doesn't want people to respond. He doesn't want us to act to avert the climate change crises.

I'm reminded of moondoong at HotCopper.  When it comes to their ability to assess risk, there's not much difference between the ignorant mining employee in the Pilbarra (who thinks that getting AIDS from HIV is as likely as an invasion by aliens from outer space) and the financier from the UK whose bank collapsed.

Matt continues to push the CO2 is plant food line, too.  What a nutter!

Contrarian contradictions

In pulling together the bits and pieces it strikes me that there are some inconsistencies.

Matt Ridley: "...the actual report, known as AR5-WGII, is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago." (Wall St Journal)

Richard Tol: One of the 70 authors of a draft U.N. report on climate change said he had pulled out of the writing team because it was "alarmist" about the threat...."The drafts became too alarmist," (Reuters)

Anthony Watts: "We are witnessing the crumbling of the consensus mindset. " (WUWT)

Did Anthony mean "we are witnessing the crumbling of the contrarian mindset", perhaps?  After all, both Richard Tol and Matt Ridley are associated with the denier lobby group the GWPF!

Luverly! Judith Curry supports "the GWPF objectives"

Oh, this is just luverly!  Judith Curry today:

In the midst of all this noise I wasn’t sure what GWPF was all about.  Now I have a better idea, and I certainly support their objectives.

Weirdly, Judith implies that she did no investigation before effectively endorsing the GWPF by writing a foreword to a report of theirs.

Nigel Lawson offers a sample of "what the GWPF" is all about, which I expect would delight Judith Curry, knowing her views on the IPCC.  And I wonder would Judith agree with GWPF Director Benny Peiser who seemed to be suggesting that we might be heading for an ice age?

Do you reckon she's angling for a job on the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council with science deniers: Bob Carter and William Happer and Richard Lindzen and Ross McKitrick and Ian Plimer and Matt Ridley and Nir Shaviv and Henrik Svensmark and David Whitehouse and others?

What's next? An endorsement of James Delingpole, interpreter of interpretations?

(It's more likely she's angling for a job with the GWPF's US cousin, the Heartland Institute.)

Matt Ridley goes to Serengeti and tells big fat lies about the work of Michael Mann and Keith Briffa

Update - see below for link to relevant article on RealClimate and more.


WUWT had an article by Brandon Schollenberger in which, by a string of seriously flawed logic, he accused Dr James Hansen of being a climate science denier.

Of course, this champion of climate science is anything but.

However the same day, Anthony Watts posted a display of absolute science denial by one Matt Ridley (archived here).  I've written about Matt Ridley before a few times, such as here. Matt Ridley pretends that paleoclimate records are all wrong, writing utter junk:

Given that these were the most prominent and recognisable graphs used to show evidence of unprecedented climate change in recent decades, and to justify unusual energy policies that hit poor people especially hard, this case of cherry-picked publication was just as potentially shocking and costly as Tamiflugate. Omission of inconvenient data is a sin in government science as well as in the private sector.

Matt Ridley tried to resurrect an old, tired and failed disinformation tactic.  He claimed that an obsessive by the name of Stephen McIntyre "unearthed problems" in paleo temperature reconstructions and Matt is implying that earth hasn't warmed compared to the past.  Matt is intent on doing his utmost to burn up the world to a cinder.  How's that for exaggeration!  But it is probably a truer statement than any in Matt Ridley's despicable article.

Matt Ridley has opted for the Serengeti Strategy.  He's singled out Michael Mann and Keith Briffa and is lying about their research.  Yes, there were some statistical errors in the first Mann reconstruction but they made no intrinsic difference to the result.  As for Keith Briffa - I know of no-one who has questioned his meticulous research and found it wanting.  Except for failed banker Matt Ridley - but Matt couldn't tell a bristlecone from a bar of soap let alone understand the ins and outs of dendrochronology.

In any case, Michael Mann's initial results have been confirmed by multiple subsequent reconstructions using many different types of proxies from many different sources, carried out by many different independent teams of researchers.

Matt Ridley is telling big fat lies.

There are numerous temperature reconstructions of the past using a variety of proxies, many more than the "handful of ...trees" that Matt Ridley wants to have you believe.  They are described in Chapter 5 of the IPCC's latest WG1 report.  For example, below is Figure 5.7 - click to enlarge it.

Figure 5.7 IPCC AR5 WG1 Reconstructed (a) Northern Hemisphere and (b) Southern Hemisphere, and (c) global annual temperatures during the last 2000 years. Individual reconstructions (see Appendix 5.A.1 for further information about each one) are shown as indicated in the legends, grouped by colour according to their spatial representation (red: land-only all latitudes; orange: land-only extra-tropical latitudes; light blue: land and sea extra-tropical latitudes; dark blue: land and sea all latitudes) and instrumental temperatures shown in black (HadCRUT4 land and sea, and CRUTEM4 land-only; Morice et al., 2012). All series represent anomalies (°C) from the 1881–1980 mean (horizontal dashed line) and have been smoothed with a filter that reduces variations on timescales less than ~50 years.

I don't have time to research or go into all the ins and outs of Matt Ridley's wrongs. I do notice that he is swinging further into denial and disinformation as time goes by.  I think that for a man of his stature (he managed to get into the British House of Lords) - shrunken though it is by his spectacular failure in his own field of endeavour - to go to such lengths to disinform the public is utterly disgusting.  And all the people who promote his disinformation, like Anthony Watts and Lord Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation - are equally despicable characters.

What do you think?

I don't have time to look at the WUWT comments, either.  You can see them for yourself in the archive here. They will doubtless enlighten readers about the madness of denial much more than science.

Update

Tim Osborne reminded me about the RealClimate article on his and Keith Briffa and co's recent work.  While Matt Ridley is tweeting the Auditor as his "authority" once again.  Perhaps he really is so scientifically illiterate he can't tell the difference between a wannabe denier like McIntyre and real science from the experts.  It's more likely that Matt can tell the difference.  After all, he's on the GWPF bandwagon.  The GWPF expects him to misinform the public.  That's what it does and it's presumably why they exist and why they back him - and vice versa.

