A new book written by University of Konstanz Professor Gerd Ganteför is now being released by science publisher Wiley VCH: Klima – der Weltuntergang findet nicht statt (Climate – The End of the World Called Off).
Although Ganteför is a warmist, he dismisses the notion that a climate catastrophe is coming, and even adds that warming will bring advantages. This sort of optimism has sparked an angry response from the forces of German doom and gloom. The following clip is an interview of Professor Ganteför (in German).
At the start of the clip the interviewer asks Ganteför (right), with amazement: “The climate catastrophe is everywhere in the media, it really isn’t going to take place?” Ganteför responds:
Yeah, I’m really sorry about that, but the end of the world is not going to take place. Indeed we are going to have a warming, there’s going to be drought, there are going to be heavy rains, there’s going to be sea level rise, but these floods will be within the normal range of variation. Normal when you look at what happened over the last 2000 years. At the North Sea coast there have been large floods every 20 years, and it is not going to get any worse or better than what humans have experienced before.”
This kind of optimism and realism of course contrasts starkly with the dark images of catastrophe that get delivered by the crystal balls of AGW fortune tellers. For example, Ganteför’s realism has infuriated the catastrophe-obsessed cultists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, PIK, who have since blasted Prof. Ganteför’s book, see Stefan Rahmstorf’s web blog of doom and pessimism Klimalounge.
Klimalounge wasted no time and spared few words in deriding Ganteför’s book, credentials and optimism, saying that he’s not a climate scientist and that any respectable publisher would have refused publishing such a work. Ganteför is just the latest enemy on the PIK’s ever growing blacklist.
Ganteför does not dispute that CO2 is causing warming, but adds:
This warming is neither worse nor better than the warming we’ve had in the past. There has always been climate change in the past. Two hundred years ago there was the Little Ice Age. This caused a lot of hardship for the people back then – with widespread hunger, bad harvests and so on. Back then we had a natural climate change that was negative. Now we are causing a positive climate change. If we didn’t do that, then it would probably get cooler, as we are scheduled for an ice age.”
I’m not sure about CO2 preventing an ice age, but I do get a kick out of the PIK when they claim we’re headed for the opposite kind of catastrophe. Both of these views are wild.
The book is also featured at: Readers Edition, which writes on how the book looks at three main topics:
Topic I: For environmental protection, the standard of living in undeveloped countries has to be improved. To achieve this, modern coal and nuclear power plants are necessary.
Topic II: The consequences of climate warming are not catastrophic, and even bring some benefits.
TpoicIII: The following should be supported to have climate protection: low-emission coal plants, modern nuclear power, wind energy, geo-thermal and nuclear fusion. Subsidies for bio-fuels, wood pellets and solar energy cause more bad than good.
Ganteför’s book is the latest in the starting and growing trend of seeing global warming as positive. Late last year, German news magazine FOCUS had a special called:
Global Warming Is Good For Us,
which concludes warming has many positive benefits. Then a short time ago a German YouTube video parody featuring Jürgen Klimann appeared – asking where’s the climate change? And says warmth would be a welcome alternative to Germany’s otherwise gray, dreary and cool weather.
So maybe a little sanity and optimism is returning to Germany.
Gore blasted too
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/17/regarding-thermodynamics-and-heat-transfer-why-al-gore’s-comments-to-bill-o’reilly-at-fox-news-are-wrong/
If you can’t beat them, join them eh.
Go no further make a nice read too.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/02/go-no-further.html
Chickens coming home to roast:
Why do I call them ECO NAZI’s because they are ECO NAZI’s
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100076404/why-do-i-call-them-eco-nazis-because-they-are-eco-nazis/
And from Joe Bastardi’s blog comes this link:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/02/the-natural-major-ocean-climate-patterns-are-not-impacted-by-co2-emissions-eu-researchers-discover.html
Speaking of the ‘greenhouse effect’, I was excoriated by Dana in another thread after suggesting the tropical ‘hot spot’ and ‘stratospheric cooling’ were key components of AGW “theory”.
Having followed this subject since the late 80’s and buying into AGW for many years, those two metrics were most definitely touted as main tenets of greenhouse theory. In fact, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, I looked up Dr. James Hansen’s 1988 Congressional testimony and sure enough he stated with the greenhouse effect it is expected “the stratosphere to cool and troposphere to warm”.
There are many other references by AGW scientists making the same claims and are embedded as key components in climate model coding, now known to be epic failures despite efforts by the Team to prevent publication of MM 10.
Note that the “hot spot over the tropics regions” near the Tropopause is expected as a result of water vapor feedback – the “enhanced” greenhouse effect.
If evidence of AGW is to be seen at all, it will be seen between Tropical latitudes because solar insolation is pretty much constant there year round and atmospheric convection patterns are stable.
It hasn’t been observed.
Indeed the stratosphere has to cool in response to tropospheric warming from CO2. Among other things, CO2 in the stratosphere enhances radiation to space.
For making the observation that the atmosphere conducts heat, and that a cooling stratosphere cannot be related to a warming troposphere within the time governed by rate of CO2 troposphere warming if conduction heat transfer rates increase because temperature differences increase,
– Ralf Tscheuschner is called a “crank” and “fringe.”
Yet greenie world continues to promote Hansen to sainthood and relegate Tscheuschner to a joke (and that’s the most “polite” of the characterizations of him.)
