No thank you, Matt Ridley

It just goes to show that even atheists, members of the BHA etc, can be as deluded and as irrational as the most god fearing Christian.

Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist, gave a lecture at the RSA, that likes to describe its self as offering 'Ideas and actions for a 21st century enlightenment'.

 

It was fawningly reported in full on WTFUWT.

Don't get me wrong I thought he started of rather well and even when he suggest scepticism on climate science he had a point but then he goes to quote the sources that  'utterly debunked' the Hockey Stick graph and you realise that he might as well believe that crop circles are not man made either.

Every historical temperature reconstruction is a 'hockey stick'. Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick to my knowledge have never published any research in a credible publication debunking any such thing, while peer reviewed science supports its general conclusions.

Steve McIntyre isn't a climatologist but a mathematician with possible conflicts of interest having had a career working in the mining industry.

Ross McKitrick is an economist and a member of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a conservative Christian public policy group that promotes a free-market approach to care for the environment.

Then we get praise for Andrew Montford’s book, again not peer reviewed science. Monford is an accountant and just happens to have gave positive reviews of Ridley's own book.

I had to stop reading there, but if this is the standard of evidence Ridley thinks is credible enough to change his beliefs despite the scientific evidence he has embraced pseudo-science with obsessive irony.