Matt Ridley in Australia tells more of his fibs, but gives Andrew Bolt little joy...

UPDATE: Anthony Watts has just posted the transcript at WUWT. Only three comments so far - see below.  I'll update if I see any more choice comments in the denier playground. (Archive here, updated here.)
(Sou: 10:45 am Tues 19 Nov 13)

---

As I said in my last article, UK failed banker, politician and GWPF adviser, Matt Ridley is in Australia.  Seems he was bought by the IPA to quell the fears of fake skeptics.  He did alright with his IPA meeting reported yesterday by keeping all the bad news from them.  He didn't do quite as well today.

This morning he appeared on Andrew Bolt's little Sunday television program.  Andrew Bolt is an Australian right wing blogger with the Herald-Sun, a widely circulated Melbourne daily newspaper which is a subsidiary of News Corp Australia (Murdoch).  A while ago Andrew also managed to snag his own half hour show on Sunday Television - Channel 10. It's not much of a program.  I don't know who wastes their time watching it except for a few right wingers keen to have their ideas reflected by him.   (It was rated way, way down at number 320 here in May this year.) I think I've only watched one other episode.

Andrew Bolt prides himself on his ignorance, claiming that it makes him "objective".  In reality it only makes him look pretty darned stupid most of the time.

I transcribed the video from this morning and have inserted comments of my own.  (PS I just visited Andrew Bolt's blog about today's television program and was a bit surprised that of 115 comments, I'd say there were only about four or five about climate.  Most were about other segments of the show.)

On typhoons...

Andrew Bolt: Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines last week and killed perhaps 4,000 people. The Greens couldn't wait to exploit it like they exploited last month's fires and even accused Tony Abbott.

Sou: There's a cut to three separate very short snippets of Adam Bandt talking to the press:

Adam Bandt:  He can be expected to be referred to as Typhoon Tony.

...Many people are saying that this is the worst typhoon that they've ever seen. 

...This is what we're in store for unless we get global warming under control.

Sou: Then back to Andrew Bolt introducing Matt Ridley - my hyperlink:

Bolt: Matt Ridley is a member of Britain's House of Lords and a science writer who's latest best seller is "The Rational Optimist". He's here on a speaking tour for the IPA. Matt Ridley, thank you for joining me.

Ridley: Thank you for having me on the show.

Andrew Bolt: The typhoon in the Philippines er er what do you make of the attempts to make that evidence of the great global warming catastrophe awaiting us.

Sou: As you've seen from what Adam Bandt had to say, Andrew Bolt couldn't find anyone saying that Typhoon Haiyan was caused by global warming.  The best he could come up with was Bandt saying that "this is what is in store for us unless we get global warming under control".  Bandt's statement accurately reflects the science.  But Matt Ridley thinks even that is "ridiculous".

Matt Ridley: Well this is ridiculous. I mean storms and weather events happen.  They've always happened. There have been much stronger typhoons in the past. This isn't the strongest one that's ever recorded or anything like that. They're gunna happen whatever and to blame this on climate change is a bit like Shamanism.  It's witchdoctery. It's going back 10,000 years to try and blame every weather event on mankind.

And we don't have to just know this from basic data.  If you look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they say there's been no trend in increasing frequency of typhoons or cyclones or hurricanes. In fact this year's been an unusually quiet one globally and even in that part of the Pacific it's been quiet. So the idea that you can stop typhoons happening by cutting carbon dioxide emissions is just absurd. We've got to tackle typhoons as an issue whatever happens to the climate.

Sou: That's what's called a strawman fallacy.  Reducing emissions won't stop typhoons from happening.  The aim is to reduce emissions so that global warming doesn't cause as much harm as otherwise.  Some of that harm may well be an increase in the ferocity of super storms and an increase in the damage they cause.  For example, even mild storms will be more damaging because of the impact of rising seas on storm surges.

Matt Ridley thinks rising seas are the main worry with global warming

Andrew Bolt: What do we have to worry about if global warming continues. I know there's been a pause in atmospheric temperature rises for fifteen years but should it continue what have we got to fear?

Matt Ridley: I personally think that we are seeing benefits from climate change.  Sorry, that's not my personal view that's what the data says.  [Sou: that's a misrepresentation. There are many more negatives than positives.]  

We're seeing benefits from climate change slightly.  Greener vegetation in the world, slightly fewer winter deaths. [Sou: many more summer deaths, more catastrophic fires, hotter droughts, heavier rains etc etc.] Things like that. Longer growing seasons. [Sou: longer bushfire seasons.] And that's likely to continue for another six or seven decades. After that, if the projections of climate change are right and on the whole they've been too warm for the last 30 years so they may not be right. [Sou: ha ha - Matt's nose grew about four inches right there!] But if they're right we will then start to see net harm.  And the one harm that really would hurt civilisation would be rapidly rising sea levels.

Fortunately the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that sea levels are not rising, are not gonna rise that fast in this century. [Sou: oops, Matt's nose grew another four inches!] Not much faster than they did in the last century.

Greenland's losing ice at the rate of two billion tonnes a year which sounds a lot but it's actually half a per cent per century. So the collapse of ice sheets, that sort of thing has now largely been ruled out by the IPCC as a risk.  [Sou: huh? Collapse of ice sheets is expected in the medium to long term.]

But we are, you know, we do have to get our act together to be ready to deal with some disasters if they happen towards the end of this century or the beginning of the next.

Sou: First up, Matt tells a big fat lie about the IPCC projections for sea level rise this century.  Except for the lowest possible under the virtually impossible to achieve RCP2.6 emissions scenario - every projection is for a substantially higher rate of rise than over the twentieth century.  Here is Figure TS.22 from page TS-122 of AR5 WG1 IPCC report (click to enlarge):

Sou: In my last article I wondered what Matt thought would happen after his 70 years "benefit" runs out.  This time he's given us a clue as to what he thinks, even going so far as to say "we do have to get our act together".  Andrew Bolt picks up on that:

Andrew Bolt: Well, when you say get our act together to be ready.  Um, we're.. obviously the world is spending trillions of dollars on various ways to so-called stop global warming. Does ..is that a sensible use of our resources?