To this day I have no idea why. Ask Hansen why he thinks AGW temperatures will continue to “spiral” and you will get an incomprehensible answer, loaded with contradiction and backed up with forcible arrogance.
Tscheushner’s argument requires no such incomprehensible justification, only a legitimate refutation, which has not been forth coming.
This might go on for ever. AGW seems to be completely immunized against falsification. Sometimes a scientist escapes, still a bit infected by the idea that CO2 does something, but OK. Public money keeps it alive like blood does with cancer. Perhaps defunding is the best therapy. We should ask Rob and Dana who know from practice what it is to be there.
Speaking of dana, perhaps someone ought to tell him that his ban has expired and that he can come back and comment again.
Dana said he will not be back.
You think he’ll keep his word? He’s a catastrophic warmist.
While here in Britain this story got a lot of coverage yesterday
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110216/full/470316a.html
” The research directly links rising greenhouse-gas levels with the growing intensity of rain and snow in the Northern Hemisphere, and the increased risk of flooding in the United Kingdom.”
And on this programme today
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yjs49
“Could severe flooding in the UK in 2000 have been caused by climate change? Quentin finds about the latest research which suggests that greenhouse gases, produced by humans, are to blame. ”
The computer said so.
What would have been really good would be if they had managed to predict that the UK 2010 rainfall would be 800mm versus the 1200mm of 2000 and explained why.
Now that might just have gained my attention.
Now, I wonder, UK rainfall 33% down in a decade, how long before somebody attributes it to….
UK Floods in 2000 caused by Millennium bug
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=310&c=5
” I have just completed a 10 year research programme into the causes of the UK floods in Autumn 2000 and conclusively demonstrate (Ref 1) their risk was very likely (a 2 in 3 chance) exacerbated by the millennium bug. The correlation between the floods and the exponential growth of the bug which started in January 2000, a full 9 months previously is widely accepted and fully piers reviewed. The other reason why we can be so confident is that we know of no other reason, or to be more precise there are allegedly plenty of other reasons but we don’t want to know them because our bug research grant needs renewal and it was hard enough to spin this one out for ten years.”
Here’s another article in German about Ganteför’s book; pointing out that he argues similar to Lomborg: By improving conditions for the 3rd world, you lift populations out of poverty, leading to a drop in population growth and so to less strain on the environment.
http://www.mz-web.de/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=ksta/page&atype=ksArtikel&aid=1297405353188
“Statistics showed that the critical (GDP) threshold for overpopulation growth was consistent with a gross domestic product of approximately 1,000 US Dollars.
Below that threshold women would not have opportunities for education and no possibilities for family planning. ”
And the World Bank continues to refuse grant loans for 3rd world nations to build their own coal fired power plants. Criminal, I say.
Richard Black says the UN would just love to continue its attack on the West via AGW, but unfortunately doesn’t have enough bureaucrats.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2011/01/reports_that_un_secretary-gene.html
“With only a certain number of expert staff and resources to call on, some important people in Mr Ban’s office will now be spending much more of their time looking to Rio, and correspondingly less to Durban – that’s all. […]”Climate change is showing us that the old model is more than obsolete. It has rendered it extremely dangerous. It is a recipe for natural disaster. It is a global suicide attack.”
”
Defunding them would make the world a better place.
I should add that the last words are a quote from Ban Ki-Moon himself. Even the IPCC, the UN department for AGW, doesn’t go as far, so either he has not understood the policy for summary makers or he is a far worse alarmist than even R.K. Pachauri. Expect no mercy. There will be no prisoners.
“…says warmth would be a welcome alternative to Germany’s otherwise gray, dreary and cool weather.”
Yeah, add Scotland to that list as well.
Good news, common sense rules again!
http://www.atinstitute.org/blog_post/show/87
Good news! Sanity at last.
“Another German Professor Rejects Climate Catastrophism”
Do they have problems like this,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8330836/Johnny-Ball-abused-by-environmentalists-over-climate-change-denial.html
“Johnny Ball ‘abused by environmentalists’ over climate change denial”
The late Ernst-Georg Beck once complained about arson threats. He was a biology teacher and outspoken about his AGW-skepticism so that might have angered some righteous green parents. His website:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/
From Joe Bastardi
FRIDAY NOON
AN EXCERPT FROM MY PAY-FOR SITE:
Note GFS global temps over the next eight days are forecast to be -.3C and if that is the case, the fall for February will have us near .1C BELOW NORMAL for the month. The astounding La nina response temperature drop continues. Let’s remember who was saying what last year at this time when I had put out that forecast for the La Nina to come on and the corresponding drop that would follow off an El Nino spike. The idea of constant El Ninos, a mainstay in the AGW argument, will be left on the ash heap of history as the cold PDO favors La Ninas, and you have to be blind not to see what a cooling Pacific will do. Lord help us when the Atlantic shifts into its cold stage… a colder climate is a lot tougher to deal with than warmer.
By the way, another wonderful Dr. Ryan Maue product for you to keep track of all this:
http://bit.ly/glHKj7
No, he is not my nephew, he is just a darn good young meteorologist with a PhD from FSU, and to show how objective I am about him, his undergrad degree is from Michigan… the dreaded rivals of PSU.
Ciao for now. ****
I just read that 10 minutes ago at Joe’s site. I’ve decide to add Dr Maue to my side bar.