I have two major stories out of Germany to report, one on the rise of Climate Skepticism into the mainstream, as Germany’s Top Environmentalist Turns Climate Sceptic, saying
“I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”
Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”
….and the other major story is on the failure of solar and wind power in Germany. First, the mainstream skepticism:
Body Blow To German Global Warming Movement! Major Media Outlets Unload On “CO2 Lies!”
Excerpts reposted from NoTricksZone by Pierre Gosselin
Today Germany’s national tabloid Bild (which has a whopping circulation of 16 million) devoted half of page 2 on an article called:.
“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”
That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.
This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.
Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.
Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).
Germany has now plunged into raucous discord on the heated topic of climate change
What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Conclusion: climate catastrophe is called off
The science was hyped. The book started hitting the bookshops today and has already hit no. 1 on the Amazon.de list for environment books. Indications show that it will climb very high in the overall bestseller charts. It’s published by a renowned publishing house and is now sending shock waves through the German climate science establishment. The first printing will produce 20,000 copies. I expect they will sell out rather quickly.
Read it all here.
=============================================================
While all that is happening, the wind is going out of the sails in the highly subsidized solar and windfarm business in Germany. Michael Limburg writes from Germany that:
We published this very comprehensive study from our author Dr. Günter Keil titled “ Germany´s Green Energy Supply Transformation Has Already Failed”. (http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/germanys-green-energy-supply-transformation-has-already-failed/)
German version here: http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/climategate-anzeige/die-energiewende-ist-schon-gescheitert-mit-update-4112/
It has won a lot of attention and was published in all german speaking sceptic blogs and is as well most regarded by our politicians.
Since a lot of green zealots in all countries praise Germany as the wonderland of manageable green miracles it might be helpful to show them the reality
I am therefore proud and happy to tell you that we managed to translate this very valuable piece of information which reveals the blindness and fanaticism of our present politicians which destroys willingly the backbone of our economy. Please make best use of it. I am sure you will welcome this information. The full report and the press release are attached.
Here is the English version:
Germany’s Green Energy Supply Transformation Has Already Failed!
Energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil has closely examined Germany’s energy policy of shifting away from nuclear and fossil fuels and over to renewables. What he finds is a bleak picture. Years ago Germany ambitiously embarked on transforming its energy supply system, and hopes to supply at least 80% of its energy needs through renewable energies by 2050, and thus become a moral leader on environmental responsibility for the rest of the world.
To do this, the former Socialist-Green coalition government, led by Gerhard Schröder, enacted the so-called Renewable Energy Feed-In Act (EEG) in 2000. This Feed-In Act requires electric utilities to buy all renewable energies, such as solar and wind power, from all producers at fixed, exorbitant rates and to feed it into the power grid for a period of 20 years. This has led to a boom as thousands of homeowners, businesses, and investors have installed thousands of megawatts of solar and wind power capacity over the years. The current Conservative-Liberal government, not to be outdone by its predecessor, is also gleefully pushing the Feed-In Act to the limit.
Weather-dependent supply wreaking havoc on the power grid
The problem is that these energy sources are weather-dependent and thus their sporadic supply is starting to wreak havoc on Germany’s power grid and is even now threatening to destabilize power grids all across Europe. The other problem: the power grid needed to distribute the decentrally produced green power is simply not there yet. They forgot to build it! So far, after tens of billions of euros spent on renewable energy systems and higher prices for consumers, not a single coal or gas-fired power plant has been taken offline. To the contrary, old inefficient plants have been brought back into service in an effort to stabilize the grid.
In a panic reaction, Germany shut down 8 nuclear power plants
To make matters worse, in a fit of panic and hysteria, the German government shut down 8 of its older 18 nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, thus removing a very cheap and stable supply of power and further pushing the grid to the limits. Before the shutdown of the nuclear reactors, Germany had been a net power exporter; today it is a net power importer and is at times severely straining neighboring power grids. To compensate for the missing nuclear power, the government is now heavily promoting even more weather-dependent wind power, which is further destabilizing the German and European power grids. A solution to the problem of storing electricity is still at least a generation away.
