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.

Here’s the exchange between the two:

Tol’s last comment pretty much sums up the quality Cook’s and Nuccitelli’s work. I could say every day last year in my hometown was over 25°C (if I ignore 320 of them and misclassify a quarter of the 45 I did count).

Dana Nuccitelli is becoming a real asset for the skeptics, one that we certainly don’t want to lose.

You can link to the Twitter exchange here: Richard Tol (@RichardTol) May 21, 2013

The Cook paper comes further apart populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-stu…

Tornado frequency. Source NOAA

To fool the public, German ZDF public television here, Germany’s version of the BBC, sought out “one of Germany’s most renown climate scientists” Prof Mojib Latif of the IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences. Latif is often a frequent guest on radio and television whenever the climate topic arises in Germany.

The interview actually was quite good, until the 2:25 mark. Latif did a good job explaining why tornadoes occur very often in Tornado Alley, and why early warning systems are difficult.

But any skeptic watching could feel the TV anchorman and Latif were building up to the climate-change moment, which came at the 2:25 mark. At this point the interview turned into the usual state-sponsored climate propaganda circus.

The anchorman asks:

Herr Latif, just briefly on climate change. Do you expect an increase in frequency because of climate change or is there no relationship?”

Latif answers, making another one of his famous laughing stock predictions:

Yeah, at the moment we cannot see it. As I said these are rare events and the data just are not sufficient. But I suspect that when global warming continues over the course of decades, then such weather situations with very severe thunderstorms will occur more frequently, and then the frequency for tornadoes will be higher than what the case is today.”

The anchorman replies:

Thank you very much for that estimation, and this is actually no good news for these people in Tornado Alley.”

Plain as day, complete BS from ZDF and Prof Latif. There’s data out there, but not the kind that the ZDF and Latif want to see, or us to see. Here it is for readers:

Plot of NOAA data.

How Latif comes up with the idea that we should expect more tornadoes as warming and CO2 increases is a mystery to me.

Then again in the year 2000 (April 1st) Latif made the notorious prediction that snow and hard frosts would become rare in Germany in the wintertime. The exact opposite has happened. In fact, snow is the forecast for parts of Germany today, and it’s May 22!

Why can’t these people just be honest for once, and skip the constant BS. These people need to be fired.

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.

Suddenly we are also seeing studies showing that warming won’t be so bad after all, and that CO2 climate sensitivity is much lower than first thought. The policy-making pressure coming from the threat of climate change is disappearing rapidly.

The German leftist TAZ and center-right Die Welt report today that the EU Commission is preparing to embark on a policy to make energy prices lower, and to push climate protection measures off the stage.

The TAZ writes that the “EU Commission is preparing a fundamental change of course in energy policy. Because of the recession in many countries, state and government leaders are to undertake a paradigm change at their summit in Brussels on Wednesday“.

The overall sentiment is expressed, for example, by statements from EU Commissar Günther Oettinger, who told Die Welt:

Over the last decades Germany has continuously made energy more expensive with taxes, levies, fees, and contributions. That now has to change.”

The high energy prices have taken a toll as companies are finding it more difficult than ever to compete globally. The TAZ writes:

Indeed because of the economic weakness in many EU countries, climate change no longer has any priority for the Commission. The sole target of getting 20% of energy demand from renewable sources has been pushed off further. Commission officials are backed by a paper from the mighty European industrial association: Business Europe. According to the study, energy costs for Europe’s concerns are 1.5 to 3 times higher than the USA.

If 400,000 new jobs in the sector of production are to be created, then the EU ‘has to overhaul its climate protection and energy policy,’ said Europe-Business-President Jürgen Thumann.”

So why is energy so much more expensive in Europe than it is in USA? The TAZ writes that this is primarily due to the fact that USA is “exploiting its shale gas reserves using controversial fracking“. The TAZ adds:

According to the EU Commission, energy prices in the EU have risen 37% since 2005. In the USA that have even dropped slightly.

The EU Commission maintains that the following guideline has to apply: ”EU energy policy has to assure uninterrupted supply of households and companies, affordable and competitive prices.”

When it comes to the clash between economics and climate protection, it appears economics is emerging as the most pressing.

Photo credit: EU Commission, JLogan, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Chart source: www.nature.com/ngeo/journal.pdf

Spiegel provides a first glimpse of the reaction from Germany: New Study On Climate Change: Earth Warming More Slowly Than Feared.

