When being half right is worse than being completely wrong

I remember years ago that I once posted a link at Catallaxy, in response to the increasingly foolish Rafe Champion, showing from part of one of the IPCC reports that it had always been acknowledged that there would be benefits to some parts of the globe from global warming, at least up to a point.   I think he pretty much ignored it.

It has thus long been a furphy from climate change fake skeptics that scientific and economic research into climate change has always ignored benefits.  The latest dimwit to grab that ball and run with it is Tony Abbott - to no one's surprise.   People knew he was lying opportunistically about believing in climate change when he was PM; the net effect of his speech is just further confirmation. 

However, there is a sense in which you can say Abbott is half right.    Journalists and others who are completely dismissive of global warming potentially having net benefits (at least, up to a certain level of warming) are wrong. 

But - he and the others in the cultural warrior/go for growth set make a much bigger mistake - they act as if either:

a. global warming will magically stop before the net detriments start to clearly outweigh the net benefits (ignoring, for the moment, the difficulty of accurately working that out equation with any precision - given that, for example, thousands of people with flooded homes in one part of the world may not feel all that cheered by the fact that some Russian farmers had a better crop of beetroot because of global warming); or

b. that stopping emissions and stopping further warming can done in an instant - when it clearly cannot.

Hence, the "catastrophists" may be making a misinterpretation of the what climate scientists and economists have said, but even so, it is not one that makes a change to sensible policy for the future benefit of the world.

Tony Abbott, Matt Ridley and all of their set of disingenuous twits, on the other hand, do want to set the world on the path of climate change destruction based on their mistakes and flim flam.

Their mistake is much, much more serious.