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The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

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The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Sat 02 Nov 2013, 22:14:21

Highly Controversial German Book, The Neglected Sun Appears On Amazon

Amazon is now showing that Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s controversial book Die kalte Sonne (The cold sun), released in German last year, is now coming out worldwide in English.

The title of the English version: The Neglected Sun, and the publisher is Stacey International in London.

Their book created quite a stir in Europe, especially in Germany. The warmist establishment pretty much had seizures over it.

Fritz Vahrenholt, chemistry professor, is also the author of the 1986 book “Seveso ist überall” (Seveso is everywhere), a book on the deadly risks of chemical pollution. That book made him one of the fathers of Germany’s modern environmental movement. Until just a couple of years ago Vahrenholt was a big believer in anthropogenic global warming, and accepted the IPCC gloomy reports as the final word on the subject – until one day he began taking a closer look at the real data. He couldn’t believe some of the shenanigans going on in the science, and so together with geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, he co-authored Die kalte Sonne.

Despite a massive orchestrated campaign by environmental activists against Die kalte Sonne, it soared to No. 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list. That success has obviously served as the springboard to the English edition. Now it’s going to be hitting bookshelves worldwide.

According to Amazon, the book will be available on September 1 and it can already be pre-ordered. Interestingly its release is right before the IPCC’s 5th assessment report. Talk about timing. The Neglected Sun can be pre-ordered at any bookshop.

Here are some reviews on the original “Die kalte Sonne” version from German media outlets:

“Author’s high profile assures there’s going to be a debate”.

- Jochen Marotzke, Director, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg (Spiegel 06/2012, p-134)

Book’s assertions “challenge the results of climate science and the IPCC.”

– Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13 September 2012,

“With his book, the departing CEO of RWE Innogy, Fritz Vahrenholt, has rekindled the climate debate in Germany.”

- Cicero, 27 February 2012,

“A book co-authored by environmental activist and RWE manager Fritz Vahrenholt revitalizes the debate: ‘Die kalte Sonne’ will bring us cooling.”

- Die Presse Österreich, 10 February 2012

“Commotion over Fritz Vahrenholt’s clams on climate change. But our society needs to accept maverick thinkers. The head is round so that we can think in all directions. In Germany blockheads govern all too often.”

– Hamburger Abendblatt, 20 February 2012

“New fracas erupts in the climate crusade. … A book attacks international climate science. … ‘Die kalte Sonne‘ has stormed the bestseller lists.“

– Bild der Wissenschaft, 07/2012

“This book is a must for those who cherish the value of scientific research.”

– getabstract, 2012
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby Rune » Sat 02 Nov 2013, 22:34:13

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The Neglected Sun: How the Sun Precludes Climate Catastrophe
by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning (Oct 16, 2013)

The effect of the sun's activity on climate change has been either scarcely known or overlooked. In this momentous book, Professor Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr Sebastian Luning demonstrate that the critical cause of global temperature change has been, and continues to be, the sun's activity. Vahrenholt and Luning reveal that four concurrent solar cycles master the earth's temperature – a climatic reality upon which man's carbon emissions bear little significance. The sun's present cooling phase, precisely monitored in this work, renders the catastrophic prospects put about by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the 'green agenda' dominant in contemporary Western politics as nothing less than impossible.

The courage to tell the truth. Glad the the authors have survived the purges and inquisitions October 1, 2013
By Graham H. Seibert TOP 1000 REVIEWER

This is my review of the German edition. The book is so important that I was sure there would soon be an English version. You can have this German edition shipped to the US from Amazon Germany. There is a Kindle edition in German, which for reasons unknown is not yet available outside of Germany/Switzerland/Austria. I recommend the Kindle for one big reason. Amazingly for a scientific book, the German edition has no index (!) and no bibliography. You need a searchable document.

The authors of this book got fed up with the sloppy science and outright mendacity of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control. They wrote a book to set the record straight.

Their bottom line is that the global warming which the world witnessed between 1975 and 2000 is the result of the confluence of many factors. The IPCC is willing to see only one factor: anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Vahrenholt and Lüning believe that the rapid warming up through the year 2000 and was due to several coincident factors, most importantly having to do with sun cycles. It has long been known that solar radiation varies over time in a predictable fashion. There are solar cycles of 11, 22, 87, 210, 1000 and 2300 year durations. When they overlap, it can result in appreciable variation.

More important than the variations in the amount of radiant energy coming from the sun is the variation in the sun's magnetic field. This is not visible, but has a large effect on the volume of cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere. When the sun's magnetic field is strong, it tends to deflect the cosmic rays from Earth.

Cosmic rays collide with gases in the atmosphere, resulting among other things in the particles which seed clouds. More cosmic rays, more clouds. And, the more clouds there are, the more light is reflected back out into space. It took an experiment in the European laboratory for particle physics, CERN, to prove a theory about the mechanism by which clouds are seeded. The vested interests in IPCC appear to have worked to hinder the scientists' access to CERN to conduct their experiment.

The IPCC is quite important in the allocation of funding for climate research. Needless to say, groups that agree with them stand a better chance of getting funded. This creates consensus, but it is the antithesis of good science. Among other things, the IPCC has seeded and funded computerized climate change models in centers all over the world. Read my review of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Infrastructures) for an appreciation of how great a task this is, and how much good work is actually going into it. Incidentally, this book, by a computer guy, not a climatologist, makes no mention of the inclusion of sun cyles in the IPCC models, and mentions the major cycles only in passing. He concentrates the problems of interpolating and interpreting actual measurements in the past century or so.

The problem is that a computerized model is only as good as the parameters and assumptions which go into it. Vahrenholt and Lüning claim that none of the models now in use to anywhere near an adequate job of taking into account the sun's influence on climate variability. The IPCC actively discourages it, and they control the purse strings. Conversely, all of the models must be based on assumptions about unknowable factors, such as how clouds are seeded, the effect of soot in the atmosphere, the effect of increased carbon dioxide on vegetation growth, and many other factors. Scientists can be open and honest in setting these assumptions, but they can equally well look at them as "fudge factors" to be adjusted in order to make the models fit their preconceptions. It depends on the integrity of the scientists, and that in turn depends on their willingness to bite the hand that feeds them.

Vahrenholt's specialty is renewable energy. The IPCC asked him in 2009 to proofread its summary report on renewable energy. He noted 293 errors and oversights in the thousand page report. On the first of February 2010 he cornered an IPCC expert at a conference in Washington and asked why the IPCC had not acted on his comments. They essentially brushed him off. He was not an expert in climate change, but he does know renewable energy pretty well. This led him to suspect sloppy science and other ways. He was alert to the scandal concerning the supposedly melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The IPCC's 2007 report contained the alarming prediction that they would disappear by 2035. They pooh-poohed critics, and it took them two years to correct this glaring error. Then there was the East Anglia e-mail scandal, in which it was clear that scientists were fudging the data in order to inflate the apparent danger of global warming. The whole thing smelled of foul play and politics, so he decided to do book.

Sebastian Lüning is a climate scientist. He was appalled by the deceit involved in concocting the "Hockey Stick Illusion," the way in which the authors omitted and fudged data in order to make it as scary story as possible so they could obtain funding, drive the political process, and gain political power. The co-authors invited shorter guest chapters by leading scientists like Henrik Svensmark whose work they have woven into their thesis.

The IPCC is an elaborate pyramid. Thousands of scientists all over the world participate at the working level. The papers they publish are assembled and summarized by designated groups of scientists, who write the lengthy working papers which the organization publishes. There is a third level of summary in which the results are rolled up into executive summaries, which are all that most people are willing to read. You can find this all by googling "IPCC".

In addition to being divided into three tiers, the IPCC working groups are divided functionally, in order to address the effects of global warming. One working group focuses on the science, whether or not global warming is real and what causes it. A second working group assesses the likely impact on human populations, and a third working group is charged with formulating policy proposals suggesting what government should do about it.

Needless to say this is highly political. The people who summarize other people's work have the ability to editorialize, to slant the work one way or another. The people who are charged with coming up with policy have a vested interest in the existence of the problem that their policies supposed to solve. In short, this is a microcosm of all of the well-known problems of the United Nations, or in fact it almost any large bureaucracy. The IPCC chief editors have been taken from Greenpeace, hardly a seedbed of scientific neutrality. Others are associated with radical groups. Google "WBGU Germany" for their position papers, which call for complete elimination of carbon fuels by 2050 through a massive, government-directed investment and government-imposed change in every aspect of our lifestyles.

There is a vast vested interest in carbon dioxide being the primary driver of global warming. Entire industries depend on it: solar cells, wind energy, the infant carbon sequestration industry, and so on. Many political careers, such as that of Al Gore, likewise depend on it. It is a fundamental plank in the platform of organizations such as Germany's Green party. The argument is something like this: (1) greedy, self-absorbed Westerners are despoiling the environment and throwing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it will poison future generations, and therefore (2) government should have the power to strongly regulate our consumption of energy, and therefore our lifestyles.

Vahrenholt and Lüning fully concur that the world needs to wean itself off of fossil fuels in the long run. Carbon dioxide does contribute to global warming, and excessive global warming is not a good thing. They believe, however, that the heedless stampede towards expensive short-term solutions is a dangerous waste of money. If their thesis is right, we have several decades to resolve the problem. It is not as though oceans are going to rise and we will all drown tomorrow. To put numbers on it, the IPCC has established a bogey of two degrees centigrade for acceptable global warming over the next century. In doing so, they are highly confident that the goal cannot be met and that there will be continued need for strong measures (and for granting funding and power to themselves). Vahrenholt and Lüning claim that because greenhouse gases are only one of many factors which drove the observed global warming in the last quarter of the last century, the two degree benchmark will be easily met without drastic measures. We have time enough to take rational, measured steps toward a solution.

