The global warming movement really started up in the late 80s. Even back then blowhard scientists were telling us that the science was settled. And because the science was in fact not really settled and poorly understood, many fell into the trap of making downright stupid predictions.Today, 20 to 25 years later, it is good time to go back and look at how all these “settled” predictions are turning out. Most, we will find, were the sort of thing one typically hears from fortune-tellers.
One example is Hartmut Grassl, who was director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg until 2005, and a harsh critic of Die kalte Sonne book. Hat tip: Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s excellent “Die kalte Sonne” debunking site.
As we will see, instead of bringing prestige to the once renown institutes, many blowhard, the-science-is-settled fortune tellers will wind up being dark, embarrassing chapters that these once prestigious institutes will certainly be ashamed of in the future.
Maybe I’m being a bit too hard saying this. But scientists who succumb to dogma, politics, or just pure money, deserve no less. With each passing day they are beginning to appear more and more like arrogant, inflated ego scientists who thought they could win the day by claiming an authority that had obviously been misbestowed.
Working for insurer that rewards top performers with sex orgies
Today Hartmut Grassl, who was once director of the UN World Climate Program in Geneva from 1994 to 1999, is also a foundation board member of reinsurer Munich Re – a major beneficiary of the climate catastrophe scare (and promoter of sex orgies for top performers). Although Grassl’s fortune telling and predictions of doom are paying huge dividends for the insurance industry, they are turning out to be completely wrong.
Grassl predicted temperature would increase up to 2°C in 30 years.
Grassl made a stunning prediction back in 1990, Die kalte Sonne website writes here:
In 1990 Hartmut Graßl sounded the alarms with his book “Wir Klimamacher” (Us climate makers) predicting a terrible climate catastrophe. On page 61 he wrote with co-author Reiner Klingholz: ‘Already in the next 30 years the temperature of the Earth will increase, with a high probability, by one or two degrees Celsius.’
Today, 22 years later, we can check how well this prediction is doing so far. The result ought to be sobering for anyone concerned about a warming catastrophe. Well, they can all breathe a sigh a relief. Here’s what actually happened since 1990:
Temperature increase since 1990: 0.25°C.
Temperature increase over the last 10 years: ZERO!
And for Grassl’s crystal ball fortune to be correct, with eight years left to go, the global temperature would have to increase 0.75°C just to reach the lower limit of his prediction, and a whopping 1.75°C for his most pessimistic vision to come true. The chances of that happening, given the current phases of the the sun and oceans, are next to nothing. Good luck finding a climate scientist willing to bet Grassl will be right.
The question to Grassl is: What happened? Please explain it to us. Settled science you said?
To keep things in perspective, the entire climate discussion today is the nitpicking over a 0.8°C temperature rise – over the last 160 years!
“The debate is over,” Grassl said in 1994
In 1994 Grassl was so convinced of his predictions that he declared the climate debate to be over. According to Die kalte Sonne site, Grassl wrote:
From the scientific side of it, the indication process concerning the topic of the greenhouse effect is over and the guilty verdict is in. It’s no longer about gathering more evidence, but solely about alleviating the punishment. The global mean temperature will increase over the next decades by one to two degrees Celsius. Each global change in climate magnitude, also including the mean temperature, forces new weather extremes at almost every location. We will see floods here, droughts there and storms at other places like we have never seen before.“
Reference for that quote: Graßl, H.: Technik München, Mitt.-Bl. Techn.-Wiss. Vereine München, 1994; 3,4. quoted e.g. in: Heinrich Röck Klima und Politik“ 2001.
Obviously today we see that much of what Grassl was saying was pure baloney. The temperature increased only a small fraction of what he predicted, thus indicating that CO2’s predicted effect had been completely over-estimated. Moreover, weather extremes have not increased at all. Today’s weather events are well within the boundaries of natural variability, see here and here, as well as page 202-208 in Die kalte Sonne. What has radically changed is our ability to record weather events. We have satellites, radars, computers, and almost everyone today walks around with a mobile phone that can make good video clips for the evening news.
This means that Grassl in his climate equation had foolishly neglected the other fundamental climate factors, namely the sun and oceans. An astonishing accomplishment for a scientist of his rumoured caliber. If a college professor were to grade Grassl’s work behind his prediction, he would certainly have to give him an “F”.
Die kalte Sonne website writes:
It is high time to admit to these errors and to make fundamental corrections to the climatic world view. Instead Grassl shifts into obstinate mode and refuses to depart at all from his now obsolete views.”
In his book Klimawandel – Was stimmt? Die wichtigsten Antworten“ (Climate Change – What’s Correct? The Important Answers) of 2007, Grassl simply avoids using terms like the Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age when discussing the climate of the last 10,000 years. He believes in the bogus hockey stick.
On page 15 Grassl describes the good correlation between CO2 and temperature over the last 750,000 years, and from this he postulates, like Al Gore did in in movie, that CO 2 was the driving climate force.
Let history judge Grassl as a scientist on that alone.
Other scientists who made dumb predictions, behaved arrogantly, and today refuse to admit their gross errors have to expect the same scrutiny and treatment. Be warned that history will not look upon you positively.
What are we to make of such people?
The case for alarm about CO2 is flimsy that all predictions conditional on that case should be so wrapped in qualifiers and cautions that even journalists will back away from making scary headlines around them. Of course, they weren’t, and they did.
It is good that you have exposed Gassl’s level of assurance about temperatures and climate knowledge as being silly, but while such assurance has allowed the insurance industry to raise fears and therefore their insurance premiums, there have been other and more harmful results that we can attribute to such false prophets of doom and their remarkable political success over the past 30 years.
Bio-fuels increasing deathrates due to hunger. ‘Educational’ materials aimed at children which can only have served, and have been intended to, frighten them and destroy any chance of carefree childhoods. Windfarms diverting resources away from sensible, economic ways of mass-production of electricity, and of course raising electricity costs and damaging landscapes in the process. The possible poisoning of international relations through the invention of a new reason to blame the West, this time for adverse weather events. Increasing the politicisation of science as evidenced by the leaderships of numerous scientific bodies deciding to help save the planet by adding their support to the shoddy science of CO2 alarmism – without, of course, first checking with their memberships. I daresay this list could be extended.
Re-insurance, sub prime, mortgagaes, credit default swaps.
rings a bell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13454160
How good a salesman is he??????????
Thanks! Now linked.The PIK also has close ties to the Munich Re. Maybe we now know what the true motivation is. What happens in Budapest does not necessarilly stay in Budapest.