From the “send the men in the white coats” department. It seems that this already alarmist climate scientist has gone off the rails and sees climate change as an ELE (extinction level event).
In an online article titled Climate Change Like An Asteroid Strike appearing in Germany’s national daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), journalist Alex Rühle reports on the outgoing director of Germany’s alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Prof. Hans-Joachim “John” Schellnhuber.
Prof. Schellnhuber, widely known in Germany as the Climate Pope, is considered in Europe as the leading climate science authority and the architect of the Master Plan for transforming global society – dubbed The Great Transformation – which aims to make global society climate compatible through draconian, surrealistic measures. Moreover the plan calls for all of it to happen in just a matter of a couple of decades!
A number of critics have called the whole idea detached from economic reality and dystopian.
Risks mounting “by the hour”
Schellnhuber is also the father of the “2°C climate target”, a warming that the world must never exceed, he claims, lest it’ll tip hopelessly into a state of rapid, irreversible climatic collapse.
The SZ article reports how the outgoing Schellnhuber believes the planet is in fact approaching the climatic catastrophe at “a crazy speed” and that the risks “are mounting quasi by the hour”.
The alarmist Potsdam Institute professor has been known for a number of shrill comments made in the past, but in this most recent SZ article, Schellnhuber’s shrillness arguably reaches a whole new level that shoots beyond the realms of reason.
Rapid, epic disaster of geologic dimensions
Now that Schellnhuber is stepping down as director of the Potsdam Institute after 25 years as its director, he reflects back, telling the SZ how he feels about the overall “disinterest with regards to the consequences of climate change” that has swept across the public globally.
More at No Tricks Zone
Science, the mastery of hyperbole with accompanying graphs and formulas
And/or apparently, a large globe.
Didn’t some other German already have a “Master Plan for Transforming Global Society”?, some guy named Adolph?
Given his Chutzpah, perhaps he should change his name to Schellenhubris
Roll that Globe around 180 degrees and all you will see is water of which we have a trivial information of its temperature and current history. In other words one of the key drivers for climate we know almost nothing.
Gordon,
The Water Hemisphere is approximately 89% water, 6% dry land and 5% polar ice cap.
The Land Hemisphere still has more water than land, ie 71% = (89% + 53%)/2.
The Southern Hemisphere is pretty close to the Water Hemisphere, with 81% water.
Sings, “Dah dah Da da da da dah dah!”
An idiot of spectacular dimensions. Quasi relevant, yet not. A buffoon of ill deserved achievement in a field of negative value for humanity. His tombstone is waiting for him with the words, “Nope! He wasn’t kidding! Pretty crazy,huh?”, inscribed on it and lit in neon. Bury him outside the clown college and raise a statue made of nutbars.
“Climate science” attracts third and fourth rate “scientists”, often computer programmers and math grads, while real climatology has been worked on by first rate scientists, such as Bryson, Gray, Lindzen, Dyson, Happer and Giaever (in retirement, in his case). Plus Feynman’s sister.
Felix, that’s an insult to third and fourth rate “scientists”.
You’re right. I take it back. They’re not scientists of any level, since to be a scientist, one must practice the scientific method.
A mod scientwist.
Essentially proves that “Green (Climate Change) is the New Red” – the position that the only means of ensuring the survival of the planet is state control of EVERYTHING!
Derived from the fact that Socialism is the opiate of the intelligentsia.
Just another example of a life wasted by narcissism and an addiction to the funding hunt.
But he will retire on a huge publicly funded pensions and large speaking fees
SJWs always double down.
Further proof of AGW – it causes such doubling down efforts to increase in proportions that could be observed as hockey stick-style graph results. Just look at the suddenly rising numbers of global warming lawsuits.
yep. that lotto look- the glazed eyes bugging out, the gaspy breathing, the twitching and palpitations are all shared with any ordinary gambling addict.
they will keep doubling the bet in the belief that they only need to win once to get over all of it.
but hey- they’re paid to go on the casino junkets. they wouldn’t be doing their job if they didn’t take your money and waste it.
being as how nobody is accusing them of being responsible people- how long before the inquisitor’s gaze follows the money to the source?
well, inquisitors are funny. when they are the source, they look for a goat.
spectrophobia kills goats! but nobody cares about the goats…
Well, it’s kind of hard to be interested in upcoming disasters when they’re all imaginary. I mean they might as well say CO2 will cause Godzilla to emerge from the oceans.
