Matt Ridley: Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 18, 2012 | Matt Ridley

[lbryce]

Evidence points to a further rise of just 1°C by 2100. The net effect on the planet may actually be beneficial

Forget the Doha climate jamboree that ended earlier this month. The theological discussions in Qatar of the arcana of climate treaties are irrelevant. By far the most important debate about climate change is taking place among scientists, on the issue of climate sensitivity: How much warming will a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide actually produce? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to pronounce its answer to this question in its Fifth Assessment Report next year.

The general public is not privy to the IPCC debate. But I have been speaking to somebody who understands the issues: Nic Lewis. A semiretired successful financier from Bath, England, with a strong mathematics and physics background, Mr. Lewis has made significant contributions to the subject of climate change.

He first collaborated with others to expose major statistical errors in a 2009 study of Antarctic temperatures. In 2011 he discovered that the IPCC had, by an unjustified statistical manipulation, altered the results of a key 2006 paper by Piers Forster of Reading University and Jonathan Gregory of the Met Office (the United Kingdom's national weather service), to vastly increase the small risk that the paper showed of climate sensitivity being high. Mr. Lewis also found that the IPCC had misreported the results of another study, leading to the IPCC issuing an Erratum in 2011.

[lbryce]

Given what we know now, there is almost no way that the feared large temperature rise is going to happen. Mr. Lewis comments: "Taking the IPCC scenario that assumes a doubling of CO2, plus the equivalent of another 30% rise from other greenhouse gases by 2100, we are likely to experience a further rise of no more than 1°C.

Despite Mr. Lewis authoritative conclusion that the fear of global warming is ado to nothing but a lot of hot air of which cooler heads should by now prevail, liberal hot-heads won't be putting their pet AGW conspiracy on ice anytime soon.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I sure could have used a little “global warming” today. I froze my @$$ off here in northern Arizona. Brrrrr.

[SaraJohnson]

A lot of hard core doomers are inspired by chicken little warmists and the Department of Homeland inSecurity.

These “experts” depend on keeping everyone afraid for Federal $$$$$$$$. They are the “smart” doomers who produce the fodder.