By P Gosselin
In an interview published by the German public broadcaster MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) on September 1, 2026—titled “Es gibt einen Markt für Desinformation” (“There is a Market for Disinformation”)—prominent alarmist Stefan Rahmstorf spoke with MDR Wissen to address the tactics of climate change skepticism, which he says of course is funded by evil special business interests, and how communication to the public must evolve.
In the MDR interview and his broader public communication strategy, Stefan Rahmstorf addresses the rise of alternative, populist, and fringe media platforms.
Exclude skeptics from debate
He suggests that rather than trying to engage them in debate or change their minds directly, he calls on mainstream journalists and established media outlets to strictly avoid giving a platform to skeptic voices from alternative channels.
Investigate skeptics
According to Rahmstorf, alternative media channels often frame their content as independent, “free speech,” or grassroots skepticism, and calls on the established media institutions and investigative journalists to trace where these channels get their material, who funds them, and how political or economic interest groups amplify them.
“We scientists explain the data and facts of climate change, but journalists need to investigate who is serving the market for disinformation and where the money is coming from,” says Rahmstorf. “”It is the job of journalism to uncover who is behind these campaigns, who is funding them, and what interests are being pursued.”
Avoid debating skeptics
Rahmstorf says that it is ineffective to try to debate or convince dedicated alternative media creators or their hardcore audiences in comment sections. It’s a debate that alarmist climate scientists cannot win. The Potsdam Climate Institute researcher thinks communication efforts should focus on the broader public—those who are exposed to alternative media snippets via social media or messaging apps. Clear, accessible explanations using real-world data and verifiable facts help build immunity against misleading claims before they take root.
Rahmstorf tells MDR that science communicators and mainstream journalists need to anticipate the false arguments likely to emerge from alternative outlets and pre-bunk them.
It’s the old story: when you’re losing the game, try to find an easier opponent. The alarmists have been finding that their narratives have been consistently losing credibility, so they try to climate any dissent entirely. Unfortunately the mainstream media has given them too much ink already with increasingly diminishing returns.
Kind of good news for us, finally the leaders of the other side are coming right out and admitting that they have lost the debate, they can’t support their claims with proper science and the truth. Losers will always turn to power and control in a desperate effort to stay relevant.
On the off chance that an MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) or other journalist reads this comment section, it seems worthwhile to point out that Rahmstorf has a history of decades violating scientific principles
Even before Lucia´s “fishy odor” ( https://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/source-of-fishy-odor-confirmed-rahmstorf-did-change-smoothing/ ) Rahmstorf called himself a radical.
He is one of the 8 alarmists managing to retract a paper without a proper scientific process like a middle age witch hunt. .a truly alarming story!
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/think-of-the-implications-of-publishing
His two recent posts at Relaclimate seem mutually exclusive, but he never bothers to clear up the discrepancy.. leaving plenty of room to be skeptical about
jan 2025
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/the-amoc-is-slowing-its-stable-its-slowing-no-yes/
“””Of the 24 CMIP6 models, a full 23 underestimate the sea surface cooling in the ‘cold blob’. And most of the CMIP6 models even show a strengthening of the AMOC in the historic period, which past studies have shown to be linked to strong aerosol forcing in many of these models (e.g. Menary et al. 2020, Robson et al. 2022). The historic Northern Hemisphere temperature evolution in the models with a strong aerosol effect “is not consistent with observations” and they “simulate the wrong sign of subpolar North Atlantic surface salinity trends”, as Robson et al. write. Thus I consider CMIP6 models as less suited to test how well the ‘cold blob’ works as AMOC indicator than the CMIP5 models.”””
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/how-will-media-report-on-this-new-amoc-study/
“””This weakening is of particular concern because the AMOC has a tipping point, and our recent study has shown that in many of the standard future global warming simulations performed for the current IPCC report the AMOC passes that tipping point and shuts down in the following decades.”””
According to him, when the newer models do not show what he want, lets use the older models, when the newer models are tuned to show what he wants, lets not mention the models of the same generation which did not show what he wants to see.
There are a couple of things here, which are wrong. .CMIP5 basically is a bad copy of CMIP6 lacking some of the features (higher resolution and better physics) of the newer models. Going back like Rhamstorf suggests, does require a consideration of the present knowledge that just like he describes older models show significantly different results, because they are lacking! This means without any doubt that their uncertainty as presented back then was insufficient, systematic error were discovered during the upgrade to CMIP6 and old findings are invalid until that is addressed!
If old ad new models show the same things (besides we know for sure the old ones are lacking, we have very good tests on that), this automatically means that the physics and technology of the model is irrelevant, they are tuned to reflect the belief of the programmer!
In any scientific field the older and lacking model cannot produce the same results with the same confidence, a very basic insight which is fundamentally violated by people like Rahmstorf.
from my coffee mug: If you can’t debate it, it’s NOT science