by A scientist whose research has been used by prominent climate science denialists Lord Matt Ridley and Rupert Murdoch to claim carbon dioxide is good for the planet has hit back at the “selective presentation” of his work.
Professor Ranga Myneni, of Boston University, has been researching satellite data showing how the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is contributing to increased plant growth across the planet.
In an article published in the Murdoch-owned The Times and reproduced in Murdoch’s The Australian, Ridley said 30 years of satellite data showed plant growth had risen by 14 per cent across the world.
I asked Lord Ridley on Twitter about the source for his satellite data and he pointed me to a 2013 presentation by Professor Myneni.
Myneni told DeSmog the presentation Lord Ridley had cited had not been peer reviewed and was “work in progress” but hoped it would appear as two scientific articles, one of which was in review at the journal Nature Climate Change.
He said his analysis of satellite data covering the last 30 years did show a 13 to 14 per cent increase in vegetation growth. He said some of this could be attributed to increased levels of carbon dioxide, but changes in the way land was management was also a factor.
Myneni, in Norway for a meeting of ecologists to discuss vegetation changes in remote regions, said “in the context of being good versus bad” he was “worried about how this work is being interpreted”.
He said Ridley’s story “suffers from selective presentation of facts” and would “not survive peer-review”.
If one were to interpret the greening of the Earth as a good or a positive development then one must also accept that the accompanying climate changes (global warming, for example) and its physical (sea level rise) and biotic impacts (polar bears) as bad or negative developments.
Again, in my opinion, this benefit of greening is not worth price of all the negative changes.
Humans are one amongst many species on Earth and we have no right conducting such experiments that affect all forms of life - it is simply indecent, deeply vulgar and inhuman (you can choose any adjective).
This is not the first time that Ridley has cited Myneni’s work. He first did so in a January 2013 column in the Wall Street Journal, prompting Murdoch himself to tell his Twitter followers that the satellite data showed the planet was “growing greener with increased carbon.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/11699
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Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley Lobbied Government on Costs of Climate Change Policies, Documents Reveal
By Brendan Montague • Monday, November 2, 2015 - 08:37
The climate denier and Tory peer whose coal mine was targeted by protesters has been quietly lobbying government, documents newly released under Freedom of Information rules confirm.
Matt Ridley, author of Rational Optimist, benefits financially from millions of tonnes of coal extracted from open-cast mines on his Blagdon Estate, just north of Newcastle.
But he does not mention this vested interest in any of the letters sent to Baroness (Sandy) Verma attacking government subsidies to renewable energy, a commercial rival to coal.
As mentioned - anyone involved in the climate wars just dismisses any nonsense from Ridley et al.
