INTERVIEW WITH MATT RIDLEY
ANDREW BOLT, PRESENTER: Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines last week and killed perhaps 4,000 people. The Greens couldn’t wait to exploit it like they exploited last month’s fires, and even accused Tony Abbott.
ADAM BANDT: He can be expected to be referred to as ‘Typhoon Tony’. // Many people are saying this is the worst typhoon that they’ve ever seen. // This is what we’re in store for, unless we get global warming under control.
ANDREW BOLT: Matt Ridley is a member of Britain’s House of Lords and a science writer, whose latest bestseller is ‘The Rational Optimist’. He’s here on a speaking tour for the IPA. Matt Ridley, thank you for joining me.
MATT RIDLEY: Thank you for having me on the show.
ANDREW BOLT: The typhoon in the Philippines – what do you make of the attempts to make that evidence of the great global warming catastrophe awaiting us?
MATT RIDLEY: Well, this is ridiculous. I mean, storms and weather events happen. They’ve always happened. There’ve been much stronger typhoons in the past. This isn’t the strongest one that’s ever recorded or anything like that. They’re gonna happen, whatever. And to blame this on climate change is a bit like shamanism. It’s witchdoctory. It’s going back 10,000 years to try and blame every weather event on mankind. And we don’t have to just know this from basic data. If you look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They say there’s been no trend in increasing frequency of typhoons or cyclones or hurricanes. In fact, this year’s been an unusually quiet one globally. And even in that part of the Pacific it’s been quiet. So the idea that you can stop typhoons happening by cutting carbon dioxide emissions is just absurd. We’ve got to tackle typhoons as an issue, whatever happens to the climate.
ANDREW BOLT: What do we have to worry about, if global warming continues? I know there’s been a pause in atmospheric temperature rises for 15 years. But should it continue, what have we got to fear?
MATT RIDLEY: Well, I personally think that we are seeing benefits from climate change. Sorry – that’s not my personal view, that’s what the data says. We’re seeing benefits from climate change at the moment – slightly greener vegetation in the world, slightly fewer winter deaths, things like that – longer growing seasons. And that’s likely to continue for another six or seven decades. After that, if the projections of climate change are right – and on the whole, they have been too warm for the last 30 years, so they may not be right – but if they’re right, we will then start to see net harm. And the one harm that will would hurt civilisation would be rapidly rising sea levels. Fortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that sea levels are not rising – are not gonna rise that fast in this century – not much faster than
they did in the last century. Greenland’s losing ice at the rate of 2 billion tonnes a year, which sounds a lot, but it’s actually 0.5% per century. So the collapse of ice sheets, that sort of thing, has now largely been ruled out by the IPCC as a risk. But we are – you know, we do have to get our act together to be ready to deal with some disasters, if they happen towards the end of this century, the beginning of the next.
ANDREW BOLT: Well, when you say “get our act together to be ready”, where – obviously the world is spending trillions of dollars on various ways to so-called stop global warming. Is that a sensible use of our resources?
MATT RIDLEY: No. I think rolling out immature and 14th-century technologies like wind power all around the world – which are extremely expensive, don’t cut carbon emissions very much, and on the whole keep people unable to afford the measures to adapt to climate, by being so expensive – is not the answer. Japan, interestingly, has just said that it’s not going to try to keep emissions as low as it was hoping by 2020. Instead, it’s going to put a lot of money into research into new energy technologies. And that’s the answer. If we can get cheap fusion energy, or cheap thorium nuclear power, or even cheap ordinary nuclear power, and some of the solar power developed, then by the end of the century we probably won’t need fossil fuels, and we can give them up, long before they run out. That’s a much better approach than trying to roll out immature energy technologies now. Because we’ve tried that, and it’s just not working. We’re trying it all over the world, it’s disastrously bad for people’s living standards.
ANDREW BOLT: So when Tony Abbott gets elected on a platform of scrapping the carbon tax, is that seen, as the Greens would suggest, as a worldwide embarrassment? Or is it seen as something perhaps – well, the return of reason?
MATT RIDLEY: Well I think until now, it’s been assumed that you had to pay lip-service to dangerous climate change. I mean, most of us – I believe that human beings do affect the climate, and probably have caused some of the warming in the past. That’s not at issue. What’s at issue is a forecast of dangerous warning, which is only going to come true if certain positive feedback amplifiers happen. And if that’s likely to be the case, it’s always been assumed that you had to show real alarm about this in order to get elected in a western democracy. I think Tony Abbott has shown that’s not the case, and a lot of elected politicians around the world will have noticed that, and will have noticed that not only was the carbon tax something that he was determined to repeal, but that it was front and centre in the election campaign, so you can’t say it was just a peripheral issue. So for example, the Canadians have commented on that. And I think western European politicians will notice that, and will say, actually, you can take a relatively rational, relatively sober approach to climate change and be elected, despite what the extreme Greens will throw at you.
