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.
mark wagner says:
September 17, 2013 at 8:44 am
Abraham: All hat; no cattle
yeah – and on a dead horse that he is flogging like bill-o !
Michael Jankowski says:
September 17, 2013 at 8:55 am
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.
Good grief. WHO ON EARTH is saying, or ever said, climate doesn’t change?! OF COURSE it changes.
1) How much, and in what direction(s), is it changing?
2) How much of the change is attributable to human activity?
3) Is the change dangerous, beneficial, neutral, or a little of everything?
4) Does the change need to be stopped? How in hell do you do that?
From John Abraham’s response:
“By using energy more efficiently, we save money and the planet at the same time. By investing in smart, renewable energy, we can create the economy of the future. That is the message that should be heard, not non-science nonsense from persons like Mr. Ridley.”
There is so much wrong with this closing comment that I can only describe it as multi-dimensionally wrong! Being more efficient with energy will save money, but not have a great deal of impact on global CO2 emissions. The planet is absolutely fine either way and is in no need of ‘saving’. That is a scientific reality. Using renewable energy is far less efficient and contradicts his first sentence. It is not ‘smart’ to use renewables accept in specific, localized circumstances, so there is very little ‘smart’ renewable energy to invest in. Certainly, his advise, if taken, will create the ‘economy of the future’. It is called poverty, and I don’t think that anyone wants to pay that price to fix something that is not broken.. Mr. Abraham had to ignore a lot of science to write such a stupid statement. His entire response ignores the available science and promotes fear mongering. No wonder he had to call Mr. Ridley names. There were no scientific arguments he could make. In fact, there haven’t been any for a long time.
The mere idea that a rise of 2 degrees could cause any harm whatsoever is ludicrous. It was a fair bit warmer in the Mediaeval Warm Period and that’s when culture and agriculture flourished.
I realize that Dr. Abraham is likely just providing PR fodder for the political machine, however, he should adhere to the same level of “reason” he is requiring of Lord Ridley. We should deconstruct his closing paragraph and deal with it in terms of economics, as is his preference. Though, I don’t think he is an economist, so perhaps he isn’t suited to discuss the economic
“…there are already economic costs”
Two things:
1) What costs might those be? Are they raised insurance premiums? A loss of employment due to a natural disaster “wiping” out your place of employment? We need specifics, not generalities.
2) Can you produce evidence that global warming caused the increase in these costs? And more specifically that global warming of the “human induced” kind was the exact cause?
You see, costs imply a payment. Usually those costs are born by the victims of a disaster or those that willingly “prepay” for such eventualities in the form of insurance premiums (so as to “spread the risk around”). In this instance, you cannot charge “mother nature” for the costs. However, you can require that EVERYONE pay for the “alleged” eventualities through intimidation by force (e.g. taxation by government agencies) of law.
“By using energy more efficiently, we save money and the planet at the same time.”
There are a lot of assumptions upon which this quote rely as support. Dr. Abraham assumes that by using energy more efficiently, we would save both money and the planet.
1) What does he mean by “efficiently”? Since his statement previous to the one I quoted above rules out “futuristic technology”, he cannot rely upon better AC or Heating unit designs (e.g. those that require less amperage to establish its BTU rating than the contemporary designs), as that would require future technology. The same would be true when discussing power generation. Therefore, I suggest that he is referring to the behavior of the marketplace participants. In which case I suspect he is attempting to influence the marketplace to favor more energy efficient technologies (which presumably have already been developed) over those that perform the same function at a higher cost of energy input. Perhaps he means that we should accept a more “reduced” standard of living for the sake of efficiency. We should voluntarily elect to use fewer electric devices than we currently use. We should elect to live in a warmer climate during the summer months than previously elected by setting our thermostat to a higher threshold on the AC system. Similar, we should elect to live in a colder climate during the winter months than previously elected by setting our thermostat to a lower threshold on the heating unit. I think a clarification on what he means by “By using energy more efficiently…” would solve a lot my questions. However, that could be a whole other can of worms as they say “the devil is in the details…”.
