Last Thursday evening in Münster, Germany, amid an atmosphere of loudly protesting students and Extinction Rebellion activists outside shouting obscenities and beating drums, prominent SPD social democrat and climate science critic Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt spoke on why Germany was headed down the wrong path with its now flailing transition to green energies, dubbed “Energiewende“.
Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt. Image: GWPF.
Vahrenholt called the Energiewende: “An impending disaster.”
According to the Westfälische Nachricten here, “Scientists for Future activists handed out leaflets to emphasize that in their opinion the climate models of the IPCC (‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’) accurately depicted climate warming and that only trace gas CO2 was responsible for it.”
But Vahrenholt, former environment senator of Hamburg, refuted the claims and showed why he thought CO2 is only half responsible for climate change today and that the rest was due to natural factors like sun and clouds.
In his 45-minute presentation, Vahrenholt showed those in attendance how Germany’s foray into green energies was doomed to fail. As leaders in Germany continue to insist wind energy is able to supply the country’s energy needs, Vahrenholt – an environmentalist and one of the founders of Germany’s modern environmental movement – pointed out the major technical obstacle: the inability to store wind energy for periods of low wind.
“Not even in the grid, like one well-known Green politician claimed,” said Vahrenholt, taking a shot at Green party leader Annalena Baerbock, who once famously claimed the power grid could store energy.
German electricity prices among world’s highest
Vahrenholt also reminded that the Energiewende has made Germany’s electricity prices among the highest in the world and that it would hit the poor especially hard. “I never understood the SPD here,” said Vahrenholt, criticizing his own party. The retired professor said it would take 90,000 wind turbines to supply Germany with electricity, a number that would lead to the country having a turbine every 2 kilometers.
The Westfälische Nachrichten sums up on whether the Energiewende is going to work:
At the end of the complex, 45-minute presentation, the majority in the hall were probably convinced: it can’t. The facts and figures presented by the environmentalist were too overwhelming.”
In her latest panic attack, teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg – citing the Guardian – once again appeared to be proclaiming the end of the world was a step closer when she tweeted Antarctica has set a new record high temperature:
According to the Guardian, “The 20.75C logged by Brazilian scientists at Seymour Island on 9 February was almost a full degree higher than the previous record of 19.8C, taken on Signy Island in January 1982.”
That reading, the Guardian reports, follows the February 6 record of 18.3C recorded at the Argentinian research station, Esperanza measured.
As is the case with most alarmists, every warm single datapoint anomaly gets uncritically accepted with open arms as solid evidence of man-made global warming while cold trends get dismissed or downgraded as “natural variability”.
Seymour Island has been cooling for over a quarter century
So we have two recent warm records set at and near the Antarctic peninsula over the past week or so and that means the region there is heating up, alarmists like Greta and the Guardian want us to believe. But what are the real TRENDS there? Do the 2 recent warm records mean the region is heating up.
Looking at official data from NASA, it turns out that warming isn’t true. And because climate is always changing, the temperature in the region in question has also not remained completely steady. The only possibility left? COOLING.
Seymour Island, also known as Marambio Island is an island in the chain of 16 major islands around the tip of the Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula. What follows is a plot of the mean annual temperature measured at Seymour Island – based on NASA data – going back to the time all the global warming predictions began in earnest:
Contrary to that implied by The Guardian and Greta, the island has in fact cooled a bit during the period, despite the warm spike of 2016.
13 of 13 Antarctic Peninsula/island stations cooling
Next we look at the Antarctic Peninsula, which global warming alarmists also like to have us believe is teetering on the brink of meltdown. Not long ago Japanese climate blogger Kirye posted a chart showing the mean annual temperatures of 13 stations located there – going back two decades.
For alarmists, the results turn out to be terribly inconvenient. The following map shows the location of the stations:
The following chart shows the plots of the mean annual temperature of the 13 stations, using NASA Version 4 unadjusted data:
13 of 13 Antarctic Peninsula and nearby island stations show cooling over the past 21 years. There hasn’t been any warming there so far this century. Data source: NASA GISS, Version 4 unadjusted.