Matt Ridley: No. I think rolling out immature and fourteenth century resources like wind power all around the world which are extremely expensive, don't cut carbon emissions very much and er on the whole keep people unable to afford the measures to adapt to climate by being so expensive ah is not the answer.

 Sou: I wonder has Matt Ridley been ordered by the GWPF (or maybe by the raving ratbag blogger James Delingpole) to run with that particular fib?  In fact the cost of electricity from wind power is very competitive in many parts of the world, as Oklahomans' recently discovered.  Even in Australia, wind power provides a lot more electricity than many people realise.

Matt Ridley thinks Japan will go back to nuclear energy?

Matt Ridley: Um Japan interestingly has just said that it's not gonna try and keep emissions as low as it was hoping by 2020.  Instead it's gonna put a lot of money into research into new energy technologies.  And that's the answer.  If we can get cheap fusion energy or cheap thorium power or even cheap ordinary nuclear power and some of the solar power developed ah by the end of the century we probably won't even need fossil fuels if we can give them up long before they run out um that's a much better approach than trying to roll out immature energy technologies now cos we've tried that and it's just not working.  We're trying it all over the world it's it's disastrously bad for people's living standards.

Sou: Oh boy! Matt Ridley has rocks in his head if he thinks that the Japanese are going to be rolling out more nuclear power plants.  Sheesh.  The aftermath of the Fukishima catastrophe is why it shut down all its nuclear power plants and is switching to gas, and the main reason why it's wanting to change it's emission reduction target.  As for Matt thinking that the Asian smog is preferable to clean energy for "people's living standards"...

No joy for Andrew Bolt's "reason"

Andrew Bolt: So when Tony Abbott gets elected on a platform of scrapping the carbon tax, is that seen as the Green's would suggest as a world-wide embarrassment or is it seen ..er ..as something perhaps ..er ..or the return of reason?

Matt Ridley: Well, I think that until now it's been assumed that you had to pay lip service to dangerous climate change.  I mean, most of us I believe that that human beings do affect the climate and probably have caused some of the warming in the past.  That's not at issue.  What's at issue is a forecast of dangerous warming which is only going to come true if certain positive feedback amplifiers happen. And if that's likely to be the case, it's always been assumed that you had to show real alarm about this in order to get elected in a western democracy.  I think  Tony Abbott has shown that's not the case and a lot of elected politicians around the world will have noticed that and will have noticed that not only was the carbon tax ah something he was ah determined to repeal, but that it was front and centre in the election campaign. So you can't say it was just a peripheral issue. So for example the Canadians have ah commented on that. And I think western European politicians will notice that and will say actually you can take a relatively rational, relatively sober approach to climate change and be elected despite what the extreme greens will throw at you.

Sou: Poor old Andrew Bolt can't win a trick.  Matt Ridley fudges and fumbles a bit, but he doesn't come out and agree with Andrew that scrapping the carbon tax is a "return of reason".  Matt avoids answering that part of Andrew's question altogether.  Instead he grudgingly says that humans do affect the climate.  

Matt doesn't answer the implied question of whether Tony Abbott's policy is the best one or not.  He doesn't come right out and contradict Andrew.  But instead of answering the question he sidesteps like the politician he is - responding in terms of the impact on politics.  

Given Matt Ridley's ideological viewpoint, it's possible that he would favour a carbon price, which is a market-based system and a charge on polluters, over the socialist approach proposed by Tony Abbott - making taxpayers cough up all the money needed to pay for emissions reductions.  And hiding the real cost in consolidated revenue.  (Tony Abbott doesn't favour transparent government).

Andrew Bolt: And er is there any other government then that er will be the next to follow us do you think? 

Matt Ridley: I'm not the one to predict ah political trends. Ah I don't think it's going to happen in a hurry in Europe. Ah um ah sorry in Britain. Um but ah there is huge disquiet in the UK about energy prices. And they're about to go up even more because of green levies and that I think is going to make politicians rethink this agenda.

Carbon is being priced around the world

Andrew Bolt asks longingly if other government's will "follow" Australia.  Follow them in what?  Getting rid of a carbon pricing scheme?  Not very likely.  What places have one and what places are planning one?  Below is a list compiled by SBS (Australia) a couple of weeks ago:

CARBON TAXES AROUND THE WORLD

CHINA (state-based action)

The Chinese Government plans to develop emissions trading schemes in seven key cities and provinces from 2013. These schemes will cover around 250 million people. The Chinese Government aims to work towards a nation-wide approach after 2015.

UNITED STATES (state-based action)

There is no nationwide carbon tax levelled in the USA, although a few states have introduced the tax. The United States Administration has not been able to secure support for legislation to set either a price or a limit on greenhouse gas emissions. However, emissions trading has operated in the power sector in nine states since 2009. California's emissions trading scheme will start in January 2013.

CANADA (province-based action)

Canada does not have a federal carbon tax, but two Canadian provinces have existing carbon taxes (Quebec and British Columbia). Alberta implemented emissions trading in 2006 and Quebec's scheme will start in 2013. A further two provinces, British Columbia and Ontario, are considering emissions trading schemes.The Canadian Federal Government has no immediate plans to implement national emissions trading.

INDIA (tax on coal)

In July 2010, India introduced a nationwide carbon tax of 50 rupees per tonne (less than $A1) of coal both produced and imported to India.

NEW ZEALAND

The New Zealand Government set up an emissions trading scheme in 2008. The scheme covered forestry initially, and was then expanded in 2010 to cover stationary energy, transport, liquid fossil fuels and industrial processes.

SOUTH KOREA 

The Republic of Korea passed legislation in May 2012 for an emissions trading scheme to start from 1 January 2015. The emissions trading scheme will cover facilities producing more than 25,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – expected to be around 450 of the country's largest emitters.

