Rahmstorf: Difference Between Vineyards In England And A Frozen Thames Is “A Few Tenths Of A Degree”

The online leftist Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) from Berlin has an essay by Stefan Rahmstorf, who attacks Dr Fritz Vahrenholt, head of RWE Innogy, for his comments in a December essay that casts doubt on man-made climate change appearing in the somwhat more conservative Die Welt from Hamburg.Interestingly, instead of appearing in the Science section, Rahmstorf’s rant appears in the Debate section. Is that a sign?

First Rahmstorf, praises Germany for carrying out a “scientific, factual discussion of climate science”, unlike in the USA, where he says:

It’s different in the USA: There the conservative Tea Party movement has proclaimed that man-made climate change is made up, and large parts of the economy are lobbying using dubious ‘climate sceptic’ propositions.”

Rahmstorf is visibly worried that this “dubious climate scepticism” may be spreading to Germany, and goes after RWE Vahrenholt. In his Die Welt essay, Vahrenholt assigns the blame for the cold winters  – writing:

It’s the sun, stupid!”

Rahmstorf, however does not believe the sun has an impact on the earth’s climate, and thinks it’s all due to a few molecules of CO2. And so Rahmstorf attributes the recent cold winters to miscalibrated human perception:

The winter appears cold because we had gotten used to the mild winters.”

and misleadingly reframes Mojib Latif’s 2008 predictions of cooling:

No serious scientist doubts global warming, and certainly not Mojib Latif, whose quote has nothing to do with the cold winters. It’s old and stems from his model projections of a temporary cooling, which in the meantime we know failed to materialise.”

Latif made his cooling projections in 2008, and so are not that old (he predicted warm-winters back in 2000). And who can say that the cold winters aren’t related to his projections of cooling? Latif’s projections look to be true, and likely will be true for the new, current decade.

Rahmstorf then quotes, defends and explains Kevin Trenberth’s infamous “it’s travesty we can’t account for the missing heat” statement, saying it was taken out of context and that Trenberth meant something else.

Rahmstorf acknowledges the solar correlation with regards to the Russian heat wave and flood in Pakistan, but claims that this correlation is very weak, and quotes Trenberth again:

‘Without global warming, these events would not have happened’.”

Now that’s the “scientific, factual discussion” that PIK scientists and the government like to praise. Of course, anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of science knows that blaming a couple of isolated weather events on global warming is preposterous. But what is preposterous in climate science passes as “scientific, factual” at the PIK.

Rahmstorf takes offence to the harsh criticism that Vahrenholt fired at PIK science, and thinks sceptics give the sun too great of a role in climate change. He says Vahrenholt is silent about the fact…(emphasis added)

…that also during the largest solar minimum of the “Little Ice Age” during the so-called Maunder Minimum of the late 17th century the global temperature was only a few tenths of a degree cooler than before and after, and that our model reproduces the temperature back then very well, otherwise we would have not used it for our future projections.”

A few tenths of a degree Celsius? That’s the difference between having vineyards in England and a frozen Thames? PIK science is moving beyond preposterous.

Rahmstorf ends with a comment on climate debate:

Those who wish to sow doubt on the urgency of climate protection, really have to work hard to twist the facts. However, the climate crisis can be overcome only by having an honest debate.”

17 responses to “Rahmstorf: Difference Between Vineyards In England And A Frozen Thames Is “A Few Tenths Of A Degree””

  1. Beano

    Sorry to mention. The west country counties of Devon and Cornwall have some very decent vineyards and have been making a decent drop for many many years.
    I have had a couple of conversations with the president of the west county wine association many years back.

  2. RCS

    The more climate alarmists are questioned, the more they fall back on model outputs and ignore serious evidence that they are wrong.

    A very human failing but, regrettably, many of the major upheavals in history have depended on political madness driven by dubious ideology.

    I suppose that if one is a politician, saving the World is a more exciting proposition than fixing the drains!

  3. Harry Dale Huffman

    The climate scientists at the center of the global warming scandal (promulgated by the UN IPCC) are scientific hysterics, who believe that “the global mean temperature difference between the extremes of the ice age and interglacial periods is only about 5 C.” That’s about 9 Fahrenheit degrees difference. But in the present “interglacial period” the mean temperature is about 15 C, or 59 F. So these “experts” think the Earth would be completely frozen over with a mean temperature of 50 F. (http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/10/101014171146.htm) You would think this idiocy would be authoritatively denounced, as front page news of a crisis in science, but it passes for the best scientific understanding among most scientists now.