Natural ocean cycles
Buried near the end of the Guardian article is mention of the real reason behind Antarctic temperature trends:
Scientists on the Brazilian Antarctic programme say this appears to be influenced by shifts in ocean currents and El Niño events: “We have climatic changes in the atmosphere, which is closely related to changes in permafrost and the ocean. The whole thing is very interrelated.”
Indeed it is. Very likely in ways the climate alarmists prefer not to mention.
By Die kalte Sonne
(Translated/edited by P. Gosselin)
It almost hurts a little that “specialist for renewable energies” (own claim on Twitter) Prof. Volker Quaschning gets mentioned here so often. This is simply due to the absurd tweets the man continuously puts out.
His latest prank has to do with the storm Sabine, which earlier this week swept across Germany. It supplied a lot of energy in the form of wind, which made the wind turbines rotate strongly.
Even in the otherwise regulated electricity market, the laws of the market cannot simply be levered out. Supply and demand determine the price. If supply is higher than demand, the price falls.
In the case of electricity, even money might be included with the product when this electricity is purchased, meaning negative prices. Electricity is an extremely perishable “commodity”, it must be consumed at the moment of production. However, the “expert” Quaschning does not blame this oversupply and the negative prices on the volatile wind power plants, but rather on nuclear power and coal. They deliver very reliably and not wildly fluctuating like wind power.
Prof. Volker Quaschning tweeted in response to the negative electricity prices from overproduction which Germany saw during the recent storm:
Sturm und viel Wind sorgen wieder für negative Börsenstrompreise. Ein klares Zeichen, dass Kohle- und Atomkraftwerke zu unflexibel sind und nicht als Backup für erneuerbare Energien taugen. Wir brauchen darum einen schnelleren #Kohleausstieg. #FridaysForFuture#Scientists4Futurepic.twitter.com/w7CRrEruoq
In English: “Storm and lots of wind are again causing negative stock market electricity prices. This is a clear sign that coal-fired and nuclear power plants are too inflexible and are not suitable as back-up for renewable energies. We therefore need a faster #coal exit.
#FridaysForFuture #Scientists4Future.”
A logical train of thought actually would have been to realize that highly volatile power sources such as wind and the simultaneous provision of base load are difficult to reconcile. Unfortunately, the energy source gas is also being massively fought by people like Quaschning, although it is more flexible and at the same time more CO2-friendly. In any case, however, it is only a crutch that might have to supply a great deal of energy, namely when we have the well-known lulls in wind and sun.
Every wind turbine and every photovoltaic system needs a backup. And anyone who has ever wondered why the wind countries of Denmark and Germany have such high electricity prices knows the reason. We are paying for a double power infrastructure. The prices will not decrease with an increasing share of renewable energies, but rather will continue to rise.
A portion of Dr. Stallinga’s paper worth highlighting – which he mentions only in passing – refers to the early history of the Earth’s greenhouse effect paradigm.
K. Ångström receives little attention as a pioneer of the conceptualization that warming and cooling resul from radiative imbalances within a planetary greenhouse effect.
About 120 years ago, Ångström (1900) contradicted the oft-cited Arrhenius (1896) – the atmospheric physicist referred to by proponents of anthropogenic global warming.
Ångström suggested Earth’s greenhouse effect is already saturated in its current (1900) state, and therefore increasing CO2 will have “no effect whatsoever” on climate (Stallinga, 2020).
Northern Europe and the Arctic show signs of winter cooling over the past decades. Could the global warming theory be in for an upset?