The question of course is how could such absurd decisions have been made to begin with? Were there no experts involved in the planning of the new power generation infrastructure? The answer obviously is no. Power executives are viewed as evil, dirty and greedy polluters, and thus were never really consulted. They could not be counted on to give the politically correct solutions. Therefore the decision to shut down the German nuclear power plants and to massively support renewables was done unilaterally by the government, without consulting the power executives or even neighboring countries.
Offshore wind parks, but no transmission lines to industrial regions!
Now that the damage is spreading, Germany’s utilities are now struggling to keep the grid stable and to fill in the power gap left by the shut-down of nuclear reactors. To do this the German government has ordered the installation of large-scale wind parks in the North and Baltic seas, in addition to the re-commissioning of mothballed, inefficient coal-fired plants. This overall energy production transition from nuclear and fossils over to “renewables” is dubbed by German officials as the Energy Supply Transformation. Construction of the offshore wind parks is now progressing rapidly. But there’s just one problem: the huge high voltage power transmission lines needed to bring their power to Germany’s industrial heartland to the south are missing! More than 3000 km of these lines are needed, but are nowhere near in sight. The government forgot about those too!
Activists groups blocking grid expansion
Building the power transmission lines quickly across the landscape will be a virtually impossible task. Activist groups have long since organized and are effectively blocking their approval and construction. So far only a measly 214 km have been built. As a result, surplus wind power cannot be delivered to the markets, and thus either has to be destroyed, dumped on the market at “negative prices”, or wind park owners are simply ordered to stop generating. No problem though – paragraph 12 of Germany’s Energy Feed-In Act requires electric utilities to pay for the electricity that they ask not to have produced! Technically, there is an incentive for wind parks to destabilize the grid.
Eventually all these costs add up and in the end they get passed along to the consumer. Under the bottom line, consumers have to pay more and more, and for a lower and lower quality supply. German industry is getting nervous and surveys show that many are leaving Germany, or are planning to do so. They no longer view Germany’s power supply as reliable.
In a death spiral…”will fail spectacularly”
Dr. Guenter Keil’s report focusses in detail on the amazing absurdities of Germany’s Renewable Energy Feed-In Act and the country’s utopian Energy Transformation. The government, through intrusive meddling and ballooning bureaucracy, has maneuvered Germany’s energy supply system into a vicious death spiral: the more the government intervenes, the greater the mess becomes. And the greater the mess becomes, the more the government intervenes! Dr. Keil concludes:
“Germany’s energy transformation has already failed. For Germans, the outlook is bleak. …the planned mismanagement is heavily damaging the economy and will fail spectacularly some years later because its economic and social costs will have become unbearable. The question remaining open is how many billions of euros will have to be destroyed before a new energy policy (a new energy transformation?) picks up the shattered pieces.”
So it’s no wonder that according to a survey of experts from 21 national committees by the World Energy Council, 0% said they could imagine their own country completely taking over the German political approach. An equal number believe Germany will reach its stated targets.
Germany’s model will serve as a classic lesson on how not to handle energy production and management.
Michael Limburg; with thanks to Pierre Gosselin from notrickszone for excellent translation support
Dr. Guenter Keil was a scientific employee at the Technical University of Munich / Fraunhofer Society, as well as Project Support at the Federal Research Ministry.
For downloading full 
report & 
press release here or see files attached (remark: Downloads of .doc pressrelease with SAFARI seems not to work, FIRFOX workfs fine)
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Ursus Augustus says:
February 6, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Well I’ve sent a link to this WUWT article to most mainland Aussie newspapers, so how about you doing so in Tassie.
Nice place, BTW. Did you get snow there (like Victoria) this summer?
Anyway, enjoy my pics http://tasmania-holiday.com
Wahrheit gewinnt !
Truth wins !
Lies die.
It’s simple really – either he’s gone mad or was bought off by the oil industry…
As long as MSM and MSP(oliticains) praise AGW crowd and villify the sceptics nothing will ever change. We can applaud brave people like this one all we like, the truth of the matter is this is all futile untill the two main instigators of this whole thing I mentioned above change their tune. Every once in a while we see influential people come back on the side of rationality and scientific process, but the amount is not nearly enough.
The way of the world sickens me, and as long as it keeps functioning the way it does, we will never have freedom, principled leaders and all that jazz. Us normal blokes will keep giving money to all those rich [selfsnipped] while us normal joes keep starving and freezing to death.
Roger Sowell
Re: Your post above.