Well it’s more likely than what this guy’s spouting!
James Bull
Oh noes! Not Godzilla as well!
Maybe Mothra as well.
All hail the mighty CO2!
Zombies. You forgot the zombies!
Yup. In the original monster movies, it was nuclear testing. Now it’s climate change that brings monsters from the deep.
It is time Chthulhu got some action here, isn’t it?
…. and Ed Wood’s giant squid, if ocean acidification hasn’t already killed it.
Temperatures increasing by “5 degrees per century” according to Shellnhuber. Easy to make an argument for imminent disaster when one pulls numbers from one’s nether regions.
He does come across as Germany’s equivalent of James Hansen.
“Schellnhuber is also the father of the “2°C climate target”.
This morning in Toronto at 8:a.m. the daily predicted high temp was 21C. By 12:00 the revised high temp was 19C a “predicted” difference of 2C in less 4 hours. Climate scientists claim the earth may warm by 2C by 2100. The sad thing is people actually believe these scientists!
People act as though 2C, assessed as an average increase over the whole Earth, is a description of one and only one scenario. Think about it, though — THE WHOLE EARTH … an AVERAGE ! How many different combinations of regional temperatures could produce such an “average” ? And why would this average computed from one configuration of regional temperatures, in any way, equal this average computed from a DIFFERENT configuration of regional temperatures ? Yeah, the number might be equal, but the circumstances that could produce this number are NOT unique, with ONE UNIQUE MEANING.
The average of 1 + 9 is 5. The average of 5 + 5 is 5. The average of 7 + 3 is 5.
Numerically, does 1 + 9 = 5 + 5 = 7 + 3 ? Yes, of course, … NUMERICALLY. But is 1 + 9 the same expression as 5 + 5 or 7 + 3 ? No. The components of each expression, and the configuration of each expression are different. The average says nothing of its components or how its components came to be in relation to one another BEFORE the average was calculated. There might be something very noteworthy about the “9” being a “9” in the first expression, as opposed to a “5” being a “5” in the second expression. The average tells us nothing about this.
2C, then, is pretty meaningless, let a lone a cause for economic overhaul or psychological distress.
When will people wake up from these mathemagical spells cast upon them ?
In Saskatchewan it is 27C today. The record for this day, as it is for many days, is from the 30’s. 32.2C in 1934. The low for this day is also from 1930. -7.8C. This is what we call weather in my part of the world.
I am reminded of a story I heard about a tourist in Texas driving along on a very windy day. He stopped and asked a local if there was any chance of a tornado. “No”, the fellow said. “A tornado would be perfectly helpless in a wind like this”
Some people do for sure but politicians? Nah. They are just thieves and are using global warming as key to your wallet
Bad spelling. Schellnhuber
Time and again I have received push back from alarmists that Catastrophic does not mean to imply “End of Days” This guy is really putting a kink in their argument.
There is absolutely no difference at all between what this guy is saying and if he wear saying “And On that Day he will return with Terrible Lighting and a Flashing Swift Sword, and The World shall Burn, and All shall be Judged, and on that day, Woe to ye, O Ye Unbelievers! For Ye shall be cast into the pit or eternal flame!!!”
I am starting to realize that there are some people who just have to have this, who want to believe in it. Always have been. it just keeps changing its disguise and its name from generation to generation.
There’s a very big difference, the Bible thumper won’t throw you in jail if you fail to believe.
MarkW: Not now days. There was a time…
Hundreds of years ago, pretty much everybody did things that offend modern sensibilities. Not just the religious.
And it’s not like he is a little nobody who just posts responses on an on-line blog.
Mark, for long periods of history people were thrown in prison and worse for “not believing” the orthodoxy. To the modern Left those were evil times back then, but NOW it is vital that all non-believers in this modern orthodoxy be persecuted at least.
This is the last known person sentenced by the Spanish Inquisition for heresy to death by burning, in 1781:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_de_los_Dolores_L%C3%B3pez
She confessed en route to the stake, so her sentence was commuted to strangulation.
