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The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Questions About The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley

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Answered Questions (2)

Why are most of the reviewers men? It appears that very few female Goodreads members have read this book or care to review it.
Nick Alden I don't think it matters. Science is a traditionally male dominated profession. Though some women have read this book and given it good reviews.…moreI don't think it matters. Science is a traditionally male dominated profession. Though some women have read this book and given it good reviews.(less)
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Do you believe there exists legitimate skepticism of catastrophic, man made climate change? If not, why?
Ivan Vanon Saying C02 is good for plants is...shaky. A lot of weeds absolutely love it, and it makes them grow faster. It makes various food plants grow faster t…moreSaying C02 is good for plants is...shaky. A lot of weeds absolutely love it, and it makes them grow faster. It makes various food plants grow faster too, but not as fast as the weeds, and that can be a major problem. It can also cause plants to grow faster but leave them inherently weaker (German foresters have done a lot of work in this area), almost stretching the cells out with the speed of the growth. If they produce food of some sort the food tends to be less nutritious. That's a bad combination, especially since the zones that food crops grow in are likely to shift and the weather in general is likely to become more chaotic.

Bjorn Lomborg is also not ideal. Scientific American has run several articles by several scientific specialists, claiming that in The Skeptical Environmentalist Lombord misrepresented scientific evidence and scientific opinion. The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty has cited the book for fabrication of data, selective discarding of unwanted results, deliberately misleading use of statistical methods, and distorted interpretation of conclusions. If you're interested, there is a blog run by Kare Fog, a Danish biologist, that has been pointing out errors in The Skeptical Environmentalist page by page since 2004.
It's not an amazing source to use. Many media figures and politicians loved it especially after hearing years of unsettling talk from climate scientists, but scientists in general tended to be lukewarm when they weren't actively saying it was and example of a badly conducted science-shaped piece of work.

Incidentally, during the 60s and 70s there were 7 scientific studies predicting global cooling. There were 42 predicting global warming as a result of rising C02 emissions. James wasn't being dishonest at all.

I'm sure that legitimate skepticism of catastrophic, man made climate change exists, but a lot of the opposition to it seems to take the form of cynicism rather than skepticism, assuming the worst about a scientist's or a scientific group's motivations rather than the most likely conclusion. It's fine to be skeptical of science, especially when there are only a few studies - Big Tobacco funded several dozen studies saying that smoking was amazing for your lungs - but when there are several meta-studies incorporating thousands and thousands of individual studies each of which includes hundreds of pieces of data, experiments, observations, etc. are all pointing in the same general direction...well, it looks a bit cynical to say that all of those meta-studies must be wrong. (less)
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