JAPAN 

In April 2012, Japan legislated for a carbon tax of approximately ¥289 per tonne ($A3.30) by increasing existing taxes on fossil fuels (coal and LPG/LNG) with effect from 1 October 2012. Half the revenue will
fund low-emissions technologies. Japan has emissions trading schemes operating in the Tokyo and Saitama regions, covering 20 million people.

EUROPE (national-based action)

The European Union emissions trading scheme began in 2005 and now covers the 27 countries of the European Union, and three non-European Union members: Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. Their current target is a 21 per cent cut of 2005 emissions by 2025 (Australia's is a 5% cut of 2000 emissions by 2020).

A carbon tax was proposed by the European Commission in 2010, but a carbon tax has not been agreed upon by the 27 member states. The current proposal by the European Commission would charge firms between 4 and 30 euros per metric tonne of CO2.

Several European countries have enacted a carbon tax. They include: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

FINLAND

Finland introduced the world's first carbon tax in 1990, initially with exemptions for specific sectors. Manly changes were later introduced, such as a border tax on imported electricity. Natural gas has a reduced tax rate, while peat was exempted between 2005 and 2010. In 2010, Finland's price on carbon was €20 per tonne of CO2.

THE NETHERLANDS

The Netherlands introduced a carbon tax in 1990, which was then replaced by a tax on fuels. In 2007, it introduced a carbon-based tax on packaging, to encourage recycling.

SWEDEN

In 1991, Sweden enacted a tax on the use of coal, oil, natural gas, petrol and aviation fuel used in domestic travel. The tax was 0.25 SEK/kg ($US100 per tonne of C02) and was later raised to $US150. With Sweden raising prices on fossil fuels since enacting the carbon tax, it cut its carbon pollution by 9 per cent between 1990 and 2006.

NORWAY

In 1991, Norway introduced a tax on carbon. However its carbon emissions increased by 43 per cent per capita between 1991 and 2008.

DENMARK

Since 2002, Denmark has had a carbon tax of 100 DKK per metric ton of CO2, equivalent to approximately 13 Euros or 18 US dollars. Denmark's carbon tax applies to all energy users, but industrial companies are taxed differently depending on the process the energy is used for, and whether or not the company has entered into a voluntary agreement to apply energy efficiency measures.

SWITZERLAND

A carbon incentive tax was introduced in Switzerland in 2008. It includes all fossil fuels, unless they are used for energy. Swiss companies can be exempt from the tax if they participate in the country's emissions trading system. The tax amounts to CHF 36 per metric tonne CO2.

UK

In 1993, the UK government introduced a tax on retail petroleum products, to reduce emissions in the transport sector. The UK's Climate Change Levy was introduced in 2001. The United Kingdom participates in the European Union emissions trading scheme and is covered by European Union policies and measures. The United Kingdom has put in place regulations requiring all new homes to have zero emissions for heating, hot water, cooling and lighting from 2016.

IRELAND

A tax on oil and gas came into effect in 2010. It was estimated to add around €43 to filling a 1000 litre oil tank and €41 to the average annual gas bill.

COSTA RICA

In 1997, Costa Rica enacted a tax on carbon pollution, set at 3.5 per cent of the market value of fossil fuels. The revenue raised from this goes into a national forest fund which pays indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them.

BRAZIL

The state of Rio de Janeiro is exploring options to implement a state-wide cap and trade system.

SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa introduced a carbon tax on new vehicle sales in September 2010. South Africa is planning to introduce a carbon tax from 2013, starting at R120 ($A15) per tonne for emissions above a threshold. Each company will have 60 per cent of its emissions tax exempt, with higher exemption thresholds for cement, iron, steel, aluminium, ceramics and fugitive emissions as well as trade exposed industries. Agriculture, forestry, land use and waste will not be taxed.

From the WUWT comments

Added 10:55 am Tues 19 Nov 13
Anthony Watts was a couple of days late to Andrew Bolt's party.  Here are a couple of WUWT comments on the Matt Ridley monologue (archived here, updated here).


Kev-in-Uk says Matt Ridley caved in too much to the "pig-troughing climate scientists":

November 18, 2013 at 3:42 pm
IMHO, Dr Ridley was a bit too soft and concilliatory – a bit too lukewarm? It’s ok to try and get your point across by appearing calm and reasoned but the fact of the matter is that all the money spent on carbon reductions schemes have been a massive waste of time and effort as well as cash.

I for one do not believe in the ‘AGW is significant’ meme – but the pragmatic view (and incorporating the oft warmist favourite – the Precautionary Principle) the best way to stop carbon emission is to invest in renewables and nuclear ‘properly’. Put it another way, a hundred billion bucks into development of non-carbon energy would have gone an awful long way into helping – instead of producing a sh$tload of useless models, adjusted data and feeding many thousands of pig-troughing ‘climate scientists’……..

Robin says "it's all a communist plot":

November 18, 2013 at 3:43 pm
Those of us who believe based on the evidence that Sustainability is merely an update of the old Marxian need for a crisis to justify the desired structural and institutional changes will keep watching and listening for the next calamity. I spent part of the weekend reading the beginnings of the ecological Marxism theories in the 70s (as its creators called it) and their justifications that more than an economic crisis would be needed.

IPCC is holding true to the social theories regardless of the facts. Matt is a rational optimist because he believes in innovation. We need to get back to societies that foster genuine innovation of the type he describes in his book instead of sociological innovations in how we are to organize ourselves in the future. Most of us can organize ourselves far better than any bureaucrat or theorist or politician

Is Matt Ridley a Crackpot?

I have just watched a YouTube video of a lecture by Matt Ridley, who I've written about before - here and here and here.  He's in Australia and spoke to the IPA (the Institute of Public Affairs is a right wing lobby group posing as a "think tank").

The crackpot comment

In the video Matt Ridley complained that some people call him a crackpot.  I don't think he's a crackpot. He's a climate science disinformer who knows exactly what he's doing and what he wants.

