With Germany scouring the world for supplies of oil and gas and firing up dormant coal power stations, one of its most distinguished atmospheric scientists, Professor Hermann Harde, has castigated politicians for reacting to increasingly shrill climate horror stories and “believing they can save the world”. Many of the research studies and “horror scenarios” are not based on a secure physical foundation, he says, “but rather represent computer games that reflect what was fed in”. The idea that humans can control the climate with their CO2 emissions is said to be an “absolute delusion”.
In Professor Harde’s view, there exists considerable doubt about a “scientifically untenable thesis” of purely human-caused climate change, “and it is completely wrong to assume that 97% of climate scientists, or even more, would assume only anthropogenic warming”. In his view, climate and energy policy can only gain popular acceptance when they are based on reliable knowledge, “and not on speculations or belief”. Harde retired a few years ago from Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg as Professor of Experimental Physics after a long career in science academia.
For many years, Germany’s politicians have been able to make virtuous green noises by closing nuclear power stations and banning exploration for fossil fuel. At the same time, the country started importing large quantities oil and gas from an unstable Russia. The war in Ukraine has suddenly brought home to Germany, and the EU, the sheer stupidity of this dangerous policy.
In Harde’s view, the move to impose ‘climate emergency’ policies was led by competition between different research groups to outdo each other predicting horror scenarios. Alarming predictions attracted media attention, “and our decision-makers felt obliged to quickly react”. But, noted Harde, it is absolutely clear that without a reliable and sufficient energy supply, “Germany and many other countries that take such a path will end in anarchy”.