Looking at January data over the northern Europe, we see no real warming trend for the month, according to data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
When plotting mean January temperatures for Norway for stations where data are available since 1988, we see that 7 of 11 stations show a cooling trend since 1988, despite rising CO2:
The story is the same in Finland, a country that stretches into the Arctic:
All stations with data going back to 1988 show a cooling trend in Finland for the month of January. Data: JMA
Ireland cooling more than warming
In Ireland, situated in the North Atlantic, we also see signs of cooling mid winters. warming has been AWOL for some time now:
In Ireland 4 of 6 stations with data going back to 1988 show a cooling trend for the month of January. Data: JMA
Arctic sea ice rebound
Next we move to the Arctic. This year’s winter is seeing an impressive rebound in sea ice, tweets meteorologist Chris Martz, reaching the 3rd highest level in 15 years:
Arctic sea ice extent is currently 3rd highest in the last 15 years, the only years higher are 2008 and 2009. It just surpassed 2013 and is about to pass 2004 within the next day or two. It isn't too far behind 2009 either. This isn't good news for the narrative, I will say that. pic.twitter.com/RyCRMnI8tK
Obviously the situation in the Arctic is nowhere as dire as alarmists like to deceive others into thinking. According to meteorologist Justin Berk here, “Arctic Sea Ice has made a dramatic recovery and expansion this winter.”
Germany’s onslaught on its famed automotive and production industries appears to be taking an economic toll as the country pushes ahead to go green by phasing out internal combustion engines and coal power plants.
Recently we reported how electricity prices are again slated to increase this year, and thus will continue to make German power among the most expensive worldwide.
A wave of green activism has led to tighter regulations against the internal combustion engines and to a planned phase-out of coal-fired power plants.
Teetering on recession
Just recently German online business daily Handelsblatt reported here that there are “new concerns about an economic slump in Germany” as “surprisingly weak figures are fueling new worries about a downturn”.
“Horrible numbers”…a “disaster”
“Experts spoke of ‘horrible numbers’, a ‘disaster’. Industry, construction, and energy providers produced a full 3.5 percent less in December than in the previous month,” the Handelsblatt reports.
December production plummets 6.8%
The economic bloodbath was even worse in the production sector which “fell even more sharply, with output falling by 6.8 percent – the sharpest drop since the end of 2009,” writes the Handelsblatt. “Concerns are growing again that the German economy may be in more difficult waters than expected.”
For Germany, “2019 was not only the worst year for industrial orders since 2008, it was also the first time since 2002 that German order books shrank for two years in a row,” reports Yahoo here.
Massive automotive layoffs
The German auto sector has been hard hit. For example, car maker Opel recently announced 2,100 job cuts in Germany. Late last year Daimler, owner of Mercedes Benz, announced plans “to ax at least 10,000 jobs,” Volkswagen’s Audi said “it would slash up to 9,500 jobs or one in ten staff by 2025 and car suppliers Continental and Osram announced staff and cost cuts.”
The Financial Times reported today that Daimler suffered its “worst results in decade” and that its earnings “plunged 60% in 2019 amid ‘Dieselgate’ woes.” Daimler also “refused to deny reports” that an additional 5,000 jobs could be cut.
The Financial Times adds: “Daimler is being forced to spend heavily on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in order to avoid fines from Brussels for breaching new emissions regulations.”
Other reasons cited for the poor German economic results are the ongoing global trade disputes. Figures are expected to come under even greater pressure due to the spreading corona virus in China.
Earth’s atmosphere is made of 78% nitrogen (N2) and 21% oxygen (O2). The “consensus” view is N2 and O2 are not greenhouse gases (GHGs) and don’t absorb infrared radiation (IR). But scientists have been saying N2 absorbs and radiates IR since 1944 and more recent (2012, 2016) studies have found N2 and O2 are “radiatively important” greenhouse gases with IR temperature absorption capacities similar to CO2.
It’s been known for 75 years that nitrogen – the Earth’s most prevalent atmospheric gas – absorbs and “strongly” radiates infrared energy (Stebbins et al., 1944)
Scientists (Höpfner et al., 2012) publishing in Geophysical Research Letters dispute the “common perception” that nitrogen and oxygen – accounting for 78% and 21% of the Earth’s atmospheric gases – do not contribute signficantly to the Earth’s greenhouse effect.
They assert N2 and O2 are “radiatively important” “natural greenhouse gases” primarily because their concentration is “about 2000 (550) times higher than that of CO2 and about 4.4 × 105 (1.2 × 105) times more abundant than CH4.”
Nitrogen, oxygen combined are more potent GHGs than methane
The atmospheric abundance of N2 and O2 compensates for their relatively weaker IR function (when directly compared to CH4).
