It appears the tactics of Stefan Rahmstorf are truly beginning to catch up with him. What goes around, comes around.H/t: Lubos Motl
Der Spiegel today has a story on IPCC bigwig and ultra-alarmist Stefan Rahmstorf, who is also a lead scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and elite member of the Hockey Team. For those of you who may not recall, Rahmstorf is the outlier oceanographer that projects a sea level rise of about 1.4 meters, even when the rest the world, including real observations, all point to something that is about 1/7 of that.
It’s a bit late at night here and so the main points only. Der Spiegel starts:
Renown climate scientist and German government advisor Stefan Rahmstorf was found guilty of a blog attack against a journalist. According to the opinion of a state court, he made untruthful assertions. Also the ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’ has come under fire.”
A State Court says he’s guilty of making untruthful assertions. Interpret that how you wish. The Frankfurter Rundschau is a sort of daily that former East German comrades lean towards. On the Rahmstorf ruling by the court, we reported about it here.
To make a long story short, journalist Irene Meichsner wrote a critical report about the IPCC, which appeared in the Frankfurter Rundschau daily, to which Rahmstorf reacted quite nastily. He asserted at his blog that the journalist had been dishonest, sloppy, had never read the IPCC report, and that she even lifted text from another source (Richard North and Jonathan Leake). For a journalist, such accusations are of course career threatening and thus deadly serious.
Meichsner didn’t stand for it, took the case to court, and won.
The Original text of the Court Judgement is here.
That should have been the end of it but, according to Der Spiegel, the PIK (Rahmstorf ‘s employer) has gotten into the fray. The PIK you’ll recall is run by German masterplanner Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, who chairs the WBGU and directly advises Chancellor Angela Merkel. If you ever wondered where Merkel comes up with all these brilliant climate policy ideas, e.g. like the 2°C warming limit, then look no further.
Der Spiegel tried to contact Rahmstorf directly for comment on the Cologne State Court ruling, but received only a statement from the PIK which attempted to play down the incident. The statement was also posted at the PIK site. According to Der Spiegel the statement claimed:
‘Mistakes can happen.’ This involves ‘interpretation questions’ and ‘misunderstandings’.”
and that:
“The PIK asks his colleagues to understand that it is the duty of a scientist “to inform the public about errors”.
Der Spiegel, citing the Cologne Court Ruling”, calls the PIK published statement:
An amazing interpretation”.
The State Court ruling against Rahmstorf is a cease and desist order that requires Rahmstorf to refrain from making the false assertions about the journalist. Yet at the PIK website the statement (on behalf of Rahmstorf?) again was clearly implying there had been “errors” in Meichsner’s report when in fact there weren’t. Talk about defying a court order! According to Der Spiegel, the PIK has since revised the text at its site. Obviously it’s not the journalist Meichsner that’s sloppy and loose with the facts. The Court was very clear on that.
Der Spiegel reminds readers that this is not the first time that Rahmstorf has maliciously taken on people who do not share his opinion and speak out.
Time and again he has not only gone after journalists, but also after scientists who have openly expressed views that Rahmstorf didn’t like.”
Der Spiegel cites the Franfurter Rundschau daily as an example, who according to Der Spiegel:”played an unusual part in the affair. The editors at FR distanced themselves from Meichsers critical piece two months after they had published it” after Rahmstorf had intervened and then published a full two-page story on how “the IPCC had been the target of an awkward campaign.” In plain English, the FR went down on its knees before a group of elite scientists.
That is disturbing. Der Spiegel was unable to obtain any comment from the FR.
Hans von Storch of the Helmholtz Center in Geesthacht Germany was also once a target of Rahmstorf. According to Der Spiegel, today he keeps a copy of the original State Court Ruling up at his private website.
At his blog Rahmstorf in the meantime gripes that “in the classical media you no longer have any control over the end product.”
The ice under Rahmstorf feet is getting awfully thin, and it’s not because of global warming.
Excellent, thanks for the translation and new information I learned, Pierre! See also
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/12/stefan-rahmstorf-convicted-as-liar.html
I translated/quotes a few lines from Der Spiegel and explained in my own words the gist of what they said. To me it looks like Rahmstorf is facing tough times.
I think they’re all becoming unstuck PG, there is undoubtedly a clique of [IPCC authors] ‘learned Professors’, who are in regular contact and who have a cosy conversational friendship – which is just too [how shall we call it] a bit too friendly. Witness, reading the [climategate] email releases pt II.
