German academia attack IPCC findings

[dZeus]

There seems to be a very lively debate going on about AGW in Germany after release of a book on IPCC' predictions of CO2 influence on the climate.

The book is called 'Die kalte Sonne' (the cold sun)

More info here

Big players in the German media, Bild and Der Spiegel, have picked up on it.

[UtwigMU]

404 bad link.

Found a synopsis of the book in German http://www.hoffmann-und-campe.de/go/die-kalte-sonne

Recently I discovered following charts and articles on oil production food production:

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/WEAP2/WEAP2.html

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/WEAP2/Energy_Intensity_GDP_2050.html

You can just look at the charts if you don't have time to read entire articles. What do you think of future and energy?

[Brian Ellis]

There seems to be a very lively debate going on about AGW in Germany after release of a book on IPCC' predictions of CO2 influence on the climate.

The book is called 'Die kalte Sonne' (the cold sun)

More info here

Big players in the German media, Bild and Der Spiegel, have picked up on it.

When asked why Hoffmann & Campe decided to publish “such a book”, the spokesman simply answered that the time is right – and there’s a real audience for the book.

This says it all. They see a bandwagon to jump on and they published it for the money. As it is, Der Bild is the German version of The Sun or The National Enquirer. If they say something, it will have zero credibility amongst intelligent people. Der Spiegel is, of course a more serious mag but they were reporting only on the book, not taking a position.

[dZeus]

This says it all. They see a bandwagon to jump on and they published it for the money. As it is, Der Bild is the German version of The Sun or The National Enquirer. If they say something, it will have zero credibility amongst intelligent people. Der Spiegel is, of course a more serious mag but they were reporting only on the book, not taking a position.

I presume you've read the critique then? I'm curious to hear what parts you disagree on, and why.

[VJ]

My colleague is an environmental scientist, and he says the issue can basically be rephrased as a number of questions:
1. Is the climate changing? -> yes (and almost all scientists agree)
2. Is the climate changing faster than normal? -> yes (and almost all scientists agree)
3. Is mankind influencing it? -> yes (not too much criticism here either)
4. Is it heating up? -> Many models indicate to "yes", but some to hint at a cooling. So here, not everybody in agreement. What does seem more clear is that the patterns appear more extreme in different parts of the worlds. E.g.some models predicted (for Europe) more prevailing winds from Siberia in winter, and this seems to be occurring.

He basically says: "It is changing, and we will have to deal with it. Some countries might benefit, others will not. But the fact that we don't know how it is changing, does not mean we should not move to alternative means for energy. (pollution neutral technology, renewable sources, ...)"

[UtwigMU]

If you look at the charts I provided in 30 years or so oil and gas will be depleted and majority of World energy production will come from coal, nuclear, hydro and renewable.

The problem of majority carbon based energy production will solve itself.

The ramifications of this are dire. Grain production is directly related to amount of oil and price of grain is related to price of oil. Also GDP is depending on energy intensity of given national economy related to total available energy. In a few decades Africa is projected to needing 100% of GDP (more population, more expensive food, less energy, less GDP) to pay for food. You can imagine where this leads.

Since in 30 years we will have less energy and population will be much higher, the average GDP per capita will drop. Also number of people in poverty will increase and number of wealthy will decrease. Basically 1 billion will have slightly lesser standard we have in developed World and 7 billion will be on par with today's poorest countries.

These predictions don't account for fusion or other major breakthroughs (but it takes a few decades before new technology is used significantly) and wars.

I think a lot of talk on saving environment and renewable and green sources (if you look at hybrid cars, their environmental footprint is actually higher than SUVs) is euphemism for decreasing dependence on oil (with electric cars and trucks, transport will still flow even if country will have only 20% of oil it has now).

[Brian Ellis]

My colleague is an environmental scientist, and he says the issue can basically be rephrased as a number of questions:
1. Is the climate changing? -> yes (and almost all scientists agree)
2. Is the climate changing faster than normal? -> yes (and almost all scientists agree)
3. Is mankind influencing it? -> yes (not too much criticism here either)
4. Is it heating up? -> Many models indicate to "yes", but some to hint at a cooling. So here, not everybody in agreement. What does seem more clear is that the patterns appear more extreme in different parts of the worlds. E.g.some models predicted (for Europe) more prevailing winds from Siberia in winter, and this seems to be occurring.

He basically says: "It is changing, and we will have to deal with it. Some countries might benefit, others will not. But the fact that we don't know how it is changing, does not mean we should not move to alternative means for energy. (pollution neutral technology, renewable sources, ...)"

The key question is 4. but it needs rewording:
4. Is it warming up on a global scale? -> yes (and almost all climatologists agree because this is the measured variable that rang all the alarm bells a few decades ago)

Then there is
5. Do we know why it is warming up? -> partially (we know the main man-made and natural causes which contribute to it, but there are still some uncertainties as to the effect of each and there may be some causes of warming and cooling that are random and therefore unpredictable and some minor causes yet to be identified)

Some remarks:
The current "Siberian" cold weather hitting Europe is only a tiny blip on the global climate scale. It is caused by an extremely strong anticyclone stationary over NW Russia bringing polar air down. This 2 Feb map shows the problem:



Note the pressure is 1061 hPa, which is the highest I have ever come across and the depressions are not able to push it away. The scientists said that we shall getting increased numbers of exceptional weather phenomena, as the global climate and this seems to be just one of them, in all probability. (For comparison the lowest and highest pressures measured here by my weather station over the last 7 years were 990.4 hPa and 1033.7 hPa, so 1061 hPa is really out of the usual range -- we don't get the very deep depressions of ~960 hPa in the N Atlantic but we do get series of anticyclones.)

The random causes are things like major volcanoes which can cause minor downward blips of temperature on a global scale, but these last only for about 3 years as the aerosols are rained out. Even Pinatubo (sp?) was back to normal after 4 years. The biggest uncertainty is semi random and is due to the effect of clouds which can be both warming (water vapour is a GHG) and cooling (increased upper level albedo). Notwithstanding, even if you take the extreme cooling effect, with no warming effect, the overall effect from all the other causes is still well into the warming sector.

The 5th IPCC report will show that the uncertainties have been considerably narrowed down compared to the 2007 4th report. I think that this will be the clincher that humans are changing the global climate.