Foreword: Dr Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, authors of a new controversial skeptic book now hitting German bookstores, have asked me to post their response to comments made by climate scientist Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in an interview by NTV television. Feulner insists that CO2 plays the major role in climate change and that the sun has little impact.
You can read about the new book just published in Germany that is causing an uproar in the German green establishment here. The response is so vitriolic that one is newspaper (TAZ) is headlining “Skeptics are like viruses“. Greenpeace Germany has now gotten into the act, denoucing Lüning and Varrenholt (formerly a champion of the global warming cause) as an Ice Cold Denier.
The website (in German) for the new book (that has become a bestseller on three outlets) from Lüning and Vahrenholt is here. An English version is also planned which I will announce at WUWT. Sincere thanks to Pierre Gosselin of notrickszone.com for translation. -Anthony
Georg Feulner of the PIK runs in circles
Guest post by Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt
On the Germany television website Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research comments on our recently published book “Die kalte Sonne”. As we have criticized his work in our book, we are not at all surprised by his rejection of our position.
First he disputes global warming has stopped for the time being. To do this he uses a special chart from a blog depicting a stepwise temperature development, which makes no sense for the particular topic at hand. The temperature plateau that we’ve had since the year 2000 is disputed by Feulner. However, the missing warming of the last 12 years is no fabrication made up by the authors of “Die kalte Sonne“. Anybody can plot it by going over to Woodfortrees.org. Or you can read up about it up in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, e.g. Kaufmann et al (2011). Even Prof. Ottmar Edenhofer of Feulner’s own Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research seems to see it the same way. Climate researcher Prof. Jochem Marotzke of Hamburg just confirmed it once again in a recent interview with the German TAZ daily (9 February 2012).
Next, Feulner tries to score points by using the 30-year climate rule. In some official definitions, climate is defined as the 30-year mean of weather. While this makes sense for some considerations, this rigid rule obstructs the discussion on the mechanisms that are involved in climate. It’s becoming increasingly clear that natural decadal cycles have been greatly under-estimated in the past. For example the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is characterized by a warm and a cold phase, each lasting 20 to 30 years. They have a significant impact on global temperature. Should that 30-year-climate window unfortunately get placed between both phases, then the trends get mixed up and we end up comparing apples and oranges. The corresponding “climate“ results end up depending more on the choice of the start point of the 30-year window and less on the real, shorter-scale temperature trends. Consequently, looking at 10-year temperature trends is not only legitimate, but it also makes sense.
In discussing the sun, Feulner attempts to show that in the event of an impending significant drop in solar activity to Dalton or Maunder Minimum-levels, which he foresees as well, no considerable cooling is to be expected. Here he fails to mention that he forgot to include any solar amplification in his climate models. This is essential because it is only with such solar amplifiers that one is able to explain the synchronicity between the sun and the temperature, with at least a 1°C pulsating climate development, over the last 10,000 years. The climate model used by Feulner cannot explain the past, and therefore naturally is not suitable for projecting the future. To explain the Maunder-Minimum 300 years ago, Feulner resorts to the dubious volcano joker. But this still does not explain the overlying fundamental problem that there is a good sun-climate coupling over the other well-documented millennial cycles of the last 10,000 years.
When it comes to the Svensmark solar amplification effect, whose existence is supported by much evidence in peer-reviewed literature (see Chapter 6 and Svensmark guest contribution on page 209 in “Die kalte Sonne”), Feulner simply pushes it off the table without providing a good argument. Not a word on the independent confirmations of the important sub-processes of the effect (e.g. Usoskin et al. 2004, Laken et al. 2010, Kirkby et al. 2011).
The NTV interview illustrates just how much Georg Feulner runs in circles with his arguments. The arguments he presents are weak. When will the Potsdam Institute get around to addressing the millennium cycles of the last 10,000 years? On page 68-75 of our book (“The sun’s impact over the last 10,000 years”) we find one of the most important keys to the climate discussion. Strangely not a single media report following publication of our book has looked into this. Day eight and counting.