Are you sure you are “a good engineer, and a lawyer” with “chemical engineering background” as your linked article claims (twice)? I don’t think so. Your quoted absolute humidity level [for 90% relative humidity at 80 degrees Fahrenheit] is about 10 times too big. Have a look at the chart
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/PsychrometricChart-SeaLevel-SI.jpg
Your article does read even remotely like what a lawyer or chemical engineer might write. You don’t do sceptics any favours by making such claims. Please just try to be honest about what you do know.
Mods – previous post was muffed; this is the replacement. TIA _Jim
Dougie, have you looked into the basis for Infrared Spectroscopy? A well-established field, I might add.
Have you any concept of how EM (electro-magnetic) waves work?
How energy is exchanged, from propagation in ‘space’ to a molecule – and then re-radiated again?
No.
You don’t, it would appear …
(Can you explain to us all how a CLOUDY night does not cool off near as much as a clear-sky night? What are the ‘cloud’ temperatures again? Can you say REFLECTOR? Or, in the case of CO2, H20, CH4: “Infrared re-radiator”.)
No one should listen to this man; he would appear to be on some other planet, physics-speaking.
.
oops typo,
2nd last sentence should read:
“Your article does NOT read even remotely like what a lawyer or chemical engineer might write.”
The energy crisis in Europe is really showing up in the current cold snap. The weather is not the issue (with regard to the deaths), but the reduction in gas flows from Russia is crippling electricity producion. ENEA (I think) in Italy is being sued for basically turning off power to some towns because they haven’t got gas to run the generation plants. Ukraine and Poland have had to ration power for the same reason.
Bottom-line: people are dying in Europe not because of the cold, but because governments have drunk the kool-aid (the sickest of sick puns).
Anybody know if Michael Man ‘tweeted’ on the atrocity this represents?
Germany disappoints. – gavin
They must do Green differently in Germany. It’s surprising that a long time green activist would be surprised to learn the movement, globally at least, is beset by crap.
Hi Anthony,
I think it is time for leading sceptics and honest climate scientists to consider issueing a warning to the world about the dawn of massive global cooling over the next decades, after the Met Office failed to do so. At minimum, the disturbing climatic history of the little ice age should kick off a sincere effort to check the facts.
The Met Office recently published a statement, that the sun will shortly enter a Dalton type minimum with 92% probability. However, they said, the temperature effect would be neglible.
What is hardly known even among the sceptical community and mainstream scientists anyways, is, that quality temperature reconstructions of the last few thousand years exist, that proxies are consistent on a global scale and correlated amazingly with solar output.
These correlations are far superior to Mannian type proxies and speak for themselves.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/neuralnetwriter/GlobalWarming/JK_Austrian_Speleothem.jpg
http://www.uibk.ac.at/geologie/pdf/mangini07.pdf
As multiple temperature peaks and valleys match in the Alps, North Atlantic, Troja, China, Chile and match as well with solar output data, the only plausible explanation is, (1) that these temperature reconstructions are correct and (2) that temperatures were mainly driven by the sun.
Having said that, the very likely coming Dalton type minimum will very likely let temperatures plunge by about two degrees in Europe and similarly elsewhere. This will massively deteriorate agriculture, particularly in Europe, the US and China and make growing impossible in parts of Canada and Russia.
The world will be taken off guard and unprepared for such a food and energy crisis.
This alarm is in no way comparable to the global warming alarm. It is based only on data and a degree of correlation that requires causation. It is not based on climate models, assumptions, exclusions and projections.
Worse, as the recent warming cycle since the little ice age had been strongly correlated with increased solar activity, greenhouse gases may be a much less powerful climate driver as assumed or even negligible. There may be no offset of the cooling.
There are only a few years left to prepare adaption.
“Ratten entgehen vom sinkenden Schiff.”
(The rats departing from the sinking ship)
Indeed! The MSM (Including Bild) have been supporting the IPCC ‘scientists’ with their fraud. They have been very vocal in smearing reputable and proper scientists and now they sense a turn in public opinion they suddenly pretend they have never supported the “Anthropogenic CO2 is a greenhouse gas that is the cause of global warming”.
It is time to get the tar and feathers out and name and shame the pseudo-scientists, ‘environmental’ profiteers and organisations, Newspapers, politicians and political parties (Icluding and especially the corrupt UN) that have been party to this scam.
