I met Matt Ridley for the first time in person last month on his trip through California. We shared lunch in Novato on a Saturday, it was a pleasant and enlightening conversation. Dr. Ridley “gets it”; he gets what climate skepticism is all about, and gets what I am about. I’m honored to count him among my friends.
He has this new video out, from his next stop after visiting with me, please take a moment to watch, and more importantly, to share. Ridley’s message is simple – through our own activities, we are making the world a better, greener place.
From Reason Magazine’s description on YouTube:
Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and other books, dropped by Reason’s studio in Los Angeles last month to talk about a curious global trend that is just starting to receive attention. Over the past three decades, our planet has gotten greener!
Even stranger, the greening of the planet in recent decades appears to be happening because of, not despite, our reliance on fossil fuels. While environmentalists often talk about how bad stuff like CO2 causes bad things to happen like global warming, it turns out that the plants aren’t complaining.
Approximately 18 minutes.
Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.
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pat says:
March 15, 2013 at 1:16 am
this goes well with ridley’s video & allan savory’s desertification presentation
Indeed perhaps some of the re-greening attributed by Allan Savory to the hooves and dung of large livestock herds is helped along considerably by rising CO2.
Dr. Ridley was well advised to avoid his former camp on Spitsbergen:
The commentator is not correct about polar bears as the only predator to hunt humans, however, as opposed to just taking targets of opportunity.
Kasuha says: March 15, 2013 at 8:29 am
Now how should I believe he says truth in all his other points, however pleasant they sound?
Gee, Kasuha, you are learning, never take any single “fact” at face value.
Solution? I guess you’re gonna have to do a little of what ever other thinking person does; thinking, listening and reading….
Good luck with that.
Ridley is right about the earth becoming greener due to anthropogenic CO2. He just doesn’t mention the “however” part. This is the same tactic he has used on claiming that anthropogenic CO2 is not the cause of extreme weather events. He just doesn’t give the public the whole story and he needs to share the entire truth with the public and not just his narrow view.
In this video he makes it sound like turning the northern latitudes green is a good thing, failing to mention that a thawing worldwide permafrost will be releasing a torrent of greenhouse gases (billions of tons of methane and two trillion tons of CO2), that all of the increased CO2 is making the oceans more acidic, killing reefs and affecting all ocean life, that the thawing poles will eventually create higher sea levels that will flood many coastal cities, that climate scientists agree that anthropogenic CO2 makes extreme weather even worse and that its effect will cost billions of dollars in our economy, and that the CO2 produced by us will not dissipate like other greenhouse gases and in fact may be with us for thousands of years. Also, scientists say that by 2050 the higher global temperatures will amplify infectious diseases and increase heat related mortality. So yes, we are seeing a greener earth in northern latitudes, but it is coming at a great cost that could be lasting.
The public deserves to have the whole story and not just a smattering of data that hides what is really happening.