There is genuine anger in this book, towards the IPCC in general and the perpetrators of the most egregious frauds. These include Michael Mann and his infamous "hockey stick," and Al Gore and his Nobel Prize. These are careerists, men of no principle and no love of the truth, who by getting huge amounts of resources diverted to unproductive ends (especially themselves), proved themselves to be significant impediments to the improvement of understanding of our climate.

It is important that this book appear in German. Several similar volumes have appeared in English, most recently S Fred Singer's masterful, 880-page Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report on the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2009. However, as Germany is the epicenter of the green movement, the German public needs access to the full range of scholarship, including the negative side.

Authoring this book will certainly change the career trajectories of both authors. They will perforce be excluded from research circles dominated by the IPCC, which means, as of today, most of the climate research community. I congratulate them for their courage, wish them luck, and hope that courageous politicians and philanthropists will support some honest research in this vitally important area.

Errors in the IPCC analysis: "Global sea levels rose continually and at an increasing rate throughout the 20th century" Wrong. They were using land-based benchmarks on coastlines which were sinking due to plate tectonics. Satellites, which reference the earth's center of gravity, show a declining rate of increase.

What rates of sulfur dioxide emissions to model? Models differ, some using 1960, some 2000 as the date of maximum human SO2 emissions. Oddly, the dates selected seem to be the ones which display the desired modelling results.

Shrinking of icecaps, glaciers and sea ice. These are shown to be cyclical phenomena. The IPCC ignores their cyclical nature, and overestimates the actual amounts. The press emphasizes the loss of ice in one place (north pole) and ignores the opposite on the other pole. There is absolutely no prediction for, or explanation of, the major re-icing of the North Pole in 2013.

I add in October 2013 that the 5th Assessment Report is now in draft, and the IPCC seems to be doubling down on its commitment to the same story line. Google "ipcc.ch" They dismiss, in only a few words, the notion that cloud cover has any relationship to solar activity. Expect Vahrenhold, Luening and Fred Singer to take a hard look at how they came to the conclusion, and how they conclude that global warming continues apace in the face of a growing body of evidence that it has gone nowhere in 17 years. Note that the 2013 summary for decision makers plays down the short term and plays up global warming over the past century. This is quite the opposite of what they did with the "hockey stick" in the third assessment.


Hahaha! Nothing like a good debate!

So many good books...so little time.

I don't feel like debating the subject because I really don't have any strong opinion on either Global Warming or Global Cooling. I just noticed this contrary view out there, increasing in frequency, from fairly decent scientists - so I mostly just want to observe the debate and, of course, watch the weather.

I'm sure this is going to charge the arguments of those who are opposed to the theses proposed by the IPCC alarmists. So, to me, it's like waiting for the Ali vs Foreman fight when I was a kid. So exciting!
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby Rune » Sat 02 Nov 2013, 23:01:49

Telegraph

Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling.

There has been a 29 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of 533,000 square miles.

In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.
The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific had remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes. One ship has now managed to pass through, completing its journey on September 27.

A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.

If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after predictions that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013. Despite the original forecasts, major climate research centres now accept that there has been a “pause” in global warming since 1997. The original predictions led to billions being invested in green measures to combat the effects of climate change.

The changing predictions have led to the UN's climate change's body holding a crisis meeting, it was reported, and the IPCC is due to report on the situation in October. A pre-summit meeting will be held later this month. But the leaked documents are said to show that the governments who fund the IPCC are demanding 1,500 changes to the Fifth Assessment Report - a three-volume study issued every six or seven years – as they claim its current draft does not properly explain the pause.

The extent to which temperatures will rise with carbon dioxide levels and how much of the warming over the past 150 years, a total of 0.8C, is down to human greenhouse gas emissions are key issues in the debate. The IPCC says it is “95 per cent confident” that global warming has been caused by humans - up from 90 per cent in 2007 – according to the draft report.

However, US climate expert Professor Judith Curry has questioned how this can be true as that rather than increasing in confidence, “uncertainty is getting bigger” within the academic community. Long-term cycles in ocean temperature, she said, suggest the world may be approaching a period similar to that from 1965 to 1975, when there was a clear cooling trend.

At the time some scientists forecast an imminent ice age.


Well, it's easy to find these articles and books now. I could go on and on.

But it seems like a fairly recent challenge to the IPCC and to global warming alarmism in general. I'm sure we will be hearing a lot more as Global Cooling science appears to be warming up! :lol:
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby Rune » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 00:55:19

I'm not desperate about this stuff. I just noticed this contrary view emerging.

It's not just one or two articles; there's a whole bunch of stuff - what looks like a fairly significant challenge to the AGW thesis.

The Russians, especially, are big on solar influences on climate rather than CO2.

It's definitely worth reading about.
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby americandream » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 07:54:52

What the sun does is possibly as speculative as the next round of lotto numbers. However, we know for a fact that this civilisation is directly causing or indirectly causing the gaseous envelope of this planet to be caused to seek a new climate range. In the course of that state, I am sure that there will be all sorts of instabilities. However when we look elsewhere in the solar system with planets and their states, we are pretty much playing with fire and I am not holding my breath, especially with billions more joining the craziness that lies behind this fiasco.

dolanbaker wrote:
americandream wrote:The chances of the planet cooling are pretty remote. The existing climate envelope has been lagging the changed natural environment around which it had ranged itself. Had the massive deforestation not taken place along with all the changes in its gasous makeup, we were certainly headed for another cold age. Chances of that now are as remote as the Second Coming.

This is my take on things as well, but with the increases in ocean heat and the weakening solar energy reaching the planet, it's the changes in weather patterns that will have the greatest affect.

Some places will get warmer and others will get cooler, Western Europe could easily experience a "mini ice age" while the global temperature remains higher than today.

If the sun was to really drop it's energy output, then of course, all bets are off!
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 14:34:00

I just bought The Neglected Sun. It's a much more thorough book, of course, than the one I just read, Don't Sell Your Coat.

So, the following is the preface. All the references were at the end of the chapter. I didn't bother to include them because there were so many. But you can easily jump to each reference in the Kindle edition, which makes fact-checking much, much easier.

Anyway, enjoy the preface. I'm sure the more fascinating parts of this book are ahead of me.

The Neglected Sun (Independent Minds)
by Sebastian Luning Fritz Vahrenholt

Preface

The day the book Die kalte Sonne was launched in Germany happened to be the coldest of 2012. And 6 February was remarkable for another reason too: on that day Germany’s power grid teetered on the brink of collapse. Having decommissioned eight of its older nuclear reactors, the country was no longer able to guarantee its own power supply. Electricity from an old, mothballed, oil-fired power plant in neighbouring Austria and from Czech nuclear power plants had to be fed in to prevent Germany’s power supply failing.

In 2011 Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would implement the Energiewende (energy turnaround) in an attempt to replace nuclear and fossil fuel power plants with renewable sources. At the same time, she promised that Germany would no longer need to import electricity and that electricity prices would not go up. Within less than a year this grand declaration proved to be little more than wishful thinking.1 Today electricity prices in Germany are soaring out of control due to unlimited subsidies given to renewable power, and the German power supply can be secured only through emergency decrees.

Power companies also have to keep unprofitable power plants on standby and large power consumers may find their supply cut off in the event of unexpected supply bottlenecks. Within less than a year, Germany has gone from having a power supply that was one of the world’s most stable to one that is on the brink of collapse. How did Germany reach this point? Germany is implementing an energy policy driven by fear. After a catastrophic tsunami on the other side of the globe struck Japan in 2011, causing the Fukushima reactor accident, fear gripped Germany. While other leaders such as Britain’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy soberly acknowledged that a tsunami could not be expected in their respective countries and that their reactors were deemed safe, Merkel lost her nerve and promptly shut down eight of Germany’s nineteen reactors even though they had been rated as among the safest in the world.

At the same time, the German government made generating 80 per cent of the country’s electricity from renewables – wind and solar energy – by 2050 a national priority. Gas, coal and oil would not play a role in the future because Germany’s energy policy was being driven by fear of a climate catastrophe. This fear was being fanned by climate scientists such as Professor Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He had been promoted to the position of chief climate adviser to the German Chancellor. Schellnhuber and his group succeeded in apportioning all the blame for past and future climate change on CO2 alone. He is on record as saying, ‘We … can show that there is an extremely simple, quasi-linear relation between the global mean temperature and the total amount of CO2 that will be emitted into the atmosphere over the next four or five decades. The climate system’s entire complexity can be boiled down to this simple linear relation’ [1].

Politicians simply accept this as true and base energy and social policy on this. The climate scientists who shape public opinion and the IPCC postulate that an uncurbed rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration will lead to a dramatic temperature increase of 2–6° C. Spreading fear is poor policy It is this fear-driven energy policy that has led to millions of tonnes of wheat being converted into biofuel, with some even being imported for that purpose. Our fear-driven energy policy has led to wind parks being erected in the middle of forests, thus destroying the function of the forest. Fear is why half of the world’s photovoltaic capacity is installed in mostly overcast Germany, a country with no more sunshine than Alaska. This German energy policy mantra is what we question in our book.

The reaction to our book from politicians and media was predictable: indignation, ostracism and marginalization of the issues and the authors. Just what outrageous facts did we bring to light? We were able to cite hundreds of scientific studies showing that the changes in the sun’s activity and oceanic decadal oscillations are responsible for at least half of the recent warming, which means that the contribution of CO2 is at most half. Yes, some warming can be traced to anthropogenic and natural sources, but the impact of CO2 has been wildly exaggerated. A warming of 2–6° C is not to be expected by the end of the twenty-first century; a warming of about 1° C is more likely. Worse still: the sun and ocean decadal oscillations indicate that we are entering a period of modest cooling that will last decades. Consequently, the earth-burning climate catastrophe, which has long been a creed for many in politics and the media, should be abandoned. That would mean cancelling the annual circuses of 20,000 participants in exotic venues like Doha, Cancun and Durban. The high priests of climate fear would no longer be welcome; political advisers and their huge research budgets would shrink. The much yearned for transformation envisaged by green ideologues, where a centrally controlled energy economy would be put in place and hollow out the nation’s industrial base, would disintegrate. The alarming headlines of the globe burning up, which no doubt boost circulation and ratings, would quickly become a thing of the past.