Example for millennial climate cycles: Studies of dripstones in Oman for the period 7500-4500 BC show a high degree of synchronicity between solar activity and temperature development. Figure modified after Neff et al. (2001)
Related articles
- ‘Germany’s George Monbiot’ turns climate sceptic (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- Two more scientists change sides in the AGW debate (hotair.com)
- Spiegel: ‘I Feel Duped on Climate Change’ (junkscience.com)
- Germany’s Top Environmentalist Turns Climate Sceptic (junkscience.com)
Anything is possible says: February 13, 2012 at 1:12 pm
“The problem as I see it Nick, is that statistical significance can only be measured with respect to the 130 years worth of data held within the Global Surface Temperature record. If we were able to extend that record back in time to encompass the entire 11,000 years of the Holocene, or even 90,000 years back to encompass the previous Glaciation, would any of the recent data retain its statistical significance?”
You measure statistical significance relative to what looks like the current level of random variation. In fact it’s just the period of the trend, but the variation over the last 130 years doesn’t look markedly different.
Yes, if you go back a long way (eg Ice ages) you see much bigger variations. But no-one thinks they are random fluctuations of the current circumstances. They would be significant (ie, explanation needed).
expect this madness every Feb:
13 Feb: Weather Channel: How Weather Around the World Impacts Chocolate
by Mark Elliot and weather.com
Above Video: A Chocolatier Discusses Weather’s Effect on Cacao
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the narrow range in the tropics that supports chocolate production could certainly see these shifts occur. The IPCC states that lower latitudes, especially tropical regions, would see crop productivity decrease for even small local temperature increases (1-2°C)…
Further, increases in the frequency of droughts and floods are projected by the IPCC, and this is already a challenge for the cacao tree. It is also projected by the IPCC that there is a potential for rainfall to occur in shorter, heavier, bursts…
http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/weathers-effect-on-chocolate_2012-02-13
13 Feb: Fox News: (from LA Times) Valentine’s Day Destroyed by Climate Change?
That’s right. Global warming is very bad for chocolate…
http://nation.foxnews.com/global-warming/2012/02/13/valentines-day-destroyed-climate-change#
11 Feb: Accuweather: Vickie Frantz: Weather Impacts Chocolate and Roses
A report by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) released on Sept. 29, 2011 outlined an increase in temperature due to climate change will adversely impact the production of cocoa in West Africa…
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/weather-impacts-chocolate-and-1/61452
10 Feb: UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction: IPCC report on climate change and risk coming soon
VIDEO: A video introducing the Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation, showcases it as the first IPCC report that integrates the work of researchers studying disaster risk management with climate science, climate impacts, and adaptation to climate change…
http://www.unisdr.org/archive/25093?utm_source=unisdrcomms&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=IPCC%2Breport%2Bon%2Bclimate%2Bchange%2Band%2Brisk%2Bcoming%2Bsoon
The majority of scientists have concluded that Global warming is real. (its 97% to 3% but it varies 1 to 2% based on what poll your using) Deniers are betting millions of lives, destruction and devastation, and damages that could bankrupt the world. And even if there is no global warming, which I highly doubt, going “green” is still a smart choice.
Steven says:
February 13, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The majority of scientists have concluded that Global warming is real. (its 97% to 3% but it varies 1 to 2% based on what poll your using) Deniers are betting millions of lives, destruction and devastation, and damages that could bankrupt the world. And even if there is no global warming, which I highly doubt, going “green” is still a smart choice.
============================================
Steven, you’ve been had……………
jaypan says:
February 13, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Robert, in Germany they did not have a lot of well-written books about climate and definitely none of the sceptic flavour. It was about time to give the doubters there some facts.