2) “we save money” — Save money on what? The electric bill or fuel oil bill? I would suggest that there are other concerns to the marketplace that might be more compelling than simply energy efficiency. Can the substitute products (more energy efficient) be obtained at an individual level? What good is an AC unit that will reduce your annual electricity costs by $25 USD a year if it costs $5000 USD more to purchase than similar, less energy efficient models (assuming the same service life). Are the costs associated with system replacement worth the savings from the efficiency? In the case of power generation (an input to so many other market place participants production cycles), is the cost of using “green power” at or below the cost of switching from power generated by non-green sources. Perhaps the most fatal of the assumption is that even with a net savings in the cost of using electricity (end cost to consumer), the end user would not spend that money elsewhere resulting in a “net” zero money saved. You see “saving money” is not the same as a particular “cost savings”. You can still save money without using more efficient systems. The two are not so dependent upon each other.
3) “…and the planet at the same time” — Really? How so? He assumes that global warming will destroy the planet? How does he know this? I think he is wanting to say that we would be saving significant portions of biological life currently residing on the planet. Outside of this simply being a “PR headline”, I fail to see what benefit that such a statement have one way or the other. You cannot promise something you cannot control. We could all adopt a wonderful, sufficiently “green” power generating source only to find out that we have doomed the planet to destruction (physical destruction, or extinction of all life forms from its surface) in the end.
“I can inform the readers that this isn’t necessarily the case” Can anyone quantify this ? does it mean yes, no, possibly, unlikely or what? “It aint’ necessarily so………..”
It’s amusing that the more the world warms the less extreme weather we will have as the jetstream range variation or longitudinal amplitude is decreased in a warmer earth, and the temperature gradient from the tropics to the Arctic Circle is less steep creating less convective turmoil.
Apparently Abraham is unaware of the most basic principles in climate science.
David says:
September 17, 2013 at 9:20 am
The mere idea that a rise of 2 degrees could cause any harm whatsoever is ludicrous. It was a fair bit warmer in the Mediaeval Warm Period and that’s when culture and agriculture flourished.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This era ( MWP) is known to historians as the High Middle Ages because of the relative prosperity of those times, which were followed by the double whammy of global cooling and the plague of the fourteenth century. Cooler climate brought decreased agricultural production and consequent economic contraction and the plague was an added misery. The CAGW alarmists are wrong on all counts, for a warmer world is a better world.
DirkH,
Thank you for the link to the alexa stats for desmogblog. Forgive my Eurocentric bias here, but am I the only one who finds it suspect that a full 17.7% of the visitors to desmogblog are from the Philippines and India? Really? Kind of has that Al Gore Climate Reality Project stank to it. I also find it pretty funny that “GWPF” and “Marc Morano” are two of the top four keywords directing traffic to the site (more than “desmogblog” itself). Channeling Nelson Muntz.
Quick follow-up to my last comment, sure enough when you search “Marc Morano” on google, the first link that comes up is to desmogblog (fourth link when searching “GWPF”). Such a tolerant bunch.
“If I did that, I would be very embarrassed.”
There is and will be no embarassment from the alarmists. In fact they will become yet more shrill and belligerent as their edifice collapses. We need to keep up the pressure on them lest they morph into some other imagined disaster that they will use to establish their agenda.
Dr. Matt Ridley says: “extend-growing seasons and increase rates of photosynthesis”.
First, you should laugh at any criticisms ‘Team climate moron’ have to say, since they are the ones who are wrong with all the doom-mongering.
But, Since when did Co2 or temperature get the ability to change the Earths Axial tilt of 23.4° since it is the Axial tilt that causes the seasons. Photosynthesis is a process based on light and not temperature. 😉
Sorry, one more follow-up as I thought this was worth sharing. desmogblog comes up on the second page on google when searching “Anthony Watts” so somehow our gracious host keeps the AGW hordes at bay (page 4 for “WUWT”). But our friends at SkepticalPseudoscience do make the front page when searching “Anthony Watts.” Me thinks your having honored them exclusively with the title of Unreliable has gotten under their skin a bit. Mr. Cook has had a bit of a PR nightmare as of late so I can see why.
“…I am careful not to make unprovoked ad-hominem attacks.”
Ah, but Dr. Ridley, you did say, “…a tenured academic, as I assume Mr Abraham to be…” In today’s world, if anyone applied the contemptuous epithet “academic” to me, I’d be highly insulted and would strenuously deny the allegation.
/s²
Thanks, Dr. Ridley. You wrote a good article.
