Leaked Memo On Climatology Exposes Growing Worry Within German Meteorological Society…
”Unacceptable Unethical Developments” Clearly grave concern is emerging over a large swath of the broader German meteorological-climatological community in the wake of the Lennart Bengtsson witchhunt.
A reader/professor has sent me an internal memo he recently obtained from a meteorologist and member of the Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft [German Meteorological Society], abbreviated as DMG. Clearly grave concern is emerging over a large swath of the broader German meteorological-climatological community in the wake of the Lennart Bengtsson witchhunt.
The memo was authored by a group of dissenting DMG-member meteorologists and intended to be published in the DMG reports, but never saw the light of day.
It reveals a growing and widespread worry over the suppression of scientific views among German Meteorological Society members. One of the authors of the memorandum wrote an e-mail to the reader who provided the copy to me. He writes:
A circle of mostly older colleagues of the Free University of Berlin, who very much reject the tone one finds in today’s field of climatology, has asked me to draft a memorandum on the subject and to publish it in the Reports of the German Meteorological Society. Shortened by a half and totally watered down, the memorandum appeared in the last issue. I now take the liberty to bring the original version to your attention.
Greetings and cordial asscoication yours, ************”
…
…certain developments are becoming cemented into their scientific fields (foremost climatology) which from a scientific point of view simply cannot be accepted and do not comply to their professional ethics.
I’ve deleted the name to protect the source. What follows is the original, un-watered down version of the memorandum – translated in English:
– See entire letter at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/05/16/leaked-memo-on-climatology-exposes-growing-worry-within-german-meteorological-society-unacceptable-unethical-developments/#sthash.lf0aNACX.dpuf
“It is not science, it is war. It is time for the skeptics to adopt a new war plan.” Yep, yep, YAWP! Civil or uncivil, it is a WAR.
I think what he means by “democritization of science” is actually “science by consensus”, which we all know is not science. It may have been lost in translation.
A and mods – Thank for your good work. Things are pretty hot right now and I am sure it is tough to keep up. The University of Queensland, Germany and GWPF all at virtually the same time. Thanks for keeping us up to date.
Do we have any idea who from the US contacted our Swedish friend? I am sure that if MM from PSU was one of the people, Mr. Steyn would love to know that.
Anyway, thanks again.
Right before your very eyes once again,,,,,,,,,
This stuff is not a made up conspiracy theory. As one can clearly see.
It is a “consensus theory”, and it is falling apart because of persistent science.
Perhaps someone will do a study on how this systemic “Group Think” developed.
A good synonym for “Group Think” would be ” Virus”.
Eventually you purge it, or bad things happen to you.
Just sayin, think about it.
“Perhaps someone will do a study on how this systemic ‘Group Think’ developed.”
I don’t know, but old investigative reporters, once worthy of the name, called it ‘FOLLOW THE MONEY.’ But nobody with US newspapers does that any more.
@Bruce Cobb – yes, bastardization AND prostitution.
@rabbit, @Pamela Gray – both of you are right: freedom of speech, but choice of effective spokespeople for our position. Science MUST be free to consider new ideas, new evidence that may contradict “consensus” or whatever definition of “accepted fact.” But it is incumbent on us to get our message across effectively to the powers that be by folks skilled at doing this.
Now is the time to pressure those front runners.
Wear them out, then run them down.
Kinda like the upcoming Preakness race.
In short: the CO2-alarmists have missed the essential parts of Theories of Science. Instead of valid arguments their papers and argumentations been filled with the worst Fallacies that every skilled scientist should have learnt never to use if he/she could expect being a Scholar of any Science.
Example of fallacies only those without valid arguments tries to use:
* Fallacies of Appeal to fear
* Fallacies of Assumtion
* Fallacies of using Argumentum ab auctoritate
and some even use:
Ab Honimem and/or Ad Hoc
If the so called scholars using one or more of those had been listning, reading and learning during their first years at University – they would have understood their own incompentence.
Bill Illis says:
May 16, 2014 at 6:23 pm
The problem for climate science is the skeptics.