For example, “the natural greenhouse effect of N2 and O2 would be larger than that of CH4 by a factor of 1.3” when considering their combined isolated GHE influence.
Further, the reduction in the atmosphere’s infrared transmission amounts to 25.7% for N2, 14.2% for O2, and only 6.9% for CH4.
Nitrogen’s greenhouse gas influence also rivals CO2’s
Höpfner and colleagues also suggest N2 reduces outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) by 4.6 W/m² compared to CO2’s 5.1 W/m² when assesing their solo absorption capacity. This would appear to be a rather minor difference.
If the number of N2 molecules in the atmosphere were hypothetically doubled, it would produce a 12 W/m² longwave greenhouse effect forcing.
Doubling CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm only yields a 3.7 W/m² radiative forcing.
The authors reject the “view that the radiative forcing of N2 increase operates only indirectly by broadening the absorption lines of other gases.” Instead, N2 has a “direct impact” (as well as an indirect impact) within greenhouse effect forcing.
Experiment: nitrogen, oxygen absorb IR to about the same limiting temperature as CO2
A real-world experiment (Allmendinger, 2016) assessing the efficacy of CO2’s IR-absorption temperature capacity relative to air (N2, O2) and Argon (Ar) further establishes CO2 is not the “special” GHG it is commonly thought to be.
Twin styrofoam Saran-wrap-sealed tubes exposed to sunlight were used, one with pure (1,000,000 ppm) CO2 and the other with air (N2, O2) and/or Ar.
The results were admittedly “surprising” given expectations CO2 would operate as a radiatively distinct GHG.
The tube absorbing IR with N2 and O2 (air) and Ar warmed to a temperature limit quite similar to (55°C to 58°C) the temperature limit in the 100% CO2 tube (58°C).
There was no remarkable or “special” heat absorption capacity for CO2 relative to air observed. And Argon – not considered a greenhouse gas – absorbed IR to the same temperature limit as CO2. With a concentration of 9300 ppm, Ar is the third-most abundant gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Because there is so little to distinguish CO2 from the most abundant gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, Dr. Allmendinger assesses “a significant efect of carbon-dioxide on the direct sunlight absorption can already be exluded.”
Further, “the greenhouse theory has to be questioned.”
By Die kalte Sonne
(Text translated by P Gosselin)
We have already reported about the very different views on trees in this blog. Perhaps this phenomenon has something to do with the fact that the words environmental protection and nature conservation are slowly but surely disappearing from our language and being displaced by climate protection. Everything has to subordinate itself to this, also environmental and nature protection. Sometimes this has has had disastrous consequences.
The value of trees is in the eye of the observer or his agenda
Trees are extremely valuable carbon stores. They are true CO2 sinks. It is estimated that a large tree removes and stores about 12.5 kg of CO2 per year from the atmosphere. Actually, one would have to think, we should not only reforest massively, as Professor Werner Sinn suggested in his lecture “How we save the climate and how not“, but also preserve existing tree populations.
Of course, trees are protected, sometimes with drastic means such as in the Hambach Forest. There, however, not for CO2 storage reasons but because the activists want to prevent lignite mining. Such actions are spectacular and get through the media. So this is about good trees.
Much less attention is paid to protests by residents of Grünheide in Brandenburg, who are mobilizing against the deforestation of an area the size of 420 football pitches, which are to make way for Tesla’s new megafactory. Here too, nature is losing carbon stores, and no activist is really itching because they are bad trees. Or were there demos of Fridays For Future (FFF) or Extinction Rebellion in Grünheide?
Weird swaps in Scotland
Just as little interest in Scotland. There it has now been discovered that almost 14 million trees have had to be felled since 2000 to build wind turbines (WTGs). According to the above calculation, Scotland has thus “given up” 175,000 tonnes of CO2 reduction per year in order to save the climate. Even planting 100,000 trees, as in Scotland, is of little use, as they only replace the lost capacity to a very limited extent. Trees simply need time until they are stately and can absorb the above-mentioned amount of CO2 annually.
