Spiegel on the IPCC's dilemma

In an article published in its English language edition today, Der Spiegel covers the IPCC's dilemma over the pause - very much the same ground I dealt with in my Spectator blog the other day.

Data shows global temperatures aren't rising the way climate scientists have predicted. Now the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change faces a problem: publicize these findings and encourage skeptics -- or hush up the figures.

Comments

[chippy]

"... publicize these findings and encourage skeptics -- or hush up the figures."

As ever, the IPCC will opt for a blend of censorship and mealy-mouthed drivel, which will convince only those who yearn to be convinced.

[JonMcD]

Jochem Marotzke sounds a real hero:
Climate researchers, Marotzke adds, have an obligation not to environmental policy but to the truth.
"We will address this subject head-on."
"Thirty years is an arbitrarily selected number,"

[Stuck-Record]

Not quite the binary position Speigel suggests:

1. Publicize these findings and encourage skeptics, or...
2. Hush up the figures, or...
3. Admit to the pause, but say it was caused by the magic climate fairy/deep ocean heat.

They'll go for 3.

[Martin A]

...Germany's highest-ranking climate researcher, physicist Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, is fighting back against this refusal to face facts. Marotzke, who is also president of the German Climate Consortium and Germany's top scientific representative in Stockholm, promises, "We will address this subject head-on." The IPCC, he says, must engage in discussion about the standstill in temperature rise.

Marotzke calls the claim that a temperature plateau isn't significant until it has lasted for over 30 years unscientific. "Thirty years is an arbitrarily selected number," he says. "Some climate phenomena occur on a shorter timescale, some on a longer one."

How good to hear the "(T<30y) = weather variation; (T>30) = climate change " nonsense spelt out as the arbitrarily fabricated distinction it is.

Yet many people, not to forget BH resident Entropic Man, have swallowed it as an exactly defined criterion, permitting precise discrimination between weather variation and climate change.

[Roy]

It is a pity that the Der Spiegel article did not come out before the German elections. It would probably have cost the German Greens some votes if it had.

[ThinkingScientist]

Its a good article, nails the issues very well.

Regarding the environmentalist who was quoted as saying "In climate research, changes don't count until they've been observed on a timescale of 30 years," that neatly rules out the warming at the end of the 20th century as being climate-related, because it only runs from about 1975 - 1998.

When its warming, it must be man, when its cooling its natural (except when its not, its soot). So actually if we are to believe the models, with a cooling from 1940 to 1975 caused by aerosols and warming 1975 - 1998 caused by CO2, so the conclusion must be that without man the climate would have been constant from 1940 - 1998? No natural variability at all for nearly 60 years? Add to that the current plateau and we would have to believe that without human influence the climate would have removed virtually constant for over 70 years? And yet in the period from 1910 to 1940 there was strong warming, and cooling prior to that. All natural.

What planet do these people live on?

[Athelstan.]

More sea ice in the Arctic = warming, less sea ice in the Arctic = warming.

No more snow they said, but then it got cold and thus, warming winters/ harsh cold winters in Europe = warming.

17 year stasis in Temperature incline [ignore it or] = not significant.............what will they make of it when average temperatures tail off and drop?

0.8º rise since 1860 [whenever] = man made runaway global warming.

You've gotta laugh, what a charade, a bloody circus comedy - all of it has become.

[RC Saumarez]

I don't think that the IPCC can "hide the pause". The cat has been let out of the bag in too many high profile newspapers and blogs.

If they do, they are simply storing trouble up for themselves as energy prices rocket. They may be saved by an el Nino,

[Bernd Felsche]

Roy wrote:

It is a pity that the Der Spiegel article did not come out before the German elections. It would probably have cost the German Greens some votes if it had.

But they did, in German.

I took the liberty of including my translation of excerpts into a blog article Master Chefs Cookoff in Stockholm

[ThinkingScientist]

My dilemma is this: I want 5 - 10 years of sharp cooling to kill off the AGW scare, but I don't want the harm it would do to the elderly, crops etc. Warming is good, but not if it is associated with economic suicide proposed by Greens.

[Green Sand]

Bernd Felsche

For

"Master Chefs Cookoff in Stockholm"

I thank you, excellent!

[geoffchambers]

Nice to hear from an honest Green politician:

Despite resistance from many researchers, the German ministries insist that it is important not to detract from the effectiveness of climate change warnings by discussing the past 15 years' lack of global warming. Doing so, they say, would result in a loss of the support necessary for pursuing rigorous climate policies. "Climate policy needs the element of fear," [German Green Party politician Hermann] Ott openly admits."Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic."

[fred Thrung]

*Bernd Felsche
For
"Master Chefs Cookoff in Stockholm"
I thank you, excellent!*

Seconded. And from someone with mother tongue other than English it's even more impressive.

[Bernd Felsche]

Thank you all for the plaudits.

Before fred Thrung's second point makes me blush, I was born into German but to be fair, having spent most of the past 45 years in Australia, Engilish is also my mother tongue.

[Athelstan.]

