Germany's version of Stephen Schneider (Wikipedia)
I think some people are not aware of, or seriously underestimate, Germany’s contribution to this global warmist movement. It really isn’t scientific at all. It’s purely political. Science (junk science) is just one of the engines they use to propel it.
A reader brought my attention to an interview with Hartmut Grassl at the leftwing newspaper TAZ in Berlin. Grassl is one of the grand-daddies of the German global warming movement.
He was the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI), a member of the Enquête Commission, a main Kyoto Protocal player, director of climate research programs at the World Meteorological Organization, board member of the über-alarmist Munich Re re-insurer and also the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg. He’s kind of like the German version of Stephen Schneider.
Here’s how this seemingly distinguished individual views the growing scepticism (answers from the TAZ interview paraphrased).
On handling sceptics (paraphrased):
Have they ever published anything? In 99% of the cases, that’s already the end of the debate – their literature has nothing to do with science.
What motivates the sceptics (paraphrased)?
Some get money from oil companies. Others are just people who are against everything. I used to try to convince them with scientific arguments, but it was hopeless. When I get e-mails from them they are highly aggressive and filled with exclamation points and sentences in block letters.
On Climategate (paraphrased)
They were released just before Copenhagen. They always get real loud before major conferences. In the USA the sceptics have been traditionally strong; a lot of money flows in part from the oil industry.
On storms and exaggerations (recall he is a board member at Munich Re!):
One also has to say that people who exaggerate climate change are not helpful. Some environmental organisations even claim that climate change leads to more storms.”
Are there any credible sceptics? (paraphrased)
Yes, but very few. Richard Lindzen from MIT in Boston for example: He doesn’t dispute CO2’s greenhouse gas, but doubts the feedback effects. The climate models have probably gotten better as a result of his critique. But, the debate over his objections is pretty much over.
On Henrik Svensmark
Also Svensmark has been refuted a number of times. But scientists are often unable to let go of worn out theories, especially their own.”
What about the geologists?
Of course there have been temperature rises of 4 to 5 °C over periods of 10,000 years. But today we are talking about a warming of 2 to 3°C within 100 years!
There you have it. Sounds like our reader Dana doesn’t he? I mean that in a friendly way. I really like his answer about Svensmark. It’s kind of like the black pot insisting the white porcelain vase is black.
And shall we add a few more exclamation marks to the last statement and put it in block letters as well? Which 100 years is he talking about anyway? The computer model-fantasy century?
Just for the record, so far in this observed century the temperature has risen 0°C. plus or minus a few hundredths.
Source: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/rebuking-bs-with-more-bs/
Expected climate warming: +1.5 to +5.5°C.
This century’s trend so far: – 0.2°C.
I think I’m going to post “This Century’s Trend So Far” every month.
But in the future I will not cheat. and use instead UAH and RSS, which below shows a slight warming of about 0.6°C per century, well below the IPCC scenarios.
So far this century, the temperature is showing a slight increase.
I have to agree with Dr Grassl when he writes:
“But scientists are often unable to let go of worn out theories, especially their own.” I can’t see much prospect of Dr Grassl letting go of the worn-out AGW theory.
Right you are! He put his finger right in it.
European Emission Trading stopped. Hackers have infiltrated the trading systems.
http://www.ftd.de/finanzen/maerkte/rohstoffe/:blamage-fuer-eu-prestigeprojekt-hacker-laehmen-emissionshandel/50217131.html
Trading will resume earliest wednesday next week.
Correction: A Czech brokering house was attacked; certificates valued at 7 Mio Euro disappeared. The exchanges themselves were not infiltrated.
Another report. Now Certificates valued at 28Mil Euro are missing.
http://de.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idDEBEE70J0JA20110120
“Die staatlichen Registrierstellen in Österreich, Tschechien, Estland, Griechenland und Polen waren Ziel der Kriminellen.”
“Governmental registrars in Austria, Czechia, Estnia, Greece and Poland were targeted by criminals.”
I hope the CLOUD experiment will deliver results that will make Grassl eat his words real soon now. He should better deliver his own theory about the causes of the LIA instead of just dismissing Svensmark.