Bart van Deenen says:
February 13, 2012 at 11:27 am
Tim Ball;
I have met very few people recently who believe in man-made global warming (here in the Netherlands). I must have bought up the subject probably 5 times to new people I met in the last 2 months, and not one of them believed in it.
How many well-written books about climate of the sceptic flavour you think there are in Dutch? Germans are unable to read or understand English?. Or if it’s not in German it doesn’t it exist.Germans do not go to school to learn something? There is no internet in Germany?Have they ever heard of Tim Ball and Richard Lindzen or Willie Soon (and many others)? But now that energy prices soar, thanks to their ……….. representatives, now they wake up.
These gentlemen are courageous, and deserve all success. On the other hand, my book is cheaper and in English, lol! http://amzn.to/yLN0Zm
@Fred houpt
I believe the figure for coal in Mongolia is on the order of 1 trillion tons. That will mean finding more, but it is conceivable. They are listed with lower numbers now, but they have not looked that hard.
Somewhere also largely uninvestigated is the DR Congo. It is a huge country. Also, one must remember that many countries reduced their ‘recoverable reserves’ figures a great deal (Germany’s dropped to nearly zero for reasons that are unknown, even though the reserves are).
As with oil, there is so much lying going on no one really has much idea is ‘down there’. The vastness of abiotic oil reserves may be part of the unsuspected riches that come to light in each century.
Dr. Tim Ball thanks for the hard work you have done for so many years.They have attacked you on all possible ways but you stood firm in the storm. Never have so many owed so much to a man so humiliated.
Robert van de Leur
“The majority of scientists have concluded that Global warming is real.”
Meh.Eighty years ago, you’d have gotten the same results polling about the necessity of eugenics.
R. Shearer says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:52 am
nomnom, there are mutiple factors (read above) besides cosmic rays. The hypothesis would be that an increase in cosmic rays would lead to aerosols, leading to clud formation, etc.
There is a large aerosol effect in the temperatures over the last 150 years.
And we know next to nothing about GCR aerosol interactions.
For these reasons I find the paleo data more persuasive than the temperature record data (normally I’d say the reverse).
Robertvdl says:
February 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm
“How many well-written books about climate of the sceptic flavour you think there are in Dutch? Germans are unable to read or understand English?. Or if it’s not in German it doesn’t it exist.Germans do not go to school to learn something? There is no internet in Germany?Have they ever heard of Tim Ball and Richard Lindzen or Willie Soon (and many others)? But now that energy prices soar, thanks to their ……….. representatives, now they wake up.”
Robertvdl, we Germans routinely use English as the language of choice for contracts or technical documentation. But regarding leisure activities, and informing yourself by reading the news or blogs is a leisure activity with regards to climate change, all American movies and TV shows get overdubbed so most of my fellow citizens are much less adept at reading regular – or scientific – English than for instance the Swedish or the Dutch. The everyday English vocabulary of the common German is next to non-existant, even when he’s an engineer. Germany is big enough to have a kind of insular culture in this regard; and big enough to have voice actors overdub the movies and TV series we import.
So, there really is a language hurdle for the Germans, due to their laziness – much like an American can’t be bothered to read German news in the original.
And that’s why culturally, Germany is usually five years behind the curve. Information only trickles in through the filter known as the MSM and the public media. Most Germans still think that a majority of Americans love their current president. Go figure.
Steven says:
February 13, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Apparently, you’re new here……………..
Hey Steven:
Steven says:
February 13, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The majority of scientists have concluded that Global warming is real. (its 97% to 3%…
(Questions only for Steven) – Where did you get those figures? How many “scientists” were included in that statement?
“Steven says:
February 13, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The majority of scientists have concluded that Global warming is real. (its 97% to 3% but it varies 1 to 2% based on what poll your using) Deniers are betting millions of lives, destruction and devastation, and damages that could bankrupt the world. And even if there is no global warming, which I highly doubt, going “green” is still a smart choice”
Steven,
Your insight is brilliant. Obviously someone of stunning intellect and perception.
