“Climate-Pope” Schellnhuber Stepping Down …Growing Impression He Had Become “More Activist Than Physicist”

“We now seriously need a Schellnhuber timeout. […] We do hope the new PIK leadership will correct the extreme direction the institute is currently on and rapidly puts an end to the flow of climate-alarmist press releases.

At their Die kalte Sonne site here, Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt comment on Prof. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber’s stepping down as director of the alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research (PIK).

Prof. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber stepping down as head of the Potsdam Institute (PIK). Photo: PIK.

Schellnhuber is often worshipped by the fringe-element climate alarmists as a sort of Climate Pope, whose every uttered word is to be regarded as infallible.  Now he may be paying the price for his entrenched, radical positions on climate change.
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From Die kalte Sonne here, by Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated by P Gosselin)

Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber is stepping down later this year in autumn and consequently will relinquish his position as director at the Potsdam PIK Climate Institute. The successors have already been named. Over the past years Schellnhuber had increasingly become a burden for the institute. Parts of the German political spectrum had already requested his removal from the “Scientific Advisory Council for Environmental Change” (WBGU) for representing a direction leading to a green dictatorship. In the end it was likely a direct decision by the Chancellor that saved him. Recently there had been a mysterious spree publications by Schellnhuber appearing in the journal of the National Academy of Science. The suspected secret is that he was allowed to choose his peer reviewers himself as a member of the society.

Parts of the press also reported what many already suspected. Spiegel on Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber: “One is getting the impression that he has become more activist than physicist. Here his role as a ghostwriter for the Pope fits very well as he basically put all the words of his choice into the Pope’s mouth. He almost totally ignored all the uncertainties climate science is afflicted by. His aim: The unconditional destruction of the fossil fuel industry. And as a direct advisor to the chancellor, he pushed this message to the highest levels. History over the coming years and decades will be decided by Schellnhuber’s role in the climate debate and the overly hasty rush into renewable energies. We now seriously need a Schellnhuber timeout. We do hope the new PIK leadership will correct the extreme direction the institute is currently on and rapidly puts an end to the flow of climate-alarmist press releases. What really is now needed is a balanced and rational presentation of the results, without the constant pressure of having to do missionary work.”

26 responses to ““Climate-Pope” Schellnhuber Stepping Down …Growing Impression He Had Become “More Activist Than Physicist””

  1. Steve

    Now SebH may be paying the price for his entrenched,radical positions on climate change. Quote,Unquote.

  2. Bitter&twisted

    Good riddance to bad rubbish.
    Senile old bar steward.

    1. AndyG55

      He’s the goose that “invented” the ZERO-science “2ºC and we’re all dead” meme, isn’t he !

      Pulled it out of his a**e, so to speak.

      1. dennisambler

        He always claims this, but the first mention of 2 degrees was by economist William Nordhaus in 1975:

        CAN WE CONTROL CARBON DIOXIDE? William D. Nordhaus June 1975

        http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/365/1/WP-75-063.pdf

        (A working paper for IIASA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_for_Applied_Systems_Analysis

        “As a first approximation, it seems reasonable to argue that the climatic effects of carbon dioxide should be kept well within the normal range of long-term climatic variation. According to most sources the range of variation between climatic (sic) is in the order of ± 5 °C., and at the present time the global climate is at the high end of this range.

        If there were global temperatures more than 2 or 3°C. above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years.”

        He repeated it again in 1977: “Strategies for the Control of Carbon Dioxide” http://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d04/d0443.pdf

        but he changed an earlier figure for the range of variation within a stable climatic regime “such as the current interglacial”, from l°C, to 2°C and said that in the last 100 years a range of mean temperature had been 0.6°C, rather than his earlier 0.7.

        Schellnhuber used similar language in promoting the EU’s global temperature target of 2°C above “pre-industrial” in 1996 during preparations for the Kyoto negotiations.

        It was via the German Advisory Council on Global Climate Change
        and said “A maximum of 2°C warming is acceptable. The WBGU reaffirms its conviction that in order to avert dangerous climatic changes, it is essential to comply with a ‘climate guard rail’ defined by a maximum warming of 2°C relative to pre-industrial values.

        As the global mean temperature has already risen by 0.6°C since the onset of industrialization, only a further warming by 1.4°C is tolerable. A global mean long-term warming rate of at most 0.2°C per decade should not be exceeded. This climate window should be agreed as a global objective within the context of the UNFCCC process. The European Union should seek to adopt a leading role on this matter.”

        There was the “scientific basis”, a plagiarised 20 year old quote from an economist.