ANDREW BOLT: And is there any other government, then, that will be the next to follow us, do you think?
MATT RIDLEY: I’m not the one to predict political trends. I don’t think it’s going to happen in a hurry in Europe – sorry, in Britain. But there is huge disquiet in the UK about energy prices, and they’re about to go up even more, because of green levies, and that I think is beginning to make politicians rethink this agenda.
ANDREW BOLT: Thank you very much, Matt Ridley, for joining us.
Video here:http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_bolt_report_today37/
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So poor old uranium fission is now just ‘cheap ordinary’ nuclear power? Don’t times change!
IMHO, Dr Ridley was a bit too soft and concilliatory – a bit too lukewarm? It’s ok to try and get your point across by appearing calm and reasoned but the fact of the matter is that all the money spent on carbon reductions schemes have been a massive waste of time and effort as well as cash.
I for one do not believe in the ‘AGW is significant’ meme – but the pragmatic view (and incorporating the oft warmist favourite – the Precautionary Principle) the best way to stop carbon emission is to invest in renewables and nuclear ‘properly’. Put it another way, a hundred billion bucks into development of non-carbon energy would have gone an awful long way into helping – instead of producing a sh$tload of useless models, adjusted data and feeding many thousands of pig-troughing ‘climate scientists’……..
Those of us who believe based on the evidence that Sustainability is merely an update of the old Marxian need for a crisis to justify the desired structural and institutional changes will keep watching and listening for the next calamity. I spent part of the weekend reading the beginnings of the ecological Marxism theories in the 70s (as its creators called it) and their justifications that more than an economic crisis would be needed.
IPCC is holding true to the social theories regardless of the facts. Matt is a rational optimist because he believes in innovation. We need to get back to societies that foster genuine innovation of the type he describes in his book instead of sociological innovations in how we are to organize ourselves in the future. Most of us can organize ourselves far better than any bureaucrat or theorist or politician
The red light going off for climate alarmists is that Australia’s gutsy stance was backed within days by Canada and there’ll be more. The first girl has left the party and instead of being talked about, will shortly be joined by the rest.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/australia-you-beaut/
Pointman
-and how Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet,,,
http://youtu.be/S-nsU_DaIZE
A few years back Warmists used to tell us that the weather is not the climate. Now that nature is defying them they insist see the weather as climate change. Climate is accepted by the IPCC and the WMO as 30 years or more of weather data. Warmists have started using rolling dice instead of peer reviewed papers. Their alleged ‘science’ should be called Climastrology. This kind of nonsense leads to witch burnings.
Reason is what we need, its the hype that causes problems on both sides of the fence.
Isn’t it about time to stop riding the hurricane? Contributors here seem obsessed by the hurricane itself (given the number of posts about it), people all around the world are engaged to supply relief to the people struck by it.
More on topic: Some counterpoints to Ridleys viewpoint:
[snip – we don’t reference those blogs since they are written by anonymous jerks. You are welcome to substitute credible links -mod]
I am not sure about Matt, he is obviously a clever guy (though sometimes mistaken as his banking adventure has shown). But statements like this:
“No. I think rolling out immature and 14th-century technologies like wind power all around the world – which are extremely expensive, don’t cut carbon emissions very much, and on the whole keep people unable to afford the measures to adapt to climate, by being so expensive – is not the answer.”
It is simply windy opinion, in the 16th and 17th century wind power made the Netherlands to what it was, a dry place where once the sea was. Expensive? Not at all, it brought great benefits. The technology has developed and nowadays calling it immature and 14th century is totally missing the mark.
Wind power is not extremely expensive, does cut carbon emissions as much as it replaces fossil fuels, and on the whole keeps people empowered to decide on the measures to adapt to their local climate, by being quite inexpensive – and with other measures like solar energy may be the right answer (other right answers may also apply).
“And to blame this on climate change is a bit like shamanism. It’s witchdoctory.”
Welcome to the party pal ! (h/t to Bruce Willis in Diehard)
This is a video of Sallie Baliunas making the same point as Jimbo.