The CLOUD experiment will be a “replication” of the experimental results found in the basement in Denmark; on a larger scale and controlling wider factors. Besides which, they final phases of the experiment destroyed the equipment. (Pushing the envelope of science … they knew that the equipment would fail.)
The nucleation of water micro-droplets under the influence of charged particles was demonstrated in that basement. CLOUD will, IIRC, also simulate the effect of “GCR” producing the necessary charged particles.
Exactly what unprecedented warming are these people citing?
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/what-evidence-for-unprecedented-warming/
I have been wondering if a proper uncertainty analysis had been performed on temperature station data. It turns out, not until now – and surprise, surprise; global trends are statistically indistinguishable from zero.
How it CAGW the greatest challenge to mankind if we are “catastrophically” heating to precisely zero statistically? Where is the catastrophic heating? For that matter, where is the heating at all?
The heating is UHI.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/heat-island-sprawl.html
I have the same question. In my analysis of the GHCN data base I do not get more out than an increase of 1 degree Celsius in three centuries. Initially, I was a bit flabbergasted, but it seems more and more justified to talk about very small numbers. I think that the most important panic factor is station selection. What do you think if you measure in 1700 temperatures in Germany and The Netherlands only and in the course of time you get stations closer to the Equator? Here in The Netherlands we enjoy temperatures more than 3 degrees Celsius below the global level.
And thanks for the link. We need cool statisticians in stead of hot Grassl’s.
“I think I’m going to post “This Century’s Trend So Far” every month.”
Great idea! Please do.
Interesting energy production and consumption projections by BP, reported by The Register, up to 2030:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/bp_global_outlook_2030/
Throw in Dr. Roy Spencer’s monthly chart also.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Dec_102.gif
Even in a cooling world AGW will not give up without a fight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12241692
“Agencies including the UK Met Office suggest 2011 is likely to be cooler on average than 2010, as La Nina conditions dominate.
The variation between El Nino and La Nina can alter the global temperature by half a degree or so.
But the variations it produces sit on top of a slow, steady warming trend dating back half a century, ascribed to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from industry, agriculture, deforestation and other human activities”
I agree, he does sound a lot like me. Everything he said was correct. Do you have any specific criticisms of anything he said? Other than cherrypicking HadCRUT when every single other temperature data set (including RSS and UAH) show a warming trend over the past decade.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html
Seriously, all you did was quote Grassl and insult him (and compliment him by comparing him to me 🙂 ). What do you think he said that was incorrect?
I knew the cherrypicking was going to irk you. I’ve added the UAH and RSS chart. Happy now?
Look at that! We’re going to heat up a whole half degree this century if this unprecedented warming continues. I can feel the heat coming on already!
“Happy now?”
I appreciate that you’re not cherrypicking now, yes. Personally I would prefer the Wood for Trees index, as long as you’re using that site. It combines all data sets into an average.
“We’re going to heat up a whole half degree this century if this unprecedented warming continues.”
Unfortunately the trend is going to accelerate unless we slow our GHG emissions.
“What was incorrect….Do I really have to repeat it again?”
If you’re going to quote somebody and insult him, then yes, I would suggest actually specifying what it is that you think he was incorrect about.
Dana, the response to rising CO2 is logarithmic. I am very happy to bring this news to you, because it means that CO2-related forcing will not accelerate but decelerate under the assumption of linearly rising CO2 concentrations.
As nations develop, they manage to produce ever higher GDP dollars per ton of CO2 emitted; so obviously, CO2 emissions will not rise exponentially even when GDP rises exponentially.
The CO2 greenhouse effect, however large or small it is, is nearly saturated.
I’m quite aware of the logarithmic relationship. In fact I discussed it in an article just a couple days ago, and explained why the forcing will accelerate anyway unless we take major steps to reduce GHG emissions.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-3-linear-warming.html
Saturated CO2 is a myth as well.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
What was incorrect?
I’ve been through that routine countless times. Do I really have to repeat it again?