Please contact me ASAP . . . I have an amazing deal for you on a slightly used bridge, only crossed by nice old ladies on sunny Sunday mornings.
Buying it would be a really “smart choice”
The german administration and its political “commisars” are mainly from old DDR. Unless one can construct an alternative that is even more authorative, then the AGWers will remain the same until they enter the bunker. However, at least one could make the greens turn away from the so called renewal sources by manufacturing the wind power propellers in the shape of swastikas? Nein?
Steven, read this (if you dare)
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/03/lawrence-solomon-97-cooked-stats/
Marvellous, Sebastian! I see you have continued to show your independent streak displayed so well in a core lab in Tripoli…back in 2007. Glad to see you have punched a hole in the leaky scow of Climate Change Religion.
Dr. Mike
Steven says:
“Deniers are betting millions of lives, destruction and devastation, and damages that could bankrupt the world.”
Global cooling deniers, like Steven, are betting billions of lives, trillions of dollars, destruction and devastation, famine and mass unemployment that will bankrupt the world and send survivors back to the stone age without any technology, let alone “green” technology.
‘And even if there is no global warming, which I highly doubt, going “green” is still a smart choice.’
I have no problem with going “green” if It will do the job and I can afford it. But it should be my choice. Forcing me to choose pseudo green, fairy-tale energy solutions that are unsustainable, unreliable, unaffordable, and which still end up being more destructive of the environment (electric cars, ethanol, etc.) than fossil fuels is sheer nonsense. Even Hansen doesn’t believe that spending trillions on schemes like cap and trade will do anything to curb global warming gasses.
So, basically, once you have bankrupted the world trying and failing to reduce CO2, we will still have to adapt to whatever the future brings. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply save that money for a “rainy day” and use it to adapt to climate change as it occurs (if it occurs)?
Steven says: …going “green” is still a smart choice.
Check out the 1010 Video No pressure and think again.
nomnom says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:27 am
Why don’t Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt show cosmic rays and temperature during the past 50 years?
Cosmic rays have been flat and temperatures have risen. Why wouldn’t they show that? Disturbing.
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Read this and learn something!
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/the-sun-climate-link-brief-synopsis/
The majority of scientists have concluded that Global warming is real. (its 97% to
Sorry to disappoint you, steven- no, actually Pleased to disappoint you, but:
Your 97% is based upon the following:
10257 scientists surveyed.
Less than 3200 responded.
The final figure was based upon 79 scientists, of whom 75 answered in the positive to two heavily biased questions.
That’s .74% of the survey sample, stevie.
This is your consensus?
Steven, as you are evidently a believer in the man-made warming paradigm, I commend you for coming to this site to discuss your views. You will get a fair hearing but vigorous debate. Your comment exemplifies the problem in this debate because in just over 4 lines you have managed to encapsulate so many misunderstandings that it would take pages to correct them. I will try to be brief.
“Deniers”, as you call them, do not deny global warming. This is a straw man argument. Skeptics are well aware that the climate is constantly changing and, for the last 300 years, has been on an upward trend. What we “deny” is evidence that this is (a) leading to a catastrophe, or (b) caused primarily by man-made greenhouse gases.
(a) For extreme weather events which happen frequently enough to permit trend analysis, e.g. hurricanes, empirical evidence demonstrates that these are not getting worse. For other events such as droughts and floods it is difficult to produce trends but there are plenty of historical records to show that these have always happened. The world is so big that once in a 100 year events are bound to happen somewhere every year.
(b) The theory of radiative heat transfer says that for a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere we should get a temperature rise of about 1 degC. The climate models reckon that this will be amplified roughly 3-fold by strong positive feedback from water vapor. It is these feedbacks which are the crux of the global warming scare. But empirical evidence shows that these feedbacks are not actually happening. Indeed, there is more evidence almost every week showing that feedbacks are actually negative, i.e. the climate system has natural thermostat mechanisms and the effect of CO2 is trivial.
