Germany’s version of the EPA, the Umweltbundesamt (UBA) and its hapless director Jochen Flasbarth have come under intense fire from much of the major German media for having published a pamphlet (background here) defaming and black-listing US and German climate skeptic scientists and journalists.
The number of articles harshly criticising the German UBA’s heavy-handed tactics is mounting and there appears to be no let-up in sight.
UBA director Jochen Flasbarth comes under heavy fire for blacklisting US and German skeptics. Stephan Röhl for the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 generic license.
Today Switzerland’s NZZ published an online commentary written by Markus Hofmann titled State-Certified Climate Science. In it he writes:
What the heck was the German Federal Office Of Environment (UBA) thinking when it decided to publish a 118-page report on the climate debate? The propaganda brochure is called: ‘And indeed the warming continues – What’s behind the climate change debate?’. It is causing a number of journalists to blow their tops with outrage.
[…] Indeed for the UBA it is obviously not about presenting facts simply and clearly. ‘And indeed the warming continues’ pamphlet is a declaration of war on so-called climate skeptics.
The UBA doesn’t stop at defaming the ‘non-climate scientist skeptics’ in general terms. No, it names the persons – putting Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Lüning, Dirk Maxeiner, Michael Miersch, Günter Ederer and the ‘European Institute for Climate and Energy’ (EIKE) on a black list. That is ‘official state defamation,’ heute.de writes.
[…] Specifying what the binding state of the science is, is not the job of a governing authority,’ legal expert Thorsten Koch correctly opines in ‘Die Welt’.
Now the debate is off and running: The gentlemen who were criticized by the state are now responding. Vahrenholt is defending himself in an open letter. Maxeiner and Miersch are firing back.
Thus precisely the opposite of what the UBA wanted is now happening: The ‘climate skeptics’ are now in the spotlight. The state’s shot at the skeptics has backfied.”
Yesterday Spiegel published satirical commentary authored by Jan Fleischhauer saying that basically the state has officially declared skeptics as misfits and that everyone should stop listening to them. The UBA defamatory pamphlet singles out veteran journalists Dirk Maxeiner and Michael Miersch for “not being in line with the latest state of knowledge of climate science“. Fleischhauer writes:
If this were about anything less important than global climate, one could take the UBA’s intervention as a badge of honor: There are not many journalists in Germany whose works are so shattering that they would be put on a black list. I know people who would kill to get that kind of recognition.”
The UBA’s pamphlet is indeed a major backfire in the face of the UBA. Flasbarth should resign and a new successor should announce a more tolerant, impartial and open stance in the climate debate.
Tomorrow I will be presenting Maxeiner’s and Miersch’s reply.
It must be becoming clear to many more people in recent years just what a low calibre of person is promoting alarm over CO2 from positions of considerable authority and influence.
While many people will not care to go into the scientific details behind such alarm, they will still be able to form opinions about the quality and integrity of those who have been pushing that alarm at them.
Well done for helping expose this shoddy publication. It is heartening to read your subsequent reports of the dismay which that publication has produced in a variety of commentators. I think they don’t like arrogance and mis-use of power. Good for them. Will they dislike these even more if and when they learn there is so little substance behind the alarmism?
Today, May 24th, we have snow on the ground here in Ontario Canada…….must be Global Warming?
Similar weather around Cologne, Germany; I read. People having to turn on their central heating again.
Where we live we had to scrape ice off the windscreens this morning! Frost is forecast for tonight as well. Unbelievable warming!
This backlash, against one instance of overweening authoritarianism and subversion of true science, is heartening to those of us who understand the full depth of the subornation, of all of our public institutions, to an utterly false, incompetent and even fraudulent climate “consensus”. Few indeed understand that even most “climate skeptics” are deluded to a substantial degree, and consider the basic science settled, only exaggerated. But it is not exaggerated, it is fundamentally wrong, and all the rest, including the political abuse, proceeds from that fundamental wrongness, that very basic scientific incompetence on the part of so many who should know better. It is literally an insane situation, in which all of the “authorities” in our societies are promulgating ridiculous “imminent” catastrophes, and those of us who speak out responsibly and knowledgeably against such rampant stupidity are made out to be criminally perverse and weak-minded. We must hope that the widespread negative public reaction to the latest official propaganda is a sign that the mass societal fever and hysteria, over “runaway climate”, is finally starting to ebb and will quickly die out entirely, with appropriate condemnation of all those who have nurtured it, and fundamental correction of the bad scientific theories behind it.
Continued illumination will hopefully result in the UBA being dissolved and the staff dismissed in disgrace.
They’re copping Flak on the Facebook page. Stating that they’ve NOT defamed people. German Wikipedia page for UBA mentions the problematic pamphlet.
You can tell that UBA is on the nose when TAZ bloggers are outraged at the pamphlet; and agree with Broder! Detlef Guertler says that the pamphlet is a request for the self-dissolution of the UBA.
TAZ bloggers are confused. They just rail against it because the government is “conservative”. They probably do not even know that Flasbarth was installed under Trittin’s environment minister term. Leftist reflexes.
No Sir, I’m not confused. I don’t care if the government is left or right and who might have installed Flasbarth or not. Might be your problem, but definitely not mine.
I simply don’t want government institutions to declare, what truth is. And I want them even less to blacklist journalists that don’t agree with the institution’s version of truth, scientific consensus or how ever you name it.
IMHO an institution that acts like this has lost its right to exist.
Unbelievable – a comment from a TAZ blogger and I like it very much!
Indeed. Flasbarth’s agency has gone way too far and it goes to show what people are capable of when they are cock-sure convinced they are absolutely right.
The UBA then deserves this backlash. The officials there are acting like typical bureaucrats and central planners with little objectivity in dealing with the debate.
Gandhi once famously said: First they try to ignore you, then they try to ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
On the surface this is the ultimate Nazi-style atrocity, demonising the opposition and inviting attacks on them. Except for one thing. By listing numerous scientists who disagree with global warming they’ve just stated there is no consensus.
Truth always wins.
I wouldn’t use the Nazi term here: “demonising the opposition and inviting attacks on them” is standard procedure in politics. It’s just particularly dirty when lies, distortions and suppression of information are used.