I don’t want to tell you how to run your blog, but most readers probably won’t find it very compelling that you simply quote and then insult Grassl for no apparent reason.
Dana, “for no apparent reason”? You warmists promote The Great Transformation; global governance; some kind of global control system that has one little flaw – it is not democratic. You warmists (i just put you in one bin with Grassl and his ilk; you said he sounds a lot like you, so excuse me) want complete control over the economic development of the globe and complete power over every nation, and you use AGW as your tool, even if poor ole CO2 just won’t heat the globe like you need it to, and water vapor feedback seems to fail as well.
So you want to determine the fate of the globe with climate model runs and a planned economy; The Great Transformation indeed. It will fail one way or the other, but of course we want to stop you from grabbing the power in the first place.
That’s all. Nothing personal.
Um, actually all we want is to put a price on carbon emissions, to internalize the economic externality associated with their environmental impacts. Please, take the tinfoil hat off.
The only measurable environmental impact i can see is that elevated CO2 promoted plant productivity.
I will happily accept your money as reward for my plant-fertilizing travel activities.
Dana, you say i should take my tinfoil hat off. Now, have you been sleeping under a rock the last 30 years.
http://www.fona.de/en/7450
All this is real. Multitudes of bureaucrats are spending their entire nonproductive life driving this forward. It is you who lives in a dreamworld.
“The only measurable environmental impact i can see is that elevated CO2 promoted plant productivity.”
Oh well if that’s the only impact you can see, I guess it’s the only impact there will be!
/sarcasm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm
The Great Transformation again, fotos of the participants, English:
http://www.greattransformation.eu/
Dana, as John Cook’s site bases all its assumptions on imperfect computer games (GCMs), i can’t take it too seriously. I looked for “convective systems” on John Cooks site, one of the biggest achilles heels of GCMs, but, wonder, he doesn’t mention them.
Hint: They vary in scale so much that the statistical approach of GCMs breaks down when trying to model them. This is also the reason why GCMs will not improve their accuracy significantly when making the raster cells smaller.
Let alone the fact that most of the forcings are assumptions anyway, but we’ve been there before.
Where’s the insult? I only provided some background on the guy…a background he himself manufactured.
My conclusion is that this guy is too much in love with himself to admit he’s dead wrong. Where does he get off thinking he’s so right and everybody else is so wrong? The guy has got Michelin-man size ego.
2-3° C of warming – when? where? You mean in a scenario?
“Where’s the insult?”
Your entire opening paragraph is insulting, although technically it just refers to the “global warmist movement”, and then says Grassl is a member of it.
“2-3° C of warming – when? where?”
He says in the next 100 years, and he’s referring to the average global temperature. 2-3°C warming from 2000 to 2100 is the projected result in some of the IPCC scenarios – actually some of the more moderate ones. On our current emissions path, we’re headed for 3-4°C warming over the next century. I discussed this here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-3-linear-warming.html
Wrong! Not in the next 90 years (10 are already behind us). That temperature rise is in a model – and nowhere else. That’s a huge difference.
Dana, your article mentions “warming in the pipeline”. Now, that doesn’t sound physical, excuse me.
Also, please make Cook rename his site to “warmistscience”, i beg you. Starting out with a lie doesn’t buy him any credibility.
Pierre, all future projections are based on models, by definition.
Poor clueless honest climate researchers are being targeted by evil gangsters who invite them to fake climate action conferences…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12219472
Lets see temps. are accelerating, that has been said for what 20 odd years now and we have what gone up and down in temps, lets see by the graphs, OH, .2 to .4 degrees. Yes thats accelerating allright and we are all doomed the tipping points are here and gone. OK truth with a little sarcasm. When we get some real warming that one can feel and say yes the globe is really getting hot, might be 100 yrs. from now by MODELS= GIGO, which by the way are still no where near being able to predict anything past 3 to 5 days with any REAL accuracy. That is with weather models so some one please tell me how any one can really beleive a climate model. Please do present pal-reviewed papers, sorry peer, all the papers are doing know from what i can see is stating back and forth that the other is wrong, so NO real knowledge going on there much less learning. But it all comes down to a couple of tenths of degrees difference up or down, so blame it on a trace gas that is barely measurable in the air and shut down what the world has progressed to for a 1000 + yrs. Weather extremes, what are they, history shows us that they have been happening for millions of yrs. and recorded history tells us for at least a 1000+ yrs. Heat waves, floods,tornados, cyclones, droughts all of them some stronger and weaker depending on what weather is going on around them at the time. HISTORY, GEOLOGY, tells us this is all true and do not need some one in their ivory tower to tell us little people who are actually living this day to day that geologist do not know what they are talking about as this good DR. says. I am done ranting know, Thank you
It was a very entertaining rant 😉
AGW as a tool to foster social change; another blurb about the globalist shindig in Essen 2009; just to show reader Dana where his “internalizing the external cost of carbon” would lead us.
