Two More Prominent German Climate Scientists (Latif and Marotzke) Break Ranks – Concede Natural Causes!

More big news!

If there’s a growing consensus about anything, it is that the man-made climate catastrophe is not going to happen, and that the scientists who believe to the contrary are becoming an ever increasingly obscure, fringe minority. Call them the natural-cause denialists.

Maybe many scientists are starting to feel that blaming everything on CO2 and neglecting the powerful sun, oceans and soot, among other factors, was a pretty stupid thing to do after all.

So it should not be a surprise that 2 more leading warmist German climate scientists Prof. Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences and Prof. Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology have come out and conceded in newspaper interviews in the recent days that natural factors do have significant impacts on climate.

Latif says that half of the 0.8°C of global warming we’ve seen since 1850 is due to natural causes. Marotzke says that ocean cycles stopped the warming over the last 12 years.

At the “Die kälte Sonne” website, which was set up to counter false attacks on the book’s science, authors Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt direct our attention to the story and write as follows (reproduced with permission):

In an interview on February 9, 2012, with the Austrian daily Die Presse, renowned climate scientist Prof. Mojib Latif confirmed 2 fundamental assumptions made in the book “Die kalte Sonne”. Latif thus openly agrees with the view of authors Vahrenholt and Lüning that natural climate factors are responsible for about half of the 0.8°C of warming since the start of industrialization in 1850. A similar 50/50 ratio of anthropogenic vs natural climate drivers is also assumed by Professor Nicola Scafetta of Duke University in North Carolina (see page 135 in the book) as well as by physicist Prof. Nir Shaviv of Jerusalem (see page 86) in their models.

Here Latif is clearly positioning himself in contradiction to the claims made by the IPCC, which pegged the natural climate factors as having an influence of only single digit percentages. The all important magnitude of the so-called radiative forcings are for CO2 (1.66 W/m²) and the sun (0.12 W/m²), and are thus worlds apart.

Moreover, Latif confirmed in the interview that the stop in global warming over the last 12 years was caused by ocean cycles. Authors Vahrenholt and Lüning have the very same opinion in their book. Anything else would be surprising as the book itself is in part based on Latif’s work. Interestingly, even climate scientist Prof. Jochem Marotzke of the Max Plank Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg said in an interview yesterday with the TAZ daily that ocean cycles were the main reason for the stopped global warming since the year 2000. Thus the darling aerosol joker used by the IPCC is stripped of it’s importance.

Now that the first knee-jerk reactions to the book within the German climate science community are just about behind us, a real detailed look at the scientific content of the book “Die kalte Sonne” is beginning. Here it will hopefully become rapidly clear that the book offers a realistic interpretation that is supported by the results of numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers.”

Very profound admissions. So natural factors sun and oceans are real factors – aerosols are stripped of their importance. Conclusion: CO2 is disappearing as a major climate factor with every passing day – making the IPCC models obselete!

It needs to be pointed out that Jochem Marotzke less than 5 years ago warned: “There’s not much time remaining!” Now today he says the ocean cycles (unexpectedly) have given us 12 extra years, thus conceding they indeed do have major impacts on the climate after all. Yes, he seems to be learning something.

And simple logic tells us that if these ocean cycles have had an impact over the last 12 years, then it must also be conceded that the negative phases of the PDO and AMO will also continue to have an impact in the decades ahead. Anything else is just not serious.

Of course Latif and Marotzke may try to deny or underplay their latest admissions, which they probably do not even realise they have made. But their words are on the record for everybody to see. Read them yourselves!

 

15 responses to “Two More Prominent German Climate Scientists (Latif and Marotzke) Break Ranks – Concede Natural Causes!”

  1. matti

    Back in 2008 Latif was saying

    “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.”

    This is what the sceptics had been saying for years , namely natural causes have always dwarfed the impact of Co2. But politics entered science and special interest and political groups got control of science

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/pdf/nature06921.pdf

    So why was he not telling European press and IPCC in more forceful ways that cold weather lay ahead and it was not manmade carbon dioxide that was the cause? I guess it takes 3-4 cold winters in Europe and some braver souls like Vahrenholt and Luning to publish what needed to be published in Gemany and some media journalists who finally saw the light .

    1. DirkH

      Latif plays it safe; he posits that oceanic influences add a long term wiggle to the temperature curve, and has some computer models tuned to show that. He never announced exactly WHEN the oceanic influence would compensate the CO2 induced warming; he is always right a posteriori. Quite useless as a forecaster; but he learned that pointing to a “could happen” prognosis he made earlier in his life is enough to let the money flow and give him loads of public TV appearances.

      He’s a snakeoil salesman.

  2. matti

    Dirk H

    You may be right about him playing it safe with one foot in both camps . I personally think he is still wrong about half the past global warming having been caused by greenhouse gases . Time will show that man generated greenhouse gases have a very minor influence on global temperatures [3-5% at the best]. The last 10 -14 years is good evidence that rising co2 levels have no effect on global climate.

    1. DirkH

      Of course. The econometric analysis by Beenstock and Reingewertz ruled out a causal relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperatures – no matter what the physical mechanism, they just looked at the numbers and applied the test for Granger-causality. No amount of climate models can rectify that in favor of CAGW science.
      http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf

  3. Edward.

    […]”Indeed, Europe’s hunger for coal continues to spike and is driving increased imports of the raw material used by power plants and heavy industry.

    Domestic hard coal consumption by EU nations through the first six months of 2011 was 64.9 million metric tons, up from 59.7 million metric tons over the year-earlier period, the European Association for Coal and Lignite reported.

