I did not write for the Globe and Mail in 1993 let alone about climate!

Then he moved onto stage 3, bargaining:

global av temp (ignoring pinatubo drop) is about 0.2C above 1991 level after 22 yrs – so I was spot on so far!

As you can see, the graph he cites shows 0.5 degrees of warming since he made his prediction, so it seems that he is applying a 0.3 degree correction for Pinatubo.   Which brings us to Ridley’s next column, published in The Sunday Telegraph on 30 Jan 1994 (one month after his column with the failed prediction):

The satellites, however, tell a very different story about the 1980s (their data do not go further back). Orbiting the planet from north to south as the Earth turns beneath them, they take the temperature of the lower atmosphere using microwave sensors. By the end of 1993 the temperature was trending downwards by 0.04 of a degree per decade.

The satellite’s masters explain away this awkward fact by subtracting two volcanic eruptions (Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and El Chichon in 1982) and four El Ninos (sudden changes in the circulation of the water in the Pacific).  Since they assume that all these would have cooled the atmosphere, they conclude that the 1980s did see a gradual warming of the air by 0.09 degrees: still less than a third of that recorded by the old method.

Even with this sleight of hand (and when I was a scientist I was trained not to correct my data according my preconceptions of the result), the startling truth remains that the best measure yet taken of the atmosphere has found virtually no evidence of global warming.

So according to Matt Ridley in 1994, Matt Ridley in 2013 used a “sleight of hand”, something that he was trained not to do.   If we hold Matt Ridley to the standard he declared at the time of his prediction there has been 0.5 degrees of warming since he predicted that there would be just one degree by 2100.

But if we do want to know what the long term warming trend is, it is not a “sleight of hand” to remove the short term effects of volcanoes and El Nino/La Nina. It is, however, a sleight of hand for Ridley to just correct for Pinatubo and not El Nino/La Nina.  Here is the graph from Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) that shows what temperature records look like if the short term effects are removed:

Using Ridley’s preferred UAH data set we see that there has been 0.4 degrees of warming since he made his prediction.

Any way you slice it, there has been much more warming that Ridley predicted.  I hope this information will help him reach stage 5, acceptance.

Global warming, too, has shot its bolt, now that the scientific consensus has settled down on about a degree of temperature increase over a century-that is, little more than has taken place in the past century.

Actually, the scientific consensus at the time, as summarised by the IPCC was for an increase about three times that.  We can compare how the IPCC and Ridley’s projection fared over the next two decades:

(Graph modified from Skeptical Science)

Given how wrong his prediction was so far, Ridley reconsidered his beliefs.  Ha ha, just kidding.  Ridley still believes exactly the same thing. And being spectacularly wrong doesn’t stop a pundit from being published. Here is Ridley in the Wall Street Journal and reprinted in The Australian.

Given what we know now, there is almost no way that the feared large temperature rise is going to happen. Mr. Lewis comments: “Taking the IPCC scenario that assumes a doubling of CO2, plus the equivalent of another 30% rise from other greenhouse gases by 2100, we are likely to experience a further rise of no more than 1°C.”

It’s clear that Ridley’s approach to this issue is profoundly unscientific.  He ignores twenty years of warming and all the other evidence that has accumulated during that period.  The only evidence that counts for Ridley is that which supports his belief that warming will be trivial.

His approach also leads him to misrepresent scientific research.  For example, he cites as supportive of his belief, a paper by Michael Schlesinger, who responds that Ridley

is just plain wrong about future warming. Our research shows that global warming will exceed 2C, defined as dangerous climate change, by the middle of this century.

Ridley also confuses water vapour with clouds and is unable or unwilling to make a correction.

Update: Ridley responds.

In its direct response to Mr Newman, the ABC maintained it did “not equate climate change sceptics to pedophiles”.

So they didn’t say it was OK, but rather denied doing it.  Because they didn’t.  Here’s what Robin Williams said on the Science Show:

What if I told you that paedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma? Or that smoking crack is a normal part and a healthy one of teenage life, to be encouraged? You’d rightly find it outrageous. But there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths again and again in recent times, distorting the science.

The example of a similar statement that Williams gives is Todd Akin’s claim that rape cannot cause pregnancy.  Williams did not equate Akin with a pedophile, but rather said that Akin made an outrageously false and unscientific claim,  A statement equating a group with pedophiles would look like this:

“The wind-farm business is bloody well near a pedophile ring. They’re f . . king our families and knowingly doing so.”

Of course, that wasn’t published by the ABC, but by The Australian (search for “Wind farm scam a huge cover-up” by James Delingpole) and yesterday The Australian was forced to publish this:

Third, it has concluded that the report of the anonymous remarks concerning paedophilia, a very serious and odious crime, were highly offensive. The Council’s principles relate, of course, to whether something is acceptable journalistic practice, not whether it is unlawful. They are breached where, as in this case, the level of offensiveness is so high that it outweighs the very strong public interest in freedom of speech

As you might expect, rather than admit that the two cases were different, The Australian’s Nick Leys complained that the ABC was being held to a different standard.  As did The Australian in an editorial.  And they also published a ridiculous rant from Delingpole making the same complaint (“Where free speech is as dead as the dodo”).  Also saying the same thing was a column by Christopher Pearson (“Climate lunacy rules at Aunty”).  I imagine there will be many more over the next few weeks.

The Australian also used this as an excuse to publish more drivel from Newman (“ABC clique in control of climate”):

We have seen the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change discredited. We know the science is less robust. And, for the past 16 years, mother nature has been kind to the sceptics. Because Williams says the entire globe is threatened in a way that is pretty dire doesn’t make it so. Yet the “weight of evidence” argument is often used as a licence to vilify holders of alternative views. As a taxpayer-funded organisation, the ABC shouldn’t even have a view on global warming. What it does have is a duty to all Australians to broadcast honestly the best available evidence on both sides of the argument so that we can make up our own minds. This is not happening.

You could make up your mind as to whether Newman’s claim that there has been no global warming for 16 years by looking at the data. Here, from woodfortrees.org, is a graph showing the temperature trend from 1980 to 1996 (the green line) and global temperatures since 1980. The data shows that in the last 16 years temperatures have been mostly above the trend line.

Newman also claims:

In March 2010 as chairman, I addressed an in-house conference of 250 ABC leaders. In a speech titled “Trust is the future of the ABC”, I asked, “how might we ensure in our newsrooms we celebrate those who interrogate every truth?” I lamented the mainstream media’s role as an effective gatekeeper. It was too conformist and had missed the warning signs of financial failure. I blamed group think and used climate change as an example. My mistake was to mention climate change.

Actually, Newman’s mistake was to smear scientists, accusing them of lacking in moral and scientific integrity and basing all this on a some blog posts.

Update: The Australian refused to print a letter from the ABC correcting the record.