The “97% of scientists agree” theme has been discussed in previous threads and, if you search, you can find the details of the survey from which this claim arose. The 97% of scientists in this survey comprised just 75 people. In any event, it cannot be stressed too strongly that scientific truth is not determined by holding a head-count. It is determined by scientific evidence.
Many thousands of people die every year as a result of extreme weather events. But, many thousands also die as a result of policies to combat climate change ( e.g. the switch of arable land from food production to biofuels ) and as a result of poverty which could be alleviated if developing countries were able to access cheap and abundant energy. If the CO2 global warming hypothesis were true and our climate change policies were effective then we would be substituting death and poverty for one group with death and poverty for another group. But if (i) extreme weather events are not being made worse by global warming, OR (ii) they are being made worse but global warming is primarily due to natural causes, OR (iii) they are being made worse due to man-made greenhouse gases but our policies will be ineffective, then the deaths and poverty from climate change policies will be in addition to those which were going to happen anyway from natural events. We must not follow climate mitigation policies “to be on the safe side” because there is no safe side. Buying an insurance policy, which is a common analogy, is immoral if the premium is being paid by people in the Third World with their lives. There is no alternative but to get the science right and then base policy on the correct science.
Finally, is “going green” sensible ? Present technology cannot meet baseload energy requirements without fossil fuels and/or nuclear power. So-called renewable energy sources require back-up from conventional power stations. They are so expensive that they need massive subsidies which is severely impacting on economies, and they don’t even save CO2 largely because of the need for back-up. Of course, we could abandon baseload power altogether and go back to the 19th Century level of industrialisation. In this case, someone needs to explain the mechanism which will be used to reduce the world population to a level which can be supported by this level of GDP.
I was curious about the chart depicting a stepwise temperature development. I plotted the non-hansenized version of GISS i.e. the version that doesn’t include data from Arctic stations that don’t actually exist. That data set is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
I did a linear regression from 2001/01 thru 2011/12 (132 months). I then created a “mobile” 132 month linear regression that I could move across the data with a spinner. I started moving it back in time looking for a 132 month period with a slope equal to or less than that of the 2001/01 thru 2011/12 period. The last time that occurred in the non-hansenized GISS data was the period from 1968/12 thru 1979/11. That was at the end of the cool period. I converted the chart to a pdf file. It can be downloaded here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?buf01cbrgph8in7
I had a similar result with NOAA Land & Oceans and HadCRUT global.
With the hansenized version of GISS I saw a totally different result. The data set is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts.txt
There were many periods during the most recent warming period that had a slope similar to the 2001/01 thru 2011/12 period. The hansenized GISS is the only temperature data that has that.
I was curious to see what effect hansenization had on the GISS data so I plotted the hansenized and non-hansenized sets together I also did a plot showing just the difference between them. Those charts can be downloaded as pdf files here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dfwkc9d4uf7cbhv
The hansenized GISS includes additional data going all the way back to 1880. They created 130 years of data through the miracle of interpolation. It is just amazing what determined climate scientists can do. [sarc]
The hansenization process appears to reduce the rate of the first warming period from around 1916 to around 1947 and increase the rate of the second warming from around 1961 to present.
p.s. I’m an optician. I’m not a climate scientist. I hope that if there is a problem with my charts, someone will be kind enough to set me straight.
nomnom says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:27 am
“Why don’t Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt show cosmic rays and temperature during the past 50 years?
Cosmic rays have been flat and temperatures have risen. Why wouldn’t they show that? Disturbing.”
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Maybe because ‘cosmic rays’ haven’t been ‘flat’ the past 50 years?
“2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19 percent beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” Doesn’t sound very flat to me.
http://www.space.com/7349-cosmic-rays-hit-50-year-high.html