Skeptic book by Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Lüning “Die kalte Sonne” (see side bar) will begin its third week on the Spiegel bestseller list since it was first released on February 7.
It shot up to number 14 on the bestseller list for German hardcover non-fiction books just a week after it was released. Last week it was at number 15, and next week it will be at the 18th spot.
Die kalte Sonne also remains No. 1 on the Hoffmann & Campe list. Publisher Hoffmann & Campe, based in Hamburg, are now is discussions with publishers for an English version. I’m also informed that a second printing of the German version is now underway.
Die kalte Sonne is also No. 1 on the German Amazon list for books on environment and natural science.
The book’s success has unleased a wave of outrage among climate alarmists and activists. But most of the criticism has been emotionally charged, from people who did not even bother to read the book. German readers click here.
Bitter Cold February Hammered Europe
As the skeptic book sweeps across Central Europe, its launch was accompanied by a nasty cold snap over the first half of February. The online Swiss magazine Blick writes:
February 2012 is among the 10 coldest February months since measurements began 150 years ago. The cold wave in the first half of the month was the most intensive in 27 years, MeteoSchweiz reported on Tuesday.”
The German Weather Service (DWD) reported that Germany had its coldest February in 26 years, saying that…
…at times February, 2012 could be compared to the harsh winters of 1963, 1956 or 1929.”
The cold snap was particularly harsh across Eastern Europe, with hundreds of people dying of the cold. According to the online Russian Ria Novosti:
The worst cold in Russia’s south for the past twenty-five years caused a disaster for the country’s vineyards, which is comparable to the damage inflicted by the anti-alcohol campaign initiated by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the Argumenty Nedeli weekly newspaper reported on Wednesday. The temperatures, which plunged to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit) in February, destroyed over a half the vineyards on the Taman Peninsula and the Krasnodar Territory.”
Interesting: On your link
http://www.vorwaerts.de/Kultur/Buchtipp/68718/ohne_sonne_geht_es_nicht.html
Vahrenholt explains what made him examine the IPCC’s predictions.
Year after year, the electricity production from the wind turbines of RWE’s renewables arm was dropping against the prognosis. (I have seen such numbers in a report as well – yes, the capacity factor is dropping year after year)
This puzzled Vahrenholt, so he started examining the causes, and to his amazement, he found that temperatures had stopped rising. Rising temperatures would have lead to an increase in the averages wind speed, but that simply didn’t happen. And from there, he researched more…
Now! This might sound strange to an American, but you can’t imagine the complete suppression of any doubt in the Global Warming message in Germany in the 2000’s decade. It is entirely plausible that even a high ranking manager of a German renewables company just didn’t know that Global Warming had stopped until he researched the international data, literature, blogs. German MSM surely would not have sufficed to find out about this, nor the dozens of self-righteous trade magazines of the German renewables scene – they all show a striking lack of introspection or reflection. During my time in a German solar company I had the opportunity of skimming through them; they were constantly painting a rosy picture of the future, had overly optimistic, or let’s say, phantastic EROI assumptions (even the German wikipedia is more realistic) etc., and not once have I seen any climate/solar/wind predictions for the future in them, let alone a reflection on the recent lack of warming… it was agitprop from start to finish, and I knew it all the time while I was in that company… During my time there Hamburg suffered through its first two hard winters, and they were utterly unprepared for the amounts of snow and ice.
Funnily enough I wasn’t the only skeptic in that company – my project leader was a physicist who was convinced of Svensmark’s hypothesis.
‘to his amazement, he found that temperatures had stopped rising. Rising temperatures would have lead to an increase in the averages wind speed’. Seems an almost perfect replay of Lysenkoism.
It is not just in Germany. The cleanie/greenie/EV community in the US practices mutual delusion by referring to each other’s ravings. They believe that German solar panels saved the French nuke grid last month, Denmark runs on wind energy, solar pv is near cost parity and a pv panel can trickle charge your EV car at night.
They have never bothered to connect a voltmeter and wattmeter to a panel or windmill. Kilowatts, megawatts and gigawatts are confused. Don’t even mention the watt-hours.
If Matti is right (and I think he is) and La Niña/El Niño is modulated by the strength of the solar cycle that came before them, we have to look at how string that cycle was.
Sunspot count history charts:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/sidc_ssn1749-2012.png
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/maunda2.jpg
Turns out it was still a little bit stronger as weak cycle in the 1970ies. And the 70ies were of course the decade of the Ice Age scare. Our current cycle is much weaker. Give it 10 years from now for severe cooling.
I think it is worth noting that during the last similar cold spell in Europe, 1962 to 1987 , a period of 26 years , 15 of the winters or about 60% of the winters were below the norm with negative winter anomalies . There is no guarantee that this cold spell will be similar but it does indicate that the cooling period if it contiunes, will have colder weather for decades.
OT: UEA defends its record on cheating:
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/uea_defends_its_record_on_cheating_1_1227357
Fish rots from the head.