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UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol bolts warmist narrative: Calls Gore’s claims ‘complete madness’

Via: http://cliscep.com/2016/01/06/interviews-with-richard-tol/

There’s an interesting blog based in Belgium called Trust, yet verify. If you’re not familiar with it, do take a look, there are plenty of good posts there. The blogger, Michel, describes in a series of posts starting here how he started out as a devout believer in what we were being told about the climate crisis, then started to look into it in more detail, asked questions, was not satisfied by the answers and the tone in which they were delivered, and gradually became more sceptical – a very familiar story.

Tol is one of the most highly cited researchers in the field and an IPCC author, writing for WG2 about economic impacts.

The world is in uproar about the climate, but you claim that climate change is not a problem?

Tol: “There is no reason to believe that climate change is so terrible at the moment. Unless you raise funds for Greenpeace or are a politician who presents themself as the savior of mankind: then you gain by exaggerating things. The reality is that the climate hardly affects our wellbeing and our prosperity. There are happy and rich people living in boiling hot Singapore, but also in freezing cold Canada. There are unhappy and poor people in boiling hot Kenya but also stone cold Mongolia. Climate change is not the main environmental problem. Dirty air causes currently roughly four million deaths each year.”

Are you concerned that the future of your children is at risk due to climate change?

Tol: “Not for a moment. It disturbs me hearing people like Al Gore say that he is worried about the future of his grandchildren. Complete madness. The best estimate is that sea level will rise half a meter this century. That is from the ground to our knees. The Netherlands has the money and the knowledge to do something about it. It is the poorest who are affected by climate change. It is the grandchildren of the people in a country like Bangladesh who are at risk from rising sea levels. But why are we suddenly concerned about the grandchildren of people that we care little about? Poverty is a bigger problem than climate change. Do you help the poor by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or by fighting poverty? An important question for which no one has a clear answer yet.”

There is also a follow-up post on a short response in the same newspaper in which an environmental activist attacks Tol, falsely claiming that he thinks only money matters and that his views contradict common sense.


Another much longer interview with Tol was carried out by BBC correspondent Roger Harrabin for his pre-Paris series on Radio 4. The full transcript is available at Carbon Brief.  This interview also illustrates the bias and prejudice of Harrabin:  he illustrates my point about painting, by noting that Tol is on the advisory panel ofGWPF, but incorrectly describing GWPF as “a climate skeptic lobby group” (in fact they are a think tank, not a lobby group, with no official or shared view, as Harrabin could have found out if he had looked at their website).

Then there’s this question from Harrabin: “Just looking at you now and from the point of view of the listeners, you look rather different from the average climate contrarian. They tend to be suited and booted and you have long hair and beard and a t-shirt. It’s a different look.”  Again, from the point of view of activists like Harrabin, anyone who dares to question imminent disaster is a ‘contrarian’.  But “suited and booted”?  Has Harrabin met the pony-tailed Jonathan Jones? Or any members of the Cliscep team?

From this interview we learn that

  • Richard Tol used to be a member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
  • His early research was on the statistical link between greenhouse gases and climate change.
  • He set out to prove Nordhaus’s low carbon price argument wrong – but ended up proving Nordhaus right.
  • There is huge uncertainty in the impact and economic cost of carbon dioxide emissions.
  • The UK is a model for how not to implement climate policy.
  • He supports a modest carbon tax, and opposes subsidies for green energy systems.
  • Many of the more dramatic impacts of climate change are really symptoms of mismanagement and poverty.

There’s also quite a bit about his withdrawal from the IPCC Summary team, on the grounds of their excessive alarmism, and his view on the benefits of warming, and much more.

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Related Links:

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Mocks UN Climate Treaty Process As ‘Futile Effort’ Where Countries ‘Pretend To Reduce Emissions’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Rips 97% consensus claim: ‘The 97% is essentially pulled from thin air, it is not based on any credible research whatsoever’

‘It’s All Wrong’: UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol slams media for false claims about alleged 97% consensus

NYT: John Kerry ‘hopes to use his position as secretary of state to achieve a legacy on global warming that has long eluded him’

Global warming causes polygamy?! Dr. Richard Tol mocks: ‘Men marry multiple wives to beat drought’ – ‘Cue claims that climate change will turn us all into bigamists’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Corrects Obama: The 97‰ ‘consensus’ is a ‘bogus number’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Debunks ‘97% Consensus’ Claim – Tol says. ‘[The IPCC’s] reputation of competence was shredded by the climate community’s celebration of the flawed works of Michael Mann’

‘If you want to believe that climate researchers are incompetent, biased and secretive, Cook’s (97%) paper is an excellent case in point.’

The paper only claims that 97 percent of the scientific literature that takes a position on climate change (most does not) supports man-made global warming hypotheses. Yet supporters have used it to claim that 97 percent of scientists support global warming theories; they do not. “In fact, about three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsements had nothing to say about the subject matter,” Tol says.

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Mocks climate hype: ‘2015: the most crucial year for decades in the climate battle as were 1992, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2009′

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Laments: ‘Politically correct climate change orthodoxy has completely destroyed our ability to think rationally about the environment’ – Tol: ‘There is no prima facie reason to assume that any given past climate was better than the prospective one.’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol: ‘There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong’

Leading German Daily Paper: Climate ‘Apocalypse Will Not Take Place’…UN IPCC’s Dr. Richard Tol: ‘97% Consensus Does Not Exist’ – Germany’s print high-profile national daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) which features climate economist Richard Tol titled: ‘The apocalypse won’t take place’ – ‘Tol is one of the most productive and most respected researchers in his field. He is (co)author of more than 250 papers in renowned journals and according to the Ideas-Repec databank, among the top 100 scientists worldwide.’

UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol: ‘The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up’

 

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