Hmmm, sounds like a bad “B” movie plot. From Pierre Gosselin at No Tricks Zone:
(…) Any fan of Hollywood films following the climate debate knows the objectives of mad scientists: They try to rule the world. With his performance in the FAZ in the run-up to the recent UN-Summit on Sustainability in Rio, Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber can be ranked along with the likes of Dr. Strangelove and Dr. No:
“The role of climate science remains to put the problem-facts on the table and to identify options for appropriate solutions. The role of politics is then to mobilize the will of the citizens with the aim of implementing decisions that are based on science.”
This demonstrates an odd understanding of democracy. Up to now the “will of the citizens” has always arose from the interests of people and were implemented by electing a goverment that abided to that will. But Schellnhuber wants to turn this on its head. According to Schellnhuber, politics should now tell the citizens what interests they are to have so that measures that follow those prescribed by science will end up getting implemented.
Read more at No Tricks Zone
h/t to reader Rudolf Kipp
“The role of climate science remains to put the problem-facts on the table and to identify options for appropriate solutions. The role of politics is then to mobilize the will of the citizens with the aim of implementing decisions that are based on science.”
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In other words, “Where’s Goebbels when need him? Al Gore just ain’t working out.”
Germany ‘Sliding Head Over Heels Into Eco-Dictatorship’
For a full account of Hans-Joachim’s views, see Fritz Vahrenholt, Die Welt, Friday, 27 May 2011:
Germany’s green government advisors admit frankly that decarbonization can only be achieved by the limitation of democracy – both nationally and internationally.
When it comes to environmental and climate policy, Germany’s Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU) is an influential advisory committee for the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The chairman of the council is Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
In April 2011, the WBGU presented a report entitled “World in Transition – Social Contract for a Great Transformation”. The main theses of the WBGU are as follows: The current economic model (“fossil industrial metabolism”) is normatively untenable.
“The transformation to a climate friendly economy… is morally as necessary as the abolition of slavery and the outlawing of child labor.” The reorganization of the world economy has to happen quickly; nuclear energy and coal have to be given up at the same time and very soon.
A historical novelty
The decarbonization of the global economy is, according to these experts, comparable with the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. These were, however, unplanned, natural historical processes. The “Great Transformation” however, must be consciously planned and controlled. It would be a historical novelty [according to WBGU, but in fact akin to Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward etc]…..
…To carry out this utopian new vision, democratic institutions, the freedom of lifestyles and the right to material well-being [has] to be sacrificed. ..
Internationally, the WBGU calls for a “World Security Council” for sustainability. The members of [its] proposed “future chamber” for Germany would explicitly not be chosen democratically and would limit the powers of Parliament.
Decarbonization means deindustrialization
In any case, there are growing signs that the driving force of the “Great Transformation” is flagging because the global warming trend has come to a halt during the last 12 years and scientific voices (outside of the WBGU and the Potsdam Institute) caution that we may enter a long-term cooling phase.
If Germany wants to do without nuclear energy, then the expansion of renewable energy will have to be accompanied by both coal and natural gas in the long term. Otherwise, decarbonization will mean nothing else but de-industrialization. Sometimes one gets the impression that this is exactly what many political actors intend to achieve.
Fritz Vahrenholt is a member of the Social Democratic Party and CEO of RWE Innogy since February 2008.
Translation Philipp Mueller
highflight56433 says:
July 15, 2012 at 6:30 pm
beesaman says:
July 15, 2012 at 3:55 pm
…….Check out China, their big economy is shrinking now at an 8% decline.
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No. Officially growing in 1st qtr 2012 at 5% which is below their 8% target. They are gearing up for their once in 10 years management shuffle this fall and the stats have been cleaned up nicely. Where is the link to your source for this assertion. An 8% decline would be catastrophic.
J. Philip Peterson says:
July 15, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Nerd says:
July 15, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Never! – with video.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator” Doesn’t say endowed by God. Maybe creator is a giant black hole, or Albert Einstein’s great great great etc. grandfather. If it’s God, who created God? It’s like when did infinity start and when will it end? The founding fathers didn’t say God, they said the creator, whatever that means – they knew more than we do. Don’t assume that creator means God.
