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)
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“”””” DirkH says:
February 13, 2012 at 5:50 pm
George E. Smith; says:
February 13, 2012 at 4:33 pm
As for the clarity of meaning of the English language; well, if these were Siemens people, they lied to you – they obviously had the order from their management to use English; Siemens is an international company so they need to force their German employees to use English. Same at Bosch – they constantly get offers of free English courses paid for by the company, on company time, to prevent them from writing their documentation in German, which at least the older ones would prefer. “”””””
Well Dirk, I can only relay what they told me; as for my German skills, I astonished them by telling them that I was able to literally tour all over Munich on the weekend by picking a road and following that road all over the city. They didn’t know of any such road so they asked me which road that was; “Einbahnstrasse” was my reply. They then clued me in as to what street that really was.
George E. Smith
“So nomnom, a rising Temperature is certainly NOT evidence that warming has stopped; so if a constant Temperature is NOT evidence that warming has stopped, and a falling Temperature is NOT evidence that warming has stopped; what in your expert opinion WOULD constitute evidence that warming has stopped ?”
See my previous comments.
Temperature most certainly an indicator of warming. So long as you look at the temperature change of EVERY PART of the climate system and weight them up according to their thermal mass. If total heat of the oceans were to plateau for some years while GH gases climbed without some major additional factor like a huge El Nino or a major volcanic eruption, then that would be evidence. But just looking at Air temperatures, 3% of the climate system in energy terms, doesn’t tell you anything. You can’t judge the Dog just by its Tail.
“The oceans have kept right on heating through the 2000′s, its just that the heat is being drawn down deeper into the ocean so it doesn’t show up in the surface layer. And since the ocean surface layer has plateaued, the air temps have plateaued as well. But warming is continuing unabated. Its just the heat is going somewhere else at the moment.”
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You do realise I hope, that if the deep ocean is heating (or even the upper troposphere or the moon, or other places like that), that means AGW is not a problem any more, right? The deep ocean is so cold it will take tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousand of years for them to heat up even slightly.
Gary Meyers
“I have a very simplistic argument to share. If all of the CO2 were taken out of the atmosphere, what would happen to the global temperature? It most likely would drop a few degrees at most. Now, if the sun were taken away, what would happen to the global temperature? It would get very cold very quickly! Which has the most effect on the global temperature? By saying that sun plays a very small role in the global temperature makes no sense.”
Actually, if all the CO2 where removed, from the atmosphere (and you would have to remove it from the oceans as well) eventually that change alone would lower temperatures by something of the order of 10 degC or so. But this would take time as the heat in the oceans would have to be dissapated. Then as the air gets colder the H2O content of the atmosphere would drop as well and its contribution to warmth would also drop. The net result would be something likea 30 DegC drop, probably more since the Earth would now be covered by ice and be very much more reflective.
The comparable change in the Sun’s output needed would be something like a 10% drop. All the discussion of changes in the Sun’s output whether due to Cosmic Rays, solarcycles etc is only talking about fractions of 1%. To go to a time when the Sun’s output was 10% lower you would need to go back in time about 1.5 Billion years.
darn it guys you went and chased off Nomnom and steven before I had a chance to weigh in no fair for you to have all the fun. Oh well maybe they learned and are now reading hoping to learn more (and I am 110 pounds and female).
Will Nitschke
My point first of all was that warming HASN’T stopped. And the evidence is that it hasn’t. Secondly the oceans wont take 10’s of 1000’s of years to warm. the lag time for their warming is decades to centuries. Thirdly, this heating pattern is being driven by increased circulation patterns in the open ocean that cycle water between the surface and the middle depths, not the abyssal deeps. Next increasedwarming lower down will then tend to slow these circulations again and warming will resume happening nearer the surface so warming of the atmosphere will resume. And this sort of pattern, of ‘hiatus’ periods followed a return to more ‘normal’ warming patterns is predicted by a number of the climate ,models. They can’t predict when a hiatus period will occur but they do predict that they do occur from time to time, typically lasting about a decade. Read Meehl et al (2011)
Global Warmists Throw In The Towel:
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/51378#more-51378
Robertvdl says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:52 am
Nevertheless, we still have to reduce CO2 emissions through WORLDWIDE EMISSIONS TRADING. And there are also other reasons to burn fewer fossil fuels. We don’t have that much coal, oil and gas left in the world, so we have to economize more. We also have to become less dependent on imports from totalitarian countries
In doing so we become the totalitarian country. It is a nonsense that we don’t have enough coal left in the world. Carbon trading is promoted because we have so much coal it is a serious threat to the price of oil. The US has a 200 year supply. They practically give the stuff away in the US. More than enough time to develop alternatives.
