Law Professor Labels German Federal Environment Agency Authoritarian Pamphlet Against Skeptics “State Propaganda”

Last week, the German Federal Umweltbundesamt (UBA), Germany’s version of the EPA, issued a one-sided alarmist pamphlet that attempts to declare the climate debate over and attacks prominent skeptics.

UBA_Pamphlet

Controversial 123-page pamphlet…in it the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) declares climate debate over and names and portrays skeptics as “spreaders of half-truths and misinformation”.

In the pamphlet, he German government UBA specifically singles out, identifies, targets and attacks US and German skeptics, thus sparking outrage.

Some of the Americans targeted include scientists Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Frederick Seitz, Pat Michaels, John Christy, Ross McKitrick and conservative think-tank Heartland Institute. The German targets include European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Fritz Vahrenholt, and Sebastian Lüning, as well as journalists and publicists Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch, and film-maker / publicist Günter Ederer, and national newspaper Die Welt.

Today flagship daily Die Welt has a commentary by law professor Thorsten Koch titled: “State Propaganda – The Federal Environment Agency violates the rules of neutrality”.

In his commentary Koch writes:

The pamphlet is a product of official state action in which in one sense the claims that contradict the ‘scientific consensus’ made by ‘climate change skeptics’ (p. 110) are polemicized. Even the ZDF public television website ‘heute.de’ diagnosed it as ‘official state defamation’. This makes the matter legally questionable.”

Koch then explains that the government is allowed to participate and take a position on the climate issue, but adds:

Strange however that a government office is attempting to bindingly specify the state of knowledge in a scientific question. That is the job of a scientist. Even more it is neither scientifically or legally appropriate if scientific truths – and thus ultimately only the current state of the error – are announced with official authority.

Deciding scientific controversies is no duty of the state. The attempt we have here by the Environment Agency to decide a scientific controversy is in this form unique.”

And we may also add that it is also not the duty of a handful of scientists to decide political controversies…at least not in democratic societies.

 

17 responses to “Law Professor Labels German Federal Environment Agency Authoritarian Pamphlet Against Skeptics “State Propaganda””

  1. Bernd Felsche

    Pyto Alert: Caption should say 123-page pamphlet

  2. Graeme No.3

    ” it is also not the duty of a handful of scientists to decide political controversies”

    Well said. Although I sometimes wonder how strong is their claim to be called scientists by anyone other than themselves and their supporters.

  3. DirkH

    This explains the controversy. Hold on to your seat; remove beverage from proximity of computer.

    Ready? ok.

    Warmists think that CO2 will heat up the Earth because they think CO2 is what heats up greenhouses, parked cars, and even houses. Listen from about 08:00 on.
    http://www.kxl.com/05/21/13/Is-Your-Car-Hot-In-The-Summer-Blame-Glob/landing_lars.html?blockID=688799&feedID=10628

    Now I understand why they’re worried.

    1. DirkH

      Dr. Laurie Johnson is Chief Economist at the NRDC and taught for 8 years at the Uni of Denver.
      http://www.nrdc.org/about/staff/laurie-johnson

  4. gilbert dupuis

    Here in Canada, we call it summer! Every year since the beginning of the Holocene, it’s the same thing. I guess it is part of Nature… Stay tune.

  5. Roger L.
  6. Bernd Felsche

    Now that UBA has “softened” the pamphlet (insubstantially), we can see the authors’ names.

    Dr. Harry Lehmann
    Dr. Klaus Müschen
    Dr. Steffi Richter
    Dr. Claudia Mäder

    The first name rang a bell from the Desertec debacle so I dug up some olde files which said that he was “Harry Lehmann, Dipl.-Phys.” in 2003 … from where (IIRC) it’s a long road to a Dr.. A biography of the Lehmann is on-hand which shows little opportunity to gain a doctorate in a scientific field. The bio. does however “lay claim” to part of Rubbia’s Nobel Prize in 1984.

    Lehmann is NOT a climate scientist.

    Dr. Klaus Müschen appears to be a glorified electrician and social scientist. For 7 years he was an assistant instructor at Hamburg Uni. He spent a long time in Berlin, squandering tax and rate-payers’ money. Doesn’t make him a climate scientist.

    Dr. Steffi Richter appears to have gained a Doctorate in philosophy of Teleology in the Soviet block. Not a climate scientist.

    I can’t find anything outside of UBA to definitively identify Dr. Claudia Mäder’s area of expertise let alone discover where she got her gongs.

    I’m used to easily finding where and in what subject people gained their degrees and higher qualifications when looking at the bio of their employer’s web site. UBA doesn’t seem to have that information.

    Germany seems to be pretty strict on people pretending to have “titles”; even raiding people’s homes and offices if they joke about it.

    While I was writing Und Sie manipulieren doch appeared. It deals further with the facts and the lies.

    1. DirkH

      Desertec debacle? Just this Monday I listened to DW-KULTRA, eh, sorry, Deutschlandradio Kultur and they interviewed a Dutch engineer who told about his vision of making solar energy in the desert work… yes, he is the desertec employee who currently builds a plant in Marocco…

      Just one current article, you find many more searching for desertec in google news .de; the Prantl-Pravda:
      http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/baubeginn-des-ersten-desertec-kraftwerks-gruener-strom-aus-der-sahara-1.1667828

      and loads more… As long as there are taxpayers to loot this gravy train won’t stop!

      1. DirkH

        This Marocco project BTW is financed by the state-owned (tax payer funded) KfW bank; and it will deliver electricity mostly to Marocco and partly to Spain IF they manage to build a transmission line. Nothing of the energy will arrive in Germany.

        Just so you know; we are long past the point where we even pretend that.

  7. Bernd Felsche

    Fritz Vahrenholt responds to the UBA’s pamphlet in an open letter to the head of the Environment Office.
    Extract:

    That you do not mention my withdrawal as CEO of RWE Innogy and my present capacity as sole director of the German Wildlife Foundation, shows that you only had one goal: to defame a critic.

    There is much more. Keep in mind that, as usual, Vahrenholt doesn’t mince words. He wields facts like heavy artillery.

    1. DirkH

      …and Vahrenholt is a Social Democrat and promotes renewable energy, i.e. another Green…

      so what we are actually seeing is a fight amongst the Green parties / the warmist sects about who is the one pure church. A religious war.

  8. Team Obama Issues Drone Alert | Designs on the Truth

    […] propaganda arm for the administration.   Chilling really. Especially when you consider that German authorities seem to be practicing the same brand of thought control (again?!). Last week that country’s version of the EPA issued an alarmist pamphlet ~   […]

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