Don’t let them get away with it!
_Jim says:
February 6, 2012 at 8:56 pm
When you produce some worldwide study that shows what you treat as a fact “that a cloudy night does not cool off near as much as a clear sky night” and that evidence also has details regarding temperatures of the clouds and the surface, as well as the humidity (which affects the lapse rate)then I will give you an explanation of the results, bearing in mind the slight overlap of the frequency distributions of the not-so-significantly different temperatures involved. My intuition tells me there could be some correlation between cloud cover and humidity, but I would not be attributing any “backradiation” warming to water vapour, just a different lapse rate, which might lead to your head not feeling much cooler than your toes.
I have repeatedly asked for empirical evidence of cooler emitters warming significantly warmer surfaces, but neither you nor anyone else has provided such. Maybe you’d like to be the first in the world to prove Claes Johnson (Professor of Applied Mathematics) wrong http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf
Now you mention IR spectroscopy which does in fact provide evidence for my point. You will find it common knowledge that a gas will not been seen to be absorbing radiation from a cooler emitter when the radiation is analysed by spectroscopy. It is only when the emitter is warmed and its temperature starts to exceed that of the gas that we do in fact start to see absorption lines.
By all means don’t listen to me, Claes Johnson or a host of physicists, though I hardly think it your prerogative to instruct others not to.
The mystery is why it has taken so long for the news media and at least some government officials to acknowledge what energy experts like me (I actually am an expert with a long list of credentials) have been telling them for years. Other than in certain narrowly defined, niche markets and applications, renewable energy in most of its forms is economically ruinous. Pathetic energy density and capacity factors doom both wind a solar, even at their theoretical conversion efficiency limits.
Anyone with a journeyman understanding of electric power generation/distribution and in possession of a hand-held calculator could have and should have long ago reached the above mentioned conclusion. That many of those who could have done so did not is a testament to the power of political correctness, fashion and vested interests of our times to bury simple truth under a pile of noble-sounding environmental proclamations.
The front page of today’s Los Angeles Times features a solar article covering what I would describe as an “environmental hangover”. In it, representatives of various environmental protection groups bemoan the pain of having sacrificed (in their view) trainloads irreplaceable desert critters and fauna to the latest rush of federally promoted, commercial solar monsters in exchange for the greater good of preventing global warming calamity. The irony is that the AGW alter on which they’ve made that sacrifice is fraudulent on its face and the resulting solar power plants are unlikely to last past the five years it takes to drain off all the federal tax benefits to private investors hooked up with the current political administration. At that point, horrendous economics is likely to leave U.S. tax payers holding the bag for $ billions in loan guarantees and a lawyer field day will begin over who should be responsible for cleaning up the physical mess left behind out in the desert.
The Caveat: The assumption that those in control wish to continue the same output or allow growth.
Remember, it’s called “sustainable” for a reason. It is also UNDEFINED for a reason.
For whatever reason, the following comment failed to post. I’ll try again.
The mystery is why it has taken so long for the news media and at least some government officials to acknowledge what energy experts like me (I actually am an expert with a long list of credentials) have been telling them for years. Other than in certain narrowly defined, niche markets and applications, renewable energy in most of its forms is economically ruinous. Pathetic energy density and capacity factors doom both wind a solar, even at their theoretical conversion efficiency limits.
Anyone with a journeyman understanding of electric power generation/distribution and in possession of a hand-held calculator could have and should have long ago reached the above mentioned conclusion. That many of those who could have done so did not is a testament to the power of political correctness, fashion and vested interests of our times to bury simple truth under a pile of noble-sounding environmental proclamations.
The front page of today’s Los Angeles Times features a solar article covering what I would describe as an “environmental hangover”. In it, representatives of various environmental protection groups bemoan the pain of having sacrificed (in their view) trainloads irreplaceable desert critters and fauna to the latest rush of federally promoted, commercial solar monsters in exchange for the greater good of preventing global warming calamity. The irony is that the AGW alter on which they’ve made that sacrifice is fraudulent on its face and the resulting solar power plants are unlikely to last past the five years it takes to drain off all the federal tax benefits to private investors hooked up with the current political administration. At that point, horrendous economics is likely to leave U.S. tax payers holding the bag for $ billions in loan guarantees and a lawyer field day will begin over who should be responsible for cleaning up the physical mess left behind out in the desert.