Never let it be said that the Church isn’t merciful!
I think you guys just said the bible thumpers evolved….
….what does that say about the rest
Latitude,
No sooner did the Church stop killing heretics than did the French Revolutionaries take up the practice, however with the modern guillotine rather than old-fashioned stake and garrote.
Then the Communist and Fascist socialists continued the True Believer tradition of murdering those who disagree with you. Now the Church of CACA is of the same totalitarian mindset.
MarkW- That’s the real curiosity here. Apparently, for years people were sitting around tables listening to this dingbat spit inanities about climate with zero evidence to back up his statements and nobody said a word in opposition. He got funding and wide-ranging support for ideas and statements that a 3rd grade science paper would be laughed at for.
How is this possible?
John,
Because his insanity and ignorance served the purposes of his political pay and puppet masters.
Of course today acts of faith involving burning would be banned, as using up too many valuable carbon credits, so naturally the CACA Inquisition prefers blowing up the heads of skeptical children.
I suppose that’s more merciful than torture to death by the strappado. Progress marches on!
Edwin, et. al. Around the same times racial bigotry was the norm and slavery was an accepted institution by everybody.
The idea that modern people of any strip should be judged by the behavior of people hundreds of years ago is a nonsense argument.
Yesterday afternoon it was 83 degrees F. here. A thunderstorm came through, and all day today it never went above 54. Friday night it’s supposed to go down to 49. And I’m supposed to lose all the advantages of 21st century living for a ~theoretical average~ temperature change of 1.5 degrees? These people are the biggest argument I’ve ever seen for a return to teaching BASIC remedial math, not to mention biology.
It was at around 2C warmer during the Climatic Optimism.
Bring it on ,baby! I’m a Canadian. I’ll hit the beach at 55F!
Needs counselling and a good dose of thermodynamics. The Cognitive Dissonance will have to dealt with later.
Just another sign of the Dark Ages of the natural sciences.
Just a sign that we Deplorables will soon lose all trust in the agit-crap that is currently masquerading as “science” in the popular press. Imagine! A return to unrestrained use of F-150’s, bacon, bourbon, and grilling steaks. Oh, wait . . . ! /sarc.
Dually F-450. Please!
More power! More carbon!
It’s good for plants and other living things.
At least he’s not standing on a street corner with sandwich boards that say, “The End is Nigh”.
Probably where he should be though.
Well, I went and read the “Great Transformation” summary at the appropriate website.
As I read it, whole brain cells started committing suicide.
The summary of the summary is this;
1. Nuclear power bad, but that’s ok because we will limit future growth of energy.
2. People are spoiled brats who should be forced to buy less stuff, use less energy and eat no meat.
3. The acceptable solutions involve taxing all carbon, producing less energy, creating a carbon trading scheme on a global basis and forcing people to stop eating meat. Oh, and force everyone to “buy in” on the global responsibility to the future – probably through re-education.
Over all its pretty neato, especially if you have a hankering for a nice dystopian future. I suspect that guys like this will soon start coming to the conclusion that since the world’s population won’t embrace this voluntarily they will just have to do it by force. Or genocide, since that would provide the same results and have the added benefit of less people on the planet.
Andrew
Genuine climate Na*zism then.
“I vill convince you ze climate I vill force ze planet to conform to is ze future for you non Arayan’s. I vill survive becauze I exercize naked viz ze nubile, uniformed fraulines viz ze vhips und dildo’s. I vill lead you all to Valhalla, just follow my red arze.”
Lunatic!
I don’t think Shellnhuber is interested in fraulines.
He has a Frau, but no Kindern, so you could be right.
Our survival hinges on our ability to perceive the intentions of others, and to act accordingly. I perceive that the socialist/warmist has no limit on what they are willing to do to bring about their utopia.
You’re forgetting that they probably exempt themselves from any restrictions because they’re the enlightened ones.
Stop everyone eating meat and see what happens to human fertility, not to mention brainpower. We’re already known to be de-evolving compared to our Paleolithic ancestors–let’s speed it up, what could go wrong? These people are secular DEMONS.
The unabomber did that already.
The ‘policy force’ is strong in this one.
Some suggested that Schellnhuber was like Germany’s Jim Hansen.
I would say Germany’s Harold Camping.