Indeed, there was a real threat to alarmism when Germany’s most widely circulated daily Bild changed tack and ran a series titled ‘The CO2 Lie’ just after our book was released. Everything is fine – just don’t voice any criticism! There were plenty of reasons for the media, scientists and politicians to avoid spreading such realism. Especially active in this respect were the leftist-liberal weekly Die Zeit (‘Vahrenholt as the front man of a new eco-reactionary movement’) [2] and the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (‘Obsolete climate claims’, ‘ridiculous’). On the other hand, the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel and other dailies such as Die Welt gave the issues examined in our book broad coverage. The reaction of some climate scientists was particularly harsh, among them Professor Jochem Marotzke, director of Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. He kept it as simple as possible by claiming that we were not real climate scientists: ‘If Vahrenholt studied the IPCC report, then he read a lot but understood little’ [3]. Professor Mojib Latif of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Sciences, Kiel took it a level higher, claiming that our arguments ‘belong in a well-deserved place in the graveyard of Absurdistan’ [4]. Universities, academies and other institutes came under pressure to cancel scheduled speaking engagements by the authors.

Changing winds

However, the arguments raised in our book were welcome overseas. Invitations came from the University of Oslo and the London Royal Society. Speaking engagements in Chicago, Vienna and Berne were met with positive resonance. We were even able to present our arguments before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, thanks to an invitation from the European People’s Party. Over the course of the year we were able to gain support even in Germany. The longer that Die kalte Sonne stayed on the bestseller list, the more obvious it became that our arguments were very well supported by a growing number of scientific publications, and as a result the more support we got from politicians and the media. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt found the reaction of some in the media ill-advised. He invited Fritz Vahrenholt to an hours-long meeting, and even allowed Vahrenholt and Lüning to quote him as follows: ‘I find your line of argument plausible.’ Science always progresses.

Hardly a week went by that new scientific publications underpinning the fact that CO2 had been exaggerated did not appear. Contrary to the supposed IPCC consensus that natural climate variability does not play a major role in today’s or the past climate, many scientists continue to work on this important subject. New papers documenting the great importance of the inconvenient natural climate drivers are published in international, peer-reviewed journals almost every week. Many disciplines contributing to the climate puzzle are still in the early stages of research and many fundamental questions remain unanswered. Controversial scientific debates are an essential part of science and are taking place today despite all the claims coming from the IPCC that the ‘science is settled’. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth.

Scientists find themselves in a quandary. How are they to deal with the politically incorrect scientific results? Two American researchers, Jackson Davis and Peter Taylor, recently came across something astonishing. While studying an Antarctic ice core covering the past 12,000 years, they identified a total of forty-six strong natural warming events throughout the pre-industrial era. The mean warming rate of these events was approximately 1.2° C per century, more than the 0.7° C warming we have seen since 1900. While the material, methods and analysis of the study were sound and unchallenged, not a single major scientific journal was interested enough to publish these important results. Was it the study’s powerful, yet inconvenient conclusion that deterred the journals? Contrary to what is always claimed by IPCC-affiliated scientists, the warming that occurred over the past one and a half centuries is not unprecedented after all. Desperate to share their results with fellow scientists and the public, Davis and Taylor eventually posted their paper on the largest climate discussion blog (http://www.wattsupwiththat.com) for maximum distribution [5].

Similar pre-industrial warming events over the past 2000 years were also reported from China [6]. While papers from well-connected climate alarmists are routinely published within a few weeks, papers refuting the IPCC often struggle to get into print. Similar problems occur with the media coverage of new scientific climate studies. Interestingly, while new results inconvenient to the IPCC are often ignored, the latest climate scare stories – some paid for by insurance companies with a vested interest – are widely carried by the mainstream media. For example, how many of us have heard that winter temperatures at the Antarctic Ross Sea have significantly cooled over the past 30 years? [7]. Has anyone read that current temperatures on the Antarctic peninsula were at their present level for 7000 out of the last 10,000 years? [8]. One might think that a study documenting that temperatures in southern Italy during the Roman Warm Period were slightly higher than they are today would be a worth reporting [9]. But such reports are largely ignored. Why do so many journalists shy away from spreading good news? The US National Oceanographic Data Center, for example, recently found in a new study that the ocean is not warming up as aggressively as the IPCC had predicted [10]. And the Gulf Stream is remarkably more stable than predicted earlier by the IPCC-affiliated climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf. In western Europe the supposed record summer heatwave of 2003 was recently downgraded to second place because it turns out a heatwave in 1540 was markedly warmer [11]. If the media are truly after an explosive news story, then they could begin by investigating the dubious temperature ‘corrections’ that are now being made to the measured data before they are input into official databases. Is it really justifiable that temperatures from the 1930s warm period are routinely corrected downwards while modern values are often inflated? 

Here comes the sun

The past is the key to the present and to the future. Data provide us with a picture of pre-industrial, natural climate patterns. They reveal that when the sun was active, temperatures were high; and when the sun was quiet, temperatures were low. This was always the relation during pre-industrial times. That is one of the key findings of this book and is thoroughly documented in Chapter 3. Reconstructions based on ice cores, dripstones, tree rings and ocean or lake sediment cores reveal that temperature history was characterized by significant temperature changes of more than 1° C. Warm and cold phases alternated according to thousand-year cycles. Examples include the Minoan Warm Period three thousand years ago and the Roman Warm Period two thousand years. During the Medieval Warm Period, around a thousand years ago, Greenland was colonized and grapes suitable for winemaking were cultivated in England. Cold periods prevailed between the warm phases, among them the Little Ice Age which lasted from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. All these temperature fluctuations occurred at a time when atmospheric CO2 concentration was essentially stable, which means that only natural processes could have been responsible for the historical climate variations. Is it really credible to think that these natural variations came to a halt about 150 years ago?

Let us consider for a moment what the climate since 1850 would have looked like had the natural pattern simply continued. 1850 marks the end of the Little Ice Age, a natural cold period associated with low solar activity. Based solely on the natural pattern, we see that solar activity has increased since 1850, more or less in parallel with an increase in temperature. When we compare this with real-world climate data for the past 160 years, we are surprised to learn that this is exactly what happened. Both the timing and the 1° C warming fit nicely into the natural scheme. The solar magnetic field has more than doubled over the past century. According to the solar physicist Sami Solanki, the past decades have been among the most active in terms of solar activity in the last ten thousand years [12].

Does it really make sense to assume that the sun has almost nothing to do with modern climate warming, as the IPCC claims? Hard-core IPCC supporters such as Rahmstorf deny that solar-driven millennial-scale climate cycles exist and insist it’s a cul-de-sac for climate science. But many researchers disagree. Since the first edition of our book appeared in German in early 2012, many studies have been published confirming the great importance of natural climate cycles in the past, and therefore they also must apply to the present and the future [13]. We find that solar-driven millennial-scale cycles have controlled wet and drought phases in the Mediterranean region during Roman times [14]. Along the French Mediterranean coast, storms occurred in millennial cycles in line with solar activity [15]. In Germany too, the sun has driven the climate over the past 10,000 years [16]. Likewise, the temperatures of the Swiss Alpine lakes fluctuated according to the same rhythm [17]. Millennial-scale solar cycles were also found to be responsible for Alpine glacier movements [18]. Similar cycles were found in Finnish Lapland. Interestingly, each successive warm phase over the last 2500 years was colder than the one that preceded it [19], marking a long-term cooling, which is not compatible with the climate catastrophe now being proposed by the IPCC. Solar-driven millennial-scale climate cycles are also reported in North America by a number of new studies. For example, temperatures along the coast of Cape Hatteras pulsated according to the rhythm of the thousand-year solar cycle [20]. Florida was drier when the sun was weak and wetter when the sun was strong [21]. The climate of British Columbia has been driven by solar activity over the past 11,000 years [22] and in South America the sun regulated the distribution and intensity of the monsoon rains [23]. In China’s Taklamakan desert, oases blossomed according to solar millennial-scale cycles [24]. Likewise, temperatures on the Tibetan plateau followed the sun’s pattern [25]. The East Asian monsoon too was controlled by solar activity [26]. The currents of the East China Sea varied according to the sun’s activity [27]. Even the climate of Lake Baikal fluctuated in accordance to the solar rhythm [28]. Natural climate cycles led to the collapse of the mighty Indus civilization [29]. Finally, the rains in south-east Australia followed the solar pattern [30].

