Matt Ridley

“My life as a climate luke warmer“:

This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.
I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.

Heh.

We did the space seder a few years ago with some friends, who had invited some other people that we didn’t know. They were interested in science, but not trained in it. They audibly gasped when I said that I didn’t think that climate was necessarily much of a problem.

17 thoughts on “Matt Ridley”

  1. I feel his pain.

    I too attract screeds of abuse for my luke warmist views, though on balance, I get slightly more from the skeptics side. The reason why Ridley and I attract the targeting systems of different camps is probably because: 1. He thinks warming over the next 65 years likely to be beneficial, and 2. has bought into the attacks on the paleoclimate reconstructions, while I: 1. don’t know if on balance the temperature changes are good or bad, but just that the rate-of-change could be damaging and 2. accept that the hockey stick is basically correct and hasn’t had a serious challenge.

    But I guess that’s just the lot of people like Ridley and I who don’t tamely run with one flock or the other.

  2. I guess Climate Audit is too technical for you then? McIntyre thoroughly demolished the hockey stick years ago. The crooks and fixers working in climate “science” were revealed as such in 2009. You can’t believe a word they say.
    What temperature changes? The ones that are within the error bars? The “adjusted ones” The ones that ignore or downplay UHI? The ones that haven’t made any noticeable difference and are generated by torturing data with bad statistics and making assumptions about instrument accuracy that are hopelessly optimistic?
    The ice at the poles is still there despite years of alarm, winters are still cold, summers are hot, some years are dry, some are wet, extreme weather hasn’t increased. Ops normal it seems and in any case there is NOTHING we can do about it. One nice by product of extra CO2 is the greening that has occurred. I guess for you this is a bad thing.
    We’re in an interglacial. The temperature is lower than it was 8000 years ago and for several periods since. The ice will be back soon enough.

    1. I guess Climate Audit is too technical for you then?

      One nice by product of extra CO2 is the greening that has occurred. I guess for you this is a bad thing.

      Yep, those are the sorts of baaing ad hominem attacks free thinkers like Ridley and I have to endure from the sheep.

        1. Wiki only supplies a list of these reconstructions, maybe you can come up with lots of large-scale paleo temperature reconstructions that contradict these ones?
          You cannot.

          1. I’m sorry, but the fact that I don’t have the time, and haven’t been paid by government grants to come up with better or more accurate reconstructions doesn’t make those correct. So you really don’t understand how science works?

          2. Um, does it work by groups of scientists writing papers based on lots and lots of research over many years to try to get an ever improving understanding of the universe, to then have all their efforts dismissed by people with little understanding of the science, who make no effort to test the reproducibility of the results of the research, because the results of that research don’t fit in with what those “skeptics” want to believe?

          3. “Um, does it work by groups of scientists writing papers based on lots and lots of research over many years to try to get an ever improving understanding of the universe, to then have all their efforts dismissed by people with little understanding of the science, who make no effort to test the reproducibility of the results of the research, because the results of that research don’t fit in with what those “skeptics” want to believe?”

            Thus spake the Holy See in pronouncing its verdict upon Galileo. How can you deny the science, when so many voluminous tomes have described the epicycles of the orbits about the Earth to such exacting degree?

          4. Meh. Only a few have a genuine blade. None really agree very well.

            Did the example make clear to you why your argument was fallacious?

          5. None really agree very well.

            A lot of them were local, not global reconstructions, hence the variations.

            Did the example make clear to you why your argument was fallacious?

            No, but it did confirm my opinion of you. Galileo was doing the science, and being crushed by those not bothering to, but rather relying on their preconceptions.

          6. I see. So, science is basically defined by… well, apparently by whatever is the right answer, either in hindsight, or as defined by authorities approved by… well, by Andrew_W and whoever agrees with him.

      1. Rand,

        if it doesn’t come from Wikipedia, Andrew isn’t interested. You know books?..science?…scholarship?…he has no time for that.

  3. That’s a great article. It’s exactly the over-the-top, Inquisition-like attitudes of the true believers that have made me an adamant AGW denier. Some of them have said that deniers should have their scientific credentials revoked, or even be criminally prosecuted for causing actual harm to people or the Earth. That is Salem witch trial or Stalinist purge territory, and is genuinely frightening.

    As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing is political from start to finish. It’s all about outlawing capitalism and instituting global socialism. I’ve never wavered in that view.

    Even though I disagree with Ridley’s “lukewarmism”, his views are rational, sober, and well-informed and I would never dream of trying to shut him up. He may be right and I may be wrong. I would say that even if there is a human component to global warming, it is probably outweighed by natural climate variation. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, if it mitigates or prevents the next Ice Age.

  4. “As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing is political from start to finish. It’s all about outlawing capitalism and instituting global socialism.”

    Yep.

    I think Richard Feynman explained best how science works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt7gPCioqTg

    If the model doesn’t match observation, it’s wrong.

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