Leading IPCC Climate Scientist Warns: “Climate Science Will Lose Its Credibility If It Keeps Spreading Panic”!

Von StorchThe online Schleswig Holstein Zeitung (SHZ) here features an interview with prominent IPCC climate scientist Professor Hans von Storch titled: A climate scientist against the spread of panic.

Hans von Storch also runs the respected Klimazwiebel blog and has at one time or another harshly criticized both sides of the climate debate. See yesterday’s NTZ story here.

Climate science losing its credibility

In the SHZ interview, the introduction writes as follows with regards to extreme weather events:

Climate scientists Hans von Storch, Director of the Helmholtz Center for Coastal Research in Geeshacht, fears that all of climate science will lose its credibility if panic keeps being spread.”

Haiyun no record storm

On whether Haiyun is a wake-up call for policymakers, von Storch reminds us that “extreme events are all part of normal weather” and that Haiyan was no record storm and that there has been no unusual increased frequency in the region over the last years. This storm can hardly be understood as a sign of man-made climate change.”

Models may have underestimated natural factors

On the models inadequate performance over the last 15 years, von Storch believes that the models may have underestimated natural factors like the sun, or that CO2 has been overrated. But he also says he sees no reason to discard the models altogether.

Acid rain scientists lost much of their credibility

Later in the interview von Storch gives his opinion on the acid-rain forest-die-off scare of the 1980s. He thinks that because of the unwarranted hysteria, few people today listen at all to forest scientists, and that he would prefer that “climate science should not become a Greenpeace arm of the government.”

Some scientists think they are keepers of the truth

Next the SHZ asks von Storch how it can be that some of his colleagues have succumbed to panic spreading. Hans von Storch:

We can think of other people in the 20th century who felt compelled to create a better world and who thought they were the keepers of a higher truth. In our case there are some that think they can derive this privilege from the scientific. Improving the world and people here mostly end up on the wayside.

I don’t believe this is the majority of climate scientists. There are a few especially visible climate scientists who are pushing such thoughts.”

Some climate scientists are abusing climate science

Hans von Storch then adds that he feels that “us scientists have to take the subject seriously and not to abuse it as a vehicle for fundamental world and population improvement.”

Fracking as an “effective bridge technology”

At the end of the interview, Hans von Storch offers some support for fracking, citing the USA’s fracking for natural gas, which he says has made a considerable contribution to “decreasing the US CO2 emissions” and calls it an effective bridge technology.

In Germany this measure is being almost unanimously rejected – obviously decreasing CO2 is ‘good’ only under certain conditions”.

In summary, more harsh criticism and even words of warning from Hans von Storch aimed at alarmist scientists and the overzealous policymakers who feel compelled to rush through a fundamental transformation of global society in a fit of panic.

Photo Hans von Storch: www.hzg.de/institute/coastal_research.en

 

18 responses to “Leading IPCC Climate Scientist Warns: “Climate Science Will Lose Its Credibility If It Keeps Spreading Panic”!”

  1. Ulrich Elkmann

    He is wrong. “Climate science” HAS lost its respectability – it is incorrigible, corrupt, a handy tool for power grabbing, and nothing more. The danger is that science as a whole will be seen in this light once the word spreads, and that the claims of scientists, the scientific method itself, will be seen as nothing more than convenient excuses for authoritarianism & privilege. Which is, of course, what the Foucaults and Derridas were claiming all along. A cynic might find a certain irony in the fact (sorry, “fact”), that a clade of pundits supposedly devoted to the hardest of hard empirical data, “97%” certainties, and the like, should prove their direst denigrators right.

  2. Casper

    Russian Court agreed to release a Polish Greenpeace activist on bail:

    http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,114881,14976331,Rosja__Sad_zgodzil_sie_na_zwolnienie_Polaka_z_Greenpeace.html

    I bet they all will be free by Xmas…

    1. DirkH

      They have served their purpose – bargaining chip for COP19. Reporting in Germany about COP19 was unnoticeable. None of the sheeple here even noticed that there was a COP19. Notice also, the EU didn’t use the opportunity to cart all the Greenshirt Jugend over to Warsaw.

      1. Casper
        1. DirkH

          I have no luck feeding it into google translate, Casper. I’m just talking about the fact that none of my reliably gullible German colleagues even noticed COP19. And they’re usually enthusiastically talking about any old news item fabricated for them – usually a minor German scandal with no relevance whatsoever.

          1. lemiere jacques

            they talk about climate smart agriculture…every bdy would agree with an agriculture using less energy to profuce the same amout of food…but climate smart….

          2. Casper

            I understood you, but it doesn’t mean there is no information from Warsaw on the COP19. I’ve also been following the German Media, but there are some traces on it. The most of Germans don’t even know where Warsaw is. I advise them to ask their mothers and fathers for it…

            PS. Connie wants up to 20% of European Budget for Green Energy Projects in Central and Eastern Europe.

  3. Harry Dale Huffman

    Von Storch has no credibility; his Klimazwiebel site is one of the very worst “global warming” discussion sites, promulgating a sociological “post-normal science” viewpoint that takes alarmist claims for granted as the best science. It is too late for him to save his credibility, his record with that site is out there for all to see and judge for themselves.

    1. DirkH

      The “honest broker” of post normal science is just the enabler of the synthesis between the thesis (EU commission; the “normal” warmists) and the antithesis (the screaming sockpuppet voice of the EU-commission financed Green NGO’s).

      Just one role in a Hegelian dialectic with a predetermined outcome.

    2. MikeR

      It does not seem possible that you have ever spent time at klimazwiebel. Your description is totally wrong.

  4. Jimbo

    I find it simply amazing how money and ‘infamous fame’ could buy 97% of climate scientists. 🙂 CAGW is the biggest fraud EVER perpetrated on the human race. It really is. Can you think of a bigger con? It is dying a slow death by a thousand cuts. The truth always wins as they say.

  5. Week in review | Climate Etc.

    […] Leading IPCC scientists warns: Climate science will lose its credibility if it keeps spreading panic […]

  6. Brian H

    Europe is discovering it is going to be left alone paying the rent of the rent-seeking nations, which is far beyond its ability.

  7. Mervyn

    The problem with the dangerous man-made global warming establishment is it has been ‘crying wolf’ once took many times, and now people are no longer taking any notice.

    The world does not need more scary climate alarmism … it does not need an IPCC 5th Assessment Report … it does not need more climate conferences.

    The only thing people need is for the IPCC to cite just one peer reviewed study that demonstrates carbon dioxide emitted from human activities is causing catastrophic global warming and is the key driver of climate change.

    It is astonishing that after almost 25 years in existence, the IPCC still cannot cite such a study. Why?

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