Could all this be a coincidence? All these studies affirm the need to include the sun as a key climate driver. And any models used to project future climate trends need to be tested rigorously by using the climate of the pre-industrial 10,000 years. Only models capable of reproducing the known climate past can be approved for use in future modelling. Unfortunately, not a single climate model used today by the IPCC is able to reproduce the climate cycles of the past. We find the sun everywhere Besides long-term millennial-scale solar cycles, researchers have also found evidence that changes in solar activity strongly contribute to climate development on human timescales, that is to say in years and decades. For example, Norwegian studies have revealed that a significant part of the warming in their country has been caused by the sun [31–34]. In Sweden too, climate and solar activity are tightly linked [35]. In neighbouring Finland, solar cycles have been discovered in tree rings [36]. The extent of Baltic Sea ice is now known to be influenced by solar activity [37], as is the ice on the Rhine in central Europe [38]. A massive cold period in central Europe 2800 years ago appears to have been triggered by a weak sun. [39]. The north Atlantic deep water formation was found to be modulated by the sun [40]. The notorious rains in Northern Ireland are affected by changes in solar activity [41]. Winds in Portugal were particularly strong when the sun was weak [42]. Solar activity fluctuations and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) have contributed to Italy’s climate over the past 10,000 years [43]. A solar influence can even be detected in Italy’s salt marshes [44]. In Asia, monsoon rains have waxed and waned according to the rhythm of the sun over the past 150 years [45]. Rains on the Tibetan plateau ceased whenever the sun weakened [46]. Coral reefs in Japan died during cold phases triggered by low solar activity [47]. A marked solar influence on Japan’s climate was also found in other recent studies [48–49]. Wet phases in the Aral Sea were associated with solar high activity phases [50]. The rains in Maine over the past 7000 years have been controlled by the sun [51]. A solar influence on precipitation has now been found for Brazil [52–53]. Solar cycles have even been detected in the water masses of the deep sea [54]. The field of research in solar–climate interaction is more active than ever [55–58]. Unfortunately, the IPCC has chosen to marginalize and underrate this important subject. Therefore, books like this one provide thousands of active researchers in this field with a much-deserved public platform and recognition for their painstaking and fascinating work.

The illusive CO2 fingerprint in the middle atmosphere In the past, IPCC-friendly scientists always argued that the enormous climate potency of CO2 could easily be demonstrated. In the middle atmosphere, namely the stratosphere, temperatures had been cooling, they said. And the reason for this could only be the CO2 greenhouse effect because warming in the lower atmosphere would always be associated with cooling in the middle atmosphere. Activist scientists like Mojib Latif have used this logic in numerous public lectures. People hear this and have no choice but to believe it because they don’t have knowledge or literature to verify the claim. However, when we take a closer look at this proposed CO2 ‘proof’, the story quickly falls apart.

First, while the temperature in the stratosphere did indeed decline between 1980 and 1995, since then it has been fairly stable. Contrary to Latif’s claim, the stratosphere has not cooled at all over the last 15 years. This is not a good start for the alleged CO2 warming ‘proof’. Unfortunately, there is more: the cooling of 1980–95 coincided with the thinning of the ozone layer. Since the mid 1990s, however, the ozone layer has been recovering due to the reduction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other substances addressed by the Montreal Protocol. This is precisely when stratospheric cooling stopped. Could temperatures in the middle atmosphere possibly be linked to the ozone concentration rather than to the CO2 greenhouse effect as Latif claims? Research conducted at Columbia University and the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Kühlungsborn, appears to indicate precisely that. It is indeed mostly ozone that drives temperatures at those atmospheric levels, and not CO2 [59–60]. And what really drives the ozone concentration in the stratosphere and mesosphere besides the CFCs? A series of papers published in 2010–12 provide the answer [61–65]: it’s the sun, stupid!

The CO2 fingerprint in the middle atmosphere has disappeared, but hardly anyone has acknowledged it, especially not the old climate guard of the IPCC. Extreme views on extreme weather Major new developments have also occurred in the field of extreme weather since the German edition of our book came out. In March 2012, the IPCC published a special report on extreme weather [66], which stated that there will be no detectable influence on the earth’s weather systems by mankind for at least 30 years, and possibly not until the end of the century. If and when mankind’s influence becomes apparent, then it may just as likely reduce the number of extreme weather events as increase them [67]. New studies from central Europe confirm that our weather is still well within the range of natural variability [68]. In the Alps, weather extremes have even declined [69].

As discussed in Chapter 5, there is currently no scientific evidence that storms have become more extreme in recent decades. When a severe drought struck the United States in 2012, many pundits viewed it as a portent of the coming climate catastrophe. While this event was certainly a catastrophe for the areas affected, an individual event like this has little relevance for the long-term climatic drought trend. A study carried out by researchers at Princeton University and the Australian National University, Canberra was published in the science journal Nature in late 2012 [70]. The results are unequivocal: droughts have not increased in frequency over the past 60 years. Another recent study of the Mediterranean found that rainfall today remains within the range of natural variability [71]. Other studies have revealed that the most severe droughts in Sweden and Spain occurred during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, during the Little Ice Age [72–74]. What has long been ignored is that marked natural drought–wet cycles operating over timescales of decades, centuries and millennia do exist. Many of these cycles are driven at least in part by changes in solar activity [75]. Studies have documented such cycles all over the world – Norway [76], the Mediterranean [14], the north-eastern United States [51], Mexico [77–78], South America [23, 79–80], the Sahel, [81], Lake Malawi [82], China and East Asia [24, 26, 46, 83–85], the Aral Sea [50] and south-east Australia [30].

A team from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that current climate models are still not able to reproduce regional trends in precipitation [86]. Most notably, the models significantly underestimate natural variability, according to these authors. River flooding is still within the range of natural variability Research has also moved forward on the question of whether river floods have already spiralled out of control and beyond the range of natural variability during the current Modern Warm Period, as some IPCC-affiliated players have claimed. The first surprising news was that global precipitation has become less extreme over the past 70 years [87]. Yet studies in the United States and Africa could not detect any statistically significant increase in flooding events [88–89]. Greater damage has more to do with ever more people settling in areas vulnerable to flooding and higher property values. Evidence for a link to anthropogenic global warming has not been found [90]. Prior to the floods of 2011 and 2012 in Australia, the IPCC suggested that droughts would be greatest environmental threat to the country. Abruptly, the floods were re-interpreted and explained by alarmist activists as ominous signs of an imminent manmade climate catastrophe. However, a subsequent and in-depth scientific analysis revealed that the Australian floods had a natural cause – the La Niña phenomenon, enhanced by the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) [91].

Another interesting result comes from the central European Alps, where research has shown that floods were more frequent there during cold rather than warm periods [92–93]. The climate sciences are still in an early and turbulent phase, where new research often exposes previously held scientific beliefs to be misconceptions. It is therefore essential to keep asking critical questions whenever sensational climate claims are made. All too often such concepts have collapsed when subjected to rigorous testing. This book aims to investigate the fundamental facts relevant to the climate catastrophe claims proposed by the IPCC and industries with vested interests, such as the insurance sector. Prepare yourself for an eye-opening journey through a climate science Wild West. You will be surprised to read about scientific distortions that you never would have thought possible in the supposedly enlightened twenty-first century.
It takes courage to watch a film so well-done as September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor. You will never be the same. It is a new release. Five hours. Watch it on YouTube for free.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby vision-master » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 14:42:31

I'm waiting for Mauro Biglino - Unexpected Bible

FOR RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION ONLY
Uploaded by sepuste on Jan 12, 2012
Mauro Biglino translated 23 books of the Bible for the Vatican. He had to translate the Leningrad Codex (the version of the Bible which all three major monotheistic religions - Cristian, Jewish and Muslim - recognize as the official Bible) from the Hebrew, word by word, literally and with no interpretation whatsoever. That is to say, he's not a wannabe kabbalist, conspirationist or ufologist, since the official publishing organism of the Vatican approved and released those books, at least 17 of them. While working on the Bible, he realized that many of the stories this book tells where mistranslated, misinterpretated, mostly on purpose, in order to insert the notion of a spiritual, allmighty and unerring God. The picture he gives us of the bestseller of all times is surprisingly different from what we all were told. Actually, as soon as he released "THE BOOK THAT WILL FOREVER CHANGE OUR IDEAS ABOUT THE BIBLE - THE GODS COMING FROM SPACE", the Vatican suspended all further publications of Mauro Biglino's works: Let's discover why!

"THE BOOK THAT WILL FOREVER CHANGE OUR IDEAS ABOUT THE BIBLE - THE GODS COMING FROM SPACE"


I'm sure this will be a forbidden book.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 15:29:12

Post your off-topic crap somewhere else, vm.

How many times do you have to be asked or told?
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Sun 03 Nov 2013, 23:23:14

1.   It’s the sun, stupid!

For many of us the term ‘climate change’ stirs strong emotions. The string of catastrophe reports coming from the media seems endless. Every month we hear or see news of another disturbing climate record. Carbon dioxide produced by mankind is dramatically changing the climate, we are told. Unprecedented temperature extremes, storms, floods, widespread death and a slew of other horrors are said to be imminent. If we fail to apply the emergency brake now, and hard, then the climate will be irreparably damaged and there will be little hope of averting the approaching cataclysm. In just a few more years it may be too late, we are constantly warned. We are also told that the measures proposed for averting disaster are costly, very costly, but that the anticipated damage from climate change will be even more expensive, so there is no alternative but to act quickly and decisively. Politicians have come under pressure. Based on a chorus of dire warnings, laws for changing the direction society is taking have been enacted and billion-dollar decisions have been made. There’s no question about the general thrust. Eventually, we are going to have to utilize energy more efficiently and we shall need new technologies to replace much of our finite supplies of oil, gas and coal. Renewables will become one of the main pillars of our energy supply.

However, the crucial question remains: How much time do we really have to carry out a comprehensive transformation of society? The key to answering this question can be found in the climate sciences. It boils down to solving the problem of determining what share of the observed climate change has been truly caused by human activity and how much is due to natural factors. Meanwhile, the world seems to have split into two camps: those who are convinced mankind is significantly changing the climate through emissions of industrial CO2 and those who see natural fluctuations at work. In the heat of the debate, the fact that nature is rarely a black-and-white picture is often lost. In reality, there are many indications that show our sun plays a more important role than CO2 in the climate and that at times they may be mutually enhancing, and at times can offset each other.

Very different reasons compelled us to examine the sun and other natural events as the possible triggers for climate fluctuations. Sebastian Lüning is a geoscientist who has spent almost 20 years of his working life studying the climate and the earth’s history. Time and again he has asked himself: Why is it that natural forces were able to dominate climate events in the past, but today they are believed to have become practically impotent? Is this a realistic assumption?

