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« An oldie and a goodie | Main | The unintended consequences of climate change policy »
Monday
Jan192015

A lukewarmer's history

Matt Ridley has an excellent post up at the Times, recounting his involvement in the climate debate, from believer to lukewarmer, and the story of how those who once stood beside him as believers have moved from polite disagreement with his scepticism to a new approach of smear and abuse.

It's paywalled, but there are extensive excerpts here.

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Reader Comments (45)

Another thing that gave me pause was that I went back and looked at the history of past predictions of ecological apocalypse from my youth – population explosion, oil exhaustion, elephant extinction, rainforest loss, acid rain, the ozone layer, desertification, nuclear winter, the running out of resources, pandemics, falling sperm counts, cancerous pesticide pollution and so forth. There was a consistent pattern of exaggeration, followed by damp squibs: in not a single case was the problem as bad as had been widely predicted by leading scientists. That does not make every new prediction of apocalypse necessarily wrong, of course, but it should encourage scepticism.

What shocked me more was the scientific establishment’s reaction to this: it tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. And then a flood of emails was leaked in 2009 showing some climate scientists apparently scheming to withhold data, prevent papers being published, get journal editors sacked and evade freedom-of-information requests, much as sceptics had been alleging. That was when I began to re-examine everything I had been told about climate change and, the more I looked, the flakier the prediction of rapid warming seemed.

Extremely well said, concise and clear! Bravo Mr. Ridley!

Jan 19, 2015 at 2:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterRedbone

Did he ever publish a paper on the predicted disasters that never happened? It would be interesting to present these nicely for the MSM, should they be interested.

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterFarleyR

FarleyR
You could try reading Booker & North's book Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth.

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:08 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

FarleyR.

Matt wrote a piece for the Economist where he presented a timeline of "disasters that never were" and listed quite a few. I tried to find it recently, but I couldn't get the whole thing. I will try and find the link again and post it, but the Economist does not list the author of their articles so it is hard to dig it out. It was in 90's I think because I read it in the paper version.....

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:14 PM | Unregistered CommenterRob

Here it is:

http://www.economist.com/node/455855

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:16 PM | Unregistered CommenterRob

Explains the sudden high cost (GBP13) of a 1.2*0.6 mtr (18mm) sheet of MDF chipboard at B&Q. Food & Clothes may have gone down, but everything else is sky high.

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:42 PM | Unregistered CommenterEx-expat Colin

A very common tale of conversion. Many of us are not natural enemies of 'science'.

However most of the warmists don't see sceptic red flags as reasons not to back climate science 100%. They don't think sensitivity is that important as a value and that even if sensitivity is low, we should do anything and everything to cut CO2 (except more nuclear and less flying). Just by pointing out the problems, Mr Ridley becomes a warmist enemy. They don’t want politicians or the public to have the smallest excuse not to do as they’re told.

Their favourite meme at the moment is ‘risk assessment’. The idea goes, that because of the number of people involved and the scale of what might happen, the risk is always very high, no matter what the likelihood and therefore we must act. Of course that is a misapplication of the risk assessment method. Just because something is high risk, it doesn’t mean you have to do something about it. Solutions need to be risk assessed themselves and all hazards need to be considered and prioritised. What we almost never do is put all our resources into solving one problem and our choice of issues to address is and has always been a bit of a guess.

Warmists don’t usually have a vision of how they expect the CO2 to come down. That’s for the plebs to work out. They just want us to write a blank cheque for anything and everything. I like to think that their belief that we might do this is evidence that they are irretrievably dumb.

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

Ex-pat Collin
Never, ever buy those sorts of material from B&Q. Go to a builder's merchant or (better) a woodyard.

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:55 PM | Unregistered CommenterCapell

the new Lysenko-ism

Jan 19, 2015 at 4:36 PM | Unregistered CommenterMars Shmallow

Well done.

Perhaps some of Matt Ridley's colleagues and acquaintances will read the article and re-appraise their assumptions about the climate science debate. Perhaps others will experience embarrassment and guilt.

The scandal only continues because those with power and influence have decided that it suits them for the scandal to continue.

Jan 19, 2015 at 5:24 PM | Unregistered CommenterSchrodinger's Cat

Jan 19, 2015 at 3:16 PM | Rob

http://www.economist.com/node/455855

Nice link, Rob. Cheers.

18 years ago and still very relevant. How environmentalists must detest the truth-exposing passage of time.

Jan 19, 2015 at 7:05 PM | Unregistered Commentercheshirered

Time has always been the Alarmists Achilles Heel.