Foundations and access
The areas for the foundations are still the least of the evils, although in Schleswig Holstein alone, a sealed area of 3 million square meters was assumed in 2018. Approximately 1300 cubic meters of concrete and 180 tons of steel disappear in such foundations.
It is not even clear how such colossuses are to be removed from the forest later on, or how they can be removed at all. Anyone who has ever spent a holiday in France on the Atlantic Ocean knows that concrete remains, i.e. bunkers, of the 3rd Reich bunkers stubbornly refuse to decay on the coasts. Ina 1000 years probably only the bunkers of the Nazis or the foundations of wind turbines will remain.
Access to wind turbines is much more serious than the foundations, which only cover a relatively small area. Wind turbines are getting ever taller and the rotors ever bigger. The radius that the special transport vehicles now is so large that a massive quantities of trees have to make way for access roads. And since the wind turbines only have a limited lifetime, the access roads have to remain, because at some point they will have to be dismantled or maintained. The forest at this point is lost and chopped up.
German conservative CDU now poised to play along
The CDU Lower Saxony is now poised to go along with a proposal that more wind turbines in forests should be approved. Whether an impact assessment has been made here? Especially in forests, the population of birds of prey is high and one can only guess what will happen if huge rotors rotate over birds or their breeding grounds and habitat. These rotors are, as studies show, a considerable hazard for birds of prey.
Indeed the wind power lobby is trying to invalidate such studies, for example by pointing out the large number of songbirds and garden birds that are killed annually by windows, cars or cats. But if you use your common sense, here you see whataboutism in its purest form. Birds of prey very rarely die from windows, cars or cats and songbirds and garden birds rarely die from wind turbines. At the latest, when the census of seabirds in the Irish Sea – an area with a lot of wind turbines – shows that the population is declining massively, the windscreen/cat/car argument falls apart.
The same outcome, but completely different reactions
But it gets really crazy when we look at the situation in places like the Reinhardts Forest in the state of Hesse. This forest is very valuable, because it still has a virgin forest character in parts. Nevertheless, wind turbines are to be built there with all the consequences described above. Residents’ protests are being dismissed as an obstacle to technology and energy production transformation.
Yet, at the same time, the people go into collective outrage when the Amazon becomes smaller through slash-and-burn clearing. In both cases forests, biotopes and very same carbon reservoirs are lost, but with completely contrary reactions. Good and bad trees.
Used to be tranquility above the tree tops
But forests are much more. Many people pursue various activities there. A climate activist from Berlin Kreuzberg or Hamburg Ottensen may find this hard to imagine, but there are actually people who visit the forests enjoy tranquility or the sounds of nature. If the plans of wind power advocates are anything to go by, then in many forests this will soon be lost forever.
I feel obligated to upgrade a reader comment by Jim Lakely, Communications Director, The Heartland Institute, to a post. He says I was “being very unfair” yesterday.
My main gripe is that these two very dishonest Correctiv “journalists” should have never been allowed to get as far as they did. Now we independent skeptics here in Germany have to deal with being smeared nationally again.
In Germany, the skeptics are outnumbered by like 20 to 1; it’s not a 50-50 deal like in USA. German MSM journalists like those at ZDF are very nasty, unfair and dishonest to legitimate climate science critics.
Jim Lakely, Director of Communications, The Heartland Institute
I have other comments, but will hold them for another time.
I’d love to see a point-by-point rebuttal from Heartland to the nonsense made by ZDF Frontal 21 and Correctiv so that we can defend ourselves here.
============================================================
Pierre,
You are being VERY unfair to James Taylor and Heartland, and Naomi Seibt — who is not “distraught,” but angry (as is Heartland) at how this has been able “to weave a highly distorted, one-sided, yet believable hit piece.” You had it right on “distorted,” and not so right with the rest.
First: James is surely flattered by your battlefield promotion, but he is not the president of The Heartland Institute. He is the Director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
Second: They “worked” James spottily over several days in two cities over two weeks before he sat down for a brief talk. That’s a lot of squeeze for no juice. Their big “get” was a big nothing. They tried to bait James into agreeing for a “pay to play” arrangement, and the reporters say … “he didn’t say no.” Really? After two weeks of work, they finally get around to asking their “money question” and that’s it?