“Which social changes are needed to be able to implement effective climate policies? How do we best foster behavioral changes? ”
English:
http://www.cleanenergy-project.de/magazin/2009/06/09/climate-change-is-cultural-change/
So; Mr. Toepfer and Mr Schellnhuber want to change my behaviour; and they want to enforce social changes on me. And they meet on my expense to discuss how to best enforce which changes on me. Please notice that most of the participants are not elected and cannot be removed by an election. They are “scientists” like Schellnhuber or heads of institutes like Toepfer (in an earlier life, he was a politician and had to endure the indignity of talking to the electorate; but he got out of that with an UN job).
Now, where will this little price increase on CO2 emissions lead us? Oh, we only need to avoid a terrible catastrophe of unprecedented dimensions, so if it costs us the world, that’s a reasonable prize to pay, don’t you think so? (I’m sure Mr. Grassl from the Munich Re would agree. Catastrophes are so expensive for his employer.) We only need to reduce our emissions in the West by 80% according to EU Climate Commissioner Connie Heedegard (a person who can’t be removed by an election, as she was not elected to her post).
So, let’s ramp up the prize of carbon by how much? Well, by how much it takes to achieve this goal of course. And replace CO2-emitting technology with renewable energy. Problem is, renewable technology is produced with good ole industrial processes relying on CO2-emitting power plants. Furthermore, we’ll need quite a lot of gas powered plants to buffer the fluctuations of wind turbines and solar panels.
Traditional energy sources cost about 2 percent of GDP. We can expect that to explode. By how much? As energy will become a scarce good, especially heating fuel, we can expect an enormous price bubble under The Great Transformation scheme, and according cold related deaths under the poor will mount. This in turn will make compensation schemes necessary that subsidize heating cost for the poor, in Germany this is already established under the names “Soziale Grundsicherung” and “Hartz IV” or “Arbeitslosengeld 2”. Rent and heating costs are paid by these schemes, plus a monthly allowance.
This in turn will lead to ever exploding public debt and/or tax hikes. Tax hikes reduce private consumption and force businesses to increase prices.
I don’t know whether this dynamic will lead to stagnation or a more abrupt economic collapse, but it will not lead to prosperity. If it did, Spain would have jobs now.
Green jobs.
But they don’t. They have unemployment and a huge public deficit.
I can see absolutely no justification for social re-engineering based on fears of catastrophic man-made warming. This warming has been predicted for over 20 years and the warmists have little to show by means of empirical proof. To paraphrase Dr Richard Lintzen of MIT; average global temperature; sometimes it goes up a little; sometimes it goes down a little; sometimes it doesn’t do much of anything.
Here’s another thermometer reading link:
http://pugshoes.blogspot.com/2010/10/metrology.html
We can’t even effectively measure global temperature well enough to know what man-made CO2 is doing.
An interesting article I came across titled “US Agencies Still Fiddling Temperature Record, Reports SPPI”
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?storyid=671981&ret=close
Fascinating to see what half a billion in taxpayers money results in for the general public and government.
