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UPDATE: See debate video in German: http://www.swissecs.ch/de/live-blog/3. All Stocker had for arguments was: 1) insisting Mann’s phony hockey stick was still valid 2) claiming there’s scientific consensus, and 3) we can trust the models! Their science is that bad, folks. I never would have believed it. The IPCC is really looking like a comedy act.

One of the main features at this year’s Swiss Climate and Energy Summit (Bern Switzerland, 12-14 September) was a debate between IPCC leading climate scientist Prof. Thomas Stocker and renewable energy expert and chemist Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt.

Needless to say the atmosphere was electrified, with an audience of almost 400. Unfortunately there still is no video of this debate, but the online Berner Zeitung daily (BZ) of Bern wrote up a report, and yes, they too had to concede that skeptic Vahrenholt won the debate.

The BZ called Vahrenholt “rhetorically tough” and wrote he needed “only 10 seconds to warm up his argumentation machinery”.

In the article, the BZ comes across as being no fan of Vahrenholt, calling his arguments “luring” and claiming he bases his skepticism on a “mind construction which laymen have difficulty detaching themselves from”. Vahrenholt’s findings shows that the sun is at least as responsible as, if not more, than CO2 for the global warming of the last decades and that solar activity will provide us with extra decades for revamping our energy supply.

The BZ writes that Vahrenholt believes “leading scientists of the UN IPCC colossally exaggerated the dimensions of the warming in their prognoses. And with them, they have legitimised a political hysteria, which has led to a grotesque wave of subsidies.” The BZ quotes Vahrenholt:

‘We need more sense of proportion,’ and not the madness we find in countries like Germany, which ‘gets as much sunshine as Alaska’ and hyper-subsidizes photovoltaic plantations.”

The BZ writes that Vahrenholt got loud applause.

Meanwhile, warmist Thomas Stocker found it difficult to maintain his cool, calling Vahrenholt’s science “audacious” and that the stagnant global temperatures over the last (15) years “is normal for climatic warming phases.”

Clearly Vahrenholt had Stocker on the defensive. The BZ writes:

Stocker also made it clear that progress in climate science always raises new questions.”

Indeed this is true. So how can the science be settled and why do the warmist scientists go to such extremes to avoid having to face them?

The applause for Stocker, the BZ writes, was quiet.

The outcome aside, we at least have to give Stocker credit for showing up to debate in public.