    No one wants to face the general scientific incompetence that lies behind such beliefs. What you read in the mainstream media is largely political propaganda by the Left, but behind that is a crisis of incompetence in science itself, and it is not limited to climate science, because physicists should have corrected the climate scientists long ago. Very few of us (I am an independent physicist, unheeded by almost everyone) even recognize that there is no “greenhouse effect” (as promulgated by the climate scientists) at all; that is how bad the fundamental understanding of the physics of the atmosphere is among scientists in leading positions, however “expert” they are considered to be. They got off on the wrong track many years ago through dogmatic beliefs, have cut themselves off from self-correction for over 20 years through the IPCC process, and are now simply deluded, and increasingly hysterical, as the differences between their beliefs and the physical reality become ever more apparent to more people.

  4. MATTI VOORO

    ”The winter appears cold because we had gotten used to the mild winters.”

    Rahmstorf sounds to me like a typical warmists who now resort to irrational statements to defend their failed science. He fails to do even a minimum of home work to check his facts . He is clearly oblivious to all the winter record temperatures being broken not only in his own country but in Europe and in North America. This is what happens when the mainstream media only report the warm records and rarely report the cold records . But a scientist should know better to check the validity of his statements.

  5. DirkH

    It should be noted that RWE Innogy is the renewables arm of German energy giant RWE (nuclear, fossil fuels, you name it…).
    I have already observed this somewhere else – the renewables sector in Germany is throwing AGW under the bus.

  6. DirkH

    “Sintflutprediger”
    That’s the term that fits.

  7. MATTI VOORO

    There should be no doubt about what Professor Latif said or did not say about upcoming global cooling. Here is a quote from his 2008 peer reviewd paper abstract. Various warmist bloggers[ including ScepticalScience ] have claimed that he “predicted that between 2010 and 2020 the planet would warm 0.4 C ” The science record is quite clear and says otherwise. Dr Keenlyside was a co-author on the same paper.

    “Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.”

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html

    In my judgement this pattern that he talks about may last at last as long 3 decades as the cyclesof the natural climate variations [ SST ] that he talks about have been much longer than just a decade . Warming may not pick up again until 2030.

  8. M White

    Simple question

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Jan_2011.gif

    After one of the warmist years in the past 30, why is it all that CO2 did not prevent the atmospheres heat from radiating into the vacuum of space?

    1. DirkH

      That’s why i’m interested in variations of the LWIR back radiation. It is on average about 300W / m ^2; that corresponds to the radiation of a blackbody at about -5 degrees C or 23 degrees F. So on average the surface can’t cool below that in the night. Most of the backradiation comes from water vapor. So in very cold winter nights (and days!), i assume that there is little water vapor (minimal specific humidity), and much less than 300 W/m ^2 LWIR backradiation.

      see
      http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V95-4GKWPB3-1&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1656453289&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVe

  9. R. de Haan

    Rahmstorf can’t distance himself from his ‘vulnerable atmosphere’ concept
    keeping his ‘tipping point’ garbage and the sense of imminent catastrophe alive.

    The difference between vineyards in England and a frozen Thames isn’t “a few tenths of a degree”of course, it’s the difference between a warm and a cold cycle or even the difference between the Medieval Warmth Period and the little Ice Age.
    The difference is temperature at least 1.5 degree Celsius.
    You can see that from the temperature reconstructions records before they screwed them up.
    Once an Alarmist always an alarmist seems to be the credo by which all warmists seem to live.

    That’s what they have in common with the Club of Rome, the UN IPCC and any crooked politician ready to exploit the fear factor to which the general public has become so susceptible.

    I wished the big masses were less impressed by fear and scare mongering attempts by the likes of Rahmstorf.
    I wished more people would question the utter garbage and lies told by our politicians and published by their newspaper.

    But thanks to blogs like this some of the truth will sew the seeds of doubt
    and run one of the most costly propaganda campaigns in history into the ground.

    We will see the day when we open the another Hall of Shame, this time to ‘honor’ the scam artists who conspired against humanity creating the Anthropogenic Global Warming scam.

    Rahmstorf’s name, I’m sure will make the top ten of the list.

    That’s a nice legacy to leave behind, don’t you think so.

    1. mindert eiting

      In discussions with normal people around me, nobody seems to believe a dime of AGW. I know one woman who is scared about warming, but she admits that she is afraid of everything. Just look ar Gadafi, who is out of touch with everything. He does not understand what’s going on. Rahmstorf is less violent, but what’s his importance in the long run?

  10. R. de Haan

    Nursing the statistics back to health
    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/nursing_the_statistics_wuwt.jpg

    Great cartoon, great message.

  11. R. de Haan

    Let’s ask a real scientist what he thinks about climate models and Global Warming
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSxubKfTBU&feature=player_embedded#at=105

  12. R. de Haan
  13. R. de Haan

    We’re discussing climate science with fanatical crackpots
    http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/02/freeman-dyson-ultimately-redirects.html#more

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    […] Schröder will Stellungnahmen von Dax-Unternehmen zu… Emotionen: 88* In Blogs gefunden: Rahmstorf: Difference Between Vineyards In England And A Frozen Rahmstorf takes offence to the harsh criticism that Vahrenholt fired at PIK science, and thinks […]

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