Guest essay by Dr. Matt Ridley
![20101109_abraham_33[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/20101109_abraham_331.jpg?quality=83)
And here’s his piece: http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/16/john-abraham-slams-matt-ridley-climate-denial-op-ed-wall-street-journal.
It’s a poor response, characterized by inaccurate representation of what I said, even down to actual misquoting. In the whole article, he puts just four words in quotation marks as written by me, yet in doing so he misses out a whole word: 20% of the quotation. Remarkable. If I did that, I would be very embarrassed.
He directly contradicts the IPCC’s report on extreme weather, which found no link between current storms and man-made climate change; he is apparently unaware that the rising costs of extreme weather are entirely caused by rising investment and insurance values, not rising quantities of extreme weather, as even a small amount of research would have told him ( http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/follow-up-q-from-senate-epw.html ); he falsely claims that I say rising sea levels will be beneficial, when I wrote no such thing; and he wholly ignores the benefits of mild climate change, even though I was careful to say that the key thing is to compare costs and benefits. It is possible that he does not know the meaning of the word “net”: he certainly shows no understanding of the concept.
“General statements about extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the literature but seem to abound in the popular media,” said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently. “It’s this popular perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the time, even though if anyone thinks about that for 10 seconds they realize that’s nonsense.”
Mr Abraham’s main point is that up to 2 degrees C of warming is likely to do net harm. For this surprising claim, he produces noevidence. None. The evidence suggest the opposite – that less than two degrees of warming will cut excess winter deaths, increase average rainfall, extendgrowing seasons and increase rates of photosynthesis in wild and agricultural ecosystems. “A global warming of less than 2.5°C could have no significant effect on overall food production,” says the UNFCC website.
See links here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188913000092%00 and here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/06/winter-kills-excess-deaths-in-the-winter-months/.
And yet it is he who accuses me of “non-science nonsense”. It’s truly disgraceful that a tenured academic, as I assume Mr Abraham to be, should make so many mistakes and yet feel free to hurl unsubstantiated abuse at another human being, however desperate he may be. In writing about climate change I am careful not to make unprovoked ad-hominem attacks – until attacked in this way.
I always play the ball, not the man. Mr Abraham, if he wishes to be taken seriously, should try to do likewise.
Abraham is clearly a fool with delusions of political grandeur.
Thanks, Matt.
Fact filled and fun. “I always play the ball, not the man.” Pretty soon it’s going to be the only way to argue in climate. The voters and energy bill payers will make sure of that.
So, we have a specific statement from the UN – the first I have read – that up to 2.5 degrees warming will cause no harm. (That is, no loss of food production – I assume some one is projecting/predicting/thinking/propagandizing that somehow a temperature rise of greater than 2.5 degrees would cause a “Sahara desert” effect of destroying crops.) Thank you.
2.0 degrees is considered “acceptable” as well for their CO2 control schemes, I would assume that those who fear sea level rise believe that 2.0 degrees warming will not flood those “ever-so-precious” few square km’s of sea islands that are threatened by a 20 cm rise. (All of this assuming that sea level rise is proportional to air temperature rise and that both could be controlled by harming human life by controlling human-released CO2, of course. )
But what was not stated was his assumed baseline of where the 2.5 degrees warming would be marked from: Is that from the natural warming of our recovery from the LIA? Or from today’s 2000-2010 Mann-made peak?
“For this surprising claim, he provides noevidence.” There should be a space between ‘no’ and ‘evidence’.
Otherwise, good response to a poor response to a good Wall Street Journal article.
Well put Matt. You have the best thing in your article that Mr Abraham completely dismisses. Evidence, with links, from reputable sources.
In the whole article, he puts just four words in quotation marks as written by me, yet in doing so he misses out a whole word: 20% of the quotation.
What were the four quoted words?
What should have been the five word quote?
What should have been the five word quote in context?
“General statements about extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the literature but seem to abound in the popular media,” said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently. “It’s this popular perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the time, even though if anyone thinks about that for 10 seconds they realize that’s nonsense.”
Gavin better be careful. He was likely unaware that this was under development from NOAA’s NCDC a few weeks ago. I think the title says it all:
New analyses find evidence of human-caused climate change in half of the 12 extreme weather and climate events analyzed from 2012
I guess Schmidtty didn’t get the memo on the Weather Extreme meme. As I noted the other day, these guys are inspirational. 1912, I mean, 2012 was a banner year for extreme weather.
Mr. Abraham will never play the ball because it does not bounce to his viewpoint.
Stephan Rasey makes a good point and there should be a reply.
Dr. Ridley, Desmogblog is funded by a PR firm led by Hoggan. This Hoggan is chairman of the David Suzuki Foundation that is on the payroll of US green billionaires and their allies that are holding the Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver under their flow of money and policies. Hoggan has made huge amounts of money in his greenwashing campaign for the Province owned utilities company BC Hydro.
With only a slight vertical cranial extension he could pass for one of the Coneheads. (Definitely not playing the ball.)
Original by Matt: “Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage.”
Quote by Abraham: “…no net and ecological damage.”
There’s a reason the more politically savy warmists avoid debate.
In the quote, the missing word was “economic”. He wrote “no net or ecological damage”, when I had written “no net economic or ecological damage”. Whoops! — my quote was six words, his 5! that reduces his inaccuracy to 16.67%.
I just went to DeSmog and they popped up with another Abraham missive about Lord Monckton responding or reresponding to something Lord Moonckton posted on WUWT…
Abraham refused to link the WUWT article and suggested that people “Google” it for themselves.
GGIH…doesn’t want to expose the “less inclined” to the influence of WUWT
(Apparently a bunch of “scientists” want to put up more money in Lord Monckton’s wager
Abraham: All hat; no cattle.
When they have nothing left to arguet they must invent something or other to try and make some irrelevant point. Academics are unfortunately living in their very own cloistered environment where they deliberately choose to read or study their own interests in order to plan their next self-promotion. Sadly, they display the ignorance nd bias that one would hope they should dispel in their students. So much for that dream!
He needs a lesson in how to wear a tie. (Definitely not playing the ball.)
Huh. There don’t seem to be any comments on John Abraham’s article. Obviously there are bunches here, and quite a few on Dr. Ridley’s original post. Makes one wonder which articles are actually being read and comprehended. Or perhaps anonymous commentators are wising up. Could be both.
Stephen Rasey at 8:16 am asks:
> What were the four quoted words?
> What should have been the five word quote?
> What should have been the five word quote in context?
Even I could figure that out from the two sources prominently linked at the top of the article.
The quote: “no net or ecological damage”
The original: “no net economic and ecological damage”
The context of the quote: “Second, Mr. Ridley makes the unsubstantiated claim that warming of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit will result in ‘no net or ecological damage’.”
The context of the original: “Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC’s emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm.”
Gavin’s statement is also a bit of a catch-all..just because we aren’t seeing extremes (hurricanes, tornados, ice loss, etc) doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening.
Page rank of Desmogblog. 174 K.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/desmogblog.com
Just for comparison, one man, no budget, operation notrickszone bests them with 163 K.
Stephen Rasey@8:16
Here’s Ridley’s sentance with the 5 word Quote:
Here’s Abraham’s sentance with the adjusted quote:
Just looked at the Abraham article. He claims that Ridley is talking about the lower limit but all the studies talk about the median. I linked to this WSJ article the other day specifically because it references (not links) about 6-8 recent Nature, GRL papers. So Abraham’s claim that he does not reference things is misleading at best.