First, a few words about 2011
I don’t want to bore everyone with a long recap of 2011, just a few highlights off the top of my head.
2011 started with the climate bet with Rob Honeycutt and Co. NoTricksZone and the coolists say this new decade 2011-2020 will be cooler than the last decade 2001-2010 (and it looks like 2011 is in the coolist column, though I haven’t run the numbers yet).
Then in March there was Fukushima and the ensuing mass media-driven hysteria that tsunamied over Germany, and led a panicked government to shut down the entire German nuclear industry.
In 2011 we also got to know Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber’s “Master Plan” for transforming global society so that it suits his view of what it should be. Unfortunately it is closed-minded, based on dogma, and has little to do with science. To me what Schellnhuber proposes is nothing less than wild adventurism in the social engineering laboratory. The results of implementing such a plan would be devastating for democracy and overall global social development. It opens the the door to authoritarianism. If anything, the “Master Plan” is a powerful argument why scientists should stay in their labs, and not be left to run society.
In April NoTricksZone got its 1 millionth visit after one year of existence (the 2 million will be reached this month).
The story that got lots a visitors was the weed-covered multi-million dollar solar field. Ironically that photo may someday come to symbolize Germany’s obsessed, misguided and rushed energy-supply conversion which the country is so hell-bent on in achieving – no matter the costs. Globally, except for China, 2011 is the year that solar energy bit the dust.
German doubt over climate science going global in 2012?
The big 2011 highlight for me is one that readers are not aware of. One morning in early September I got an e-mail from geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, asking if I’d be interested in translating in English a new book on climate science and energy policy he and Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt were working on. I immediately said yes.
Over the next three months I used every available hour I could find to do the work. I finished the job just a few days ago, on December 29. The book’s publisher Hoffmann & Campe in Hamburg is now about to start the search for a publisher for the English version. So we’re hoping that Die Kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun) will also soon be available in English for international readers – soon.
German edition can now be ordered here.
Personally I learned a lot from this book. As a layman, I had some general knowledge gaps and gray areas in climate science. This book puts everything in clear perspective and deepened my knowledge. It’s up-to-date and cites many of the latest peer-reviewed papers – more than 800 sources in total. Both Dr. Lüning and Dr. Vahrenholt made an outstanding effort in putting it together. Already it’s starting to stir up controversy here, even though the German version won’t be available until February. It’s light-years more up-to-date than the IPCC 2007 AR4.
When you read Die Kalte Sonne, you really get the sense of how far climate science has advanced since 2007 and how outdated and narrow the IPCC AR4 truly is. Talk about divergence!
Authors forecast cooling for the decades ahead
The book’s authors focus on why the climate catastrophe is not taking place. It takes an in-depth look into the topics of solar cycles, temperature reconstructions, the Hockey Stick, aerosols, soot, fudging, amplification mechanisms, cosmic radiation, magnetism, clouds, UV radiation, ocean cycles, the shortcomings and flaws of the IPCC and their dubious models in particular. The authors also present their own look into the future using a model that considers all important climate drivers. It concludes that the Earth has to reckon with cooling over the coming decades. It’s the most convincing forecast I’ve seen up to now.
I’m very optimistic about the success of the book, and will be following it closely in the weeks ahead.
3rd year of NTZ
I also look forward to starting my 3rd year of blogging, together with the guest writers you have come to know – like Ed, Matti, and Juraj. I hope readers will keep coming back. Wishing you all the best for 2012!
Pierre
Happy New Year Pierre.
In the mean time we have the Canadian Testimonies on climate.
I love this presentation by Jan Veizer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5zakcprRIs
And Tim Patterson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h24Dk30UJTQ
In the mean time Zero hedge published an article about the (confidential) Kissinger Papers.
If any of the proposed policies of this paper have been put to practice, a lot of the current crazy energy, climate and environmental policies can be explained.
The time has come to stop all this madness.
There is no peak oil and there is no dangerous climate effect from CO2 let alone anthropogenic CO2 and there is no population bomb if we bring prosperity to the developing countries. Higher energy consumption brings progress and prosperity and prosperity comes with lower birth rates.
Besides that. The alarmist claims made by the Club of Rome in the early seventies
have been proven wrong already.
We’re recycling old scares and practicing failed socialist policies.