Meanwhile, as governments work to save the planet, the poor are denied cheap, clean, abundant energy; without food because their land is being used for crops to be burnt to make rich people in other countries feel good about using “renewable energy”. They will freeze at night and choke in their huts on the fumes of dung from their cooking fire. The deserts will grow around them as the poor harvest anything that will burn to help them stay warm at night. The children will forage, fetch water from afar, or work their day in the meagre fields instead of spending time at school. They will sit in the dark at night, perhaps dreaming of finding a fish on a beach.

Thank you Bernd, that's what the green version of altruism looks like in real time. Heaven, God, someone - we need rescuing from the 'save the world' green do gooders and UNEP-IPCC.

[mikeh]

How's this for sheer brass-necked hypocrisy:
" "In climate research, changes don't count until they've been observed on a timescale of 30 years," claims one delegate participating in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister Johanna Wanka of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Ministry for the Environment's identical stance: "Climate fluctuations that don't last very long are not scientifically relevant."
AFAIK the burst of warming which triggered all the alarmist hysteria did not last 30 years.
(Great name for that minister btw!)

[Messenger]

Twas summer and the missing heat
Did plunge into the ocean waves
It sank beneath to utmost depth
It was a most unusual feat.

Beware the missing heat, my friends!
The heat that burns, the heat the kills
It’s coming out to get you soon
Unless at once you make amends

And change your life, to be more green.
So carbon footprints must be cut
And wind be caught by modern mills
And petrol cars must not be seen

Or else the heat will escalate
And burst out from the ocean’s floor
And overwhelm the human race…
[Sceptic voice] I think you must be joking, mate!

[Mark Well]

Sep 24, 2013 at 9:38 AM | ThinkingScientist

Apologies.

I made a comment on the following thread which I must subconsciously have lifted from you. The first signs ...

[SandyS]

There was an attempt to distract attention on BBC lunchtime news with an item about Pakistani cooking fires; millions of them melting Himalayan glaciers.

Then an item about Norway burning waste to generate electricity, at the end of the item an interview with a green who wasn't happy.

[Athelstan.]

"Then an item about Norway burning waste to generate electricity, at the end of the item an interview with a green who wasn't happy."

And the default mood of any and all 'greens' is - unhappy. Gloom merchants, pessimists and small minded creepy crawlies, would also suit, guys who generally do not believe in the human race, a bit like communists and progressives - in which the big state rules OK.

[graphicconception]

Why pick on Lindzen and his alleged tobacco ties? Why not pick on Gore?

"about-those-tobacco-connections"

[Wijnand]

"Climate policy needs the element of fear," Ott openly admits. "Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic."

Sigh.....

[Takuan_Soho]

>Now the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change faces a problem: publicize these findings and encourage skeptics -- or hush up the figures.<

Because that is how science is supposed to work!

Or for that part, the media in with encouraging them to do it......

[richard verney]

There was an attempt to distract attention on BBC lunchtime news with an item about Pakistani cooking fires; millions of them melting Himalayan glaciers.

Then an item about Norway burning waste to generate electricity, at the end of the item an interview with a green who wasn't happy.
0
Sep 24, 2013 at 1:25 PM | SandyS
//////////////////

I am surprised by this since it is nothing new.

My wife, who is Norwegian, owned a house in the mid 1980s on an estate which was supplied with free hot water for central heating and domestic hot water usage supplied from heat generated from a nearby waste disposal unit which burnt the local garbage/waste (which was collected not just that from the estate but from the wider area). The Norwegians being sensible did not let all the heat go to waste, and instead it was put to a useful purpose.

I had the impression that this was not unusual and that in other areas similar schemes were in place.

[richard verney]

Readers may be aware that Germany was putting pressure on the IPCC to hush up/cover up/not report on the temperature hiatus.

Whilst this story is doing the rounds, no one seems to be commenting upon the motive behid such a move. I would suggest that the motive is as follows:

Germany has gone too far down the road of green renewables which is causing all sorts of problems both with grid stability and with cost. The cost is such that German industry is becoming uncompetive when compared to similar industries in other countries that have cheaper energy. This is already causing some industries to relocate especially those in high energy intensive sectors such as the chemical industries. Several such companies have already relocated or announced intention to do so to the US where energy prices are cheap. This is very serious as it leads to less tax revenues, diminishes the balance of payment net surpluses, creates loss of employment, leads to higher welfare payments.

Germany knows the full costs of green/renewables and that it is saddled with this. Germany knows that the simplest way to restore its industrial competitiveness is for other countries to push ahead with their drive/commitment towards green/renewable energy so those countries are also burdened with needlessly high energy costs.

If all countries have the same high energy costs, then German companies will no longer be at a disadvantage having themselves to bear the high costs of energy in Germany. If other countries have high energy costs then German industrials will have nothing to gain by relocating.

Accordingly, Germany does not want to see anything in the latest IPCC report that may cause other countries (who are not already so far down the road of needlessly expensive green/renewable energy production) reconsidering their policies and perhaps delaying or worse still altogether abandoning the further pursuit of expensive green renewable energy.

Thus Germany's motive is not that it agrees with the AGW mantra nor that it considers that green/renewable energy production is a success and the way forward, but rather that it will be financially screwed unless other countries join it in committing economic suicide. To see these other countries push ahead with green/renewable energy production is the best and quickest way of restoring financial competiveness to Germany industry.