Jan 19, 2015 at 9:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterDoug UK

Why is climatology the only branch of science where the majority of participants refuse to accept that an important assumption, (positive feedback, due to water vapour, in this case) might be wrong? Unverified parameters (fudge factors) are often important to make a theory fit empirical results. But in AGW theory the assumption has failed miserably to predict global, mean surface temperatures, so why in Heaven's name is it not doubted?

Jan 19, 2015 at 10:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterPeter Stroud

Redborn:

Ridley was doing splendidly up to the section you quote, but , for all his lip service to moderation,shortly thereafter he takes a turn away from rigor to embrace, no surprise, the decidedly polemic line-up of those who agree with him as to a policy trajectory as extreme as that of the practitioners of existential threat inflation that he denounces.

As surely as they err in insisting on worst-case assumptions, along with their opposite numbers who place arbitrary bounds on feddback, Matt is wrong to assume that the odds favor the middle of the road, for the precise reason thatt we cannot at this juncture readily distinguish signal and noise in the record of recent climate change- not knowing what the climate sesitivity is frustrates all parties to the policy debate -- as surely as nobody knows whether Matt is wrong, he cannot know if he is right-- the climate wars are deeply enveloped in a Bayesian fog only more data and better models can lift.

Jan 20, 2015 at 12:49 AM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

Judy Curry's got a nice new thread on attribution and sensitivity. Yes, lack of knowledge of sensitivity frustrates everyone.

It's nice to remember though that the higher the sensitivity, the colder we would now be without man's effort. We better hope sensitivity is low, because it means we've bounced naturally out of the lows of the Holocene. If we've done the heavy lifting here, well, we can't keep it up forever.
==============

Jan 20, 2015 at 2:46 AM | Unregistered Commenterkim

i wrote a long article for Wired in 2012 that ran through the failed predictions of apocalypse:

http://rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not.aspx

Jan 20, 2015 at 6:12 AM | Unregistered CommenterMatt Ridley

@Russell: before you model further, get the physics right.

Jan 20, 2015 at 7:08 AM | Unregistered CommenterNCC 1701E

"This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary"

Someone please explain to Matt the difference between a sceptic and a denier.

Jan 20, 2015 at 9:10 AM | Unregistered CommenterTuppence

The whole thing is now available at Ridley's blog.

The latter section (not visible on the GWPF site) discusses the 'settled science' claim, says that his best guess would be warming of about 1C this century, and echoes Andrew's concerns (previous post) about the damaging effects of policy. He also talks about how climate scientists failed to answer questions and resorted to appeals to authority.
Then there's a section on the bizarre personal attacks, where Bob Ward and Lord Deben get a special mention.

Jan 20, 2015 at 9:28 AM | Registered CommenterPaul Matthews

Just read Matt's full article.

I am gobsmacked about the story about his PhD thesis. For those who have not read it, the fact that his supervisor picked up a couple of errors in it, pre-submission, (which is a supervisor's job) was used 30 years later to attack him as not knowing what he is talking about.

This is pettiness taken to the Theatre of the Absurd.

But it does highlight how this topic has poisoned human relations in the name of ideology, rather like relatives and friends turning on each other under totalitarian regimes.

Jan 20, 2015 at 11:17 AM | Registered Commenterjohanna

the climate wars are deeply enveloped in a Bayesian fog only more data and better models can lift.
Jan 20, 2015 at 12:49 AM Russell


Better models? Than what?

It has often been pointed out that unvalidated models, if you believe what they tell you, are worse than having no model at all. Climate science (so-called) claims that the ability of the models to reproduce some of the training data validates them. "Testing on the training data" has been recognised as a fallacy since the early days of computer modelling.

Jan 20, 2015 at 12:42 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Mat Ridley is a wishy-washy alarmist. ie., he still believes in the GHE whichj is the mainstay of alarmism.

The GHE is IMPOSSIBLE because it violates the laws of thermodynamics and Planck's laws.

Jan 20, 2015 at 12:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterJohn Marshall

John Marshall, it doesn't matter in practical terms, except in the minds of fanatics. I can't help wondering if you are one of them?

Jan 20, 2015 at 1:02 PM | Registered Commenterjohanna

John Marshall - the Bish has often asked for no discussion of radiation physics here.

Johanna 11:17. I too was gobsmacked about the PhD story. But it's worse than what you said. It was (according to what Matt Ridley said) not his supervisor but his own PhD examiner who spread the stories that his thesis contained an error in calculations.

As a PhD examiner myself, I have always understood what goes on between candidate and examiner to be confidential. And most certainly not to be passed on to third parties decades later. Amazing.

Jan 20, 2015 at 1:06 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Didn't we have an "issue" with Krebs just a few days ago?
He was having a go at Owen Paterson and being needlessly offensive in the process. A pattern emerges!

