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A couple of days back I wrote about a German meteorologist Dr. Karsten Brandt here, who claims climate prognoses are “not worth the paper they are printed on“.

At his website here, Germany’s new climate enfant terrible posted a report titled: The Future Of Our Climate In Europe (in German) where he fires blistering criticism at regional climate forecasts made by computer-models.

Worthless models – ocean currents are 100 to 1000 times more powerful than CO2

First Brandt takes a look at CO2 versus other climate factors. Brandt says that surely CO2 will have some impact over the long-term – over centuries, but over the shorter term (100 years) and on continental scales, CO2 plays nary a role compared to other factors like ocean currents:

At the continental level, ocean currents are especially capable of completely knocking our climate out of whack. In Europe, that would be of course the Gulf Stream. This has an influence factor on our climate that is 100-1000 in comparison to the long-term CO2 impact.

So how can we trust computer climate model forecasts made for the next 100 years? Can you leave out such factors like the sun, ocean cycles and volcanoes – which are all poorly understood – and still get a useful outlook? To answer this question Brandt uses a financial analogy (which Brandt knows something about, as he runs his own private meteorological services company):

Imagine you are preparing the financial plan for your company, but you completely forget the all-important factors of taxes and mandatory expenses for employee benefits. You’re sure to go bankrupt. That’s basically the appraoch used in the climate models and their prognoses. These models exclude numerous difficult details. Still, climatologists go out and hock their climate forecast maps of central Germany and Bavaria for the year 2060.

By now, any normal reader begins to understand just how dubious and worthless such forecasts truly are. Just months ago we recall how these climate forecasters predicted warm, mild winters for Europe, along with the end of the ski industry in the Alps. Now today, having their heads pulled out of the sand by meteorologists, the same climatologists are forecasting bitter cold winters in Europe. Gone suddenly is all the dreaded warming. If this to you all sounds like a swindle, you’re not alone.

Brandt tells us more about how climatologists behave:

Just a small change in the Gulf Stream results in Europe shivering, thus rendering obsolete all the plans made for a mild future. What’s even worse, many climate scientists know this, but still claim to make precise prognoses. The business with the future is really great, especially when the speculation involves no risk, or if others have to bear the costs of the forecasts.”

Brandt is sure that the climatologists of 2040 will need a good supply of excuses for the climatologists of today, and suggests some for the newspapers of 2040:

‘Well, that was the state of the science back then.’

or:

The models were correct, they just under-estimated this one factor.’

Brandt adds:

Perhaps you can send your suggestions for excuses to PIK in Potsdam.”

He then presents tables of the strengths of impacts of various climate drivers for Europe. We see that Europe’s climate is significantly coupled to the Gulf Stream. If the Gulf Stream were to weaken, then forget about mild winters. Winters in England could become like winters in Newfoundland. Brandt summarizes:

If you still haven’t heard from the climate debate which climate factors must be taken into account when making regional forecasts, it certainly isn’t CO2.”

Brandt does say that CO2 will have an impact over larger timescales, i.e. 1000 years. But who knows where the climate will be in 1000 years. The earth could be back into an ice age. The earth could also be obliterated by an asteroid. You choose the scenario! Brandt writes:

Over the very short term (2-50 years) and short-term (50-100 years) climate prognoses for continents, especially Europe, depend on a number of unpredictable factors. For the next 1000 years, the Gulf Stream is the decisive factor. Even changes in air currents have similar impacts as CO2 does. Over time, the earth’s orbital parameters, random volcanic eruptions, and, in a 1000 years, again the earth’s orbit will have huge impacts. That alone is already an explosive mixture for every climate computer model, in which the most important factor is still not even accounted for: the Gulf Stream.

If that doesn’t convince you that the models and claims made by climate institutes like PIK in Potsdam are useless crap at best, then you truly belong among the fundamentalists in the AGW religion.