        In 1990, the UN AGGG (United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases), was asking for no more than a 1 degree rise in global temperature, (as if they could turn a switch). That in turn traces back to the Villach Conference of 1986, and the subsequent Bellagio Conference in 1987, when some of the main proponents of the AGW meme were present, and have been driving it ever since.

        That then morphed into 1.5 degrees and again into 2 degrees. After Paris, 1.5 degrees is the new mantra for the activists.

  3. Ron Clutz
    1. tom0mason

      🙂 Right on the mark Ron.

  4. sunsettommy

    Good!

    Hope the successor will bring in a balanced view where all possibilities are examined.

    1. Kurt in Switzerland

      “Hope the successor will bring in a balanced view…”

      Don’t count on it.

      With a Grand Coalition government (Merkel cronies and Socialists), the prospect for an about-face on matters of ‘Climate’ is grim, if not all but impossible.

      (That would be akin to saying AfD as well as protest voters from both the FDP and the CSU were right, after all).

      You

  5. AndyG55

    I wouldn’t put too much hope in LESS fundamentalist alarmist front from PIK.

    The new guy is Johan Rockström, who, if anything, is even more a radical alarmist nutter than that the previous alarmist nutter.

    http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2017-07-02-three-years-to-safeguard-our-climate.html

    1. AndyG55

      And another

      https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/planet-climate-change-johan-rockstrom/

      A TRUE BELIEVER, and a RADICAL ACTIVISTS.

      Who else would use such idiotic phrases like “a safe operating space for humanity”

      1. dennisambler

        And of course his co-director is Ottmar Edenhofer, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/ipcc-official-%E2%80%9Cclimate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth%E2%80%9D/

        He is also Director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/institute/team/edenhofer-ottmar.html

        Rockstrom is a fellow of the Beijer institute of Ecological Economics http://www.beijer.kva.se/index.php

        Along with Paul Ehrlich, Jane Lubchenko, Will Steffen and other fellow travellers.

        The finance available for all these institutes is phenomenal and they have grown exponentially.

  6. Bitter&twisted

    You don’t have to be mad to work at Potsdam PIK, but it sure as Hell helps.
    Ask our resident troll- he was at the same asylum.

    1. AndyG55

      Institute/asylum.

      For those guys, basically the same thing.

      If your brain isn’t totally hosed with AGW sludge and anti-science before you go in..

      .. it certainly will be when you escape !!

  7. tom0mason

    If anyone outside of Germany does not understand how important Schellnhuber was for the ‘CO2 is bad’ that holds sway at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research (PIK), and across Europe, then just put Schellnhuber in the ‘search’ box at the top of the screen, and read the many articles about this all too influential alarmist.

  8. Ed Caryl

    Hey, where’s Seb???

    1. Bitter&twisted

      Don’t encourage the troll.
      Remember DNFTT.

    2. SebastianH

      Here, why?

  9. Bernd Felsche

    Such a shame that he’s scurrying from the light.
    https://wp.me/p5YSpg-2Z

    I have no doubt that there are other clowns waiting to step into the “debate”.

    1. yonason (from my cell phone)

      Great website.

      Thx!

  10. "Climate-Pope" Schellnhuber Stepping Down …Growing Impression He Had Become "More Activist Than Physicist" | Un hobby...

    […] P. Gosselin, March 9, 2018 in […]

  11. Lasse

    Rockström has a degree in agriculture with irrigation as a speciality.
    In a program showing the subsidence of Mekong delta he pointed at sea level rise, and failed to recognise the groundwater out-take for irrigation as a cause for land subsidence.
    He is devoted to climate change.
    Good luck!

  12. FreSto

    Schelmhuber would be more appropriate

  13. Kurt in Switzerland

    When I read the headline, I thought it suggested Schellnhuber himself had uttered the words, “more activist than physicist”, indicating as a minimum a healthy modicum of self-criticism, if not an outright epiphany.

    Alas, ’twas not the case. This was just the Spiegel editorial opinion expressed during an interview with Schellnhuber some 3 y ago.

    So Schellnhuber is NOT in fact planning on stepping down because he feels he has oversold something; most likely he still views himself as a Climate Protector (if not outright Savior)!

    Do you remember the comic book / cartoon a few years ago, attempting to double-down on Germany’s Renewable Energy Craziness as though it would be a perfect blueprint for the rest of the world?

    http://www.die-grosse-transformation.de/2015/11/der-wbgu-comic-im-buch.html

  14. yonason (from my cell phone)

    “Climate Pope”

    See! Even they know it’s a religion!

    1. AndyG55

      oops… my eyes read that as “climate poop”

      1. yonason (from my cell phone)

        Natural response, given their beliefs and treatment of those who don’t share them.

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