He's not a crackpot but he was wrong when he claimed (citing his GWPF mate, Richard Tol) that earth will benefit from global warming for the next 70 years.  That is, until 2083.  And I expect he knows he's wrong. If he doesn't he should. He's clever enough to figure it out. (Matt didn't say what he thinks will happen after that or whether, just maybe, we should start acting now to reduce the harm after his 70 years are up.)

I'm not familiar enough with Richard Tol's work to know if he's ever found that the world will be better off with global warming for the next seventy years.  Or whether Matt or Richard have more prescience than climate scientists and know exactly how much CO2 we will emit over the coming seventy years.

Who made the world a better place - the pessimists or the optimists or both?

In the first five minutes of the video, Matt Ridley complained about what he regards as left wing pessimists who warned the world about overpopulation, famine, the hole in the ozone layer, unbreathable air, acid rain and other problems the world faced.

He spent the next ten minutes gloating that we shouldn't have been concerned about any of those things because none of them caused major problems.

He argued against government intervention.  He is very much against government intervention.

Why is the world as clean as it is today?  Why isn't the world population even greater? 

What Matt didn't admit to (does he even recognise it?) was that the reason that these are no longer the big problems that they might have been is because of people power.  Because of environmentalists and scientists and particularly because of people like Paul Erlich, who Matt seemed to think was an irrational pessimist:

• Ozone hole - addressed by the intergovernmental agreement, the Montreal Protocol
• Over-population - being addressed by international aid programs and particularly by family planning education and subsidised access to birth control - in the developed world and the less developed world
• Acid rain - being addressed by clean air regulation and pollution controls
• Smog - being addressed by clean air regulations and pollution controls

So why is Matt Ridley arguing against controls to limit the harm we are doing to the earth by polluting the air with CO2?

It was controls and government intervention that addressed all the problems he cited as not being as bad as the pessimists said they would be.  Matt must realise that but decided not to admit it.

A bit boring...

Incidentally, Matt Ridley is not a very good speaker.  His speaking voice is okay with sufficient intonation but his speech was overpopulated with quotes, rambled from one topic to another and came across as nothing but a sop to the audience.  I guess the audience liked it enough.  At least some of them stayed awake and laughed when they were supposed to.  However his talk had no coherent message that I could fathom.  He shifted from climate change and environmental issues to free trade.  I'm in favour of free trade (ie I don't favour tariffs and quotas as a rule) but I also think that societal controls are very important.  We can have both.

Rich capitalists are kind people  

Matt spent much of the latter part of his speech rationalising his approach to the world, extolling the virtues of capitalism and saying how kind all the rich people are because they are giving work to people in sweatshops. Is that what he means by "a rational(ising) optimist"?

CO2 is plant food!

Oh, and he finished up with "CO2 is plant food"!

Matt Ridley couldn't support his ridiculous claims

Update - see below

---

Matt Ridley, unsurprisingly, can't get a word in at Slate.  So he's had to lower his sights (again) and turn to a fake sceptic, Anthony Watts and his science-denying blog, wattsupwiththat (archived here). WUWT is much less discriminating about what it publishes :(

Here is what Matt claims:

The argument I made was that climate change has benefits as well as costs and that the benefits are likely to be greater than the costs until almost the end of the current century.

Matt's persisting in his false claim that global warming will have net benefits until 'almost' 2100, by which time he'll be long gone so I guess he doesn't care what happens to the world after that.  His main argument seems to be that "CO2 is plant food".  It's clear he's not a very good farmer.  As CO2 increases and the world heats up, it will increasingly be extreme heat, flash floods, lack of water and greater spread of plant pests and diseases that limit plant growth and agricultural productivity.  These are the result of global warming brought on by our CO2 emissions.

Matt says: Stop the World at 2 Degrees?

Logic shows that Matt's argument assumes once global temperatures rise two degrees the world will be able to stop it rising any higher.  But he also argues against any action to limit the rise.  He doesn't say whether he's arguing that the world keep burning fossil fuels till temperatures hit two degrees above pre-industrial temperatures and then all human activity needs to be stopped.  But that's where his argument leads us. The world would have to come to a standstill.

His own articles don't support Matt Ridley's claim

Matt says that he's managed to dig up two articles that support his claim. He hasn't.  He stretched way back to 2004 for one of them.  Way back before the Stern review, way back before the 2008 WGII report.

Matt's first 2004 article doesn't support his claim of net benefits.  It found that the net costs of a higher temperature increase (above 3-4 degrees) were definitely higher than any benefits.  It also found that the overall net cost/benefits up to 3 degrees wasn't clear and that more work was needed.  The paper does not claim that global warming is a net benefit.  More work was indeed done and it shows that the cost is of global warming is high and increasing.

Matt also cited a recent paper by Richard Tol.  I don't know what Richard Tol's work showed in regard to Matt's supposed "net benefits".  It is paywalled.  In the abstract Richard does say that carbon dioxide emissions are a negative externality (which even Matt Ridley shouldn't dispute). However I don't see any sign that Richard's paper says what Matt claims - that global warming is a net benefit.  Nor would I expect to. Richard has written many papers on related topics and I'm not aware of him ever coming up with the finding that rising atmospheric CO2 will do more good than harm - at any level of global warming.

---

Update

In the comments, Richard Tol states that Matt Ridley "correctly cites my work".  Matt Ridley wrote:

I’d like to direct him to this 2004 survey of many studies, and this 2013 study, which confirm that climate change of 1 or 2 degrees Celsius will probably, in aggregate, do net economic and humanitarian good to mankind. It will do so by lengthening northern growing seasons, reducing winter deaths (which greatly exceed summer deaths even in countries with hot summers) and increasing precipitation, but without raising sea levels sufficiently to do serious harm.

In Richard Tol's 2013 paper, there is no mention of any of the words "humanitarian", "growing season", "rain" or "precipitation" or "summer" or "sea level".  The only mention of death was this:

Arbitrarily stringent climate policy would be a disaster: Billions of people would starve to death.

