This is a very strange post. You apparently think the earth cannot be greening because the messenger got a sentence wrong 20 years ago. How does that logic work? It seems to be an extreme example of the authority fallacy, where the interpretation of scientific data is wholly dependent on your subjective assessment of the previous fallibility of other commentators.

What happened here is a fine example of the flaws of the authority approach. It turns out that the chosen sentence Ridley wrote in 1993 (one of tens of thousands of sentences from this professional writer) was not wrong after all.

I presume it follows that the earth must be greening.

Did he take a massive payout after the government bailout? I don’t think so. If he did I would think less of the man but he seems the genuine article to me.

Matt Ridley very helpfully includes John Christy’s EPS update of his EPW Fig 2.1 that I hadn’t found in jpg form anywhere until now:-

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/clip_image0042.jpg

Ridley,

“First, the IPCC’s many models, only two of which looks any good at this stage. The rest have all overshot the real world by some margin. Woops.”

The blue line (one of “only two”) right between the satellite and surface-based observations is the Russian Academy of Sciences INM-CM4 model. If the latest decadal prediction from UKMO using their new HadGEM3 model were added (it was too late for CMIP5), it would track the level and trajectory of the surface-based observations and the second of the “only two” projections (black/dark green, don’t know the model).

That means only 3 (or maybe 4) models are practically useful right now; the rest are useless. I’m sure that by 2017 we’ll know if those 3 have any validity or not. My own seat-of-the-pants prediction says that by 2017 a minor downward inflexion will be evident i.e. the beginnings of a 1990s level regime. I can see no reason whatsoever for temperatures to be elevated above 2002 or 2010 levels. Ocean heat release will keep temperatures elevated for some time yes, but not boosted even by a big El Nino. That would only take the level up on a par with 2010, not above it.

Matt Ridley’s seat-of-the-pants prediction has stood up well over 20 years but to call it now is way too premature (and incorrect anyway).

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/15/matt-ridley-responds-to-tim-lamberts-war-deltoid

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/box-10-2-figure-1.html

h/t commenter Alex Harvey on BH:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/1/12/lewis-on-schmidt-on-climate-sensitivity.html

To me, Nic appears to know what he is talking about.