Jan 20, 2015 at 1:38 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

Martin, thanks for the correction. The details of PhD examinations in different places are unknown to most of us.

But as I understand it, his examiner or supervisor of 30 years ago revived issues about his thesis 30 years later.

Ridley has admitted that his supervisor (doing his job) picked up a couple of errors.

What this has to do with anything subsequently is open to conjecture.

Unlike his opponents, Ridley is prepared to admit that sometime, somewhere, he has made a mistake.

Jan 20, 2015 at 2:39 PM | Registered Commenterjohanna

The fact that so many Alarmists now simply try and denigrate the person rather than the argument is a sure sign that they know they are losing. It is also of course a clear sign that many Alarmists care far more about the "solutions" than the science, and that their Alarmism is driven by their politics.

Jan 20, 2015 at 3:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterTim Hammond

My understanding is that, at Oxford, a DPhil viva is a Public Examination. (Now, AIUI, you have to have an Oxford MA to sit in on one- but the principle is there). Thus no impropriety to talk about it later, just pettiness as has been observed.

Jan 20, 2015 at 3:56 PM | Unregistered CommenterSkeptical Chymist

It is a shame that Viscount Ridley adheres to the AGW meme, despite his scepticism. Perhaps he, too, is afflicted with human vanity: something grand is happening (let’s skip the “Is it?” part of the argument), so it must have been caused by humans. While humanity might have some influence upon the climates, particularly locally, I doubt that the influence is such that it would have any global register on any monitoring equipment that we have deployed.

But then, I could be wrong.

However, I would agree with all others here: when you are attacking the man, not his argument, then you are, in effect, admitting that you have lost the argument. Lord Dreben, Bub Ward, et al – you have lost. Oh, would that we could take them off the public pay-roll!

Jan 20, 2015 at 4:19 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Matt Ridley should take up Lord Krebs' conduct with the Speaker of House of Lords; that must surely be misfeasance.

Jan 20, 2015 at 4:34 PM | Unregistered CommenterGladiatrix

Tuppence


"This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary"
Someone please explain to Matt the difference between a sceptic and a denier.

I'm a sceptic. I am willing to accept that all the warming could be natural. Not that it is, just that it could be.
In my opinion, we can't possibly tell as we have no idea of the magnitude of the natural warming and cooling changes.

Jan 20, 2015 at 4:49 PM | Unregistered CommenterMCourtney

MCourtney - and that illustrates the point. There are only two camps in the Believers' Manichean world, you are either wiv us or against us. Nuances (which characterise real science or debate on other issues) are not allowed.

Jan 21, 2015 at 3:15 AM | Registered Commenterjohanna

In times like these, you know what God does to moderates:

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

From the pulpit in the Cathedral, Savonarola would rain this threat upon the good burgers of Florence for their reticence to pile vanities upon his bonfires.

Jan 21, 2015 at 5:18 AM | Unregistered CommenterBernieL


Better models? Than what?

It has often been pointed out that unvalidated models, if you believe what they tell you, are worse than having no model at all. Climate science (so-called) claims that the ability of the models to reproduce some of the training data validates them. "Testing on the training data" has been recognised as a fallacy since the early days of computer modelling.

Jan 20, 2015 at 12:42 PM | Martin A

From what I understand the climatic system of this planet is not completely regular in the matter of cause and effect. That it has within it many thousands - if not millions - of interdependent closely coupled processes with many feedback paths, with many of them nonlinear, and many also chaotic in nature.

From what I understand the climate model have chaotic simulation within the fluid mechanics parts of its algorithm, and maybe in other places. This however does not mean that the models can in any way simulate the real climate, as all the starting condition of our climate are unknown and unknowable. That said it just means that they could show a useful range of possibilities. This product from the model would be very useful if it were not nobbled by excessive forcing(feedback effects) of atmospheric CO2.
IMO this CO2 aberration alone makes these models and their products virtually worthless in showing the possiblities of the real world, or progress in the climate science field.
So model can be useful but only if they are programmed based on reality and fed the data correctly, even if this were so however they will not correctly simulate our chaotic climate's reality.

Jan 21, 2015 at 6:27 AM | Unregistered Commentertom0mason

#johanna
Sorry but the truth is important. If the alarmists think we accept the orriginal premis, the GHE, then they will never stop the rubbish claims. The whole basis of the alarm is false so it must be exposed as false.

No I am not a fanatic but the truth is important in science.

Jan 21, 2015 at 11:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterJohn Marshall

Can I be pedantic Mr Ridley. You forgot to mention AIDS. If the dire predictions in the 80's had come true we should all be dead by now.
I must admit it was looking back at all these failed predictions of apocalypse, including of course a new ice age that made me into a sceptic.

