The social cost of carbon is positive, admits Anthony Watts

Prickly Pear Qld 1930s.
Wikipedia.

At last Anthony Watts admits that there is a social cost of carbon (archived here). He doesn't say what it is, he's not a climate economist after all but at least he admits it. His headline was: "The Social “Cost” of Carbon is Positive".  Unfortunately the article he posted, by ex-coal director Viv Forbes, doesn't discuss the social cost.

Viv Forbes is a climate disinformer from Australia. He's no longer a director of Stanmore Coal, but he used to be. As he's done before, his article is in the form of a letter to some unnamed editor of an unnamed publication. I guess it's to the "editor" of WUWT.

Viv lists "social benefits" of burning fossil fuels in the following terms:

Greens seem unaware that “carbon” coming from man-made CO2 is beneficial plant food supporting all life on Earth including polar bears, cane toads, prickly pear, rain forests and wheat.

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.