You got that right, consider the first per-conditions laid out in this storyline;
A. Dr. Bengtsson quits the rational organization, the GWPF, under pressure, sights his health and safety and drops the pregnant with leftist mythology code word “McCarthyism”. So it’s a bucket of suck we’re handed as we enter the presentation hall. In order to watch leftist AGW orthodox meltdown we have to swallow the whole ancient leftist chestnut about imagined “right-wing” oppression of “McCarthyism” as part of the storyline. It’s pathetic at so many levels;
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2007-11-07.html
Why didn’t he resign from a consensus organization that represents the bully authority he’s complaining about?
If he wants to play the role of a HUAC “victim” you don’t cave like a Lilly and throw the GWPF under a bus after what ….two weeks? He folded like a cheap suit. Three steps back for a promise of tagging alarmists for bullying?
B. All this comes as a surprise to him?? Has he been living on an ice-sheet the past 50 or so years? He’s never noticed how the academic left has behaved routinely in climate science? Spencer, Lindzen treatments etc? This level of obtuseness qualifies as being a perpetrator, as a consensus member just whining a little over the years or trying to build middling positions is a poor excuse.
C. Now he’s concerned about “politicization”?? Recently? Again, back on that ice-sheet, this doesn’t pass the laugh test;
Like Dr. Curry and host of others they don’t even have the decency to identify left-wing politics of the most virulent kind when it stares them and everyone else right in the face. They refuse to politically characterize the AGW “cause” which can only be considered a dishonest conclusion in the face of overwhelming historical evidence. The mindless “McCarthyism” straw-man is on the table along with the even more false equivocation (code words; advocacy, politicization, politics) that all the sides were equally political from inception to this moment. This is disinformation of the worst order, AGW has always been a leftist expansion plan and has used tortured and near Orwellian authority/subterfuge for decades. When you hear this equalization of “sides” you realize at once there is neither logic or a moral compass and the whole narrative is close to a farce. Rudolf Hess wasn’t a hero of freedom flying to England and this particular brand of skeptic hero getting praise all over this and other sites is sickening.
So to this point we don’t have a Whittaker Chambers here, someone who showed honesty, reason and contrition;
I’ll hope for more but it looks like more lukewarm hoo-hah out of the gate. What good are warming defectors who remain at the core loyal to narratives that effectively advance warming authority?
Slanderous coding, “McCarthyism”. “Shock” at routine, garden variety leftist academic blackballing found daily almost anywhere in the world. False political equivocation that characterizes the shear scaling and hostility of the academic arm of the AGW cause.
They can keep the bucket.
Yes ORSON. Got it.
O/T but good to see someone at Stanford speak a few truths, even if he isn’t a CAGW sceptic:
16 May: LA Times Op-Ed: Frank A. Wolak: Memo to Stanford: Don’t attack coal, attack carbon — with a tax
(Frank A. Wolak is director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development and a professor of economics at Stanford University.)
Last week, Stanford’s Board of Trustees announced that the university would not directly invest funds from its endowment in coal mining companies…
Those who claim that Stanford is not dependent on coal or coal-derived products are flat wrong. Coal is a major component in the production of the steel that goes into all the buildings sprouting up around the campus and the cement used to make the concrete that goes into them. Many other items purchased by Stanford are produced using electricity generated from coal either in the United States or, more likely, in China, where more than 80% of electricity comes from coal…
Because coal’s negative attributes go hand in hand with important positive ones, and all of us are complicit in coal production and use, the moral equivalence with past divestment campaigns is a false one. In fact, I have serious concerns that making such an equivalence will only exacerbate the political divisions that have paralyzed Washington on climate…
Painting “evil” fossil fuel companies as the principal obstacle to a better future only keeps us from staring these hard realities in the face. And, in the process, it may alienate the very people we need to be part of the climate policy solution.
How, then, can universities take action on climate change in a way that plays to their research and educational strengths while helping to move the climate debate toward real action?
There is wide agreement that the most cost-effective way to reduce the carbon content of the energy services we consume is to set a price for greenhouse gas emissions…
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wolak-stanford-divestment-carbon-20140516-story.html
***this might explain why it is only in the LA Times:
Stanford: Frank A. Wolak – Biography:
…***He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)…
Wolak is also a member of the Emissions Market Advisory Committee (EMAC) for California’s Market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances. This committee advises the California Air Resources Board on the design and monitoring of the state’s cap-and-trade market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/fwolak/cgi-bin/
Stokes. You expect the German meteorologist to sign the letter, despite what happened to Bengtsson !