In December 2009 Fritz Vahrenholt, an energy expert, was asked by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to review the draft of a renewable energy report. I (Vahrenholt) found 293 errors and deficiencies in the 1000-page report, and then found at an IPCC meeting of experts held in Washington on 1 February 2010 that my remarks met no objection. So I asked myself: Could it be that a similar superficial and flawed approach had been taken to the topic of climate change? I am not a climate scientist, but I do have a comprehensive, in-depth knowledge of the renewable energy sector. Up to that point I had trusted the IPCC’s pronouncements on climate protection. Taking such an unscientific approach to the main issue of climate as had been taken to the report on renewable energies would have been absolutely unthinkable to me.

Up to that point, I had trusted all IPCC reports and never doubted the recommendations based on them. But signs of deficits and deficiencies with the consensus finding process of the IPCC climate report started piling up. First, the warning that Himalayan glaciers would melt completely by 2035 was an alarming statement in the 2007 IPCC report. However, that claim had never been confirmed by studies from the Indian Ministry of Environment. IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri initially called the results ‘voodoo science’, before lamely admitting 2 years later that the 2035 glacier melting claim originated from a telephone interview with a scientist, Syed Hasnain, who said the statement was intended as pure speculation. This telephone interview was quoted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the claim found its way into the 2007 report. Pachauri finally expressed his regret over the blunder in January 2010.

My uncertainty only grew after the Climategate scandal, when thousands of emails were made public and gave the impression that a crucial temperature data series from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) had been changed to depict a growing warming trend. The CRU data series had been used prominently by the IPCC. CRU’s head, Phil Jones, denied every irregularity, but resigned during the ensuing investigation. Subsequent investigations confirmed that infractions of the scientific obligation to make data available to other scientists had been committed, but threw out the charges of manipulation. My suspicions were aroused by all of these incidents. This left me with no choice but to take a much deeper look into climate science itself, and especially examine alternative scientific views that had failed to find their way into the official reports.

The second factor that compelled me to take a closer look at the sun and other natural impacts on climate came from within my own company. In early 2008 I had been appointed managing director of RWE Innogy. For decades RWE had failed to invest in renewable energy. As Europe’s fifth largest power provider, the lion’s share of RWE’s power had been produced by burning lignite and anthracite coal. With the European emissions trading certificates looming, it was clear that from 2013, unless it reduced its CO2 emissions, RWE would have to cough up billions of euros over the long term. The new chairman, Jürgen Grossmann, decided to cut the company’s CO2 emissions by implementing an ambitious investment programme in renewable energies, in addition to replacing older power plants with newer, more efficient coal-and gas-fired plants, and extending the operating lifetimes of its nuclear plants. From that point on approximately 1.2 billion euros a year were invested in wind, biomass and hydroelectric power plants. A respectable portfolio resulted after just 3 years: over 2300 megawatts of renewable power capacity is now online.

However, much to our surprise, the outputs from the wind power plants ended up falling far short of our expectations because the wind during the winters simply failed to materialize. In 2009 winds were down 10 per cent, in 2010 they were down a whopping 20 per cent, and in 2011 about 10 per cent. We discovered that across all the northern European countries (Britain, the Netherlands and Poland), the wind had simply taken a break. For years I had been chairman of a wind power company, REpower Systems AG, and so I was familiar with the unpredictability of the wind. However, such a widespread, multi-year fluctuation was completely unprecedented. Was this the first sign of climate change, brought about by anthropogenic global warming? Were the wind patterns of Europe changing permanently? This had to be investigated because we intended to invest up to another 5 billion euros in onshore and offshore wind parks over the next 5 years. In fact, we were planning to become one of the largest offshore investors in the North Sea, and so we had to be certain that the turbine-driving winds would not peter out. This scenario was nowhere to be found in the official IPCC statements.

One day I happened by chance to come across a paper by Michael Lockwood on the connection between cold winters and solar radiation [1]. I was completely absorbed! We always knew that whenever we had a stubborn system of cold easterly winds in the winter, the wind park yields would drop dramatically. On the other hand, strong westerly winds blowing in from the Atlantic provided enough energy to power the wind parks to near full capacity. In Europe, whether westerly winds or easterly winds prevail depends in large part on the atmospheric pressure difference between Greenland and the Azores. This is known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). A positive NAO means there is a large difference between both pressure systems (a powerful Icelandic low and a powerful Azores high), a negative NAO means there is a weak difference (a weak Icelandic low and a weak Azores high). With a negative NAO, the powerful westerly winds are driven to the south and the weaker Siberian-influenced easterly wind systems make their way across northern Europe more frequently, thus making winters there colder and less windy (Figuere 1.1). 

Figure 1.1 Annual energy production in Germany is closely coupled with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

The NAO is a naturally occurring climate oscillation which appears to be influenced by solar activity. But what is it that drives the NAO? Lockwood provided the decisive clue to solving this riddle. He linked the NAO and the British winter temperatures to solar activity. He determined that solar activity had strongly diminished at the end of the last decade and was able establish a statistically strong correlation between solar activity, the NAO and how cold British winters were [1]. I was stunned by his conclusion: despite global warming, Britain and Europe would have to reckon with cold winters in the near future [1–2]. The physical processes involved have meanwhile been successfully simulated in climate models [3–4].

In Lockwood’s paper I read for the first time how the 11-year solar cycle had an impact on our weather and climate. I turned to sunspots next and came across more surprising relationships between solar activity and climatic change, both in the earth’s history and mankind’s recent history. I found relationships the IPCC had not reported – for example, that there is a 210-year (Suess/de Vries) cycle, an 87-year (Gleissberg) cycle and an 11-year (Schwabe) cycle with which solar activity oscillated. I was also surprised to learn that there is a scientific consensus on the fact that these cycles had an impact on climate development in the past – along with volcanic events and the 100,000-year Milankovitch cycles, which triggered the huge ices ages and warm interglacials. The more I delved into the literature, the more obvious became the discrepancy between my knowledge and what I had shown as the ‘hockey stick’ in my presentations over the years. The hockey stick is a temperature reconstruction that depicts almost 900 years of relatively subdued temperature change from AD 1000 to 1900, followed by a sharp warming over the last century (Figure 1.2).

During my time as an environmental senator, as a manager for Shell for renewable energies, as chairman of REpower Systems and as RWE Innogy CEO, I demonstrated the exceptional features of the warming since the middle of the twentieth century in hundreds of presentations, speeches and conferences. I used Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ even though I should have known that relatively warm eleventh-century Greenland was not called ‘green’ for no reason and that the Little Ice Age depicted in Pieter Bruegel’s paintings were familiar. In the meantime, a series of studies has been published that show the Medieval Warm Period around the year AD 1000 had a similar temperature level to today’s and that the Little Ice Age of the sixteenth century was about 1° C cooler than today [5]. 

Figure 1.2 Temperature development and trends of the last ten years as illustrated by three established global temperature data sets (surface stations and satellite measurements).

Global warming has essentially stopped since the year 2000. Temperatures have fluctuated about a stable plateau. The geologist and, at the time, my RWE colleague Sebastian Lüning referred me to two books: The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford [6] and The Chilling Stars by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder [7], which I tore through over a matter of days. In Montford’s book I read the following by David Deming, who received this in an email from an IPCC scientist: ‘We have to get rid of the medieval warmth.’ As I went through the ruses used to create the hockey stick, which feigned an unprecedented global temperature increase during recent decades, I was upset. I felt the wool had been pulled over my eyes.

To initiate a broad discussion on this obviously flawed procedure used by the IPCC, I wrote an essay that was published in the German daily Die Welt. It described the attempt by IPCC climate scientists to trivialize the natural variability of the climate in order to be able to make climate gas CO2 the single determining effect on our future climate. This simplification was obviously necessary to give the political demand of radically changing the global energy supply badly needed momentum. The reaction to my piece from traditional climate scientists was frightening. The paper, titled The Cold Sun, was characterized by Stefan Rahmstorf, lead scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, as ‘an extraordinary example of twisting scientific facts’. I had pointed out that the warming had ceased in 1998, yet Rahmstorf called this a distortion, claiming that all established global climate data sets showed a rising trend [8]. Is that true? Let’s put it to the test by looking at temperatures over the last 10 years. The result: two important data sets (HadCRUT and RSS) show a cooling trend (Figure 1.2).

The rise in other data sets is minimal when compared to the strong warming phase of 1977–2000. The confrontation served to initiate one thing: that we take a deeper look into natural climate change. Together with Lüning I became more intensely involved with the natural causes of climate fluctuations and tracked down the real extent of the CO2 threat. Manfred Bissinger, a leading name in German journalism, encouraged us to go one step further and write a synthesis about it. This book is the result. It reports on the astonishing findings that stem from our research and our discussions with palaeontologists, astrophysicists, solar scientists, oceanographers and theoretical physicists. For more than a year we talked to many scientists of  varying opinions from all over the world and exchanged or requested information about new research results.2

Our conclusions? At a sociopolitical level, they are highly explosive. There is no question that CO2, methane and other climate gases have a limited warming effect on our climate. But there is also no doubt that a large part of the warming measured so far can be traced back to natural causes, with the sun having the most powerful impact on our climate. Currently, the sun is in the process of switching to a longer-term phase of weak activity [9–10] and as a result we can expect a cooling period over the next decades. This is why we call it the ‘cold sun’. Over the coming decades the cold sun will give us the time we need to put the energy supply system on a sustainable basis without putting our civilization’s prosperity in jeopardy by implementing irrational, knee-jerk measures. Yes, of course it is necessary to free ourselves of our long-term dependency on fossil fuels for a number of reasons. We have to research new technologies for a sustainable energy supply, and we can develop renewable energies so that they become an economic alternative to traditional energy sources. This conversion process will take decades. But the cold sun will give us the time to do it in a measured way.