The rest of the world have barely begun to tap its supplies of coal. The stuff is everywhere. Cut a road through a hill for a recently industrialized nation to drive its cars and you will find coal. It isn’t like the world had a shortage of tress for the past 500 million years. All you have to do is dig them up.
“The net result would be something likea 30 DegC drop, probably more since the Earth would now be covered by ice and be very much more reflective.”
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The entire greenhouse effect of the atmosphere, water vapour, CO2, methane, etc., is estimated at around 33C. So you are attributing 30C of that directly to CO2. Or in other words, 90% of the greenhouse effect is attributable to CO2 and 10% to the rest of the greenhouse gases. So a trace gas which is 0.039% of the atmosphere by volume causes 90% of the heating effect according to your claim. CO2 is a very remarkable gas.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
“Well, better than going to a third party blog, why not go to a climate agency that processes the data?”
Wood for trees is not a “third party blog”. It is a site that maintains and distributes climate data, and that provides a handy interface for performing basic analyses. It is telling that some guy in his basement has come up with a more public friendly user interface for climate data visulaization than all the governments of the world. His method lets you look at the data you want, the way you want to look at it, instead of being told a canned story that someone else wants you to hear.
“The data that really matters.”
The data that really matters to a discussion about surface temperature trends is … surface temperature data. And for the last 30+ years, we have been told that this is the data that matters when making multi-hundred trillion dollar decisions impacting personal freedom and the sovereignty of nations. Please have IPCC issue four very contrite retractions and disband before chastising the rest of us.
“The data that shows what is happening in the oceans which is the main game in the climate. Here: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ Look at graphs 1 & 2 in their animation. 0-700 metres and 0-2000 metres.”
Yes, look at that flat spot in the 0-700m ocean data. Ponder how much it resembles the flat spot in surface and atmospheric temps. Then compare it against the steeply rising prediction for 0-700m of the IPCC models.
Then look at the 700-2000m data. Ponder how little of it there is. Then wonder how much of the “main game in the climate” is deeper than that, where there is effectively no data at all.
“The oceans have kept right on heating through the 2000′s, its just that the heat is being drawn down deeper into the ocean so it doesn’t show up in the surface layer.”
Being drawn deeper? How about not being drawn as deep, so it doesn’t disappear into the 75% of the ocean that you aren’t even looking at?
“But warming is continuing unabated. Its just the heat is going somewhere else at the moment.”
Another faith commitment.
Ask yourself this … if heat can “go somewhere else at the moment”, then why do we care? Is it because you think that it can come back from the deeps to affect us at the surface? Really?
Then ask yourself if you can point to the parts of the current climate models that account for heat having come back from the deep previously …
Then ask yourself what the error bars of a measurement of such diffuse heat contained in such a large mass would be …
Nick [Stokes], I really appreciate the heads up. I hate getting things so wrong. I don’t remember where I was led to believe that one set was with the additional Arctic data and the other was without. However, in retrospect, I should have known that such a smoking gun would not have been so easily available for comparison. I should have been more careful.
Clearly the GISS is the outlier. NOAA and HadCRUT don’t have the same warming. Also my mobile regression for both NOAA and HadCRUT doesn’t find periods similar to 2001/01 to 2011/12 going back until getting into the cool period.
Are you aware of any source for GISS data before hansenization?