Bill Illis says:
May 16, 2014 at 6:23 pm
“So, it not a search for the “truth” like other sciences are based on.
It is just a movement against “us”.”
Well, it IS a science, only that it has nothing to do with climate but with the quest for the sorcerer’s stone. And they found it and it does not turn lead into Gold, but it materializes taxpayer money out of thin air. The secret is to write “climate change” in your grant application, and “It’s worse than we thought; more research is needed” in your abstract.
@Billmelater. Clearly your knowledge of reality is out of date. Stick around and do a lot more reading here at WUWT. Glaciers receding ? record temperatures ? Nope. Some glaciers are receding, some are growing, overall no real change, global sea ice is at a record high. Temperatures are declining and have been doing so ever since the 60 (ish) year PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) moved into its 30 year cold phase ~6 years ago. Overall global temperatures haven’t increased over the last 17 years, each of the Medieval, Roman and Minoan periods were warmer than the present with the Minoan being the warmest and each subsequent peak being cooler, including the current modern peak.
Currently the sun’s magnetic field is declining at a significant pace and it is widely expected that this may lead to cooler temperatures over the coming 30 years or so, some people argue that it won’t, others argue that it will. Overall, it is apparent that co2 doesn’t actually have the warming power that the overrated, self inflated climate scientists computer models expect since co2 has climbed steadily over the last 17 years but temperatures have not. Global warming stopped 17 years ago, but the politicians continue to trumpet alarmist nonsense which no longer has any justification if indeed it ever did.
You need to understand that computer models are models, and include a certain amount of guesswork about a subject, climate, that has some decidedly random and chaotic behaviour. As a result these models, indeed, all models, will sooner or later be wrong, there is no way to avoid that, climate is not fully understood, is immensely complex and has chaotic elements of behaviour which may never be capable of being modeled. Its just that in the case of current climate models they have been very badly wrong for the last 17 years, despite being so very wrong our politicians continue to irresponsibly loudly trumpet the alarmist predictions of these models.
Just because politicians and newspapers preach whatever is the politically perceived correctness du jour, doesn’t mean that they have been fed up-to-date unbiased information, nor does it mean that they have made any efforts to check that the information they have been fed is correct, unbiased, up-to-date or that the people or organisations priming them don’t have their own agenda. Open your eyes, and mind and discover that you have been misinformed by those same politicians and newspapers.
William Connolley gets a real kicking here:
http://notrickszone.com/2014/05/16/leaked-memo-on-climatology-exposes-growing-worry-within-german-meteorological-society-unacceptable-unethical-developments/#comment-942195
One post from Mark in Toledo sums it up expertly:
Mark in Toledo
16. Mai 2014 at 13:49
“what a twisted take Mr. Connolley. I am sure this letter sends shivers up your spine as one of the iconic examples of censorship, intimidation and bullying in society today. Why are you so against the scientific method? Why do you seek to slow down the advance of science and push a magisterial view of science more akin to the medieval Catholic Church than to the modern scientific enterprise? Are you afraid that the actual science can not stand on its own? Do you fear that the data which keeps contradicting the models will undermine the political agenda to which you are so ardently and vehemently committed?”
Well said, sir.
Billmelater says:
May 16, 2014 at 6:51 pm
“Goodness me. Sounds like a conspiracy to me. It is a pity that nature is now part of the conspiracy. ”
You mean nature conspires against warmism by refusing to warm for the last 17 years, while the broken global warming computer models predicted continuous warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
I agree. It’s a travesty.