There’s a reason James didn’t say “yes”: Because “pay to play” is not what Heartland does, unlike many think tanks on the left. You’re seriously faulting James for steering a (fake) potential donor away from that “gotcha” dishonorable idea into discussing honorable like-minded work with a donor? By that standard, no one in the climate realist movement would ever be able to raise any funds to support our work.
Ask yourself: If these “journalists” had a genuine “smoking gun,” wouldn’t they have presented that instead of that lame “gotcha”?
Third: To compare this lame, days-long caper to the work of Project Veritas is a massive insult to the latter’s fantastic work.
I hope, Pierre, that you will consider giving Heartland some space on your site to more fully rebut for your readers your unfair and uncharitable take on this. Considering all Heartland has done to promote climate realism over many years, I hope you don’t consider that an unreasonable request.
Jim Lakely
Director of Communications
The Heartland Institute”
[Correction: James Taylor is Director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, and not the President of The Heartland Institute]
Today I’m writing about a public relations disaster here in Germany by the Heartland Institute where its president, James Taylor, allowed himself to be fully duped by leftist journalists posing as industry lobbyists offering half a million dollars to his Chicago-based think tank.
Image: Correctiv
Just days ago, flagship ZDF German public television broadcast a segment here — created by “investigative” site Correctiv here — at its popular weekly Frontal 21 magazine. Frontal 21 describes how the two “investigative” journalists from the leftist Correctiv infiltrated Heartland Institute and exposed its “lobbying and climate disinformation campaign”.
The ZDF’s Frontal 21 magazine shows how Correctiv set up a phony PR agency, fake website and printed phony business cards so that two of its reporters could pose as lobbyists representing the German automotive and coal industry. Their Project Veritas-like mission: to infiltrate Heartland and uncover “what goes on in the climate denier scene, how it works, which strategies it’s pursuing in Europe and how influential it is.”
“That’s how we want to find out whether and how to question climate change in exchange for money and to buy influence,” reported Frontal 21.
Unfortunately, James Taylor fell for the entire ploy. The ZDF’s Frontal 21 (and Corectiv) took the material and later pieced together a major hit piece seen nationally on February 4th. A blow to the skeptic scene in Germany.
First meeting in Munich
The two undercover German journalists started by making their way from their base in Berlin to the Munich Climate Conference last November, where they had an easy time fooling James Taylor.
Equipped with hidden cameras, they sat down with Taylor for dinner and asked how he went about convincing people of his mission. ZDF’s Frontal 21 quotes Taylor: “The people cannot be motivated by logical things; you have to argue emotionally.”
$500,000 offer in Madrid
According to Frontal 21, after dinner Taylor then personally invited the two “German lobbyists” to Madrid for a later conference, where they met again with Taylor in the Marriott Hotel lobby.
ZDF Frontal 21 reported: “Taylor boasted about his good contacts to the Trump administration. ‘The Trump administration often asked for advice and about what we could do. We worked closely together.'” Taylor even told the undercover journalists that Heartland’s budget was $6 million.”
When asked how a $500,000 donation could be made, Frontal 21 says Taylor told them to donate it directly to Heartland. “And if you want to remain anonymous, then give it to an organization. One of them is Donors Trust.”
“To keep it hidden?” one undercover Correctiv journalist asked.”
Untypical for interviews, Taylor’s voice is completely filtered out by Correctiv editors, so it’s impossible to ascertain whether Frontal 21 translated Taylor’s words accurately.
In the Marriott lobby meeting, Taylor discloses Heartland’s future plans for Germany, where he also brings up young German influencer Naomi Seibt – the “anti-Greta”.
Duped by the mean and nasty media
Weeks later, Taylor sends the two undercover journalists his proposal dubbed “Funding Proposal: Germany Environmental Issues”, outlining Heartland’s strategy for Germany and that Heartland was interested in the funding in order to inform the public about the minimal effects of diesel exhaust and to produce videos on the negative impacts of excessive environmental regulation.