Manfred says:
February 6, 2012 at 9:14 pm
I think it is time for leading sceptics and honest climate scientists to consider issueing a warning to the world about the dawn of massive global cooling over the next decades.
Even though, as most here know, I strongly believe that there is absolutely no warming effect due to carbon dioxide, my analysis of past climate cycles does not indicate another Little Ice Age for at least 550 years.
Yes there will be slight cooling in the near future until about 2028, but we should still expect another 0.4 to 0.8 degree rise in the long-term trend before it passes a maximum some time in the next 50 to 200 years. Let’s not be accused of alarmist claims ourselves.
The whole AGW house of cards seems to be starting to crumble.
I only hope major media outlets around the world will cover this story of a prominent IPCC expert reviewer having the courage to speak out against the flawed science and flawed peer-review process which exists at the IPCC.
Not to diminish the courage of these scientists speaking out against CAGW theory, but I find it interesting that so many stepped “out of the closet” just after it was announced that solar cycle 25 will most likely be the weakest since the Maunder Minimum 300 years ago.
Regardless, I think of the growing number of CAGW “deniers” as early adopters. Pretty soon, the anti-CAGW sentiment will reach critical mass in the scientific community and scientists will be stepping over each other to be the first in their departments to “see the light” and express their “concerns” over the many failures of CAGW theory….
I must caution myself not become too optimistic, as I felt the same sentiment during and after Climategates 1.0 and 2.0, but it somehow feels different this time…
And so it goes……until it doesn’t…..
Reading the (now 88) comments, I notice an almost jubilant feeling from many with expressions of the tipping point, death spiral, dominoes falling and so on as far as CAGW is concerned. For me, there is too much of an expression of hope therein, and hope is not a plan.
I remind you that an entire generation is steeped in the guilt of environmental destruction. Folks I know express this when making statements in support of subsidies for “green” energy and cars. Guilt is a feeling of having violated a moral position and can involve significant responsibility for correcting the issue. Reason, logic, and science did not create this generation of guilt and will have little success in producing change. There is much that could be said about why and how this has come to be (it has been discussed elsewhere), and I do not want to have this post go off in that direction. So don’t go there. (Even though I just did!)
Jeremy says:
February 6, 2012 at 8:19 pm
“Sad to say, none of the “climate scientists” (con artists) nor the media will ever be held accountable by western governments.”
Jeremy, CAGW was always in the interest of these governments; they MADE it. It was always the intent to use this or any other scientific concern to raise new taxes. The Kyoto treaty is a near-verbatim copy of a template penned by a commission of the German parliament. CAGW scientists have always worked in the name of the government. That also explains why the science is so crappy.
Alexander Feht says:
February 6, 2012 at 8:12 pm
“Ratten entgehen vom sinkenden Schiff.”
Nearly. Die Ratten verlassen das sinkende Schiff is the correct saying.
_Jim says:
February 6, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Doug Cotton says on February 6, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Have you any concept of how … energy is exchanged, from propagation in ‘space’ to a molecule – and then re-radiated again?”,
___________________________
Yes, coherent radiated energy is indeed converted to incoherent thermal energy when the peak frequency of the incident radiation exceeds the peak frequency of the recipient body, such peak frequencies being determined by Wien’s Displacement Law.
The earth’s surface converts incident high frequency solar radiation to thermal energy, which can subsequently be diffused to the surface by molecular collision, or transferred by evaporation or chemical processes or, if the adjoining atmosphere is cooler, the remaining energy will be radiated to such atmosphere with a one-way transfer of thermal energy from the warmer surface to the cooler atmosphere or directly to space. .
Radiation is also generated in the atmosphere from thermal energy which is absorbed in a variety of ways including absorption of both surface and solar radiation, molecular collision and phase change. Any such radiation which meets a (significantly) warmer surface will be scattered and not converted to thermal energy.
Spectroscopy demonstrates this quite clearly for gases which only show absorption lines when the emitting source is warmer than such gases.
I hope that helps you to understand, but if you need mathematical proof visit http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf
This was written months ago. Looks like it was reasonably accurate.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Go%20GermanyBB.doc
Here is the link regarding Kyoto I expected DirkH to include:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/secret-history-climate-alarmism?page=1