Billmelater says:
May 16, 2014 at 6:51 pm
“Goodness me. Sounds like a conspiracy to me. It is a pity that nature is now part of the conspiracy. I wish the record temperatures would stop happening, glaciers would stop receding, sea water temperatures increasing etc. It makes it very hard to to argue against global warming”
It certainly would be had the predictions matched the data, or your belief. However I do suggest you do a little homework before opening your mouth – It appears that even your holy prophet Michael Mann accept that actually the temperatures haven’t co-operated. Of course he’s mann-ipulated the presentation a little so the lead text calls this Global Temperature Rise, and it’s actually the Northern Hemisphere.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/hide-the-decline-deja-vu-manns-little-white-line-as-false-hope-may-actually-be-false-hype/ For an interesting view of prediction vs actuality http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/nir-shaviv-on-ipccs-exaggerated-climate-sensitivity-and-the-emperors-new-clothes/
It’s worth noting that CO2 levels have continued to rise steadily, but the effects predicted have not. A little elementary research into scientific papers instead of a diet of MSM will reveal that the glacial ‘retreat’ is somewhat selective, and may well relate to black carbon, deforestation (Kilimanjaro) as much as or more than other factors. Other glaciers are stable or increasing. Polar ice also hasn’t co-operated with your delusion. Likewise the sea-level rise. Likewise ocean temperature seems around the same as it was a couple of decades ago. There are some explanations of what ‘record’ temperatures really mean if you bother to look. You’re in for a shock if you expect them to prove much. They’re neither global nor in all probability accurate (the UHI and siting have much to answer for). Nor when closely looked at are they historically that exceptional.
Do you still find it hard to accept that there may just have been a tiny teeny bit of alarmist over-hype, that you swallowed hook, line, and sinker?
When notorious Wikipedia activist William Connolley made a desperate claim that this professor’s paper was rejected not for political reasons but for lacking innovation, I wondered:
“First it’s an “error” and then it’s a lack of innovation instead. You mean like Steig’s innovation of illegally spreading Antarctic Peninsula warming over the whole continent, or Mann’s innovation of ignoring the majority of proxies that show a bowl instead of a hockey stick, or Mann’s innovation of then using an algorithm to cherry pick noisy proxies that lined up with thermometer plots so he could call this objectively unbiased “filtering,” or Marcott’s innovation of a pure data-drop off hockey stick blade, of the innovation of creating virtual sea levels that are then labeled as “sea level,” or the innovation of calling debate foes “deniers” in press releases for papers, or the innovation of allowing a single tree to create a hockey stick shape, or the innovation of raising confidence levels from 90% to 95% after further deviation of temperature from predictions, or the innovation of invoking consensus as a *scientific* instead of profoundly anti-scientific principle, or the innovation of Hiding The Decline by just throwing away new data, or the innovation of claiming that greater uncertainty equates with greater urgency and risk, or the innovation of dissolving sea shells in acid and extrapolating to the whole ocean, or the innovation of calling mild ocean neutralization “acidification,” or the innovation of finding four dead polar bears and expanding that to species endangerment, or the innovation of using satellite data to up-adjust the global average temperature in a way that the same satellite data in fact falsifies, or the innovation of doing risk analysis devoid of any and all benefit analysis as balance, or the innovation of “reversing the null hypothesis,” or the innovation of theoretically hiding heat in an ocean that shows no corresponding extra volume expansion, of the innovation of calling climate model runs “experiments,” of the innovation of invoking a surge of weather intensity in abstracts as actual weather intensity has declined, or the innovation of referencing IPCC reports which themselves reference activist literature almost as much as peer reviewed science, or the innovation of using mere mentions of man made warming in abstracts as offering empirical support *of* that theory, or the innovation of NASA itself not using NASA satellite data in their only temperature product, or the innovation of asserting that recent temperature variation is outside of natural variability without mentioning the near exact precedent for it in the first half of the thermometer record, or the innovation of claiming the 350 year old Central England record that falsifies climate alarm is merely an insignificant local affair that just by chance shows near exact correlation with the global average plots, or the innovation of using the systematic mismatch between tide gauges (relative to land) and satellite altimetry (absolute) to imply a sudden burst in sea level rise that is falsified by the tide gauge data itself?”
Would you invest your life’s savings with an investment firm that has gotten their prediction for the economy wrong the last 17 years . Would you go with them more likely if they got the forecast for the last winter or last quarter 100 % wrong too. Would you then believe more their latest prediction for the next 100 years and their claim that they now have more confidence than ever in their technique . Would you trust this firm to tell the truth to the public when it suppresses all dissenters in their employ and blackballs those who oppose the clearly flawed view of the economy . Would you support this firm if it opposes all public debate and discussion about the reason for past failures and how to correct them. Would you trust them when they hide their research data and hide past missed forecasts from their summary section of their reports to the public.