The Spiegel piece starts:

Most extreme scenarios less likely…

An international team of scientists have corrected the prognoses for climate change downwards. In a new study the scientists calculated a smaller global warming for the next 50 to 100 years than previously expected. But they did not turn off the alarm.”

And later writes:

The annual mean temperature would thus be about 0.9°C and 2°C higher than pre-industrial times. Thus they are considerably less than the forecast of the UN climate scientists in the year 2007, who estimated an increase of 1 – 3°C .

Co-author Reto Knutti said the new estimates for the time period are welcome.”

Reasons cited for the slowdown are heat absorption by the oceans, reduced solar activity, and high levels of aerosols in the atmosphere. Spiegel ends the article with:

Lead author Otto says the slowdown is not evidence that climate change is not going to happen. ‘You would need a considerably longer time period to be able to say there is not going to be any warming,’ he told the ‘Guardian’. Such a phase could last up to 40 years.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. Now it’s 40 years?

The recent warming was just 18 years long 1980 – 1998, and that was enough for them to declare a permanent climate state of emergency. And now that it hasn’t warmed in 15 years, they’re telling us that we’ve got to wait another 25 years to say that it’s not man-made. Such BS.

First rats to abandon ship

So what would possibly compel a group of mostly alarmist scientists to produce such results? Answer: It has dawned on them that other factors really are playing a big time role and that it wouldn’t be long before they looked like fools. What we are seeing are the first rats swimming off the sinking ship that is man-made global warming.

UBA Director Jochen Flasbarth lost control of the agency to radical zealots, now under massive fire. Photo: UBA.

The notorious brochure not only included an alarmist summary of climate science today, but also contained a sort of “black list” of US and German skeptics, portraying them as “spreaders of half-truths and misinformation”.

In that article I expressed doubts about this brochure holding up legally, and said we likely have not heard the last of this story. Boy was I right! Hat-tip Bernd Felsche.

Henryk Broder sees parallels with dark regimes

For starters, yesterday, flagship national daily Die Welt, one of the targets of the UBA brochure, published a commentary written by veteran, renowned journalist Henryk Broder. The title: A government agency declares the climate debate ended.

What follows are some of Broder’s comments on the notorious witch-hunting UBA brochure:

The UBA Environmental Agency claims to have the power of authority when it comes to climate change and has put some journalists on the pillory in the debate. Such an approach reminds us of the Reichskulturkammer and the East German regime.”

Broder writes that one has to be careful before making Nazi comparisons, but says “sometimes there are stunning similarities or parallels that bear witness to an amazing continuity of thought and action.” He writes:

There was a Reich Chamber of Films that controlled German film-making. Only members of the Reich Chamber of Films were allowed to work in film production. Every one else was forbidden to work in that occupation. The same rule applied for the Reich Chamber of Theatre, Reich Chamber of the Press, Reich Chamber of Broadcasting, Reich Chamber of Music, and the Reich Chamber of Arts. All these chambers operated under the umbrella of the Reichskulturkammer (RKK) [Reich Chamber of Culture], which was created by the Reich Minister for Education and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

At the end of the Third Reich, the RKK and its departments disappeared into the rubble of German history. And up to today no one has ever proposed a new founding or re-establishment of such an institution. However: There is now a ‘Federal Chamber of Climate’ that is under the name of the Umweltbundesamt UBA.”

I’d like to remind readers that Broder is by no means exaggerating here. The brochure really is that nasty. Rahmstorf is all over it. The UBA brochure takes aim at American and German journalists and scientists only because they have a different opinion about how the world’s weather works over the long-term.

Broder writes that the UBA’s latest step “is an unprecedented case of government authoritarian intervention in a public discussion we’ve seen since World War II“, adding that the UBA has gone too far:

It draws the lines in the climate debate. That means it has ordered an end to the debate. And it determines who has the right to say something, and who is to remain silent.”

If there was ever proof that the warmists have lost the debate, the UBA has delivered it on a silver platter.