Jan 21, 2015 at 1:17 PM | Unregistered CommenterStu

Amusing how you hold the views of this guy as gospel. He was hopeless in his main role as non exec at Northern Rock (IOU taxman @ over 40bn USD) where quite simple risks were missed entirely and now wants to be taken seriously as a climate scientist. All he has are convenient connections that allow him to peddle his ignorant wares.

The following article helped save me some time in writing up my contempt for this guy.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jan/21/matt-ridley-wants-to-gamble-earths-future-because-wont-learn-from-past

One curiosity - I don't recall in all my years of reading around this subject as having noticed Matt Ridley being in the warmist camp and actually believeing and understanding the science. Would be interested if you guys could provide evidence.

Jan 21, 2015 at 3:39 PM | Unregistered CommenterWhack a Mole

Please share with us when and where Matt Ridley claimed to be a "climate scientist."

Jan 21, 2015 at 3:51 PM | Registered Commenterjohanna

Pedantic johanna. Maybe you can do better than that..

Jan 21, 2015 at 3:54 PM | Unregistered CommenterWhack a Mole

Whack a Mole: you are having a laugh, right? You say that Viscount Ridley is wanting to be taken as a “climate scientist” – I am not sure that he is making that claim; he strikes me as using his position to try and counter the outrageous claims of many climate scientists academics as they attempt to influence government policy. Then, you refer us to a Grauniad article as if it was an article of truth, not faith (a few points: climate models accurately predicting? – erm, no; temperatures rising faster? – not rising at all; sea levels rising faster? – any rise claimed is highly questionable), with sub-links to Skeptical(not)Science (surely, the Office of Fair Trading must have something to say about that title!).

Why ask us for evidence of Viscount Ridley’s past beliefs; why not ask the man himself? As you give the impression that you would not believe any evidence that we were to provide for you, anyway, why not get drastic – do your own research!

My own personal grievance against him is that he still clings to the broken meme of greenhouse effect, a theory that is now so riddled with holes it would be useless as a tennis racket.

Jan 21, 2015 at 4:10 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Yup, those damned pedants who ask for evidence for rhetorical statements.

Next thing you know, they'll be demanding proof via the scientific method! Outrageous!

AFAIK, Ridley has never claimed to be a climate scientist, whatever that means these days.

If you are implying that only the self-appointed Inner Circle should have any say about public policy, you are on the wrong website.

Jan 21, 2015 at 4:46 PM | Registered Commenterjohanna

Whack-a-mole you are guilty of Phil Jones's time travel trick, the one where he uses a flood of FOI requests that haven't yet been made as a pretext for refusing them. Ridley was an excellent science writer before his ill-fated time at Northern Rock, so it is a lazy smear to suggest that he has moved from that failure to a new field.
Two other things: first, the 97% consensus is neither climate science nor any other kind of science; it purports to be a literature review but it has been shot full of holes many times, and the sum of $40 billion was the amount at the time; the debt is now about $28 billion and is falling fast, with managers confident that they will be able to repay it in full. Assign they are wrong and we only get 80% of it back, your number is wrong by a factor of 7. To put this in context, renewables subsidies in one month alone, April 2014, were £16.6 billion ($25b) http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKKBN0F12ZR20140626?irpc=932

Jan 21, 2015 at 5:39 PM | Unregistered CommenterDavid S

How many other Ridleys caved in ? for an easy life
- EXCellent piece, but did you see what Matt had to endure and still stay sane ?
- If there were 20 Ridleys at the beginning ..probably mosts of them took the easy of option on just pretending to give in.
- In today's "solid wall of warmists" how many are like those Ridley's just playing along for an easy life ?

Jan 22, 2015 at 12:31 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

RR - excellent suggestion! I must admit I hadn't noticed that MR lurked these boards (assuming no one else uses that moniker) when penning the last mail. So here goes...

Dear Matt - seems your fan-base here is asking you to do the legwork. I'd be happy to receive links to any articles that you may have penned that evidences your previous more "warmist" position. As far as I see at the moment you are taking a hedging position with regards to AGW that still conveniently asks for very little to be done.

As I said I don't recall you being in the vanguard back then of trying to push forward the science nor opinion on it. Would be utterly happy to be proved wrong....(honestly).

Jan 23, 2015 at 12:13 PM | Unregistered CommenterWhack a Mole

Well I gave it a week before checking back in and as I'd feared. Nothing.

I can only surmise that the article written by Matt for the GWPF denial site was the usual hand waving economical with the truth exercise.

Jan 29, 2015 at 2:26 PM | Unregistered CommenterWhack a Mole

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