Of course you would not and you would search around for alternate and more ethical firms and professionals for more reliable and better information . You would wonder how the previous firm ever got a public license to do business and why it still operates as it does . Where is the government oversight, you wonder. You would take a personal interest in the economy and do more of your own research and even participate in the debate and blogs . You would minimize all business with this former firm and take your hard earned money elsewhere before they completely bankrupt you. You can no longer sit at the sidelines and let only the “so called experts” to run the show. Too much is at risk for you personally.
I am continually amazed that it is the West’s libertarians who are marching us down this autocratic creed-based road to ruin.
Back in the 17th century, it was the libertarians (the enlightened) who fought a century-long crusade against the autocratic creed-based philosophy of the Catholic Church. This was the Reformation movement, that gave us the Enlightenment, the Royal Society, Grand Lodge, and the entire Industrial Revolution and all its accompanying social and economic benefits.
But now it is the libertarians who want to take us back to the Dark Ages of despotic religious dogma – a totalitarian regime where the Warmist pontiff becomes infallible in his/her/its pronouncements. And anyone who dissents has their career destroyed, as was the career of David Bellamy.
For our non-UK friends, David Bellamy was the UK’s most popular environmentalist, mostly on the BBC, until he spoke out against wind farms and Warmism back in the mid-90s. And then he disappeared. Some wondered thought if he had gone to research penguins in Antarctica for a couple of decades. Others wondered if the Russians had sent him to the Gulags. But in reality the ‘libertarian and freethinking’ BBC had deliberately destroyed his career, because he refused to pray before the great gilded idol of Warmism.
All hail to the warm-one, genuflex, genuflex, genuflex:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9817181/David-Bellamy-tells-of-moment-he-was-frozen-out-of-BBC.html
I like the reference to him being ‘frozen out’. Nice touch that, from the Telegraph….
Ralph
It’s funny, and maybe I have overlooked it, but the NYTimes doesn’t see the Bengtsson affaire fit to print.
Bill C.? Chuckle a. Connollydoodoo you mean?
Here in Virginia we have a local wild cherry, very sour, that might be the size of a dried pea. Should I send you some? They’re coming into season in a couple weeks. No, they are not flavorful and definitely not the wild cherries found in Maryland and Pennsylvania. I used to make wine with those northern cherries, down here I consider these wild cherries as walking stick material.
Definitely a republic which is what the United States was initialized as. As recent events have proven, all too often the majority rapidly becomes a tyranny; called “tyranny of the majority” by my POD (Problems of Democracy) teacher.
By the way; after reading your plans for Billy C., just how do you plan to harvest your trout? When is steelhead season?
ralfellis says:
May 17, 2014 at 8:09 am “I am continually amazed that it is the West’s libertarians who are marching us down this autocratic creed-based road to ruin.”
The Baby Boomers are the children of the Greatest Generation, my grandparents, who fought expansionist and totalitarian Germany, Russia, and Japan in WWII. They now have utterly, cynically, and cruelly betrayed their parents and all the rest of us by embracing the “sustainable” government micromanagement environmentalist program from the UN, the nationalization of education in Common Core, and the nationalization of health care**. Their personal treachery is very difficult to understand; it would make an enlightening but very sad study. Unfortunately, the Boomers still have much further to fall, and much more damage they can do.
Zeke says:
May 17, 2014 at 10:36 am
[Kitty Werthmann]”Welfare became a huge apparatus with everyone accessing subsidized housing, food stamps, heating subsidies and many other benefits until everyone,”
Nazis were big in price fixing; saw it as fix for all ills, very much like the Maduro government in Venezuela at the moment. Like in Venezuela, it did their economy in, from 1936 on, and from 1939 on it was war economy. Part of the reason for WW 2 was the need for adventurism as distraction from economic incapability of the Nazi regime.
So watch the price fixing. At the moment, minimum wage introduction in Germany and minimum wage increase in USA.
Ralfellis….what the heck are you talking about? American libertarians are (1) totally against federally-funded science, and (2) totally against central governments interfering with non-fraudulent economic activity (i.e., production of CO2). Therefore we are not supportive of almost all climate science because it is federally funded and we are totally against any governments efforts to limit CO2 production.
If you mean “liberals” (rather than “libertarians” — there is a world of difference!), then you are completely correct. But, modern American liberals have nothing to do philosophically with classic, 19th Century Liberals. Modern American liberals, though any would be horrified if confronted with this reality, as more akin to Fascists.