Good News! WSJ says don't worry about climate change!

[Speck Tater]

Whew! That was a close call. But fortunately, the Wall Street Journal, in their infinite wisdom, has declared that concerns over global climate change are overblown.

Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323981504578179291222227104.html

...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.

Mr. Lewis tells me that the latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find that they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written. The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest. In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced—culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago—no longer work.

More comforting propaganda at the link.

I'm so glad we can put this fear to rest at last ( )

[Downwinder]

1. What is the MSL elevation of WSJ's front door?

[intaglio]

2. Not a complete Denier,

here's an article from The Climate Denier List

[AverageJoe90]

3. WSJ's Ridley is full of crap here, I think we can all agree on that.

All the legitimate evidence that we can see says that Earth has warmed, and is still warming, and we're responsible for much of it.

[Speck Tater]

4. How can there be "global" warming when the earth is "flat"?

Those silly globe-shaped earth believers are just not to be trusted.

[Nihil]

5. "A semiretired successful financier"

Just the sort of person you can rely upon for environmental & climate critical issues.

[hatrack]

11. But he has a "strong" background in math and physics!

My CPA also has a strong math background, but it's unlikely that it makes him an authority on climatology, either.

[CRH]

6. Yeah, and what about the Arctic sea ice, ...

the droughts on five continents in the last decade, and the CO2 ocean acidification happening at accelerated rates. All this is happening while warming is at a 'standstill'? The Journal is living down to its reputation, again.

[Speck Tater]

7. Wall Street lives in a world where Nature doesn't exist.

Or at the very least, where nature is irrelevant.

[CRH]

8. It is only relevant where there is profit, ...

LP, GP, and The Pacific Lumber Company after it was taken over by junk bond funded Maxim Corp., couldn't wait to harvest every viable tree, many of which were sold to Japan. From 1980 through 1990 the north coast of California was cut right out of jobs, for instant profit.

Yeah, often the dollar makes the rules. Sad but true.

[petronius]

9. I was particularly comforted by this gem:

A cumulative change of less than 2°C by the end of this century will do no net harm. It will actually do net good—that much the IPCC scientists have already agreed upon in the last IPCC report. Rainfall will increase slightly, growing seasons will lengthen, Greenland's ice cap will melt only very slowly, and so on.

When do the big polluters receive their medals for service to humanity? These folks are the true heroes...

[NickB79]

10. That is a gem

With less than 1C of warming, we've seen the central US turn from world breadbasket to a wasteland, to the tune of $100 billion in losses.

I can't wait to see the "benefits" of 2C of warming......