Unlike Matt Ridley's article, the Tol paper does mention the unequal impact of global warming but from an economic perspective, stating for example:

Fourth, not shown in Figure 1, poorer countries tend to be more vulnerable to climate change. Poorer countries have a large share of their economic activity in sectors, such as agriculture, that are directly exposed to the weather. Poorer countries tend to be in hotter places, and thus closer to their biophysical limits and with fewer technical and behavioral analogues. Poorer countries also tend to be worse at adaptation, lacking resources and capacity (Yohe and Tol 2002). 

The only aspect in which Matt Ridley is correct as far as I can see, is where he writes that the Tol paper indicates that  "climate change of 1 or 2 degrees Celsius will probably, in aggregate, do net economic and humanitarian good to mankind".  That's if I take Richard Tol's Figure 1 as indicative.

And that finding of Tol's I would dispute on the grounds that it must not take sufficient account of the short, and particularly not the medium and long term changes caused by global warming.  Not specific enough?  Maybe.  But I'm not the only one to dispute his findings.  Bob Ward does as well, in this article.

In fairness to Richard Tol, his Figure 1 has huge error margins and his lower bound crosses over to the negative at 0.5 degrees warming.  

It will be interesting to read what WG2 of the IPCC report comes up with when it comes out next year.

Added by Sou 8:47 pm AEDST Sat 2 November 2013.

Maybe my last sentence suggested prophecy - or just some knowledge of agriculture (see here). (Added 3 Nov 2013)

---

While Matt Ridley is trying to convince everyone that lurching into a hot world will be "good" for them, the rest of the world is looking for a better handle on just how big a price we are going to pay for global warming.

The cost of doing nothing is much higher

Business and political leaders around the world don't agree with Matt's contrarian nonsense.  For example, from Bloomberg this week (my bold italics):

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon is spearheading a study sponsored by seven countries into the economics of climate change, seeking to elucidate the financial benefits of reducing carbon emissions.

Calderon’s panel will draw from the experiences of companies and governments around the world in fighting off the ravages of storms and droughts, and in cutting greenhouse gases. It also will use academic research to show the costs and risks associated with climate change and efforts to stem it, publishing a report next September to guide policy makers.

“We’ve talked about emissions -- this time, we will try to talk about profits, and that will change the equation,” Calderon said today at an event announcing the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate in New York. “The idea is that we can present an economic case. What we’re expecting is that our report cannot be ignored in 2014.”

The effort by a group that includes Unilever NV Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman and the former leaders of Chile, New Zealand and Mozambique is designed to guide global envoys as they devise a new treaty to fight climate change in 2015. Britain, Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, South Korea, Norway and Sweden are sponsoring the panel.

“The alternative of not doing anything is not actually an alternative,” Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the event. “The costs of not doing anything are much higher.”

The panel also includes business leaders such as Vattenfall AB Chief Financial Officer Ingrid Bonde, China International Capital Corp. CEO Zhu Levin and officials from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Most of the above nations can't be described as aggressive when it comes to mitigation.  If they are worried then everyone else should be very worried.

And in the same week, from the UK Guardian:

It would be "absurd" to claim the risks of climate change are small, economic expert Lord Stern said before the publication of a key scientific report on global warming.

The latest international assessment of climate science makes it crystal clear the risks are "immense", and it would be extraordinary and unscientific to ignore the evidence and argue for a delay in addressing the problem, he said.

The former World Bank chief economist and author of the key 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change also warned that scientific projections and economic predictions were underestimating the risks of global warming.

Here is a link to the 2008 WGII IPCC section discussing cost implications of global warming.  The next report is due in March/April next year.


It's no wonder that Matt Ridley has to turn to an anti-science blogger to get his silly article published.  His "arguments" are baseless.  He didn't cite a single article supporting his ridiculous claim of "net benefits".  The closest he got was a paper from nine years ago that said costs unequivocally outweigh benefits as warming progresses beyond 3-4 degrees, which is what would be guaranteed if people listened to Matt Ridley, and didn't quantify the net impact below that.

Matt Ridley ignores the range of sensitivity and makes wrong projections

Matt finishes with this, which further undermines his argument:

...if you consult the probability density functions of most recent studies of climate sensitivity, conducted by senior IPCC-affiliated scientists, you will find that there is a significantly higher than 50-50 probability of warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius during the next 70 years.

He fails to cite any "recent studies of climate sensitivity" or how they relate to how quickly the world will heat up.  There are a number of studies that suggest a low climate sensitivity of around 1.9 degrees.  There are as many if not more studies that suggest a higher climate sensitivity.  The current IPCC WG1 report states that it is likely that that the upper bound is 4.5 degrees for a doubling of CO2 - but that "values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded".

So Matt misrepresents the risk of higher climate sensitivity by ignoring it.  Now for his assertion of "70 years".  He doesn't give any indication of how he arrived at that figure. It hinges on how long it will take for CO2 to double.   Even using low estimates of climate sensitivity, a doubling of CO2 would raise surface temperatures by about two degrees.

Because Matt urges no action to limit carbon emissions the "business as usual" scenario is likely to be conservative.  Atmospheric CO2 might not just double (to 560 ppm), it could be triple or go even higher before the end of this century.  At that point global warming will not suddenly stop unless the world comes to a complete standstill.

From the WUWT comments

Dr Burns says Matt Ridley is not a good scientist, but for different reasons!

September 24, 2013 at 4:56 pm
A good scientist would consider the potential effects of global cooling. A major Ice Age is inevitable in the not too distant future.

Editing the Environment out of Existence: Graham Lloyd and The Australian tell Big Fat Lies

UPDATE 2: Media Watch did pick up on this tonight (23 Sept 13).  Good for them!
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3854782.htm


UPDATE: The Australian has printed this in its weekend edition today (h/t John Quiggin):

It didn't pick up on all the wrongs in the Lloyd article, it didn't fix the original article and it didn't stop The Australian from publishing more wrong claims about the IPCC and climate science in the same edition today (Saturday 21 September 2013).

---

Graham Lloyd is a science denier.  Graham Lloyd is "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper and a science denier.  Graham Lloyd peddles disinformation, is "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper and is a science denier.


Australian climate hawks knew that already.  Here is the latest evidence for this - archived here.