Glenn Tamblyn says:
“My point first of all was that warming HASN’T stopped.”
===============
No that’s not the point Glenn. This point is, will the warming be harmful to humans or life on this planet? If this warming goes somewhere else, as some now claim, then it would appear that those worries were exaggerated, no?
Now all your talk of circulation changes in the deep ocean, etc., is interesting to speculate over, but more science fiction than science fact at this stage, given our level of understanding. But you do raise an interesting question as one or two others here have. Maybe the warmth from the atmosphere is being sucked into other things (ice melt, deep ocean, radiated back into space, etc.). This is what Trenberth refers to as the “missing heat”. What he complained about was not that the heat wasn’t there – he believed it was – but rather that scientists do not have the necessary tools to measure it. That’s not an unrational point of view, but it does present a problem for the sceptically minded. Since you assume something is there that you can’t measure (or believe it’s going somewhere else which will be far less harmful) how does one falsify such claims? Perhaps it’s not unreasonable to request that you come back and worry about AGW once you have observational rather than hypothetical concern?
Tim Ball says:
February 13, 2012 at 10:56 am
You have no idea how vicious, vindictive and vitriolic the attacks are until you dare to question the prevailing wisdom. Bullying his not just a problem in our schools. I warned many over the years of the reactions they would get if they went public about disparities between ‘official’ climate science and their findings…………..I warned Martin Durkin, producer of the Great Global Warming Swindle. He said he was used to negative reactions, but later told me he was surprised by the differences with his experience……..’
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I re-watched that documentary the other day. Stependous!! I love documentaries but It, though, has to be one of the greatest of all time. Most documentaries are about the past whereas it was about the future. Right when it was wrong, and now even more so in both extremes!!! Any chance of contacting Mr. Durkin and getting him to pick up the trail from where he left off with that series and bring us up-to-date? Particularly in light of the FOIA revelations? And thanks for being brave enough to be on it—that took some guts. There should be a link to it here @ur momisugly WUWT. Nothing has really changed on all the points it made. Although, the Sun’s role is not as route-one as I thought it would be when I got involved in this…which was before that docu came out,. I brought AGW hook line and sinker until I started hearing the Skeptical views which rang true. That documentary however, was a game changer.!
For those who are curious about it, check out this trailer for the series.
George E. Smith; says:
February 13, 2012 at 6:42 pm
“Well Dirk, I can only relay what they told me; as for my German skills, I astonished them by telling them that I was able to literally tour all over Munich on the weekend by picking a road and following that road all over the city. They didn’t know of any such road so they asked me which road that was; “Einbahnstrasse” was my reply. They then clued me in as to what street that really was.”
🙂
For Non-German readers: Einbahnstrasse is one-way street, and Munich’s centre is full of them… so you would be able to continue your journey seamlessly from crossing to crossing by following those signs. Paris, BTW, is even worse in this regard.
Charles Bruce Richardson Jr. says: February 13, 2012 at 7:31 pm
“Are you aware of any source for GISS data before hansenization?”
GISS’s main source for station data is GHCN. They have just switched to Version 3. They also use USHCN for US data, and a special Antarctic set SCAR. There is no special Arctic data, so you won’t find a no-Arctic version of their index.
It’s true that Arctic data is sparse. You can get a perspective on GHCN station coverage there from this map. Click on the top R map to get N Pole in the centre (of the aphere), then “Show Stations” and Refresh. My own view is that the main Arctic difficulty is not station sparsity but how to handle SST’s when the water is intermittently frozen.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
“Actually, if all the CO2 where removed, from the atmosphere (and you would have to remove it from the oceans as well) eventually that change alone would lower temperatures by something of the order of 10 degC or so. But this would take time as the heat in the oceans would have to be dissapated. Then as the air gets colder the H2O content of the atmosphere would drop as well and its contribution to warmth would also drop. The net result would be something likea 30 DegC drop, probably more since the Earth would now be covered by ice and be very much more reflective.”
Really? A 30C drop -probably more – just from removing CO2?
