In the Guardian, Dana Nuccitelli takes on Matt Ridley, who recently penned a piece in the London Times full of the standard "zombie arguments" (lines that, although thoroughly rebutted, keep parading about). One might wonder why someone would repeat debunked claims. Well, in Ridley's case, DeSmogUK looked into it and found that not only does he have a coal mine on his family estate, but Ridley "will earn an estimated £4.1 million each year from opencast coal mines on his Blagdon Estate with income guaranteed until 2020."
Getting back to Ridley's writing, Dana shows it runs the gamut of denial—Ridley claims observed warming has been lower than it actually is; he mischaracterizes sea level rise; discounts simple science on water vapor; and basically covers all the classic tropes. Dana offers the easy answers to these claims and highlights how Ridley is advocating a high-risk strategy for climate by accepting the chance that all the scientists are wrong to avoid undertaking relatively low-risk mitigation and adaptation efforts.
With risk in mind, Dana's piece ends by recalling one of Ridley's past experiences with risk assessment. Turns out he chaired a British bank "that in 2007, was the first in over 150 years to experience a run on its deposits." Ridley's leadership guided the bank to a high-risk business strategy. Given Ridley's current insistence on the high-risk strategy for climate change, one might assume his strategy at the bank worked out well. But one would be wrong, as Ridley's risky play ended with British taxpayers having to spend $41 billion to bail the bank out.
Now Ridley's taking that same losing strategy and suggesting we use it with the world's climate. Given that he stands to make a small fortune off of fossil fuels, his anti-climate advocacy comes as no surprise.
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