I wonder which Muppet is going to take his place probably some equally rabid nutter, but what the hey you get what you pay large amounts of money for.
James Bull
James Bull
Having referred to various idiots over the years as Muppets, it was pointed out to me recently that Kermit et al were largely a bunch of cuddly, adorable characters that brought pleasure to the lives of many.
There is no comparison between this climate apocalypse zombie and Fozzie Bear.
Kindly don’t insult the Muppets!
🤣
Don’t underestimate Oscar.
But they were not in government or positions of authority when they did it.
the original muppets were in Sesame Street
The millennial replacement which has permanently damaged the millennial brain with subversive eco propaganda and validation of emotional nonsense narratives is this.
Fozzie Bear? No wait, at least Fozzie was funny!
wakka wakka
The kinetic energy of the strike was so great it punctured the fabric of believable science. Check for shatter cones in the MSM. This amounts to the late stage bombardment of the truth by advocacy science.
Perhaps if you translate his name into English it means Harold Camping.
Thats funny, I translated it as Richard Head 😀
“off the rails” eh?
I think flat out bonkers is closer.
I’ve looked at his output over some years and like Andrew Cooke above I’ve come to the conclusion that he is not only mad but dangerously so given his elevated status in both German academia and political circles – where he seems to be presented as some kind of irrefutable sage by some.
Unhinged
It is good to have these wacko alarmists in charge. That way people can contrast their hysteric alarmist claims with the reality they feel every day. This cold winter in Europe has given people plenty to think on their own about the modest reality of climate warming. In Spain we haven’t seen so much snow in a couple of decades.
Javier
In the UK we had a week or so of the beast from the east this winter, that was it. I rather enjoyed the mild weather. May it get ever milder thanks to climate change.
Talking about climate change like an asteroid strike is like a hemorrhoid strike to intelligent people.
Once he was human, as human as you and I. Humor him.
Climate Change is like a bank robbery. No matter what happens, you get to pay.
So true. They don’t need to hear the question. The answer is always the same: stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
The earth is headed into a new ice age. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
The forests are being destroyed by acid rain. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
The earth is headed for runaway heating. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
There are too many storms. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
There is not enough wind. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
We’re having a drought. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
There’s too much rain. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
We’re out of beer. stop using fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
Not just the “climate pope,” isn’t this the guy who got Pope Francis all wound up about global warming or climate change or whatever you call it.
Wonder how many other militant atheists and Gaia worshipers are on the Pontifical Academy of Sciences?
Its president from 2011-17, Swiss microbiologist Werner Arber, a theistic evolutionist, was the first Protestant to hold that position.
Not a very scientific attitude:
http://notrickszone.com/2015/06/27/schellnhuber-boasts-of-having-skeptics-excluded-from-participating-in-drafting-laudato-si-encyclical/#sthash.auADmzC3.dpbs
Originally, the 2C rise since the depths of the LIA was just the difference between then and the warmest it got during the MWP.
They acknowledged that up to 2C was good, as shown by the MWP, but more than 2C was unknown territory.
Then this “evolved” into more than 2C and bad things start to happen.
Now this nutcase declares that more than 2C will lead to environmental collapse.
Sheesh, if they couldn’t change their story, they would have no story at all.
PS: The Holocene Optimum was between 3 and 5 degrees warmer than the bottom of the LIA, and the world thrived. So much for the claim that warmer than the MWP is “unexplored territory”.
Yup. The Roman (2 Ka), Minoan (3 Ka) and Egyptian (4 Ka) Warm Periods were also hotter than the Medieval (1 Ka) and Modern WP (so far in the latter case). The Minoan and Egyptian were about as warm as Holocene Optimum peaks (5-8 Ka).
Note that the intervening cool periods are associated with cultural collapse, barbarian invasions, famines, pandemics and constant warfare. The warm periods OTOH are named after high civilizations.
Careful, Felix. Dealing in the truth could get you burned at the stake in the modern world.
It has been threatened, or the 21st century equivalent thereof.
Felix
And still the Romans moaned about the miserable Scottish weather on Hadrians wall!
With good reason. Especially in their last century there, when the Roman Warm Period was ending, sliding into the Dark Ages Cold Period.