Here is the link to the Kissinger article and the PDF of the complete report.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/presenting-nssm-200-implications-worldwide-population-growth-us-security-and-overseas-interests
The Chinese are starting to buy up German PV companies.
http://www.ftd.de/unternehmen/industrie/:angebot-fuer-sunways-chinesen-kaufen-deutsche-solartechnik/60148685.html
Congrats Pierre. You’re doing well. I check NTZ at least once a day, I like your focus on German and other European stories on climate tricks. Happy new year.
Happy New Year to you as well, Nonoy.
Happy New Year!
Keep up the great work – it is surely much appreciated, not just by me but by many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of others. I am glad to be responsible for a good few dozen of those nearly 2,000,000 visits!
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Thanks John – PG
Pierre, a Happy & Prosperous New Year to you.
I visit here at least once a day to get the German slant on the Climate debate and politics.
Keep up the good work.
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Thanks and hope you’ll keep dropping by – PG
Happy New Year, Pierre. I also come here once a day to look at your postings. I particularly like being able to see sense gradually creeping into a dogmatic and controlled orthodox environment, it gives me hope. Thanks for your efforts.
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Thanks for the kind comments. -PG
“I visit here at least once a day…”
“I also come here once a day …”
Oh, oh: not only are there people who will openly admit to their scepticism, but they admit that go back to it again and again (at LEAST once a day!): they’re addicted to it! They are psychologically dependent on it! Remember what they told you about Internet addiction, and the ‘nets lowering your IQ (just ask Jaron Lanier & Clifford Stoll)? Right after last year’s scientific proof that Republican voters were id—-, eh, not responsible for the views they hold, here is Further Proof.
BTW (this is confidential, but this is e-mail, isn’t it? Just make sure this isn’t leaked): It was always good to be able to point to Schellnhuber & his ilk: can’t trust these Germans politicially, of course, but their academics still command respect. Just quote that some Herr Doktor Professor warns against AGW and you carry more weight than quoting 20 Greenpeace flyleafs. Now if some of these guys come out as sceptics… Luckily, no one in the anglophone world reads translations, so there’s still hope for The Cause.
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“…carry more weight than quoting 20 Greenpeace flyleafs” True – but that works both ways. -PG
Pierre,
Great site – yes I admit I am an addict!
I love hearing about European and German fascination with this green non-sense. Keep up the good fight. You know, here in the US there are always dissenters and two sides to any story and we have a good number of skeptical sites – but you are a real minority view I’m sure in Germany.
Wow is it going to hurt when Germans and Europeans wake up and find out what a fraud CAGW is.
Happy New Year!
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Thanks – I’m not even sure I qualify to be a minority. In Germany in politics you need to win 5% of the vote to be considered a minority. – PG
Yes he is a minority view here. The Germans who don’t track the international news but get their info from the insular German language media are regularly surprised by what I tell them. They don’t even attack me as they don’t have the data or information to do so . They are simply baffled.
There is a slow osmosis-like trickle of information seeping in from the English speaking world and it takes time to hollow out the foundations of German Green romanticism, and it will make a big thumping noise when it comes down. And they will be very disappointed because they will have spend all their money on a useless cause.
Hi Dirk,
That could take awhile before they realize it. Probably after the money is gone.
Not so sure about the “big thumping noise”. German Romantic illusions have a tradition of 200 years of bumping against the real world. The rhetorical spin has always been a loud lament about “restoration” and “reactionary conservatism” – after 1825, the 1880s (the “Gründerzeit”), the turn of the century, the 1950s – when the West was deaf to the siren song from the East, the aftermath of the sixties – while the revolutionaries were always turning into the new bobooisie. The new Green Landed Gentry may have to look for new ways to live off the hoi polloi when the subsidies for clean power are scaled back, but they will never, ever have betrayed The Revolution. And all of them, 1825-ca.2020, will always be the first generation “who made democracy possible in Germany”.
Congratulations on the great success of No Tricks Zone which is on my list of 10 climate blogsites I visit each day.
Happy and Prosperous 2012 to you and yours!
Please inform us when ‘Die kalte Sonne’ is available in English as I will certainly buy it.
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Great – and thanks. Best wishes to you too! -PG
Pierre
All the best for the New Year . I have some ideas for future articles but they will involve more about North America . We are here near Toronto , Ontario at -15 C now and it may go to -27 C tonight .The worst is yet to come later in the winter.
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Thanks Matti. Best wishes to you for 2012. Looking forward to your future articles. Here in Germany we have a balmy 6°C. It’s been a mild winter so far. -PG