All of these climate change promoters, are to be found in European/US centres based around University campuses [PIK, CRU] and are usually research faculties and government funded, mainly by EU countries [Germany and Britain] and the USA. In the US, particularly at Penn State climatology dept, NASA/GISS + NOAA and others – in Boulder NCAR et al.
It’s all a big club and they don’t take kindly to negative reportage or sceptical views [why are they so tetchy? – could it be they don’t believe their own BS?].
Which in reality is incredible really, seeing as there is little or no foundation, still less scientific proof in their wild claims [and that’s all it is – wild outrageous armageddon computer generated scenarios] – how were they allowed to dominate the media? [Now, therein lies a tale!]
Rahmstorf really doesn’t look the type, he is an academic only, his mates in Penn State and at Realclimate are a different kettle of fish – more like street thugs and vociferous proponents of the great lie [CAGW] – Rahmstorf should choose the company he keeps and be more, [much more] selective – bad people lead you into bad habits.
In Germany, Britain and the USA, if you subtract government funding from climate research – what’s left? Not a lot – we must do more lobbying to stop this rot, in doing so, cutting the funding off from these ‘climate alchemy units’.
Exposing the climate clique’s lies and bogus science is one of the ways to common sense and realist pragmatism.
Great stuff! Your blog, Gosselin, is an inspiration for all that seek the truth! The time you referred to it, about a month ago, one journalist here in Portugal was also being attacked by the Green Religion, for exposing the Environment Mafia…
The true heros here are people like Irene. We need to get this message out, so that Freedom doesn’t get compromised… I’ll refer to it, once again, later today!
Ecotretas
It would be great to get the original article from Irene Meichsner…
I think Irene was simply reporting on IPCC blunders that were already known in February 2010. She carefully checked them and wrote the IPCC. She is in no way a sceptic as far as I know and is probably even a believer of what the IPCC is supposed to be doing. My feeling is that because Germany is so isolated from the science, which for the most part is conducted in English and the average person can’t get the other side of the story, Rahmstorf probhably thought he could bottle the story up get away with his assertions against Irene.
Well he and his bigcity attorneys up in Hamburg picked the wrong person to mess with.
At least part of the original article seems to be on page 5 of this PDF: http://www.wpk.org/upload/download/quarterly/WPK-Quarterly%202011%20II.pdf
Is this correct?
Ecotretas
Der Spiegel will take future utterances by Rahmstorf and the PIK with a grain of salt, one hopes. Cracks in the scientific-journalistic front emerge…
Can someone confirm (I don’t understand German) this was the original article of Irene in the Stadt-Anzeiger (KStA) which then appeared in abbreviated form in the Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) ?
http://www.ksta.de/html/artikel/1264185820994.shtml
Ecotretas
Yes, that must be it. Great find, Ecotretas! And quite a damning text, mentioning the well known errors of the IPCC report (Glaciergate, Africagate,…) in no uncertain terms.
BUT! down below there are links to other articles by her; like this one, mentioning Pachauri’s TERI financial connections.
http://www.ksta.de/html/artikel/1264185766454.shtml
Looks like she went on a full blown investigative series. Wow! And we only learn about it now due to Rahmstorf. Thanks, Stefan! 😉
That looks like the one.
[…] Der Spiegel Slams IPCC Lead Author Rahmstorf: “Scandal Surrounds German Government Climate Advisor… […]
BBC says a 0.7centigrade rise in global temperature average turns people into murderous beasts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/11/video-alejandro-litovsky—rep.shtml
Because there’s such a strong correlation between global temperature average and violent conflict. Somebody tell the Stalingrad soldiers.
Also eating meat does that, but the Dutch Professor who published this, is unemployed now and gets a certain psychiatric treatment.
The BBC inspired me to explain to my kid the difference between correlation and causation; so in the end maybe that did some good…
This is just the first punch of round one of one of the fights to come. We need a few knock-outs. We need people fired, put in jail, publicly humiliated, and professionally broken. If that had happened a few years ago, we wouldn’t have the Eurozone problems we have now, and the global economic problems we will soon see get worse. We should have seen the early Climate Gate 1&2 emails five years ago. I just hope that all this information coming out is not too little, too late.
Please don’t forget taking the Nobel away from Gore & IPCC
[…] Providing one more example of career alarmists’ talent for presenting black as white, the Potsdam think-tank pretended it had been vindicated, saying, “The PIK asks his [Rahmstorf’s] colleagues to understand that it is the duty of a scientist “to inform the public about errors”. Der Spiegel called this “An amazing interpretation”, given that the court had ordered Rahmstorf to stop maligning the journalist. […]