It would have been even worse had the Wall been in Scotland rather than England. The closest it comes to the Border is in the west at Bowness-on-Solway, about one klick south. Much farther away in the east.
Pity the poor legionary buggers who had to camp out on the Antonine Wall, deep in Pictland, among the wild, tattooed natives of Caledonia.
Well we are past that stage, we have achieved all of that in a warming world, too!
Leo,
No, we have not.
Warfare since the end of WWII, when CO2 took off, hasn’t been a pimple on the ass of the wars of the LIA.
Nor have our pandemics claimed even a tiny fraction of the percentage of humans of those of the past. Which is why there are eight billion of us now, as opposed to one billion during the Dalton Minimum.
Ditto famine.
A few notes of rationalism from a rationalist. I love it because it has become so infrequent,.especially when the topic has anything to do with global climate and/or global sea level. .
Rationalist def. :a person who bases their opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response:
(Personally, I prefer ‘rationalist’ and ‘rationalism’ to ‘skeptic’ and ‘skepticism.’ I think they provide a more useful and more accurate depiction of the scientific method. )
It’s a peculiar phenomenon, isn’t it, a highly intelligent guy like Schellnhuber can seriously, even frantically, entertain utterly fatuous ideas.
There’s clearly a disconnect between intelligence and common sense.
The first doesn’t imply the second, but the second always seems to go with a fair amount of the first.
Herr Dr. Professor Geheimrat Schellnhuber is doomed to be remembered as a millennialist zany. Along with Paul Ehrlich, by the way, and Jim Hansen.
I have spent a lot of time trying to understand that point, and it is a serious point. My conclusion is the same as yours but expressed differently. Intelligence is the ability to manipulate elements of a world view consistently logically and accurately. Common sense is having a world view that is not inconsistent with reality ( as it presumably is) in the first place.
They are orthogonal qualities. One may have one and not the other, or both.
AGW is a belief system – a world view – or part of one – founded on faux principles but fashionable in the New Left philosophy.
A flawed philosophy that implicitly considers that since people are what they think, by and large, so to is the world, and therefore it can be changed by ‘right thinking’. This implicitly denies the world a reality beyond the Left mind’s perception of it.
Which in terms of society and human issues is not a bad approximation, but is deeply dangerous when considering the natural world (i.e. that that lies outside the power of human imagination to alter).
Nicely put, Leo.
To the Left, if you self-identify as something, that is your reality and it’s your human right to be affirmed in your feeling.
Schellnhuber identifies as the savior and master of the world apparently. Reality doesn’t enter into it.
Personally I am beginning to believe that CAGW crowd are all suffering from mental illness. It is possible since they hang out together that some virus or prion has spread amongst them.
There was A Russian scientist, Alexander Chizhevoky, ( about solar cycles making people .. um.. not quite right ) that made that claim as well. He later backed off when prison time was in the offing in the new Soviet Union of 1917. I was going to comment on Eric Holthaus that he is probably suffering under the same symptoms. After talking to true believers in AGW, it’s not a far stretch to say that they have some kind of mental condition that is afflicting them. … I don’t want to live in the hell hole that they are attempting to drag the rest of humanity with them.
It could just be a symptom of a more general depression. They seem to compulsively see only the bad. They believe without question anything that indicates we’re all going to Hell and just as reflexively reject any positive news even when it comes with irrefutable evidence.
Plus, bad news is never bad enough for them! They always go straight downhill to the worst possible scenario even when it rests on the shakiest ground. Which it always dose!
They can’t believe warmer is better, They can’t believe it was just as warm in the past and things were fine. They can’t believe we’re not headed for “the worst case scenario”. They can’t believe the world is getting greener. they can’t believe more food is being grown on less land. It would really be laughable except they really, seriously want to screw up our good times.
I think it is genetic – there is something to be said for the argument that those who think every shadow is a lion will have an advantage over those who dismiss the threat. Their genes will spread but the optimists will get devoured more often.
It’s not strong selection, and there may sometimes be selection for optimism too, so we end with a mixed population. But there is a natural tendency for people to listen to the pessimists.
Schellnhuber will now retire in a much warmer area south (you know 20C warmer where lots of plants grow so easily and animals live out long lives and with awesome beaches and no snow).