World’s Largest Re-Insurer “Munich Re” $ponsors 2014 “Extreme Weather Congress” In Hamburg!

Today parts of the German mainstream media have begun reporting on the 9th Extreme Weather Conference in Hamburg, which began today and is slated to end on Friday. The direct link to the program-pdf here. Of course the focus of the Congress will be on the claimed “increasing frequency of extreme weather events”.

In all 3000 experts are attending, along with 2500 Hamburg school pupils.

What especially raises eye brows is the fact that the event is sponsored by the Munich Re reinsurer, the biggest in the world. The Munich-Germany-based reinsurer of course stands to profit handsomely from the spreading of extreme weather fear; it makes it it a lot easier to jack up premiums (see “Spiegel Online doubts the catastrophe scenarios of the Munich Re“).

Also very murky is the identity of the organizer of the Congress: Institute for Weather and Climate Communication” (IWK). At their Die kalte Sonne website here, German skeptics Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt looked into who is behind the mysterious IWK? They write:

The result is sobering: Apparently the institute really does not have its own Internet platform. So we took a look at the legal page of wetterspiegel.de. Here indeed the “Institute for Weather and Climate Communication GmbH” is given. Listed as the managing directors are Frank Böttcher and Alexander Hübener. Frank Böttcher? Indeed we’ve written about him as well: “Extreme weather “expert” Frank Böttcher does not not know about the latest literature: Latest research results on global cyclone activity are damaging is climate-alarmist business“. Without climate fear and extreme weather alarm, the number of visitors for the commercialized Extreme Weather Congress would certainly be limited. Thus it’s little wonder that Böttcher, because of promotional reasons, is fervently preaching climatic doomsday to attract visitors into his auditorium.”

Lüning and Vahrenholt also look at a list of persons slated to appear: “Paul Becker of the German Weather Service, a climate alarmist to the bone. Peter Höppe of the Munich Re reinsurer will attend the introductory press conference, thus getting his sponsoring money’s worth.”

No skeptic was invited to the present at the Extreme Weather Congress. For the second year in a row Lüning and Vahrenholt were denied the opportunity to present there.

Vahrenholt and Lüning also ask themselves whether Mojib Latif will be able to muster the courage to disclose some inconvenient things that up to now he only has quietly admitted in the scientific literature. See “Mojib Latif: the proof of an anthropogenic climate contribution is difficult because the natural ocean cycles dominated” and “Mojib Latif in the presentation in USA: CO2 sensitivity was set too high by the IPCC“.

There is a bit of hope: “honest broker” and alarmism-critic Hans von Storch has also been invited, and so maybe he will infuse a little sobriety into the Hamburg climate panic-fest, see “Climate scientist Hans von Storch: Climate models possibly do not take solar activity sufficiently into account” and “Judith Curry prognosticates warming pause until the 2030s: Hans von Storch in such a case demands a vote of no-confidence against CO2“.

Overall, however, in view of the sponsorship by the world’s biggest player in the re-insurance industry, the murkiness surrounding the event’s organizers, and their exclusion of scientists with other views and data, the event has everything to do with serving corporate special interests rather than those of science.

 

17 responses to “World’s Largest Re-Insurer “Munich Re” $ponsors 2014 “Extreme Weather Congress” In Hamburg!”

  1. oebele bruinsma

    Well, it sounds like a sponsored indoctrination exercise for 2500 school children.

    1. DirkH

      Hamburg loves to drag captive kids into climate panic outings; when I was there in 2010 they were the Climate Capital of Europe. I read the program; they dragged kids from Kindergarten onwards into all kinds of Drecks-art climate panic expos; all paid for by the EU commission. Worse; Hamburg residents don’t even notice that they’re lunatics.

    2. Bernd Felsche

      Most of the kids would be much smarter than the experts.

      They know how to play the game.

      1. oebele bruinsma

        I agree: Furthermore as they are of school-age caliber they have have never experienced the predicted/projected warming for the last 18+ years.