So why have the IPCC, many scientists and politicians been so successful in designating CO2 as the sole cause of the warming during the second half of the twentieth century? As we shall show, there is a multitude of natural causes – the changing solar irradiative intensity in harmony with the large solar cycles, the solar magnetic field in connection with cosmic radiation and cloud formation, the oscillating Pacific and Atlantic warming and cooling processes, stratospheric ozone, atmospheric water vapour and also poorly understood additional anthropogenic causes such as soot and aerosols.

In this book we shall show that the earth’s climate depends in large part on multiple natural effects that are complexly interconnected, and are the main cause of the 1977–2000 warming. Designating a single factor – namely, CO2 – as the only meaningful climate driver has truly been the dubious crowning achievement of political and scientific communication. The conclusion that one derives is utterly misleading in that it suggests that we ‘only’ need to reduce manmade CO2 emissions and then everything will be lovely. That was the simple message that the media and politicians readily accepted. It became the guiding narrative of every privately and publicly held discussion. Because of the simplicity of the equation for describing the climate system, it is easy for everyone to grasp. Unfortunately, it is false, as we shall demonstrate.

Physics and nature simply do not allow themselves to be influenced by such facile messages. It is becoming obvious that since the start of the millennium the CO2 equation for explaining the climate really doesn’t hold water. Despite continued increases in CO2 emissions, the global temperature has not risen over the last 13 years. The sun has weakened and is now showing us its cold side. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation – which describes the alternation from warm and cold water areas in the northern Pacific Ocean – does the rest. In the next chapter we summarize the most important facts and interrelations.

Assessing the mass of scientific data has led us to conclude that warming in the twentieth century is due only a small extent to CO2. More importantly, the 2-degree limit, which has been the mantra for all energy-political objectives in the political debate, will in all probability not be exceeded in the current century. We hope that The Neglected Sun will make a contribution to initiating an urgent and much needed political discussion on realigning our climate policy, to opening up scientific research on the natural causes of climate change and to reorienting energy policy towards the politics of energy efficiency. The focus must return to ensuring that massive financial resources are rationally allocated to the truly urgent social, societal and ecological problems of the nine billion people on our planet.

References
1.   Lockwood, M., R. G. Harrison, T. Woollings and S. K. Solanki (2010) Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity? Environ. Res. Lett. 5, 1–7.
2.   Lockwood, M., R. G. Harrison, M. J. Owens, L. Barnard, T. Woollings and F. Steinhilber (2011) The solar influence on the probability of relatively cold UK winters in the future. Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 1–11.
3.   Ineson, S., A. A. Scaife, J. R. Knight, J. C. Manners, N. J. Dunstone, L. J. Gray and J. D. Haigh (2011) Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Nature Geoscience 4, 753–7.
4.   Matthes, K. (2011) Solar cycle and climate predictions. Nature Geoscience.
5.   Ljungqvist, F. C. (2010) A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere during the last two millennia. Geografiska Annaler: Series A 92 (3), 339–51.
6.   Montford, A. W. (2010) The Hockey Stick Illusion. Stacey International, London.
7.   Svensmark, H. and N. Calder (2007) The Chilling Stars. Icon Books, Cambridge.
8.   Rahmstorf, S. (2011) Es winkt die RWE-Lobby. http://www.scilogs.de/wblogs/blog/klimalounge/medien-check/2011-02-23/klimawandel-vahrenholt-rwe.
9.   Barnard, L., M. Lockwood, M. A. Hapgood, M. J. Owens, C. J. Davis and F. Steinhilber (2011) Predicting space climate change. Geophysical Research Letters 38, 1–6.
10.   Clilverd, M. A., E. Clarke, T. Ulich, H. Rishbeth and M. J. Jarvis (2006) Predicting solar cycle 24 and beyond. Space Weather 4, 1–7.

2   Dr David Archibald, Dr Raimund Brunner, Professor Joachim Curtius, Professor Don Easterbrook, Dr Martin Enghoff, Professor Klaus Hasselmann, Professor Reinhard Hüttl, Dr Natalie A. Krivova, Dr Ben Laken, Professor Mojib Latif, Dr Rainer Link, Professor Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Professor Jochem Marotzke, Professor Ullrich Müller, Professor Ron Prin, Dr John Reilly, Professor Nicola Scafetta, Professor Nir Shaviv, Professor Fred Singer, Professor Sami K. Solanki, Dr Leif Svalgaard, Professor Henrik Svensmark, Dr Ilya Usoskin, Professor Jan Veizer, Professor Hans von Storch, Professor Werner Weber, Dr Richard Willson.


Well, there's Chapter 1 for you.

Judge for yourself the author's credentials, approach and sources. Every chapter has references to scientific papers and solid sources.

You might not like the fact that we live near a star called the Sun which has stupendous energy, unfathomable internal and external magentic dynamism and other neat little facts that disturb your pretty notions. But the Sun is there. I wouldn'lt lie to you.

And this book proceeds in a very factual and forthright way to examine our Sun's cyclical patterns and how they interact with the Earth ocean-atmosphere.

Here's another neat little fact: Reading doesn't hurt you. And there is no reason to be afraid of it.

Right now, I couldn't recommend a better book to read to anyone interested in energy, the environment, global warming, investment or policy.

I have given you the Preface and Chapter 1.

By all means, direct anyone you know who is interested in global warming science to this thread.
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 02:05:57

Rune wrote:
There is a vast vested interest in carbon dioxide being the primary driver of global warming. Entire industries depend on it: solar cells, wind energy, the infant carbon sequestration industry, and so on.
There is a much vaster vested interest in FF industries that are threatened by public understanding of the science.

Why are Vahrenholt and Luning not publishing this in the scientific journals? Oh, right, there is a vast conspiracy of scientists to suppress the truth.
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby Rune » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 02:45:17

Keith_McClary wrote:
Rune wrote:
There is a vast vested interest in carbon dioxide being the primary driver of global warming. Entire industries depend on it: solar cells, wind energy, the infant carbon sequestration industry, and so on.
There is a much vaster vested interest in FF industries that are threatened by public understanding of the science.

Why are Vahrenholt and Luning not publishing this in the scientific journals? Oh, right, there is a vast conspiracy of scientists to suppress the truth.


Do you realize how dumb a question it is that you just asked?

They published a book! The authors can reach whole populations of interested, comprehending people. This book was on Der Spiegel's bestsellers list for weeks in Germany. It's English-language debut has been eagerly awaited.

This is not some sort of esoteric subject that only a specialist can understand or be interested in. Anyone can respond to anything in the book. It is comopletely available to anyone.
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 02:57:26

Rune wrote:
Keith_McClary wrote:Why are Vahrenholt and Luning not publishing this in the scientific journals? Oh, right, there is a vast conspiracy of scientists to suppress the truth.


Do you realize how dumb a question it is that you just asked?

They published a book! The authors can reach whole populations of interested, comprehending people. This book was on Der Spiegel's bestsellers list for weeks in Germany.
Like these? :
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/crackpot
Whole populations of interested, comprehending clueless people bought them.
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Re: The Great Global Cooling Thread

Unread postby dorlomin » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 06:26:21

Rune wrote:Do you realize how dumb a question it is that you just asked?

They published a book! The authors can reach whole populations of interested, comprehending people.

Its not a stupid question. Nor do they have to only publish either a book or peer reviewed research. It is common for real scientists to do both.

They have not produced anything peer reviewed so actual scientists in the field will pay no attention.


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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 12:53:24

Fritz Vahrenholt worked for the IPCC and was asked by that organization to proof-read and report on errors in its previous reports. Which he did. And he found , in the 2007 report, some 293 errors which he reported to the IPCC assembly. He met with no objections to his work from the IPCC.

He is eminently qualified to write on the the subject of the IPCC's methods.

The earth receives some 99.98% of its energy from the Sun.
The Sun does indeed exhibit solar cycles of various lengths and amplitudes.

To suggest that the effects of the Sun's energy is somehow a null factor in understanding earth's warming and cooling cycles is preposterous! The burden of proof that the Sun can be relegated to a non-issue is on those that make that claim!

And that is what the IPCC is claiming - that the Sun is largely irrelevant. Does anyone here begin to get a clue as to why ALL of the climate computer models have performed so abysmally?

It's just common-sense.

The rest of the book is fascinating. The author has much to say about the IPCC and his work with them. He is someone who has been directly involved and has gotten into the weeds of the IPCC analyses.

Frankly, I can't understand all the hostility. I would have thought that anyone witha modicum of curiosity would have been very interested in a book about Sun cycles and the Sun's effects on Earth climate. Each chapter is abundantly backed up with evidence from published climate science papers and historical records.

I will never understand willful ignorance or the irrational fear people have of even looking at ideas or theses or theories that challenge previous perceptions.

The Sun and its rythmns is THE MOST important eature of Earth's climate.

Try to argue that it's not and let me watch you make a fool of yourself.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 14:06:38

Comment on EER interview with Fritz Vahrenholt
Challenging the core tenets of climate science is easier said than done. Varenholt’s extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. The least one would expect of such a claim is that it be put to the scientific test. Spectacular theories and speculations abound in books and on the internet, but most of them were not offered to the scientific community, or did not stand up to scrutiny if they were. Scientists routinely check each other’s work via the peer review process, which can be seen as a first test of scientific validity. From further discussions in the literature and other scientific fora the relative robustness of competing ideas is assessed. The most robust idea eventually gains acceptance. That is how science progresses. Surely the peer-review system is not perfect, but at least it is an organised process aimed at filtering what is possibly right from what is plainly wrong. Such a mechanism is lacking in the public debate; and that adds much to the public confusion about this and other complex scientific topics.

