Fritz Vahrenholt, one of Germany’s earliest green energy investors, has written an article for the Telegraph explaining why he is no longer convinced that the IPCC has made an adequate case for catastrophic global warming:
For many years, I was an active supporter of the IPCC and its CO2 theory. Recent experience with the UN’s climate panel, however, forced me to reassess my position. In February 2010, I was invited as a reviewer for the IPCC report on renewable energy. I realised that the drafting of the report was done in anything but a scientific manner. The report was littered with errors and a member of Greenpeace edited the final version. These developments shocked me. I thought, if such things can happen in this report, then they might happen in other IPCC reports too.
Vahrenholt goes on to ask some very pertinent questions regarding CO2, models and predictions, feedback mechanisms, solar effect and more that he says calls consensus into question:
Rather than being largely settled, there are more and more open climate questions which need to be addressed in an impartial and open-minded way.
Sadly, however, he ignores the money and the politics – the very reason that “the Science is Settled” was coined as a phrase in the first place – and veers back into green territory recommending research into underestimated climate drivers, rational decarbonization, energy efficiency and renewables (He owns one of Europe’s largest renewable energy companies… just a coincidence, surely).
To Vahrenholt and like-minded adherents, Climate Change is akin to Socialism among Progressives. When their plans fail and their policies are proven wrong, it’s not Socialism that’s the problem, it’s the people implementing it who just weren’t up to the task. Similarly, it isn’t Global Warming theory itself that Vahrenholt is reconsidering, it’s the shaky science that doesn’t adequately support his desired conclusion.