What follows to me is absolutely stunning. I don’t recall the US government officials and military persons responsible for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki being brought to trials in Nuremberg. Controversial? Maybe for some. But to put Hiroshima on the same level as Auschwitz?
Excerpt from the PIK press release.
Hat/tip a reader.
Obviously Schellnhuber knows no scruples when it comes to promoting his alarmist brand of climate science.
Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, is the direct personal advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel on the “urgent” climate issue. This is a slap to the face of the allied forces who sacrificed so much to liberate the world from the horrible tyranny of the time.
Surely it cannot be the position of the German government to have itself advised by persons with such beliefs.
Some years ago, the brown neo-Nazis in the Saxony Parliament called the bombing of Dresden near the end of WWII a “Bomben-Holocaust“, to which there rightfully was a swift and harsh reaction from politicians, media and citizens.
Schellnhuber’s Hiroshima-Auschwitz press release is no better and deserves the same reaction.
Welcome to the real face of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The online Potsdam PNN here/ has the original quote from Schellnhuber (h/t Bernd Felsche):
Conscience, Schellnhuber says with regards to the unanswered questions concerning climate science, does not need absolute certainty: ‘In a world where Hiroshima and Auschwitz happened, I can’t trust that everything will always turn out well.'”
I’ve read another report and Schellnhuber clearly suffers from a messiah complex.
Schellnhuber is quoted as saying (my translation):
Original:
What a prize ass.
If he’d said:
He might have gotten a laugh out of the audience.
Ask him to explain himself.
What did he really mean by this equation?
Was he excusing the ridiculous AGW science and making a way for an exit from it?
Was he referrencing the fact that both examples came from WW2, and both examples were caused by ideologies of dictators (German and Japanese)?
Was he saying that we don’t know what can happen, but we must still take the precautions to avoid the consequences of the misuse of science?
etc…
I don’t know.
To me it’s morally wrong to file the historical consequence of Hiroshima together with Auschwitz. If one thinks the two events are similar enough to be grouped together, then the person needs a doctor.
I am glad that you say it is morally wrong, and I agree with you, but I still want to open it up a bit. I am not sure if I can get this out right so apologies to everyone if it is not understood the way I intend it.
Not everyone agrees that Hiroshima was necessary, and many think Nagasaki was much less necessary – why did they do it? As it says in wiki on this, the “ethics are still debated”. Some do think it was science gone a bit mad and irresponsible, especially in Nagasaki.
Auschwitz on the other hand was mass extermination, but the whole German culture and way of thinking promoted this at the time (ask Einstein). It wasn’t just about Jews (target no.1 though), although 6 million were executed as we all know, but there were 5 million others including thousands (0.25Million) of Germans who were “inferior” in the Eugenics movement. They were inferior because of a belief that it is the duty of the strong to survive and thereby eliminate the weak. This movement sprung up from Britain and the USA and the Germans supported it vigorously. The UK and USA even became jealous of the German success in eugenics until the true extent of the carnage was known.
In 1941 the cremation of the 10,000th mental patient had involved psychiatrists, nurses, attendants and secretaries, and they all received a bottle of beer for the occasion. They thought they were doing the right thing!
The Hiroshima and Auschwitz examples can legitimately be considered under the heading of responsibility in science, but in the case of Auschwitz the responsibility was much further back in those who fostered and promoted the false concept of racism and Eugenics. So Auschwitz is only one consequence of the scientific irresponsibility. ( I am ignoring the experimentation on the victims in this context)
As people on this blog are aware, the desire remains in many to reduce the population of the planet, some say 1Billion is the ideal. Even David Attenborough called the human race a plague last year. The ideas the captivated and inspired Hitler in his madness have not gone away but are seeking new ways to operate.
Responsibility in science needs to be seriously discussed, with all its issues, with all the deaf ears that only want to pontificate, and pipers playing the tune they are paid for. Without this it is only a matter of time before ideology takes over again, convinces the masses who think it is morally right, and we will have the same mess all over again.
[Agreed that in hindsight the morality of Hiroshima is debatable – for some of us. But there is no way Hiroshima can be put in the same basket as Auschwitz. And I agree it is necessary to see the entire speech to discern what exactly he was driving at. My feeling is that he was putting himself way above both, taking on a position of towering moral superiority and wisdom. Yet, he has to stoop to spreading a huge lie to do this. He really does want to be the hero like the one depicted in the cartoon book. -PG].