Broder concedes that perhaps the comparison to the third Reich is overdoing it, and so ends his commentary:

Therefore the question is not: ‘Is there climate change?’, but rather it is: ‘Are we on the way to a second East German Regime where the government is responsible for today’s weather forecast and the climate for the day after tomorrow?’ “

UBA brochure “a scandal”

Broder is just the latest to speak out on the UBA’s anti-democratic direction. Die Welt Editor in Chief Jan-Eric Peters wrote at his Facebook site:

One should use the term ‘scandal’ sparingly. However, when a government agency such as the German Environment Agency publishes a sort of black list on unliked journalists in a brochure funded by taxpayers, and requests them to stop spreading untruths, then this is indeed a scandal!”

At his klimazwiebel blog Hans von Storch writes in a reader comment writes:

I suspect that there is going to be public, critical interest aimed at this UBA Sleeping Beauty Castle.”

Even devout green protagonaists of man-made global warming are horrified by the UBA’s authoritarian brochure, like ZDF television. Very few media outlets are greener and more one-sided than Germany’s ZDF public television. ZDF journalist Reinhard Schlieker comments, writing that the “UBA goes after journalists and scientists who claim that man-made global warming has not been proven” and that the brochure comes across as an ”official defamation for a ‘good cause’”. Suddenly, we see that the ZDF recognizes that the UBA has gone way over the line, and that there is no consensus in climate science after all.

The ZDF article continues, describing the “chamber” mentality of the brochure:

In Part B of the brochure that the science is settled and that cluelessness rules in the public debate which is influenced by somehow misled journalists. This part is based mainly on findings from Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, who works at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and vehemently advocates that only qualified scientists should have the right to express views on climate science – everyone else should not be given the authority to do so.”

The ZDF continues:

The publication of the UBA could produce the impression with readers who are unfamiliar with the topic that, with these journalists and authors, we are dealing with intentional fraudsters who are controlled by outside forces and paid by lobbyists.”

Knowing what I know about some of those targeted by the UBA, you can be sure they are not going to take this “defamation” laying down. Expect much more to develop on this in the days and weeks ahead.

Oh, the ZDF ends with:

According to information from heute.de [ZDF] Those involved are are considering a lawsuit. Heute.de has sent a list of questions and requested an explanation.”

The Latest On The CLOUD Experiment at CERN

On May 10, 2013, at the online Austrian ORF, there was a rare interview with the CLOUD Experiment director of the European European Organization for Nuclear Research, Jasper Kirkby. Within the scope of the CLOUD project, it is being investigated to what extent solar activity has on cloud formation via the mechanism of cosmic radiation and the impact this could have on the Earth’s climate (see Chapter 6 of our book “Die kalte Sonne“). Here’s an excerpt of the worthwhile interview:

ORF: What is the relationship between solar activity and cosmic radiation?

Kirkby: Cosmic radiation consists of high energy, charged particles. When they reach our solar system, they are deflected away by the magnetic field of the sun. Foremost by the magnetic field of the solar plasma. When the sun is active, less cosmic radiation reaches the Earth. The relationship to the solar cycle: When there are many sunspots, the Earth receives 10 – 30% less cosmic radiation.

Is this relationship sure?

Yes, it is solidly confirmed. We also know that cosmic radiation ionizes every cubic centimeter of the Earth’s atmosphere. Unsure so far is whether or not this also could have a climatic impact. Clouds are extremely important for the Earth’s climate. If I could magically eliminate all clouds from the atmosphere, then 30 watts of additional heat energy would reach every square meter of the Earth.

To put this number into context: The warming of the atmosphere through the impacts of man is currently pegged at 1.5 watts per square meter. Small variations in cloud cover could have large impacts.

What do your experiments show?

At this point in time we cannot say if cosmic radiation impacts the climate. So far up to now we have investigated the production of condensation nuclei for cloud droplets – particularly those that are formed from gas, i.e. gas-to-particle-conversion”. They represent about half of the condensation nuclei in the atmosphere. The remaining nuclei come from soot and dust.

What gases are involved in this process?

We have looked at sulfuric acid and ammonia. The results of the first trials: Cosmic radiation enhances the formation of condensation nuclei from gases by a factor of 10. But that alone is too little to have a significant impact on cloud formation. According to our latest experiments, there has to be another gas or vapor involved that enhances this process. We suspect organic substances.

Which ones?

The results are currently being reviewed by a journal. Unfortunately I can’t tell you more. Only this much: The results are very interesting. Over the course of the year there are going to be some publications on the subject.

Let’s assume that you are able to show that cosmic radiation indeed does contribute a lot to cloud formation. What would that mean?

