EconTalk: Matt Ridly on Climate Change Consensus

In a fairly recent EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts, Matt Ridley discusses the consensus about climate change:

"if it's true that 97% of scientists are all of a particular view about climate, then let's go and ask what that view is. And if you go and look at the origin of that figure, it was that a certain poll--of 79 scientists, by the way, an extraordinarily small sample--said that, 97% of them agreed that human beings had influenced climate and that carbon dioxide was greenhouse gas....it's not referring to a consensus about dangerous climate change. It's referring to a consensus about humans' ability to affect the climate."

This is similar to what I wrote before back in 2008  after actually reading the IPCC 4th Assessment report. And more recently I have commented on how difficult it may be to solve the knowledge problem and actually attempt to price carbon (for which there is no consensus), and given this consensus view, from a policy perspective, the science just might not support doing anything drastic to try to stop climate change (i.e. carbon taxes, CAFE standards, other regulations).

So I continue to think that you don't  necessarily have to be a climate change skeptic or 'denier' to be a denier on climate policy (or at least push back a little)