Physics & Climate

Climate Science

Introductory Remarks

Climate is the weather averaged over several decades. While it is relatively easy to observe daily variations of the temperature, humidity or wind speed, changes of the climate requires to measure smallest trends of these strongly varying quantities over many years and large areas. Even more difficult is to make reliable climate prognoses, when the origin and interaction of some climate drivers are not known or not fully understood. Over recent years climate science has rapidly developed to an interdisciplinary branch of sci - ence and now adays covers many of the classical disciplines like meteorology, geology, earth- and atmosphe ric physics, chemistry and biology, pale ontology or astrophysics. Meanwhile it even includes subjects like climate-ecology, -health, -psychology, -law and, of course, climate politics. And indeed for understanding such an extremely complex ‘phenomenon‘ like climate, interdisci plinarity is an absolute requirement. But up to now climate science suffers from some principal problems: 1. Despite considerably improved measuring techniques for temperature, humidity, clouds or sea-level heights - meanwhile covering the whole planet by means of satellite techniques - direct measurements are only available for relatively short observation periods. For longer trends researchers have to rely on proxy data like ice cores, stalactites, dendrology or sto- mata of leaves with much higher uncertainties. 2. Up to now the main processes and drivers for a changing climate are not really understood. There exist different hypotheses but because of the long time constants and a lot of compe- ting effects, it is extremely difficult to verify one of them. Only climate models based on many assumptions and endless parameters can be used to simulate the past and future climate. 3. The different research fields are not really integrated and do not form a common discipline. Often scientists proceed in their original research but under the label of climate science, which is known to be well funded. Meanwhile climate covers all fields of our society, and any inconvenient developments are traced back to climate. Already brief insinuations of danger or catastrophes assumed to result from climate changes give the highest guarantee for receiving attention from media, politics and finally for further funding. 4. As long as science cannot explain unambiguously the processes responsible for previous and future climate variations, speculation and ideology defeat serious science. It is easier and more spectacular to retrace all changes to human activities and to neglect any natural effects. 5. At present a lot of fundamental research of serious scientists is no longer recognized. Instead, ideologized environmental and political organizations, which don‘t care about real science, dictate our actual environmental and energy politics. Our society and particularly some of our politicians are manipulated and indoctrinated by these groups, which believe: “The only way to save our planet is to stop all anthropogenic CO 2 -emissions.“

Outline of this Section

• The German Way or the CO 2 Delusion and its Consequences This article presents some consequences of the actual environmental and energy politics of many industrialized countries like Germany. • IPCC and UNFCCC This contribution summarizes the main deficits of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its politics. • Own Climate Studies This Subsection gives an overview of own climate investigations. It shows the negligible influence of human emissions on our climate. a) Greenhouse Effect b) Climate Sensitivity c) Methane Sensitivity d) Carbon Cycle e) Solar Influence