“David Riser says:
November 18, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Reason is what we need, its the hype that causes problems on both sides of the fence”.
What fence are you talking about?
Ridley is right in so may way’s. A petty nobody is listening.
The fence between skeptics and CAGW believers
Reason TV: Re Matt Ridley. He said Charles Keeling measured CO2 in the atmosphere for the first time 20 years ago. Hmm was that not in 1958?
had to wade through five pages of results on a “carbon price” search to find this current, EXTREMELY INFORMATIVE Financial Times article, yet MSM shilling for a carbon trading market was all there on the first page of results, some dating back as far as 11 Nov:
18 Nov: UK Financial Times: London banks quit carbon trading
At least 10 London banks have scaled back or closed their carbon trading desks amid turmoil in the European emissions trading scheme.
The fledgling market was once seen as a promising growth area, with the City of London Corporation predicting in 2006 that London would become the leading provider of services to the “mushrooming” sector.
But the number of City workers employed on carbon desks has fallen by 70 per cent in the past four years, according to Anthony Hobley, president of the Climate Markets & Investors Association…
The workforce had fallen from close to a thousand to just a couple of hundred, Mr Hobley estimated, as carbon prices have plummeted…
Barclays has sold its carbon trading business, Deutsche Bank has closed its global carbon trading operations and UBS has closed its climate change advisory practice, according to the report.
It says that JPMorgan has scaled back its environmental markets team and Morgan Stanley has reduced its carbon desk from full-time to part-time…
Other banks reducing their London operations include EcoSecurities, Camco Clean Energy, Nedbank, Sindacatum and TFS Green, the report adds…
“Our gas and power team keep an eye on the [ETS] market, in case a client needs to transact, but as a stand alone business it is basically over,” said an executive who oversees European energy trading at one large bank.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cbb749ba-506b-11e3-9f0d-00144feabdc0.html
this is what makes or breaks the CAGW meme.
this, on the other hand, was easy to find!
18 Nov: Bloomberg: Oil’s Future Draws Blood and Gore in Investment Portfolios
By Tom Randall with assistance from Eric Roston in New York
Gore has been fighting climate change since he co-sponsored the first congressional hearings on the subject in 1976. While his essential aim hasn’t changed, his tactics and rhetoric have. Flush with cash after making $70 million in the sale of the Current TV network, Gore is buddying up to investors, working to change their minds about billion-dollar climate risks lurking in their portfolios. Gore, snubbing trees, is now a hugger of Wall Street.
“We’re already seeing the impact on some carbon intensive assets — we’ve seen it in Australia, we’ve seen it in Canada, we’ve seen it in the U.S.,” Gore said by phone from London on Oct. 29, a day he spent promoting a new report as chairman of Generation Asset Management, the investment firm he co-founded with David Blood. “The time has come to question how people avoid the risk.”…
***Whenever the company (Royal Dutch Shell) evaluates a new project, it bakes in $40 a ton for the future cost of carbon emissions, Destin Singleton, a spokeswoman for Shell, wrote in an e-mail…
Not everyone says fossil fuels are in trouble…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/oil-s-future-draws-blood-and-gore-in-investment-portfolios.html
jb frodsham says:
November 18, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Reason TV: Re Matt Ridley. He said Charles Keeling measured CO2 in the atmosphere for the first time 20 years ago. Hmm was that not in 1958?
=========================================================================
Thank God we have Al Gore to set us straight on the million degree core temperature of the Earth.
Source for your assertion?
The problem with socialists is that eventually you run out of OPM. Eventually when the alarmists have jacked up taxes and energy prices so much, people will push back. But not until.
It’s so refreshing to hear the voice of reason in the vast wilderness of CAGW ignorance and propaganda.
It was also wonderful to hear a politician even mention thorium reactors, as the vast majority of them are clueless to the likelihood that we’ll be moving from a fossil-fuel based economy to a thorium-based economy within the next 30 years, which will make this entire CAGW scam moot.
I’ve contacted many US Senators and Congressmen about the importance of LFTRs and only Senator Rand Paul was savvy enough to quickly grasp the importance of thorium reactors and sent me a personal letter promising his staff will work on legislation to fast-track the necessary rules, regulations and safety standards required for LFTR development in the US.