——
You lost me there with god stuff. Not really the point… Have you read the book? Sure, religious played a role but it didn’t mean much at least in some ways. They believe in personal freedom. I don’t really care since I rarely ever attend church for Sunday services all my life but I do understand the freedom part. That’s what I am focusing on. I sure am very impressed how well educated these founding fathers are compared to these days…
Here’s some Shovel Ready Jobs for Romney:
1. Dig for oil
2. Dig for coal
3. Dig for natural gas
4. Dig for iron ore
5. Dig for copper
6. Dig for uranium
7. Dig for gold
7. Dig for silver
8 Etc.
Nerd says:
July 15, 2012 at 7:08 pm
“You lost me there with god stuff. Not really the point… Have you read the book?”
That was the point of your video. I was just pointing out that the founders were smart enough to say Creator rather than God. Yes I have read the book – probably not all of it. Just saying.
The video misquoted.
We Europeans know that Germans are German in a sort of Germanic sort of way. As the historian Kershaw explained to their very own Der Spiegel. Their sense of ‘duty’ to ‘over arching’ national causes is not really like anyone else’s and WWII bore out a mind-set that needs to be understood. The fact is Schellnhuber is German and German humour is no laughing matter and conicidentally, he ain’t joking.
‘…..Kershaw: Hitler always had a very sensitive ear for anything that could undermine the morale of the German people. It was a lesson he had learned from World War I, namely that it was important to keep the people in good spirits, or else there would be an uprising from below, as had occurred in 1918. That’s why he made sure that the Bavarian farmers continued to get their beer. Goebbels saw much more clearly than Hitler that the German population was indeed prepared to accept tough measures, provided they affected everyone equally.
SPIEGEL: The system functioned until the end. Only a few months before the end of the war, applications for building permits were being submitted and approved, and wages were being paid. The last concert of the Berlin Philharmonic took place on April 12, 1945.
Kershaw: And the Soviet offensive on the German capital began four days later. The audience sat in the unheated auditorium of the Philharmonic, wearing heavy coats, while (Wilhelm) Furtwängler conducted Symphony No. 4 by Bruckner.
SPIEGEL: And on April 23, 1945, Bayern München defeated TSV 1860 München in the Munich football derby.
Kershaw: Yes, they won 3:2. When I read that, I was so shocked that I thought the date might be wrong. But it was correct.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this eerie urge to preserve normality?
Kershaw: The normality of routine, even if it’s only a phony normality, is probably essential to the functioning of human order. You go to your workplace to check your files, even if the work you do is completely useless. And when your office no longer exists, because it was bombed, you simply set yourself up somewhere else……..’.
Philemon,
For what it’s worth, I read an interview with Herman Wouk quite a few years ago. I recall him commenting that he had collected the facts he used in The Winds of War from contemporary news sources like TIME magazine.
• • •
And for some historical interest, it appears that the internment of the entire Japanese population of Hawaii was the result of one incident.
Will he destroy dissenters with a ‘la-ser’ from his ‘death-star’?
Tom J says:
July 15, 2012 at 6:10 pm
“It’s both sad and humorous that such a moron got to the position he got to.”
You can thank to a great degree the morons in the MSM (the same one who march in lock step with the fanatical CAGW types). Fortunately, the MSM is too screwed up to be very effective this time around (e.g. CNN).
highflight56433 says:
July 15, 2012 at 6:30 pm
beesaman says:
July 15, 2012 at 3:55 pm
…….Check out China, their big economy is shrinking now at an 8% decline.
————————————–
No. Officially growing in 1st qtr 2012 at 5% which is below their 8% target. They are gearing up for their once in 10 years management shuffle this fall and the stats have been cleaned up nicely. Where is the link to your source for this assertion. An 8% decline would be catastrophic.
Yes, you are correct. Their recovery expectation is 8% growth, not being met. 🙂
I’ve just made this comment at a local Oz site, but I really feel like repeating it here.
