My Spectator cover story on the net benefits of climate change sparked a lot of interest. There was an explosion of fury from all the predictable places. Yet not one of my critics managed to disprove my central assertion, that climate change is probably causing net benefits now and is likely to continue doing so for some decades yet.
I’ve written responses to some of the critical articles and reproduce them here.
1. Duncan Geere in the New Statesman.
Four paragraphs in his piece in turn begin with ‘He’s right…’ so I am glad that Geere confirms that I am right about all my main points. If you read my article you will find that each of Geere’s assertions about the eventual harm of climate change are also in my piece. For example, I say:
‘Even if climate change does produce slightly more welfare for the next 70 years, why take the risk that it will do great harm thereafter?’
I do not ignore sea level rise: and anyway it is taken into account in all of the studies collated by Prof Tol, on whose research my piece was based.
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