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Reply to a misleading article in the Guardian

I have the following letter in the Guardian (online).

While preaching to others to be accurate, John Abraham is
himself inaccurate in his critique of me (
Global warming and business reporting – can business news
organizations achieve less than zero?
, 18 November,
theguardian.com). In correcting one mistake he made – by changing
3.6C to 3.6F – you only exacerbate the problem. Far from it being
“unbelievable” that up to 3.6F of warming will be beneficial, this
is actually the conclusion of those studies that have addressed the
issue, as confirmed in recent surveys by Professor Richard Tol. Mr
Abraham may not agree with those studies, but in that case he is
departing from the consensus and should give reasons rather than
merely stating that he finds them unbelievable. Rather than shoot
the messenger, he should invite readers to read Professor Tol’s
most recent paper. It is published in an excellent book edited by
Bjørn Lomborg entitled How Much Have Global Problems Cost the
World?

As for Andrew Dessler’s critique of my remarks about feedback by
water vapour and clouds, his actual words confirm that I am right
that these issues are still in doubt, as confirmed by the latest
report from the IPCC. Most of your readers are probably unaware of
the fact that doubling carbon dioxide in itself only produces a
modest warming effect of about 1.2C and that to get dangerous
warming requires feedbacks from water vapour, clouds and other
phenomena for which the evidence is far more doubtful. This is an
area of honest disagreement between commentators, so it is
misleading of Mr Abraham to shoot the messenger again.

Matt Ridley

By Matt Ridley | Tagged:  rational-optimist