Wednesday, March 4, 2015

MUST READ: My Life as a Climate Lukewarmer

By  Matt Ridley

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.

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.

Kind friends send me news almost weekly of whole blog posts devoted to nothing but analysing my intellectual and personal inadequacies, always in relation to my views on climate. Writing about climate change is a small part of my life but, to judge by some of the stuff that gets written about me, writing about me is a large part of the life of some of the more obsessive climate commentators. It’s all a bit strange.

Read the rest here.

(ht Mark Brady)

7 comments:

  1. There is a great deal of hysteria that goes along with the global warming alarmists. It matches anything seen from religious fanatics. I'll leave it to the master of rational thought (John Brignell) to explain:
    http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
    http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/lying.htm

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  2. "That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made"

    Then you're an idiot. Another one drinking the kool-aid.

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    1. "That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made ... and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future."

      If it's erratic, then there is no need to appeal to the theory of Warming (Occam's Razor).

      The claim is that mankind's emissions necessarily result in a gradual increase in the "global temperature" (a meaningless measurement, since climate data is derived from weather data and weather is a regional phenomenon, not a global one).

      If the weather in a particular region gets colder after one revolution of the earth around the sun - adjusting for any variation in distance from the sun - then global warming has been disproven because whatever is supposed to be causing so-called global warming isn't able to overcome some natural cooling mechanism that the Earth is exhibiting.

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    2. Really Mike? An idiot? Hyperbolic much?

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    3. Stupidity much? Yes Edward. An idiot.

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  3. This is a great article. I appreciate the link very much.

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    1. you must have a pretty low standard of greatness

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