Sparks says regarding “extending growing seasons”: “…Since when did Co2 or temperature get the ability to change the Earths Axial tilt of 23.4° since it is the Axial tilt that causes the seasons. Photosynthesis is a process based on light and not temperature. ;)”
Growing seasons are different from seasons.
Sorry once again. Don’t know how I missed this, but the link right above the SS, sorry SkS, link (though in light of their photo gallery…) that come up on google when searching “Anthony Watts” was this hilarity. LOL! I admit I did a triple-take when I read the headline. And I thought football was a tough game!
“Photosynthesis is a process based on light and not temperature. ;)”
it’s also based on… CO2, the most important consequence of more CO2 is that it stimulates plant growth, temperature is just a side issue
Sparks at 10:14 am said “Since when did Co2 or temperature get the ability to change the Earths Axial tilt of 23.4° since it is the Axial tilt that causes the seasons. Photosynthesis is a process based on light and not temperature.”
Look up the concept of Growing Degree Days. Yes, light is a necessary input for photosynthesis. So are water and CO2. Plant growth and maturation, however, is a far more complex phenomenon. Growth can be constrained if one or more of the necessary inputs is below a required threshold but within a fairly broad range of “normal” growing conditions, there is a strong and direct correlation between cumulative temperature and cumulative growth.
@sparks: Photosynthesis rate is based on light intensity, temperature and CO2 concentration. Commercial greenhouses increase temperature and some increase CO2 in the greenhouse to increase seedling growth rate.
jorgekafkazar says:
September 17, 2013 at 10:21 am
Sparks says . . .
seasons
specific example – fruit set temperature for tomatoes
general example – ‘growing degree days’
The bit about “axial tilt of” suggests that Sparks was thinking very narrowly. Still, I wonder?
jorgekafkazar says:
September 17, 2013 at 10:21 am
“Growing seasons are different from seasons.”
Of course growing seasons vary in length, they are not caused by Co2 or temperature, sometimes a farmer will have a long sunny summer and autumn/fall which will extend the growing season and result in a late harvest, and sometimes a farmer will have a long wet summer and autumn/fall which will reduce the growing season and result in an early harvest. Long sunny summers have warmer temperatures than long wet summers which are cooler, extended sunny conditions also increase rates of photosynthesis, it is not temperature or C02 that increase the rates of photosynthesis.
Higher CO2 levels are great for plants and they do grow much better, but without plenty of sunlight it doesn’t matter how much CO2 there is, the plants will not grow.
If you put a seed in a dark room and increase the amount of CO2 and increase the temperature the seed will not grow. Even if you put a potted house plant into a dark room raise CO2 levels and keep the temperature warm, the plant will eventually die off.
I guess Abraham is one of the “climate fighters” his friends Cook and Nucitelli ramble on about. However, he’s fighting from the site of the chairman of the David Suzuki foundation. It doesn’t have anything to do with science, nor does it bother much with fact.
In one of the Climategate emails, Desmogblog’s Richard Littlemore contacted Mann to ask some temperature questions.
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=34
The money quote from Littlemore in describing himself and Desmogblog is . . . “but I am out of my depth (as I am sure you have noticed: we’re all about PR here, not much about science). . .”
Says it all really.
John F. Hultquist says:
September 17, 2013 at 10:48 am
jorgekafkazar says:
September 17, 2013 at 10:21 am
Sparks says . . .
seasons
specific example – fruit set temperature for tomatoes
general example – ‘growing degree days’
The bit about “axial tilt of” suggests that Sparks was thinking very narrowly. Still, I wonder?
John F, One of my many talents is that I am a qualified horticulturalist, 😉
I’m not criticizing Dr. Matt Ridley, I’m just pointing out a myth that he may not be aware of.
For all the gloom and doom about increasing global temperatures and our intemperate use of fossil fuels it is interesting to note that with both of these, in general, the average life expectancy has increased globally. Increased availability of relatively inexpensive energy, new technologies and increasing global wealth seems to have negated the Ehrlich doomsday predictions of 40 years ago. Norway was best in 1960 with an average life expectancy of ~73.6 years, in 2011 it was Japan with ~82.7 years. The US increased from 69.8-78.6. Afghanistan went from 31.3-59.6, Sierra Leone went from 32.3-46.5. http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/history-of-life-expectancy
Why do folks like Abraham believe that we should now make energy more expensive and less available? You’d think those folks out to save the plant would have more regard for the third world.