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At the online Die Welt Prof. Josef Reichholf penned a commentary on climate science and the abuse by a German government attempting to act as a ministry of truth: “Quickly one gets labeled ‘climate denier’“.

Leading German zoologist Prof. Josef Reichholf slams data manipulations, German government acting as “Ministry of Truth”. Photo credit: Josef Reichholf, here.

The former Technical University of Munich zoologist/evolutionary biologist is considered among the top of his field. In his piece he first casts climate models into doubt, pointing out that temperature observations in fact diverge from the model projections. He sharply criticizes scientists who hold climate models as the truth and who fudge or cherry-pick the data so that they fit a predetermined outcome: “The data that fit are the right ones!”

Objective commentary “hardly possible”

He reminds that science entails skepticism, and if that is scorned, then something has to be very wrong with the science. Reichholf blasts the hostile environment in which skeptical journalists find themselves in Germany whenever they look at the data objectively. He writes:

An objective journalistic commentary here is hardly possible. Anyone who dares to do so risks being labelled a climate skeptic‘ or even a ‘climate denier’.”

Ministry of Truth

Reichholf slams Germany’s Ministry of Environment, which in 2013 defamed skeptical science journalist Michael Miersch (and other) in a government information brochure, where the Ministry wrote that they could not be trusted with climate science, portraying them as “spreaders of half-truths and misinformation“. He asks:

“Are we on the way to a Ministry of Truth?”

Reichholf concludes:

No office, also no federal ministry, can posses the dictatorial power over the progress of science. Critical journalism is needed here. Very much so!”