Watershed…Leading German Business Weekly Declares IPCC Science A Failure: “Time For A New Climate Policy”

Dieter Dürand and Sven Titz write at Germany’s flagship business weekly Wirtschaftswoche (English: Business Week) that it’s high time for a new climate policy in the wake of the massive IPCC failures.

Germany’s “Wirtschaftswoche” publishes unusually harsh article on IPCC science.

Fear-driven science is a failure

The authors write of scientists using “horror scenarios” to scare leaders into rash policymaking. Wirtschaftswoche cites three examples: hunger, war, and species extinction. They add:

The facts refute many end-of-world prophesies or at least greatly diminish them. …the time is ripe for a new climate policy.”

Wirtschaftswoche describes a science that has been dominated by doomsday-sayers and shoddy computer simulations and gives a list of examples of totally botched predictions.

The German business weekly is the latest in a string of German flagship media outlets to openly express skepticism and dissastisfaction with IPCC science and to harshly criticize IPCC results. Wirtschaftswoche writes:

Humbly and quietly the IPCC is forced to admit that the central mechanism for global warming is not functioning like the scientists said it would, at least for the time being. […] Even though CO2 concentrations are increasing like the scientists have said it would, global warming has paused for 15 years. No IPCC climate model had predicted that.”

Moreover, Wirtschaftswoche adds that “scientists are urgently scrambling for an explanation“:

One thing is clear, something cannot be right with the previous simulations. The climate is obviously reacting far less sensitively to the rise in greenhouse gases than feared.

Mann’s hockey stick among top 5 climate bloopers

Wirtschaftswoche also highlights the top 5 grossly blundered claims made by IPCC scientists: 1) increasing cyclone frequency, 2) the hockey stick chart, 3) rapidly melting sea ice, 4) melting Himalayan glaciers, 5) Africa threatened by starvation. All of these have turned out to be false, writes Wirtschftswoche.

On Michael Mann’s hockey stick chart: The magazine writes:

There’s a suspicion that scientists led by US climatologist Michael Mann ‘smoothed’ the climate curve in order to underscore drama.”

Wirtschaftswoche also expresses surprise that Antarctic sea ice is near record highs and that cyclones are not growing in frequency, and that the IPCC only mentions extreme weather frequency on the very fringes of its report. In summary the business weekly concludes that much is rotten with the current state of IPCC science, and thus it is indeed “time for a new climate policy“.

Richard Tol: all cost, no benefit

To be fair, Wirtschaftswoche insists that the risks of manmade climate change cannot be underestimated and that steps should be taken to curb emissions. But the authors also caution against throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Climate policy has to make sense, and this has not been the case, Wirtschaftswoche writes. The magazine cites economist Richard Tol:

Dutch environmental economist Richard Tol has compared the costs and benefits. By the year 2100 the EU will have pumped nearly 15 trillion euros into climate protection. That amount of money however brakes the temperature rise only 0.05°C.”

Moreover, Wirtschaftswoche writes stricter CO2 emission standards for automobiles would add 3600 euros to the price tag of each automobile, making mobility for the poor a daunting task.

Wirtschaftswoche has nothing against those who wish to protect the climate, but argues that “the means must be effective. In the end if both climate and the economy are driven into the ground, no one will be helped.”

Wirtschaftswoche’s top 6 doomsday sayers

Wirtschaftswoche also lists its top 6 doomsday-sayers of climate change: 6) Michael Mann: past climate like a hockey stick, 5) Angela Merkel: 4°C rise likely, 4) Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber: Sahara may extend to Berlin, 3) Nicholas Stern: worst climate in 30 million years, 2) Rajendra Pachauri: heatwave warnings, and no. 1 (no surprise here) Al Gore for his catastrophic sea level rise warnings.

It’s beginning to dawn on Germans that climate science has been much less about science, and much more about hoax. Expect more critical articles soon. The climate change issue is sinking faster than the Titanic.