Bizzare. What the hell is “Urania”?
Is he some sort of closet Nazi or a Uranus?
If I’m correct “Urania” could mean following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urania_%28Berlin%29
He’s just trying to maintain his creepiness.
Putting dropping the bomb on Japan to end a war, and the shoah is absolutely mad. It reeks of psychiatrically curious bargaining.
Actually, to someone of Schellnhuber’s cast of mind, using it in a “joking” way would be the reprehensible part, not the equation of the Holocaust with the Manhattan Project. In that, Schellnhuber represents a tradition, not limited to Germany, but especially prevalent there for at least 60 years: “Auschwitz” and “Hiroshima” represent the “worst the human mind can come up with” (keep in mind that this “equation” came about at the height of the Cold War, with atomic war – and for many that meant the end of humanity – imminent at any moment). Just check the letter columns of, say, Der Spiegel, between 1948 and 1975, every time the subject of disarmament comes up. (The 1952 first H-bomb , test, the “Lucky Dragon” incident, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Fukury%C5%AB_Maru] & the “Kampf dem Atomtod” campaign for nuclear disarmament 1958-59 are especially fruitful.) Invariably, there will even be 2 or 3 letters claiming that “the Germans were morally superior to the Americans, since they did not drop/not develop their bomb”. Not defending Schellnhuber, but in this case he is just parroting old attitudes mindlessly.
BTW, have you seen the new “Spiegel” headline?
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/psychologie-was-die-klimawandelleugner-bewegt-a-891707.html
“Verschwörungstheorien: Was Faktenleugner bewegt” (Conspiracy Theories: What motivates Fact Deniers)
You may learn there that those who question AGW hold other strange beliefs, too: for instance, they tend to believe that the moon landings were faked; or they believe in a free market… The “study” the Spiegel references is Lewandowsky et al.’s 2012 “Moon Hoax” paper in “Psychological Science”.
Oh. Now they had Bojanowski write few actually rather fair articles, and now they promote a paper based on forged data. Maybe this is just stupidity on the side of Der Spiegel and they haven’t learned to use google by now.
At least they call us Klimawandelleugner instead of Klimaleugner as they did in the past. I guess that’s a promotion.
Thanks Ulrich.
Dirk,
It doesn’t look like it was written by Bojanowski. It’s just too shrill, childish and lacking in intellect. I think this one comes comes from the real Spiegel itself.
I was referring to the Bojanowski articles during the last few weeks. Yes this one doesn’t come from him, Bojanowski does not call us something-Leugner.
Urania? Wrong spelling.
Schellnhuber, must have been thinking of and then extacting the urine – Hiroshima and likening it to the horror of Auschwitz – surely he cannot be serious?
Schellnhuber, with a messianic gleam he is a dangerous man.
A man born after his time – he would have done well and risen high in the ranks of…[-snip].
[What worries me is the rank he now finds heimself at, and all the stupid politicians who believe in his obsessions. -PG]
Schelmhuber, that is all I can say!
I was just wondering why it took so long for the Spiegel to latch on to the “Moon Hoax” paper (it was, well, “deconstructed” seems to be the technical term) by Jo Nova, Anthony Watts, Bishop Hill pp. between 29 Aug and 05 Sept 2012. My own *theory* (dons Fox Mulder hat) is that they noted the name in connection with the retracted Lewandowski and Cook paper, “Recursive fury…”, and decided to play it safe by not relying on a paper that was just withdrawn from the journal that published it.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/28/second-lewandowsky-conspiracy-theory-paper-withdrawn/
As to why it was rertacted: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/09/stephan-lewandowsky-and-john-cook-making-things-up/
“Fabricated quotes and gross distortions are used to paint skeptics as conspiracy nuts…People have taken issue with a number of aspects of the paper, but to my knowledge, nobody has noticed Lewandowsky and Cook fabricate things in their paper. That’s right. They make things up.” See their examples below the quote.
Scrolled through some of the Spiegel comments. None of the commenters knows about the fraudulent nature of Lewandowsky’s work.
So; German leftists, way behind the curve.
See my latest story. 🙂