Editing the Environment out of Existence

My thinking is that Graham takes his job title the wrong way.  In most newspapers the title of "Environment Editor" signifies someone who reports to the public on newsworthy matters relating to the environment.

In Graham Lloyd's case he and his paymasters are trying to edit the environment out of existence.

Tim Lambert of Deltoid for many years chronicled the Australian's War on Science.  Now the Australian is waging a War on our Future.  By editing out the environment they are also editing out the future for humanity.  But they know that already.  The question is - do all their readers know that?

Today's Battle - Big Fat Lies

In today's effort to hasten the sixth major extinction, Graham Lloyd starts off with a big fat lie (archived here):

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment reportedly admits its computer drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007.

I've dealt with that wrong statement already - more than once.  It's not merely disinformation it's a lie.  It's been all over the internet that it's a lie.  If Graham Lloyd wasn't aware of the fact when he lazily and willing repeated the lie that David Rose told, then he is a very poor journalist (well, he is that anyway).

The previous IPCC report stated that between 1956 and 2005 the world had warmed by 0.13 degrees:

The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005. {WGI 3.2, SPM} 

Graham Lloyd writes (see below) that since 1951 the world has warmed by 0.12 degrees.

Compare 0.13 degrees for one period and 0.12 degrees for a slightly longer period.  Where is the fifty per cent?  Not there. I did my own calculations and got similar results.  Both numbers are accurately reported by the IPCC!  Graham Lloyd is telling a Big Fat Lie.

(Did anyone else notice the reference to the IPCC "computer"?  Oh my!  Does Graham really think the highly complex and sophisticated earth system models are run on a little laptop operated by one of the 12 employees of the IPCC?)

Graham Lloyd Tries to Shift the Blame for his Big Fat Lie

Graham continues:

More importantly, according to reports in British and US media, the draft report appears to suggest global temperatures were less sensitive to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide than was previously thought.

The 2007 assessment report said the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade, but according to Britain's The Daily Mail the draft update report says the true figure since 1951 has been 0.12C.

Here Graham shows what a seedy character he is.  He uses a slimy gossippers 'trick' of spreading lies while blame-shifting "I'm only telling you what I heard!".  But he refused to tell you that what he read was wrong.  It's a lie.  If he adhered to a code of ethics he'd not have printed the lies.  He's been reporting on climate for years so surely he is familiar with the content of the IPCC reports.  If he didn't know that David Rose has a reputation as a disinformer then as an editor he has a responsibility to take two minutes to check the IPCC report itself.  But Graham does know that David Rose tells lies because he reports as much.  To see how he uses the lies he knows that David Rose told, read on.

How's this for Seedy Spin?

Even knowing something is a lie doesn't stop Graham.  He'll stoop to anything for a chance to destroy the planet.  Denied the opportunity to spread another lie - Rose's ludicrous "crisis talks" lie, Graham uses a gutter press tactic - the "forced to deny" approach.  He writes:

Last week, the IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks as reports intensified that scientists were preparing to revise down the speed at which climate change is happening and its likely impact.

Or "have you stopped beating your wife?"

How can such a person be "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper?  Is he devoid of values and ethics or does the Australian itself demand of him that he spread disinformation, innuendo and lies?  Of course he'd never get a job with any reputable newspaper so he's a bit stuck if he wants to get paid for deceiving the general public.  I guess he could freelance for PrisonPlanet or InfoWars or Canada Free Press.

Thing is, given that Graham Lloyd reports that the IPCC showed David Rose up in this lie, why does Graham Lloyd repeat all the other lies told by David Rose at all, or if he must repeat them surely he should let his readers know that David Rose lied!

The facts are buried deep

Way down, after Graham has done his "duty" he decides that he'd better make a weak attempt at pretending to be an environment editor rather than an environment wrecker.  He writes what "is believed".

It is believed the IPCC draft report will still conclude there is now greater confidence that climate change is real, humans are having a major impact and that the world will continue to warm catastrophically unless drastic action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The impacts would include big rises in the sea level, floods, droughts and the disappearance of the Arctic icecap.

Believed by whom, Graham doesn't say.  The report hasn't yet been released.  It won't be released until the end of the month.  Which is why people like Graham Lloyd are getting in early.  To try to get people to not believe their eyes or what they read in the papers.

The rest of the article is junk.  He writes about the incomprehensible comments Judith Curry made to David Rose and what fibs Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal plus more on a "forced to deny" garbage.

The Lies of Graham Lloyd and The Australian should not be tolerated

The appalling behaviour of Graham Lloyd and the Australian should not be tolerated in Australia.  Our media has a responsibility to portray facts.  I don't know what can be done.  I'll make this contribution but I hope that there is at least one other person who has the integrity and clout to do more.

To read more about the reaction to this War on our Future, here are some other reports and commentary.  As you can see - the disinformers are simply repeating each other's lies and spin.  That's all they have in waging their war against the environment and their war on humanity's future:

Phil Plait on Bad Astronomy at Slate

Dana Nuccitelli at the UK Guardian and more here

HotWhopper - here and here and here and here

Maybe the ABC's Media Watch will help expose the disinformation from Graham Lloyd.  You can help by sending them a tip. - And they did!  (Thanks, people!)

Matt Ridley loses the plot, falls back on "CO2 is plant food"

I've been watching WUWT waiting for an article on the amazing and appalling one in a hundred year flood in Colorado.  But despite claiming to be an ex-tele weather announcer, and despite living close by in California, Anthony isn't interested in such things.

Instead, joining the list of crank articles on WUWT, Anthony favours a Matt Ridley "CO2 is plant food" bit of idiocy (archived here).  Here is a video from Peter Sinclair that hits that old denier meme on the head:

A spate of silly articles on WUWT - but what's new?

As usual there is a spate of silly articles coming out in advance of the new IPCC report later this month.  Anthony Watts is putting up all sorts of nonsense and it's hard to tell which is worse.