I think that the experiments are important in two ways. Firstly, they would show that there is a natural source to climate change. And the other point is that it would change our understanding of anthropogenic climate change. We know quite a bit about greenhouse gases. What we know little about are aerosols. These are particles that come from industry floating in the atmosphere. They surely have a cooling effect. However, we have no idea just how great this effect is. It may be small, but it may be very big. Maybe it is even big enough to offset the additional CO2 in the atmosphere.. We don’t know.

Continue reading at ORF.at.”

Image source: NASA, public domain image.

But Spiegel draws a different a totally conclusion.

First Bojanowski describes how a large number of Americans have serious doubts when it comes to man-made climate change, and so surveys get conducted with the aim of trying to sway public opinion. The latest was carried out by John Cook of the University of Queensland in Australia, and the results were published in the journal of Environmental Research Letters: 97% of thousands of papers surveyed agree that climate change is man-made, it asserted.

But Bojanowski trashes the findings:

There’s an obvious discrepancy between the public perception and reality. The authors speak about ‘consensus on man-made climate change’ – and thus this threatens to further increase confusion within the public. The survey confirms only a banality: Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that man is responsible for at least a part of the climate warming. The important question of how big is man’s part in climate change remains hotly disputed.

In the draft of the next UN report that will summarize climate science knowledge in September, it is stated: ‘It is extremely likely that human activity is responsible for more than half of the warming since the 1950s.’ The estimations from scientists on the exact extent vary vastly – here the consensus ends.”

Bojanowski then gives Spiegel readers the results produced by Cook: “About two thirds took no position on the subject – they remained on the sidelines. 97% of the rest supported man-made impact.

Also in an additional step, 35% of the authors who took no position were left out of the survey results altogether.

A new German survey produces similar results: no consensus!

Bojanowski then reports on another still unpublished German survey conducted by the University of Mainz in Germany. Senja Post told SPIEGEL ONLINE that “123 of 292 climate scientists asked participated in the study“. The result (warmists may want to sit down before reading):

Only 5% of those responding believed natural factors played the main role in the warming. However, Post then asked about the extent of the man-made warming. The result looked very different. Only 59% of the scientists said the ‘climate development of the last 50 years was mostly influenced by man’s activity. One quarter of those surveyed said that human and natural factors played an equal role’.”

Only 10% of German scientists say computer models are sufficiently accurate

Bojanowski then writes that skepticism is even far more widespread when it comes to the reliability of computer models. ”Only 10% said climate models are ‘sufficiently accurate’ and only 15% said that ‘climatic processes are understood enough’ to allow climate to be calculated.”

Bojanowski sums up: “There’s plenty of fodder there to continue the ideologically influenced debate about climate – no matter what is said about consensus.”

The title: “Scientists should not play priest…Climate scientist von Storch accuses his colleagues of spreading panic – and sees no major consequences coming from a dredging of the Elbe River“.

Sebastian Lüning’s and Fritz Vahrenholt’s blogsite www.kaltesonne.de presented an excerpt of the Die Welt article, which I’ve translated in English:

‘Unfortunately in climate science there is a tendency to proclaim absolute truths and to link these immediately to instructions on actions to take,’ von Storch said. ‘The climate pope tells us what has to be done, and for the people it’s: keep your mouths shut. Scientists have been taking over the roles of medicine men and priests. That’s not the job of scientists. Science is supposed to help understand problems, show the possibilities that exist in dealing with them. The best is to show many possibilities. Then the political process has to decide the path to take.’

But some of his colleagues in science like to use ‘stories that point to a catastrophe,’ said the professor of meteorology. One example was the assumption that our region would see ‘murderous violent storms’. But there was no data showing this. ‘It all has a cultural, anthropological background’ . ‘If you sin, then you will be punished. And the punishment always takes on an environmental dimension which also included storms in the past. In former times it was God’s punishment. Today it’s punishment by Nature. Nature is to keep man in check. And for this we see idiotic films like ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’’

With ‘snappy’ and short statements like ‘snow will be a thing of the past’, the loud speakers among the scientists are putting the credibility of science at stake.’”

More info on Hans von Storch here. He also runs the climate blog klimazwiebel.de and is co-author of the recently released book: The Climate Trap: The Dangerous Proximity of Politics and Climate Science.

Graphic: Rembrandt depiction of prophet Moses, public domain work.