Part of the process of abolishing history is promoting the belief that “scientists” are a free thinking elite above politics, theology, mass emotion, conformity and fashion. In fact, the scholarly community has never been an elite of impartial enquirers protecting the rest of us from hooey and obscurantism. Not risk-takers or go-getters by nature, they are more often the paid supporters and official priesthood of prevailing dogma. The belief that something like “reef science” cannot be held in political thrall is a fond belief, at best. There is no question that information of value is being gathered, but that can happen in the worst of intellectual climates. Alchemy gave us much chemistry, Lysenko and his buddies found out things that one would not discard.
What is striking is how valuable science and scholarship become when natural curiosity, freedom and impartiality are allowed to prevail. What power lies in that rare combination!
Though only a casual blogger, I blush to use words like “record” and “unprecedented” because I instinctively know that such expressions, even when qualified, are prime tools of distortion and manipulation. When someone posturing as a scientist uses these expressions loosely and without any qualification, I have to dismiss them as distorters and manipulators. When they do it continually, I have to suspect something worse. Even the average layman of average intelligence talking about cricket would not and should not be excused.
The enquirer looks for contradictions. The dogmatist hates them. The recent heatwave in North America, well and truly precedented in multiple ways, quickly became a flagship for the most slob-minded of alarmist “scientists”, though fortunately not all (hence my inverted commas). I can honestly say that any coldwaves recently occurring (there have been several) would impress me not at all, and I would certainly discount the opinions of any Ice Age boosters who drew flip conclusions from these events, especially if they used words like “record” and “unprecedented” without qualification.
We are presently operating under the conceited belief that the Enlightenment will continue unabated. It won’t. We have to deserve it. Look at the stupendous absurdities and paradoxes of Australia’s present energy policies, the products of “greened” science and economics.
Modern environmentalism did not begin with Rachel Carson, though that would be bad enough. It really did become institutional first in National Socialist Germany, with Martin Heidegger as its most respectable philosophical urger. Germany was where hostility to free markets, mass consumption and class mobility had long been stiffest, but it was National Socialism which successfully wedded the Bismarckian benevolent state to Wagnerian nature cult.
In short, the real emergency facing humanity is intellectual, not physical. To serve dogma, our Green Betters would happily see Australia as one gigantic mine with wind turbines whizzing on any spare ground. Do I exaggerate? Look at the great “saving” philosophies and movements of the last century before answering.
John Schellnhuber´s interest was drawn to complex systems and nonlinearity or chaos theory.[10]. This is what later led him to do research on the climate system which is characterised by its complexity and nonlinearity.
So why has he forsaken all his training,and is treating climate as linear and simple? To paraphrase …because it’s easier to control the masses with BS then facts(at least on todays world)
Look familiar. I knew I had seen this guy before!
Yeah. That’s where these mad scientists have gone wrong. They’ve abstracted the problem to “basic physics,” which it isn’t. “Basic physics” fits their reductionist, “straight,” clock-model (Popper), strict causality mindset, but not the chaotic, cloud-model, multi-feedback, un-model-able climate.
I think we’ve passed a milestone of sorts: the first True Believer I’ve seen that is honest about the liberal fascism of the AGW movement. It’s a lot easier to flush it down when it’s been flushed out.
“The role of climate science remains to put the problem-facts on the table and to identify options for appropriate solutions.”
Problem-facts. Seems to me that you have already put all your problem-facts on the table. And you have a lot of problem-facts. Substituting cooked for raw data thinking we wouldn’t notice, McIntyre, et al……
But here, tonight, in the court of public poker-table, we will accept your plugged nickel data as real facts. With a nod to the electorate we let you plunk-down strictly peer-reviewed IPCC AR-4 data without biting on it to see what sort of mettle it is made of.
I see your AR-4 +0.59M sea level bet and raise you +6M at the end-Eemian. You protest with problem-facts where some workers declare that the Eemian may have only barely reached present-day sea levels. I open a crate of peer-reviewed studies from all over the world which show that even the Holocene Climate Optimum produced sea levels higher than present, not to mention a reasonable range for the Eemian of +6 to +42M.