The set-up succeeded, and Correctiv got all the footage they needed, and much more, to allow German ZDF public television to weave a highly distorted, one-sided, yet believable hit piece. All in all, a major PR blow for climate skeptics in Germany.
A little research and precaution on Heartland’s part could have avoided being duped to the extent they were. They were sloppy. And we also have to feel bad that a young, promising German influencer got caught up in it and was so inaccurately portrayed on national television.
In her latest video, a visibly distraught Naomi tells of her experience of being observed by impostors under the table by hidden cameras, yet bravely pledges to keep up the fight for what she believes to be the truth. Now she understands just how mean and nasty the German media really are.
Scientists (Syring et al., 2020) find almost sea ice-free conditions pervaded a much warmer northern Greenland region during the Early Holocene. Arctic sea ice extent has “continuously” grown for ~4800 years, with modern conditions a bit lower than the peak of the last few centuries.
In a new paper (Syring et al., 2020), scientists rely on biomarker evidence – (a) the presence of warmth-demanding species Armeria scabra and Mytilus edulis, and (b) IP25, a proxy for the presence or absence of sea ice – to suggest not only were there much warmer (4 to 5°C) northern Greenland temperatures 10,000 to 8500 years ago, but effectively sea ice-free conditions pervaded the region during this time.
The sea ice in the region has been growing “continuously” for the last 4800 years, reaching its peak during the last millennium.
The authors also find decadal- and centennial-scale periodicities in solar activity have coincided with variability in Arctic sea ice (IP25) throughout the Holocene.
Sina began her environmental activism by joining a demonstration against coal power plants, organized by Greenpeace and WWF, before getting involved as a press spokesperson in the FFF movement in March; 2019.
In the interview, she reports on cult-like control, censorship, hostility and left-wing infiltration.
By November, 2019, she began questioning the movement. As press spokesperson, she says she recalls having an older organizer constantly standing at her side at the demonstrations to make sure she said “the right things” when interviewed by radio or television.
“No matter what was asked, it had to be answered like this or like that” and we had to “sound dramatic and to not express any doubts about it,” Sina tells GROSSE FREIHEIT TV (Great Freedom TV) in the interview.
Constantly watched
“We have to act immediately, otherwise things will go like so, and the world will fall apart if you don’t take to the streets, and those who don’t are to blame for the world collapsing and all such things that put pressure on people,” said Sina, explaining what the organizers expected the press spokeschildren to say to the media.
According to Sina:
One question from the press has always been very popular, and that is what you do yourself for climate protection. A very clear guideline was the answer that one should live vegan, plastic-free, seasonal and regional, as well as avoid car journeys and flights as far as possible. I believe, that is also the first thing I learned there.”
Began to have doubts
In the interview, the sharp-witted teen explains how she began to have doubts about the movement when the question of a CO2 tax came up and her father had doubts about it. This made Sina think about the implications of shutting down the coal power plants and the financial implications.
“The demands were so dogmatic and radical” that “they they could not really be implemented,” she says in the interview. She then explains how she researched the subject and found out that the 97% claimed consensus was bogus.
Insults and attacks…”Nazi” …”climate denier”
When her doubts and skepticism became known, she recounts how immediately she was accused of acting like a Nazi, and getting labelled a “climate denier” and “future destroyer”. At that point she had had enough and ditched the movement.
“Cult character”
At the 20:35-mark, having been asked to describe how she sees the FFF movement, shes says: “In my view, it has a sort of cult character because you have to have that opinion. Otherwise you’ll be insulted out, if you will.”
She then adds: “They make demands without even thinking about solutions and thinking about the consequences of immediately exiting coal power.”
She adds: “High taxes isn’t going to buy the CO2 out of the air.”
Her advice: “Do a little research”
Later she describes how dissent is absolutely not tolerated by the movement in any way. At school some of the more extreme teachers “couldn’t understand” why she exited the movement and how she was confronted by other radical classmates: “If you don’t take part, then it will be your fault that none of us will have a future and we’ll all die.” She responded to them: “Just do a little research!”
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