Hopefully Senator Paul will follow through on that promise.
note it’s a slowdown in growth of emissions, not clear in the headline:
19 Nov: NYT: Justin Gillis/David Jolly: Slowdown in Carbon Emissions Worldwide, but Coal Burning Continues to Grow
Scientists compiling the numbers said it was unclear whether the slowdown in the growth of emissions might represent the beginnings of a permanent shift…
The new figures were released late Monday by the Global Carbon Project, which tracks emissions…
Yet on a global scale, the continuing expansion of coal, the dirtiest form of fossil energy and the one associated with the highest emissions of greenhouse gases, is far outstripping the growth of renewables and other low-carbon sources of power.
“Coal is king, still,” said Glen P. Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo and a leader of the group that produced the new analysis…
In a speech on Monday in Warsaw, the United Nations’ top officer on climate change warned coal industry executives that much of the world’s coal will need to be left in the ground if international climate goals are to be met.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told industry leaders at the World Coal Summit…
“Let me be clear from the outset that my joining you today is neither a tacit approval of coal use, nor is it a call for the immediate disappearance of coal,” Ms. Figueres said. “But I am here to say that coal must change rapidly and dramatically for everyone’s sake.” …
*** Godfrey G. Gomwe, chairman of the World Coal Association’s energy and climate committee, responded in a speech that, with “1.3 billion people in the world who live without access to electricity,” the questions of climate change and poverty reduction could not be separated.
“A life lived without access to modern energy is a life lived in poverty,” said Mr. Gomwe, who is also chief executive of the mining company Anglo American’s thermal coal business. “As much as some may wish it, coal is not going away.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/science/slowdown-in-carbon-emissions-worldwide-but-coal-burning-continues-to-grow.html?_r=0
“Tsk Tsk”: Lol yes of course Al Gore. The million degree thing. Gore is a crook!
Actually I really like Matt Ridley. Loved his book “The Rational Optimist” And his blog too. I just pointed out an error. “Charles Keeling began collecting data at Mauna Loa in 1958, the concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million” Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/12/nsf-says-biosphere-is-breathing-in-co2-more-deeply/
No big deal really, but it is the sort of thing that alarmists will harp on and on about. You know; do and say 1000 things right and no one says anything but get one wrong and they zero in on it. I am sorry if I might have come across as a warmist for pointing out an error. But I am not a warmist, but a realist as most of the readers here at WUWT really are.
There is a direct parallel to the climate change public policy question and the current state of “Obamacare”. Most voters don’t know how the health care system works and have no CLUE nor care about how the grid operates…just that it does so 99.9% of the time.
I have been trying to excite people about the consequence of taxing fossil fueled electricity and conclude it’s too abstract. People continue to believe that adding the next increment of wind and solar is a noble thing.
I hate to admit it, but we may have to let the monthly electric bill go up $40-50 to get a reaction. Hopefully, it’s not too late for the coal industry.
Kev-in-Uk says:
November 18, 2013 at 3:42 pm
IMHO, Dr Ridley was a bit too soft and concilliatory – a bit too lukewarm? It’s ok to try and get your point across by appearing calm and reasoned but the fact of the matter is that all the money spent on carbon reductions schemes have been a massive waste of time and effort as well as cash….
———————————————————-
I’m pretty sure there was no cash involved.
We got an excellent low interest only loan to cover it.
We’ll be paying for it for a long time.
cn
Sisi says:
November 18, 2013 at 4:55 pm
It is simply windy opinion, in the 16th and 17th century wind power made the Netherlands to what it was, a dry place where once the sea was. Expensive? Not at all, it brought great benefits. The technology has developed and nowadays calling it immature and 14th century is totally missing the mark.
Wind power is not extremely expensive, does cut carbon emissions as much as it replaces fossil fuels, and on the whole keeps people empowered to decide on the measures to adapt to their local climate, by being quite inexpensive – and with other measures like solar energy may be the right answer (other right answers may also apply).
Not really.
First and foremost: its unreliable. After the industrial revolution these windmills were decommissioned one by one for more reliable technology. And that brought the benefits.
Most of the land recovered from the sea was in 1900’s. And they did not use wind power.
It also does not cut CO2 emissions, because fast acting power stations with lower efficiency must be on standby; and the net result is that CO2 emissions are greater.
Wind power is expensive and has raised energy prices in the last decade by energy taxes (doubling the price per kWh). Real estate values are also dropping when wind mills are build nearby.
Weather dependent power sources can not be the answer for an economy which requires reliable power 24/7.
R. de Haan says:
November 18, 2013 at 5:19 pm
I know you didn’t intend it the way it reads, but that second sentence is hilarious. It’s fun to think who that person might be.