The current “accepted” figure for the greenhouse effect of the entire atmosphere is only 33C. I’m not sure if the models accurately reflect this new knowledge of yours, that more than 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to the 0.03% CO2. You better call IPCC. Right away.
the missing warming of the last 12 years
Naturally this depends on the data set that is used. RSS, for example, has the longest trend of no warming whatsoever for a time of 15 years and two months, from December 1996 (slope = -9.04377e-05 per year). And once the February numbers are in, I expect this to increase by several more months. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1996.92/trend
In lieu of comments by various warmists in the past, I wish to draw your attention to two things in the graph above.
First of all, we were often criticized for starting a graph at the height of an El Nino and ending at the bottom on a La Nina. However notice in this case that while the right side of the green slope line is at a low spike, the left side is ALSO at a very low spike.
Secondly, I read that this La Nina is the warmest La Nina on record. I will not dispute that, however look at the low spike for January 2012. It is very close to the low spikes of the 1996 La Nina. So if these people want to make a big deal of this fact, they must not have much to prove their case.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
February 13, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Well, better than going to a third party blog, why not go to a climate agency that processes the data? The data that really matters. The data that shows what is happening in the oceans which is the main game in the climate. Here: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ Look at graphs 1 & 2 in their animation. 0-700 metres and 0-2000 metres.
======================================================
Yes, do that. Glenn, I haven’t looked into all of this much, but I guess I will……. But, there’s something very wrong with those graphs……. First of all, the first view is a bit misleading in their graphical representation….. you should click on the link below that says,”figures with error bars”…… There you’ll see that the warming at 0-700 meters range has stopped or nearly stopped since about 2003. But, yes, the 0-2000m seems to say that the oceans are getting warmer.
Now a non-skeptic would look at that without critically thinking, simply accept it and then go pronounce that the end is nigh…….
So, a review of the theory is in order….. the CO2 intercepts and absorbs IR energy. It sends it back to the earth. You correctly have stated that much of the earth is oceans, so most of the energy goes to the oceans……. there, it somehow travels downward beyond 700 meters without detection and then sits and heats up the 2000 and up, but not it isn’t heating the 700 meters and up as much. Is that about right?
Tell me, what physical process has NOAA described that allows this heat to defy otherwise accepted laws of physics? Heat rises, and if heat rises and the heat source of the 2000-700m comes from above that, then the 700m-0 would be consistently hotter than 2000-0m.
This is brilliant, we no longer need power lines to send energy, we can just call NOAA and have them teleport it.
I wish someone would criminally investigate NOAA….. regardless of their rationalization, this is pure bs.
As this whole tragedy is a religious one, consider a historical parallel.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a monk who didn’t like the way that the church was being run (in many ways). So he made up a list of complaints and nailed them to the doors of a cathedral. He then married a nun.
The monk still believed in God, etc. etc, but he stopped believing in the old church.
The converts to the reformed church gather while the old church denounces them as Satan’s spawn.
Wow, that’s too bad. I visited there while serving in the US Army in the early 80s. It was a beautiful region. I can’t imagine it being polluted with solar panels. I weep.
Those 97% were asked about AGW (“global warming”); but the debate is about CAGW.
The reason such a high %age of scientists back the warmist cause is that they think there’s no downside to CO2 mitigation, or only a temporary one, and that “renewable energy” (going green) is fundamentally sound. It’s gradually becoming evident that the latter isn’t the case–that renewable energy has been greatly oversold. As this seeps into people’s awareness over the years, support for CO2 mitigation will decline, including among scientists.
Nominate Lüning and Vahrenholt for a Nobel I say.
Now, now. Heretics were not turned into steaks! Stake your word on it.
DirkH says:
February 13, 2012 at 8:11 pm
For Non-German readers: Einbahnstrasse is one-way street, and Munich’s centre is full of them… so you would be able to continue your journey seamlessly from crossing to crossing by following those signs. Paris, BTW, is even worse in this regard.
Paris is indeed worse and we now have cyclists allowed to ride the wrong way down one-way streets it is twice as terrifying.