    Germany was on track to import up to 48 million metric tons of coal for 2011– a total that will like increase due to its decision to phase out its nuclear power capacity, the coal industry group said.”

    http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/02/08/New-EU-wind-power-capacity-near-level/UPI-73051328700600/#ixzz1m0LFm8tk

    Well, MMCO2 is little or NO problem – is it something the German power companies already knew?

    Why are we still dancing to the Alarmist tune?

    Even if, you were gullible enough to swallow the idea of man’s puny atmospheric input of a life giving gas was causing climate catastrophe [and Good Gawd what a stretch that was!]. Surely now, with no hard evidence of any threat and with what science there was, has been aptly defenestrated, the flimsy crackpot idea is blown to oblivion.

    Of far greater import and one which affects every citizen in Europe.

    Germany [along with Britain], has been – for far too long, beholden to the Loony Green Faction – it is very much high time that the political ninnies re-adjusted their blinkers and removed their Green Goggles and in doing so: entered once more into the real world.

    One problem with that of course – the EU economic policy [if one can call it that] is built on financial fastasy constructs – one of its main pillars is founded on carbon emissions trading and a fabulously braindead commitment to a ‘renewable energy agenda’.
    Renewable energy, carbon trading with a bonkers floor price which will impinge on every facet of ordinary life in the Soviet Europe Empire. Such will be the burden on ‘big industry and energy intensive manufacturing, that it will ‘engineer’ a colossal collapse in industrial output: as firms close and outsource to Asia.
    Thus, as our economic activity degrades, in a spiral of regressive de-industrialisation. Eventually, turning Europe into a industrial ghost region, indeed, a Socialist ‘wet dream’ of a Europe wide and massive agrarian commune.

    That is the battle, we must all fight the mad Kommissars.

    1. DirkH

      I don’t think de-industrialization was their intent. I think they are so out of control, so surrounded by sycophants (lesser Eurocrats), so unaccountable and so inept that they thought their decarbonization strategy (and some other very mad ideas) could work. What we have are not some brilliant evil masterplanners but a bunch of bumbling morons.

      1. Mindert Eiting

        When I read for the first time something of the post-modern philosophers, I also thought that they were a bunch of bumbling morons. I had never seen such a worthless and self-defeating philosophy. Nevertheless, in a few decades large parts of our universities became infected by post-modernism. I was quite naive. Be on one’s guard against morons in a moronic environment.

        1. DirkH

          I never cared for whatever the soft science types were doing. When I entered university in 1984 or so those faculties were probably already a hopelessly lost cause. But I would say it has to do with brain drain – the newly emergent computer science sector absorbed people like me; philosophy et.al. had to make do with the rest; and the real new philosophy came from the computer guys. (von Neumann, Kurzweil, Moravec, Vinge; that line actually starts with Wittgenstein and Gödel.)

        2. Edward.

          Yes and morons surround themselves with other like minded morons, a cosy self perpetuating club.

          The real victim of post-modernism, is the truth.

  4. DirkH

    http://www.hko.gov.hk/education/edu05spacewx/ele_sunspot_cold_e.htm

    “Mike Lockwood opined that solar activity seemed able to modulate blocking events. When the solar activity was low, blocking events became more stable. In the winter between 2009 and 2010, a prolonged blocking situation of distorted upper-air westerly jet stream caused the long spell of freezing weather in Europe. ”

    We are approaching the weak maximum of SC24 and we seem to have less blocking than last year… maybe it stays this way for another 3 years until the maximum is over. And then, lots of blocking again.

  5. DirkH

    German ex-communists, now crypto communists, Die Linke (The Left; ex PDS, ex SED) demand that RWE must fire Vahrenholt; call him conspiracy theorist.

    http://www.scharf-links.de/92.0.html?&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=22006&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=56&cHash=6ec38cf5df

    Communists HATE it when a vehicle of redistribution and free market disruption gets destroyed…

  6. DirkH

    Marotzke continues damage control. Small interview: He says of course the global temperature stagnates because the heat somehow gets stored in the oceans without manifesting in the atmosphere. We are just researching exactly how this happens. He is astonished why two people would write a book like Die Kalte Sonne, and says it would be unlikely if two such amateurs would be able to contradict the worlds climate scientists.

    http://nachrichten.t-online.de/klimawandel-abgesagt-die-kalte-sonne-im-experten-check/id_53915584/index

    There’s a chorus of skeptical comments under the interview. Noone believes him.

  7. Steve Milesworthy

    It’s mendacious to claim that somehow Jochem Marotzke is turning sceptic (without realising it) when in the first part of the Der Spiegel interview he says:

    “The strongest driver of climate change is clearly the CO2 increase. In addition, an increase of other greenhouse gases such as methane or nitrous oxide. A large role is played by aerosols, ie particles that float in the atmosphere. But the dominant effect comes from the CO2. And because CO2 remains in the atmosphere, this gas will also affect the climate significantly in the future. Unless we reduce the emissions of CO2.”

    He then re-emphasises the need to take radical action to avoid 2C of warming and finally states “the scientific quality of the arguments in this book leaves much to be desired.”

    (courtesy of Google translate

    http://nachrichten.t-online.de/klimawandel-abgesagt-die-kalte-sonne-im-experten-check/id_53915584/index

    )

  8. Week in review 2/11/12 | Climate Etc.

    […] (3)  Two more prominent german climate scientists – Latif and Marotzke- break ranks and concede nat… […]

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