  2. DirkH

    Rivers in the 1970ies carried 25% more water because of pollution, the Met Office finds out. Pollution reduced the amount of sunlight that reached the ground by 0.5% which led to less evaporation.
    http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/aerosole-schmutzige-luft-laesst-fluesse-anschwellen-a-995643.html

    Somehow I think they have a bug in their model because it just doesn’t sound plausible. I am confident that some time in the future they might find it though.

    Or maybe the Spiegel scribe botched the numbers.

    1. Ulrich Elkmann

      For once, Spiegel gets the translation right. The Abracts of the paper they refers to in “Nature Geoscience” reads:

      “Using statistical techniques, we identify a detectable aerosol signal in the observed river flow both over the combined region, and over individual river basins in Europe and North America. We estimate that solar dimming due to rising aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere around 1980 led to an increase in river runoff by up to 25% in the most heavily polluted regions in Europe.”

      “Statistical techniques” sounds like they found a new use for the hockey stick.

  3. DirkH

    Greens in Saxony all giddy about Swedish-Red-Green-controlled end to Lignite mining expansion. Subsidy-Destroyed energy market makes burning Lignite less profitable. Venezuela here we come. (No, the journalist does not understand that there is no energy market in Germany anymore; he swallows everything the Saxon Greens say; praises New Age Of Solar And Wind.)
    http://www.l-iz.de/Wirtschaft/Metropolregion/2014/10/Zeit-der-Braunkohle-geht-in-Sachsen-zu-Ende-57545.html

  4. Curious George

    Is there any data available regarding insurance claims in 2008-2013? Also on a profitability of insurance companies, and of Munich Re .. including top manager’s compensation?

    1. DirkH
  5. John F. Hultquist

    General comment: Our retirement funds likely make money when large insurers do well. Still, lying is not a good plan. Maybe they just don’t know the truth – and don’t want to. The climate activists get about 90% of my anger. In this case, Frank Böttcher and Alexander Hübener, can be added to Gore, Hansen, McKibben, and others.

    A reply: Dirk mentions stream flow and model. Many rivers have been monitored for a long time so relying on a model seems unwarranted. First thing would be to look at stream flow. However, actual streams are hard to evaluate because of land cover changes, dam construction, withdrawals, dredging, levees, and so on. I can believe variations over time but 25% from air pollution seems unlikely. I, too, will go with “botched” numbers until more information is available.

    1. DirkH

      I remember that in the 1970ies it was all the rage to restrict rivers with concrete walls…. to prevent flooding (which didn’t always work) and to increase the flow to make commercial shipping easier…

      This will be fun to watch.

      1. John F. Hultquist
  6. mwhite
  7. DirkH

    O/T The green-red govt of Baden Wuerttemberg wants to force homeowners to install bicycle stands with a rain roof, and green their facades or roofs if they don’t have a garden. For each flat, two bicycle stands with a roof will be mandatory.
    http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article132986029/Die-absurde-Efeu-Novelle-der-gruen-roten-Regierung.html
    The green facade requirement collides with the mandated foam isolation plates which would quickly be destroyed by ivy roots.

    They voted Green, they got Green.

  8. dennisambler

    Check out more on Munich Re: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/eye_of_the_storm.html

    “Munich Re is fully integrated into the UN system and the IPCC and has launched several new institutions, which continue the promotion of human induced global warming. One of these is the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII), initiated by Munich Re in April 2005 “in response to the growing realization that insurance solutions can play a role in adaptation to climate change, as suggested in the Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol”.

    “Lord Stern of the Stern Review and chairman of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, became involved with Munich Re in 2008 when the company co-founded a new Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, chaired by Lord Stern, within LSE’s Grantham Climate Institute. Munich Re is constantly pushing the global warming theme and is also involved on the other side of the coin, dealing in carbon credits relating to developing countries.”

  9. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #153 | Watts Up With That?

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