Now, would the ideas of prof. Vahrenholt stand up to scientific scrutiny? On the basis of the interview, we expect: no, they would not. However, we would still encourage him to submit his ideas for scientific review. That is where the physical forces and feedbacks in the climate system should be discussed. On the other hand, questions on how society and politics should respond cannot be answered by science, but should be discussed in the public and political debate. Unfortunately, Vahrenholt’s accusations like “we are being misinformed by the climate establishment” and “the whole purpose of the IPCC has been to get rid of the so-called Medieval Warm Period” betray him as being receptive to conspiracy theories, which are routinely echoed on the internet. In such a world view, any criticism by the scientific mainstream is of course only perceived as proof that his and similar views are being suppressed. This is often used as an excuse to not even try to submit one’s ideas to peer review. His book is criticized by scientists not because it would be politically incorrect, as Vahrenholt assumes, but because it is scientifically incorrect.
...
The solar activity has been well-measured, particularly since 1979 using satellites, and before that by indirect (“proxy”) measures. From these, the solar activity is seen to have been relatively stable over the past 50 years. That means, that even if amplified strongly, the sun’s variations could still not explain the strong global warming that started halfway the 1970’s. Measurements of cosmic rays, a favourite candidate for a solar amplification mechanism, also show no trend since at least 50 years. The robust evidence needed to become a serious scientific competitor for the dominant greenhouse mechanism is sorely lacking. It is true however, that the sun gained strength over the first half of the 20th century, and thus contributed to warming seen during that time, as is also described in the IPCC report.
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Various solar and climate physicists, like Lockwood, Haigh, Gray and others have published analyses indicating that the solar influence in the warming of the last half century is low or absent. These analyses include the magnetic field effects, which – in contrast to what Vahrenholt is saying – are not neglected by the IPCC. A few years ago, Pierce and Adams modeled the potential cloud forming effect of cosmic rays and found it wanting by more than an order of magnitude, even when the most favourable assumptions possible were made.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby jedrider » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 14:44:11

Rune,
I have confidence that most of the scientists working on global warming know what they are doing and that just mentioning 'haven't they considered the sun' is rather ingenuous, because that is their job to understand what is happening.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby dorlomin » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 14:50:15

Rune wrote:Fritz Vahrenholt worked for the IPCC and was asked by that organization to proof-read and report on errors in its previous reports. Which he did. And he found , in the 2007 report, some 293 errors which he reported to the IPCC assembly. He met with no objections to his work from the IPCC.

Source please.

The earth receives some 99.98% of its energy from the Sun.
The Sun does indeed exhibit solar cycles of various lengths and amplitudes.
"The sky is blue"

To suggest that the effects of the Sun's energy is somehow a null factor in understanding earth's warming and cooling cycles is preposterous!
Not as preposterous as to lie that people say such things.


The estimates of long-term solar irradiance changes used in the TAR (e.g., Hoyt and Schatten, 1993; Lean et al., 1995) have been revised downwards, based on new studies indicating that bright solar faculae likely contributed a smaller irradiance increase since the Maunder Minimum than was originally suggested by the range of brightness in Sun-like stars (Hall and Lockwood, 2004; M. Wang et al., 2005). However, empirical results since the TAR have strengthened the evidence for solar forcing of climate change by identifying detectable tropospheric changes associated with solar variability, including during the solar cycle (Section 9.2; van Loon and Shea, 2000; Douglass and Clader, 2002; Gleisner and Thejll, 2003; Haigh, 2003; Stott et al., 2003; White et al., 2003; Coughlin and Tung, 2004; Labitzke, 2004; Crooks and Gray, 2005). The most likely mechanism is considered to be some combination of direct forcing by changes in total solar irradiance, and indirect effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation on the stratosphere. Least certain, and under ongoing debate as discussed in the TAR, are indirect effects induced by galactic cosmic rays (e.g., Marsh and Svensmark, 2000a,b; Kristjánsson et al., 2002; Sun and Bradley, 2002).
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-7.html#2-7-1

And that is what the IPCC is claiming - that the Sun is largely irrelevant.
If the sun is causing the warming, by what mechanism.

We know the TSI numbers reasonably well. So what mechanism are you hand waving about...

And dont bother with 600 word cut and pastes, write your own words thank you.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 15:05:14

jedrider wrote:Rune,
I have confidence that most of the scientists working on global warming know what they are doing and that just mentioning 'haven't they considered the sun' is rather ingenuous, because that is their job to understand what is happening.


Well, we probably will not have to wonder about the truth of the matter for very long - say, 5 years, just guessing.

Because, like it or not, there actually are solar scientists out there predicting a decades long global cooling, beginning right about now.

I probably would not be interested in this whole thing unless I actually saw something unequivocal happening - such as obvious, non-debatable sea level rise acceleration and other predicted bad news due to CO2-caused global warming.

However, we have seen a pause in global warming. Something that the computer models failed to predict. The computer models of climate have failed horribly, in fact.

And so, as I said originally, I do not have a strongly-felt opinion about either Global Warming or Global Cooling. I simply became aware that there are now twso groups of scientists who are making opposed claims about Earth's climate.

And I recognized that it would not be very long before we see a resolution of these conflicting views. So, being a curious person who likes to read, I bought and read two books recently on the environmental view that the Sun plays at least as significant a role in warming and cooling processes as does greenhouse gases.

I don't see anything wrong with being aware of these things. And it is an interesting situation. The book I chose is by a well-credentialed author, not some fly-by-night kook. Like I said, these authors were condemned at first and then welcomed in Germany, Britain, France and other places - universities and such.

And I took the time to share some content of these books with the members of this site, knowing full-well that knickers get all in a bunch over nothing. But I don't care. Books are great. Reading is good. Spend $9 and have a good sit, WTF!
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 16:08:01

German Professor: IPCC Science Finds Itself In A Serious Jam…”5AR Likely To Be The Last Of Its Kind”

By P Gosselin on 16. September 2013

And: “Extreme weather is the only card they have got left to play.”

So says German Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, who is one of the founders of Germany’s modern environmental movement, and agreed to an interview with NoTricksZone. He is one of the co-authors of the German skeptic book “Die kalte Sonne”, which took Germany by storm last year and is now available at bookstores worldwide in English under the title: The Neglected Sun.

In Germany Prof. Vahrenholt has had to endure a lot heat from the media, activists, and climate scientists for having expressed a different view. But as global temperatures remain stagnant and CO2 climate sensitivity is being scaled back, he feels vindicated. Here’s the interview:

=======================

IPCC Science Finds Itself In A Serious Jam, There Is Not Going To be A Climate Catastrophe

NTZ: You were once a believer in the man-made CO2 climate disaster. What changed your mind?

FV: I was Environmental Senator of Hamburg until 1998 and had had absolutely no doubts about the AGW hypothesis because global temperatures indeed had been running parallel with CO2 emissions. My first doubts over the IPCC’s science arose after the dramatic errors of the 2007 4th Assessment Report came to light. On German public television PIK Director Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber said the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by the year 2035. Then as a CEO of Shell Repower Systems, and later RWE Innogy, where I was responsible for the development of renewable energies and discovered that natural factors were impacting our climate. We saw that the wind strength in Northwest Europe had been in decline year after year. Yet, climate scientists had told us just the opposite was supposed to occur, i.e. that wind strength would increase. So I looked at the literature in detail and was able to find there was a relationship with the North Atlantic Oscillation, whose 60-year cycle had entered a weak phase. I wrote articles about this in leading German dailies, and I was immediately branded as a “climate denier” by Stefan Rahmstorf. His reaction led me to look even deeper into the literature. In the end it was Schellnhuber and Rahmstorf who turned me into a skeptic.

NTZ: Your climate science critical book Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun) was released early last year in Germany. It remained on the Spiegel bestseller list for 3 weeks. Has it changed the discussion in Germany? Were you surprised by the public’s reaction?

FV: The leftist, liberal media labeled me an “eco-reactionary” who represented obsolete positions. That was to be expected. What truly surprised me the most was the harsh reaction from German climate scientists who were not even willing to discuss the topics addressed in the book. And the longer our book remained on the bestseller list, and the longer the warming stop became, the more our adversaries’ tactics ran aground. First they ignored us and then they tried to isolate us through personal defamation. Die kalte Sonne became the symbol of resistance against a politically indoctrinated science which denied natural processes and spread fear in order to promote a particular energy policy – one that threatened the prosperity and growth of the German industrial base. So to me it was a sort of an accolade when former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt invited me to a personal audience to find out more about Die kalte Sonne. Now I’m permitted to quote him: “Lüning’s and Vahrenholt’s assertions are plausible“. The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson invited me to London and encouraged me to publish the book in English. Now it is appearing this week as “The Neglected Sun“. It’s the Die kalte Sonne in English, and it’s been updated.

NTZ: CO2 is supposed to be trapping heat in the atmosphere, yet global atmospheric temperatures haven’t risen in 200 months (over 16 years). Where has all the “trapped heat” gone? Some leading scientists are frustrated that they cannot find it. What do you think is happening?

FV: It’s now obvious that the IPCC models are not correctly reflecting the development of atmospheric temperatures. What‘s false? Reality or the models? The hackneyed explanation of a deep sea warming below 700 meters hasn’t been substantiated up to now. How does atmospheric warming from a climate gas jump 700 meters deep into the ocean? If you consider the uncertainties in the Earth’s radiation budget measurements at the top of the atmosphere, and those of the temperature changes at water depths below 700 meters, where we are talking about changes of a few hundredths of a degree Celsius over many years, such a “missing heat” cannot be ascertained today. The likelihood is that there is no “missing heat”. Slight changes in cloud cover could easily account for a similar effect. That would mean the end of the alarmist CO2 theory. Perhaps this is why we’ve been hearing speculation about the deep ocean.  On the other hand, perhaps this discussion tells us that the alarmist faction needs to deal more with oceanic cycles. It is possible that this is a step in recognizing the central impacts of the PDO and AMO on our climate.

