from National Review, Matt Ridley: Climate Change’s Rational Optimist
“This is a huge global phenomenon, which is bringing enormous financial benefits to agriculture,” Ridley told me. “That means we have a genuine benefit to carbon dioxide that surely must be taken into account if you are calculating the social cost of carbon. Given that we are not seeing any clear impact on droughts, floods, or storms, it is very hard to argue that there have been net negatives to carbon from climate change so far. In fact, there have clearly been net benefits.” Grain production worldwide hit an all-time high in 2016, with global cereal production 5.5 million tons higher than the peak year of 2014, according to the United Nations.
Climate scientists, environmentalists, and politicians here and abroad could use a healthy dose of that kind of rational optimism. Instead, they will no doubt continue their scare tactics, push their unattainable and punitive zero-emissions goal, and bully any “denier” who doesn’t capitulate to their political agenda.
HKO
Somewhere between deniers and rapidly impending doom is probably a reasonable “lukewarming” reality. Most of the models have predicted far more warming than we have witnessed, but that does not mean that AGW in nonexistent.
What bothers me most is the illiberal intellectual McCarthyism in the debate that demonizes any and all legitimate scientifically rational skepticism in a way that resembles religious fanaticism.
I Recommend Matt Ridley’s blog- The RATIONAL Optimist and his book by the same name. Also The Evolution of Everything.
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