The second link is an earlier article on wattsupwiththat I just had a chance to read through; a new paper published titled “UNCERTAINTY IN THE GLOBAL AVERAGE SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE INDEX: A REPRESENTATIVE LOWER LIMIT”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/20/surface-temperature-uncertainty-quantified/
One of conclusions as follows: “The ±0.46 C lower limit of uncertainty shows that between 1880 and 2000, the trend in averaged global surface air temperature anomalies is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C at the 1σ level. One cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that it is presently impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate since 1880”
I wonder how it is that experts choose not to keep an open mind if there is such uncertainty that exists merely on measurements… Settled science indeed!
The forcing of CO2 is so big, it can’t be measured.
You mean forcing down are throats. sarc off/
It’s even impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate since
1880.
“The ±0.46 C lower limit of uncertainty shows that between 1880 and 2000, the
trend in averaged global surface air temperature anomalies is statistically
indistinguishable from 0 C at the 1σ level.
One cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion
that it is presently impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate since 1880.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/20/surface-temperature-uncertainty-quantified/
I’m sure Helmuth Grassl will be rewarded with a high position in the new world order.
You place some willing “scientists” like Hansen in the right places, and you control the media. From there, it begins.
If i did not already know how IPCC climate science operates, i would now be flabbergasted that this is the first time somebody assesses the error bars of the instrumental record. But i’m not surprised. They never wanted us to know.
“I think I’m going to post “This Century’s Trend So Far” every month”
Excellent idea, I do hope you do. But it may be fraught with complications. I notice today the Met says the HadCrut3 anomaly is now 0.498C rounded to 0.50C?
Whereas the CRU site:-
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
still shows 0.475C, I wonder why it has now changed.
The Met Office HadCRUT3 page:-
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/hadcrut3.html
has the annual data showing 0.498C and the monthly data showing 0.475C.
Or maybe it is just me that is confused.
Sorry, forgot the link to the Met Office announcement:-
“2010 — a near-record year”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/2010-global-temperature
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/21/rao_cosmic_ray_climate_forcing/
‘India’s leading space physicist believes cosmic rays affect the Earth’s climate far more than previously thought.
U R Rao has analysed 45 years of data and declared that the forcing from charged particles is higher than previously thought, at 1.1Wm-2, and human-forcing lower than the IPCC “consensus” of 1.6Wm-2.
The report was commissioned by Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh, who has described the manmade global warming hypothesis as a “religion”.
“We’re not denying the contribution of greenhouse gases — we’re only trying to expand the scientific debate to look at some non-greenhouse gas factors that may also influence global warming,” Ramesh told the Telegraph of India’
The Indians make NASA look silly. Beautiful.
Yeah, I actually read that study. To be blunt, it’s total crap. It contains no new data and no new analysis. The press release basically implies that Rao is the only scientist in the world studying cosmic rays, which again, is total crap, especially since he didn’t even do any original research.
The peer-review process on the paper was clearly almost non-existent. Rao’s entire conclusion is basically based on one paper – except he references the wrong paper! He puts reference #12 where he’s actually referencing his #13. It’s bad enough to make this sort of mistake, even worse that none of the reviewers or editors caught it, and worst of all that it was the entire basis of his conclusion.
Reference #13 is to Veizer (2005). So basically this paper is nothing more than a re-tread of a 5-year-old paper, which itself was ridiculously flawed, as discussed here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celestial-climate-driver/
So when you boil it down, this study is nothing more than a crappier re-tread of a crappy 5-year-old study.
You’re starting to sound angry. Why don’t you jump off the AGW bandwagon like everybody else and go for biodiversity instead?
I’m not angry, I just don’t celebrate bad science, unlike yourself.
Bad Science is exactly what the whole AGW movement is, the biggest most expensive pseudo-scientific progress-stopping scam since the Earth is Flat dictats and decrees of the Middle Ages !
Uh, bad science that relies on experiments like CLOUD, i forgot, that’s the old fashioned way. I wish you luck on your foray into post-normalism. And before you go, remember, up is down, black is white, warming is cooling.
Remember what the dormouse said: Keep your head.
Starting the graph with the Year 2000 gives a positive trend.
http://tinyurl.com/2vfa2q5
A positive trend in HADCRUT, GISS, UAH and RSS. And, hey, of course No Tricks involved…