First - Tim "slayer" Ball can't read a simple chart

Yesterday he had Tim Ball, who denies the greenhouse effect, claiming it's been cooling for the past seventeen years (archived here). If Tim was interested in facts, he'd be saying that the average global surface temperature hasn't gone up in two years - not since the record high in 2010.  Instead he tries to bluff and bluster about 17 years.  Here's a chart showing 1995 (2012 minus 17) and 1996 (2013 minus 17) that demonstrates how woefully wrong is serial disinformer and greenhouse effect denier, Tim Ball.

Data source: NASA

Next it's Matt "CO2 is plant food" Ridley

Now the latest spin on WUWT is from Matt Ridley, who has gone completely nuts claiming that global warming will be "good".  All this would be laughable, if it weren't so sad.  What is it that addles people's brains to the extent that they can't accept reality?

Anthony thinks he has "BREAKING: IPCC AR5 report to dial back climate sensitivity" (archived here).  Whether that is true or not (see Justin Gillis NYT article), the article itself shows that Ridley has lost the plot completely. Matt tries to claim: (there is a) very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

Good grief.  Remember, that's coming from a self-labelled "rational optimist".  Irrational is more like it.  Ridley makes a ludicrous appeal to an "authority" that he pulled out of thin air - unnamed "experts":

Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. 

Matt has a habit of making up stuff.  His "most experts" probably include deniers like Anthony Watts.  No rational person thinks that "less than two degrees" will result in "no net economic or ecological damage".  Governments picked 2 degrees to aim for as a cap because they figured that we might just survive that - albeit at great cost to the economy and the environment.

Matt's "most experts" are not climate scientists, that's for sure.  Not only is his claim about "most experts" not true, but at present we are on track to well exceed a doubling of carbon emissions this century which, even with the most conservative estimates of sensitivity, means that we are heading for very serious climate change with dire consequences.  If Matt Ridley and Anthony Watts and other science deniers have their way, we won't be worried about what damage a doubling of CO2 will bring, we'll be facing damage that a trebling or quadrupling of CO2 will bring - or worse.

I had to go to the Wall Street Journal (archived here) to read the rest of his silliness.  For example:

Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places). Increased carbon dioxide levels also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth—because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher.

"Extend the range of farming further north" - does he seriously imagine that farming is going to suddenly sprout up on the Greenland ice sheet?  I wonder if he thinks that the sun will stay up for longer as the world warms?  And what about all the farming south that will go under?

"Improve crop yields?" - what about the reduction in crop yields as marginal areas extend further, as places like south western USA and south western Australia become even drier and hotter?

"Slightly increase rainfall in arid areas"? Not so.  Dry areas are generally expected to become drier and wet areas wetter.  Rainfall intensity will continue to increase.  Downpours aren't good for topsoil.

As for his silly "CO2 is plant food" argument - if everything else is equal, C3 plants (wheat etc) do respond to an increase in CO2.  But if there's no water or too much water it won't help the crop.  And it doesn't matter how much extra CO2 there is when it's too hot and dry.

Then Matt goes into full-on - "people in low lying coastal areas can go hang":

Up to two degrees of warming, these benefits will generally outweigh the harmful effects, such as more extreme weather or rising sea levels, which even the IPCC concedes will be only about 1 to 3 feet during this period.

Matt Ridley dismisses the sea level rise as "only 1 to 3 feet over this period".  "Only"? I'm almost lost for words with that one.  That means he cares little about places like Miami, much of which would be seriously damaged with a one foot rise in sea level.  Just look at the damage that Sandy wrought with a much smaller rise in sea level.  From Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone:

With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won't just come in from the east – because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades.

Not that Matt Ridley cares, he lives in England.  So what will happen to his little island after he's departed it? Here is one estimate - with a rise of one metre, the risk that the Thames Barrier is breached goes to one in ten years.  Bye bye London:

"With 50cm of sea level rise we would expect that level of protection to go down from 1 in 1,000 years to about 1 in 100 years, so under that scenario in every year there would be a 1 per cent chance of flooding. If you have a metre rise you go down from 1 in 1,000 years to 1 in 10 years," Professor Vaughan said.

We can expect more ludicrous articles like this one over the next few weeks as the people who don't want to mitigate harmful global warming deny the latest IPCC report of the science.

And to think that Anthony Watts complains about being lumped in with all the other deniers.  If he doesn't want people to think he rejects climate science, he will need at the very least to stop posting any and all contributions from "guest denialist authors" like Matt Ridley, perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale, Tim Ball, Christopher Monckton, Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham, David "funny sunny" Archibald and others.  And he'd have to stop making silly claims like he did yesterday, with his "it's natural" and other denier memes.

From the WUWT comments

As usual the fake "skeptics" at WUWT regulars aren't the least bit sceptical.  Here is a sample of the reaction:

Lanny says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:23 am
So basically the whole “Global warming thing” has been a tempest in a teapot.

Steve Jones is an uber conspiracy nutter who says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:39 am
They are putting an awful lot of effort into calculating these temp rises v. probability and none of it is via the scientific method. Their concern is to keep their gravy train rolling whilst distancing themselves from the more ridiculous projections that real world data is falsifying right now.
Let’s hope the IPCC falls off this tight-rope and soon.

JustMEinT Musings thinks global warming is one big joke and says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:41 am
so does this mean that Dr. Train Driver/engineer will be out of a job now :-)

Birdieshooter is completely ignorant of climate science and says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:42 am
Since earlier projections of increases in extreme weather,ie, hurricanes and tornadoes etc, have not come to pass, I wonder how they will address that aspect.

ConTrari is another deluded conspiracy nutter who says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:54 am
The basic question for IPCC in a world that is cooling not only in temperature but also in attitudes towards them, is how to preserve their status and funding. So they must backpaddle a bit, to avoid the danger of being called activist alarmists. It is, however, a razorthin edge to walk along, with the abyss of oblivion and insignificance on the other side of the knife’s edge.
They may adopt the practical view that in order to keep themselves clothed, warm and well-fed, the vision of a boiling globe and a starving humanity must be pushed a bit into the background.

Anthony Watts doesn't want to be thought of as a "denier" - ha! He and his blog are a joke!