Again, as sporting folk, we allow you to see our raise and double-down on CO2 assuming it cannot reach IR saturation, ever, and that it will guarantee a Loutre and Berger, 2003 50,000 year interglacial.
Flumoxed, and unsure if what you just bet was that we might end up like MIS-11, having an extended interglacial (a bad thing?) because of CO2 pollution, or if sustainability constitutes restoring CO2 concentrations to pre-industrial levels so as not to interrupt onset of the next ice age (a good thing?).
Yes, there are indeed problem-facts on the table now…….
The “appropriate solution” might be to fold…… I am neither a parrot (capable of repeating a thing without understanding it) or a parent (with offspring in the offing), so what happens in the UK, Australia or Kahlifornia etc. if I cash in my chips matters little. On the other hand, I could draw to a straight or a flush………
In the end-game, the “appropriate solutions” may be all about entertainment value. Assuming you are not bluffing, and assuming the social script you have issued to the pot has value (which we have guaranteed), you are in one heck of a pickle.
Loutre and Berger’s 2003 prediction is based on an orbital model. And it is one devil of a longshot at 50,000 years. Given that no interglacial has lasted near this long in the past 2.8 million years, unless, of course, CO2 was involved, the only way to “bet the farm” while simultaneously satisfying the “precautionary principle” would be to issue CO2 as an insurance policy now wouldn’t it?
I draw two cards. A quiet sun at half a precession cycle old and an eccentricity minimum.
I may have to bluff with some blocking highs and pre-glacial winters. It will, after all, be another 200,000 years before we become eligible for our next cranial-capacity upgrade (they tend to happen at the eccentricity maxima).
I signal the Carbon Crédit Mobilier to earshot range and trade all the carbon-credits I have left for a HEMI, going all-in……..
“The role of politics is then to mobilize the will of the citizens with the aim of implementing decisions that are based on science.”
Subjects can be mobilized (see inquisition et seq,), decisions implemented (“burning at the stake” et al) based on the “science” of the day. The “role of politics” is therefore the net result of this cranial capacity. And no more.
Meanwhile, enjoy the interglacial, while it lasts……………….
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to comply.”
I like the cut of his Jib, he handles that globe like a pro.
Boomers are such dorks.
Oh wait, does Germany have Boomers? He looks and sounds exactly like one from over here in the US.
Reminds me of Pinky and the Brain. He isn’t the Brain… Who is? But then remember where both came from. Perhaps someone else is playing games with them.
There is, in my view, a “desire” by some in Europe certainly to produce a “superstate” – you only have t look at the debacle of the Euro and Greece’s membership to realise that people with this desire for “collective” government are quite prepared and happy to fiddle the facts to achieve their aim.
And I do not think Europe is alone in having this issue. I think on of the greatest threats to individual human freedom are those that truly believe that what the do, they do for the common good.
How easy it is to state that with scarce resources, to ensure that everyone gets a bit, then someone should control the supply. It is when you ask “And who might that be?” that you get the real agenda uncoverred.
Demonising CO2 is simply a reciprocal strategy akin to the above – rather than control scarce resources, control an innocuous gas that is part of the Carbon Cycle required for life on earth and you have the methedology for control.
Thankfully the Alarmist CO2 nonsence is all but dead on its feet.
One wonders what these people will come up with next. Whatever it is it will have the same old fingerprint of manipulation of facts so that whatever they want it is via the “will of the citizens”.
Tatt picture Of prof. schellhuber has an extreme likeness to the globe scene in Charlie Chaplin’s film the Dictator. Here is a snip from that scene, not just the pictures. Brilliant scene and hopefully a symbolic representation of how the CAGW establishment plan for world domination will end. Enjoy!
Here is Schellen-Huber explaining why the Himalaya glaciers will be gone by 2035:
(In German, but funny even for people who do not understand it due to its pomposity)