Vahrenholt, chief of RWE Innogy climate expert Die Kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun), "the contribution of CO2 to global warming is exaggerated

/ / ,

I very much recommend reading this article
http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/site/pagina.php?id=3740&zoek=Vahrenholt
on european energy review which features a (rather lengthy) discussion
between climate scientists Rob van Dorland and Bart Verheggen and
self-proclaimed climate expert Vahrenholt. While Vahrenholt was mainly
backed by German Bild Zeitung (crappy German tabloid), van Dorland and
Verheggen have a list of serious scientific papers published in top
journals (check scopus for references).

“Scientists working on climate on a daily basis must have been rather
astonished by the recent interview with professor Fritz Vahrenholt
published by European Energy Review (May 2, 2012). Vahrenholt, chief of
RWE Innogy, self-proclaimed climate expert and co-author of the book Die
Kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun), claims that “the contribution of CO2 to
global warming is being exaggerated”. This claim, however, does not
stand up to scientific scrutiny. We assess his ideas in the light of the
scientific literature on the role of the sun versus other climate
forcing factors. The dominant influence of greenhouse gases follows not
only from their basic physical properties, but also from their
“fingerprint” in the observed warming. The sun, in contrast, has not
exhibited any warming trend over the past 50 years. The sun is thus not
responsible for the warming seen during this period. Greenhouse gases in
all likelihood are. ”

cheers,
johannes

———————————
Johannes Schmidt, Dr.+43 / 1 / 47654-3594Institute for Sustainable Economic Development
www.wiso.boku.ac.at/454.html

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Peter Jordan-Str. 82
1190 Vienna / Austria

 

Dear Kevin,
# Can you, or anyone else, see any specific flaws or errors in the points he presents?

 

where Vahrenholt’s points are discussed by climate scientists – and Vahrenholt gets the fair chance of a response.

if you do not want to register, you can read two blog entries by the same authors:
# It appears that the IPCC models do not take Cloud Cover into account in tehir models, because “…. cloud cover introduces too much uncertainty. Wow!! See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/28/uncertain-climate-risks-nature-climate-change/
IPCC does not have any single global circulation model. The IPCC is a process reviewing peer-reviewed published evidence. In that sense it’s true that IPCC does not take into account clouding in their models because they simple do not develop any of the global circulation models. if you read the paper that the author of the blog is refering to carefully, you’ll see that there’s nothing anything close to your statement in the publication. In fact, Kevin Trenberth states that long-term projections of climate change (up to 2100) in the 4th assessment report reported less uncertainties than new models which include additional factors such as clouding. (Note the term long-term projection. There’s nothing like a prediction of long-term climate around.) This does not mean that they were more certain but simply that those factors were not included in the models – and that uncertainties associated with those factors therefore couldn’t be reported.
And, yes, a consequence is that climate models are – what a surprise – uncertain and continue being so. But they are consistently projecting temperature increases caused by rising levels of GHG emissions. Trenberth also states that the scientific community is starting to develop models which are assumed to have predictive power up to perhaps 2030. However, these models are still in very early stage of development and therefore first attempts of predictions could go terribly wrong – because that’s what science is all about: trial and error. And particularly in climate science, validation is complicated as we have to wait how climate turns out to be over decades.
However, I cannot see how this in any aspect contradicts what the IPCC reports are saying.
cheers,
johannes

 

Related Posts