Climate change could be real but do less harm than climate policy

See Global lukewarming need not be catastrophic by Matt Ridley. Excerpts:

"Yet read between the lines of yesterday’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and you see that even its authors are tiptoeing towards the moderate middle. They now admit there has been at least a 15-year standstill in temperatures, which they did not predict and cannot explain, something sceptics were denounced for claiming only two years ago. They concede, through gritted teeth, that over three decades, warming has been much slower than predicted. They have lowered their estimate of “transient” climate sensitivity, which tells you roughly how much the temperature will rise towards the end of this century, to 1-2.5C, up to a half of which has already happened.

They concede that sea level is rising at about one foot a century and showing no sign of acceleration. They admit there has been no measurable change in the frequency or severity of droughts, floods and storms. They are no longer predicting millions of climate refugees in the near future. They have had to give up on malaria getting worse, Antarctic ice caps collapsing, or a big methane burp from the Arctic (Lord Stern, who still talks about refugees, methane and ice caps, has obviously not got the memo). Talk of tipping points is gone.

They have come to some of this rather late in the day. Had they been prepared to listen to lukewarmers and sceptics such as Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Pat Michaels, Judith Curry and others, then they would not have had to scramble around at the last minute for ad-hoc explanations. These issues have been discussed ad nauseam by lukewarmers."

"We’ve warmed the world and will probably warm it some more. Carbon dioxide alone can’t cause catastrophe. For that you need threefold amplification by extra water vapour — which is not happening."

"Of course, the IPCC’s conversion to lukewarming is not the way it will be spun, lest it derail the gravy train that keeps so many activists in well-paid jobs, scientists in amply funded labs and renewable investors in subsidised profits. After all, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, confidently asserted in 2009 that “when the IPCC’s fifth assessment comes out in 2013 or 2014, there will be a major revival of interest in action that has to be taken.” He said this before the people who would write the report had been selected, before any meetings had happened and before the research on which it was based had even been published."

"if the climate resumes warming at the rate the IPCC expects, it may do more good than harm for at least 70 years: longer growing seasons, fewer droughts, fewer excess winter deaths (which greatly exceed summer deaths even in warm countries) and a general greening of the planet."

"Satellites show that in the period 1982-2011, 31 per cent of Earth’s vegetated area became more green, 3 per cent more brown. The main reason: carbon dioxide.

Leave the last word to Professor Judith Curry, of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who used to be alarmed and no longer is. Her message to the IPCC this week was: “Once you sort out the uncertainty in climate sensitivity estimates and fix your climate models, let us know .. .. . And let us know if you come up with any solutions to this ‘problem’ that aren’t worse than the potential problem itself.”"