NTZ: Hans von Storch confirms that 98% of the climate models have been wrong so far. Do you think the directors of world’s leading climate research institutes risk damaging the once sterling reputations of their institutes if they do not soon admit there’s a problem with climate science?

FV: They certainly find themselves in a serious jam. That‘s why they are now trying to gain time by claiming that the models first become falsified if there has been no warming over a period of 30 years – never mind that the warming of 1977 to 1998 was only 22 years and deemed to be long enough to “prove“ the CO2 theory. A few years ago climate scientist Ben Santer said only 17 years were necessary before we could talk about a real climate trend. Now that reality is pulling the rug from under models, some scientists are having misgivings. Some are praying for an El Nino year, which would allow them to beat the drums of fear again. They’ll hype up every single weather effect to get attention.

NTZ: Some prominent climate experts have been expressing second thoughts about the seriousness of man-made climate change, e.g. Hans von Storch, Lennart Bengtsson. Do you expect more scientists to follow as more data come in?

FV: Certainly. That’s what’s so fascinating about science. It proposes theories. And when they don’t fit reality, they get changed. The chaff gets separated from the wheat.

NTZ: Spiegel for example has been publishing some articles critical of alarmist climate science. Do you expect the rest of Germany’s media to soon follow and to start taking a more critical look?

FV: This process is fully under way. But it’s going to take a long time because an entire generation has been convinced that CO2 is a climate killer. But the shrill tones have been quieting down.

NTZ: What danger does Germany face should it continue down its current path of climate alarmism and rush into renewable energies?

FV: Twenty billion euros are being paid out by consumers for renewable energies in Germany each and every year. Currently that amounts to 250 euros per household each year and it will increase to 300 euros next year.

Worse, it’s a gigantic redistribution from the bottom to top, from the poor who cannot afford a solar system to rich property owners who own buildings with large roof areas. The German Minister of Environment fears a burden of 1000 billion euros by 2040.

It is truly outrageous that 1) 40% of the world’s photovoltaic capacity is installed in Germany, a country that sees as much sunshine as Alaska, 2) we are converting wheat into biofuel instead of feeding it to the hungry, and 3) we are covering 20% of our agricultural land with corn for biogas plants and thus adversely impacting wildlife. We are even destroying forests and nature in order to make way for industrial wind parks.

On windy days we have so much power that wind parks are asked to shut down, yet they get paid for the power they don’t even deliver. And when the wind really blows, we “sell” surplus power to neighboring countries at negative prices. And when the wind stops blowing and when there is no sun, we have to get our power from foreign countries. In the end we pay with the loss of high-paying industrial jobs because the high price of power is making us uncompetitive.

The agitators in climate science here in Germany have done us no favors. Renewable energies do have a big future, but not like this. It’s been a run-away train and it’s too expensive. We are putting Germany’s industry in jeopardy. In reality there really isn’t any urgency because the solar cycles and nature are giving us time to make the transition over to renewable energies in a sensible way.

NTZ: Has the weather become more extreme? Why are we getting bombarded by scary reports from the media – even after a normal thunderstorm with hail?

FV: Extreme weather is the only card they have left to play. We see that Arctic sea ice extent is the highest since 2007. At the South Pole sea ice is at the highest extent in a very long time, hurricanes have not become more frequent, the same is true with tornadoes, sea level is rising at 2-3 mm per year and there’s been no change in the rate, and global temperature has been stagnant for 15 years. Indeed we are exposed to bad weather. And when one is presented with a simplistic explanation, i.e. it’s man’s fault, it gladly gets accepted. CO2 does have a warming effect on the planet. However, this effect has been greatly exaggerated. The climate impact of CO2 is less than the half of what the climate alarmists claim. That’s why in our book, The Neglected Sun, we are saying there is not going to be any climate catastrophe.

NTZ: What do you expect from the soon-to-be-released IPCC 5th Assessment Report?

FV: It is truly remarkable that some countries are urging IPCC 5AR authors to address the reasons for the temperature hiatus in the summary for policymakers. Dissatisfaction with the IPCC’s tunnel vision is growing. But let’s not kid ourselves: In the coming days and weeks the media are not going to be able to refrain from the IPCC catastrophe-hype. However, what will be different from the previous four reports is that the hype will die off much more quickly. Those who ignore nature and its fluctuations will end up on the sidelines soon enough. I think this is going to be the last report of this kind.

============================

Professor Dr Fritz Vahrenholt is a German scientist, environmentalist, politician and industrialist. With his initial Doctorate in chemistry, Prof Vahrenholt has researched at the Max Planck Institute for Carbon Research at Mulheim. A former Senator and Deputy Environmental Minister for Hamburg, he has served on the Sustainable Advisory Board successively for Chancellors Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel.


Like I said, I am just a curious guy who likes to read - Science, Histories, Fiction (mostly from the early to mid 20th century when fiction was truly great).

Since I don't have any strongly-felt opinion about either global warming or global cooling, I have absolutely no reason to bother debating the issue. But I have become aware of issues surrounding these topics.

And I did find a couple of interesting books recently whose authors went to lengths NOT to be kooky and these books are well-written, so I shared them with the members of this site who might be interested in the subject. One of them was kind of a perusal, the other a more in-depth, rigorous treatment.

If you want to debate someone, debate with Prof. Vahrenholt.
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Re: The Neglected Sun by Fritz Vahrenholt, Sebastian Luning

Unread postby Rune » Mon 04 Nov 2013, 17:16:45

Vahrenholt Thrashes Leading IPCC, Former NCAR Scientist In Hamburg Debate! “The Wound Of Climate Science”

By P Gosselin on 15. August 2013

Spiegel journalist and geologist Axel Bojanowski reports on a heated climate debate in the online Spiegel today.

Image
Climate scientist Daniela Jacob (left) completely overpowered by Vahrenholt (right) in debate in Hamburg. Jacob admitted climate models and science are filled with uncertainty, concedes model failure.

Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the modern environmental movement, and today persona non grata for having published a skeptical climate science book last year, met IPCC climate scientist Daniela Jacob in a head-to-head debate before an audience of 100 at the Scandic Hotel in Hamburg yesterday evening. The debate was organized by Angela Merkel’s CDU Christian Democratic Party.

Vahrenholt trounced the former NCAR scientist, who was broken down into making a number of admissions.

Spiegel writes in the photo caption:

Unusual debate at the CDU in Hamburg: A renowned climatologist debates scientist critic and RWE supervisory board member Fritz Vahrenholt. The dispute reveals a new stage in the handling of climate prognoses.”

The days of uncritical acceptance of climate prognoses are over. The trust is gone. Open criticism of climate science is gaining traction in Germany as climate prognoses from renowned institutes are being viewed by the public and media with increasing skepticism. Spiegel writes:

After Vahrenholt and Jacob each made a presentation and duked it out in a heated dispute, the duel appeared to decide: “When the climate models do not agree with the reality”, Vahrenholt thundered, “then reality is not what’s false!”

Hostile audiences are becoming a thing of the past for climate skeptics – even among the generally climate alarmist CDU conservative party audiences. The overall reaction by the Hamburg audience signals a growing, pent-up resentment among Germans as the inkling that the climate catastrophe is more charade than fact begins to sink in.

Failed climate models “the wound of climate science”

In its article, Spiegel calls the growing disagreement between model results and measured observations “the wound of climate science“.  Spiegel writes on Vahrenholt’s claim of faulty models:

With that statement Vahrenholt bored into the wound of climate science: For 15 years the global mean temperature has remained stagnant, the computer models had not foreseen the warming pause. The models could not reproduce the surprising temperature trend, reported climatologists surrounding Hans von Storch of the Helmholtz-Zentrum GKSS in a new study. The probability that the simulations in this respect are faulty is higher than 98 percent. The climate catastrophe is refuted, believes Vahrenholt, who made his audacious claims into a bestseller.”

That German establishment-shaking bestseller is now coming in English in September: North America and UK. And there are discussions to have the book out in Polish.

Vahrenholt scoffed at the excuse that the oceans had swallowed up the heat, saying it was not credible. Jacob even desperately had to cite the Bible to explain the missing heat: “We know this already from the Bible: Seven goods years follow seven bad years.”

Prognoses with “concrete numbers was an error”

Jacob reluctantly had to admit the shortcomings with the models, blaming poor communication for the model failures: “We do however have to improve the communication with the public,” Jacob admitted. “One error was giving out concrete figures for the prognoses.” She then conceded that we ought not be surprised that the models projections were wrong and that there’s lots of uncertainty, adding: “In the economy and in a marriage they aren’t any better.”

Untypical for an IPCC scientist, Jacob also admitted that the models exaggerated. “I don’t think highly of that. we all have learned from it.”

Why did no scientist intervene?

With that admission, Bojanowski writes that Vahrenholt didn’t pass up the opportunity to capitalize, loudly demanding:
Vahrenholt wrote:Why is it then, when panic was rampant, no moderate climate scientist intervened? … You too must sometimes publicly distance yourselves from the agitators at the Potsdam-Institute, Frau Jacob!”

Applause from the audience, Bojanwski writes. Vahrenholt continued:
The catastrophic heightening of some scientists now threatens to destroy Germany as a place to do business.  … 1000 billion euros for the Energiewende, who is going to pay for it?”

Good question. And what does a scientist feeding on the public trough like Jacob care? Her answer, Spiegel writes: I makes statements in my field of study as a scientist, and not politically.”

Germany is slowly awakening.
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