German State Court Orders Stefan Rahmstorf To Cease And Desist “Violating Journalist’s Personal Rights”

No Tricks Zone
P. Gosselin

Bitter conflict with climate skeptics has moved to the newspapers and media. Earlier this year, German science review magazine here andblog, the first on 20 February and the second on 26 April 2010. He also had a letter published at the FR on March 25, 2010, where he called the accusations made in Meichsner’s story false and made up. He attacked Meischsner, implying that she played loose with the facts, and that she had even lifted part of her text from skeptic blogs.

Rahmstorf even convinced the FR to publish a 2-page retraction on April 30, 2010, which, according to the WPK Quarterly, claimed that Meichsner’s accusations aimed at the IPCC were “part of a campaign by skeptics” designed “to discredit the IPCC”.

According to the WPK, Rahmstorf wrote in his February 20 blog piece that Meichsner’s story represented:

…a media scandal where a few journalists mislead the public with completely exaggerated or freely made up pseudo-scandals. Too many among them are naive and go along without seeing through the farce.”

Rahmstorf also aimed harsh words at the journalist’s integrity and credibility, suggesting that she never bothered to read the IPCC report and that she did things that never happened. For example, the WPK Quarterly writes:

He accused her of uncritically copying text from [Richard] North and [Jonathan] Leake.”

As credibility and reputation are especially important for the survival of a free-lance journalist, and based on that she had stuck to the facts in her article, Meichsner felt Rahmstorf had obviously ventured too far in his response to her story, and so took the matter to court demanding that Rahmstorf be forced to cease and desist making the untrue claims.

So what judgement did the State Court in Cologne hand down? WPK Quarterly provides that (my English legal translation – you’ll forgive me for not being a lawyer):

In the name of the People, 9 February of this year, a judgement was issued and entails: The Defendant is judged by the 28th Civil Chamber of the State Court of Cologne “to (…) cease and desist from arousing the impression that

a) the Plaintiff copied from bloggers Richard North and journalist Jonathan Leake;
b) the Plaintiff had the defendent informed through the editorial board of the Frankfurter Rundschau that he should remove the name of the Plaintiff from the blog story of the Defendant ’FR Retracts Article Against IPCC’ and to name only the Frankfurter Rundschau. Furthermore, the Defendant must pay the plaintiff 511.58 euro plus interest and bear two thirds of the costs of the legal dispute. The Chamber determined that the grounds were untrue allegation of facts that violated her personal rights.”
WPK Quarterly wrote at length about this story and featured it in its up-front editorial, deeming the overall case merits special attention because:
“…a free journalist was able to successfully defend herself against the malice that a renown scientist who had dumped on her.”

Although Rahmstorf lost in court, he was able to chalk up an off-court victory. When asked if she would report more on climate change, the WPK writes:

For now she has had enough of climate science. She doesn’t write about it any more.”

Indeed it’s not a topic for those with thin skin and people who can’t afford to put their careers on the line. Expressing skepticism over a politically correct issue in Germany indeed leads to malicious nattacks. Like the old saying goes: Sometimes it’s much more dangerous to speak up against wrongdoing than it is to commit it.

UN Climate Body Struggling to Pinpoint Rising Sea Levels

By Axel Bojanowski

REUTERS

Contradictory Studies

The United Nations' forecast of how quickly global sea levels will rise this century is vital in determining how much money might be needed to combat the phenomenon. But predictions by researchers vary wildly, and the attempt to find consensus has become fractious.

It is a number which will ultimately establish how billions in taxpayer money will be spent -- and it is one which is the subject of heated debate, both among politicians and scientists.

When the next report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is issued in two years, it will include a forecast for how high the world's oceans might rise by 2100. With 146 million people in the world currently living less than one meter above sea level, the forecast will be vital in determining how much money governments must spend on measures to protect people from the rising waters and to resettle those in the most acute danger.

Eighteen scientists from 10 countries are involved in the task, and their first step is to determine which of the myriad studies relating to climate change's effect on ocean levels to consider. In the end, they are to establish a possible range, with the maximum being the most decisive -- and most contested -- number. Even more challenging, the estimates currently differ by almost five meters (16.5 feet).

The last IPCC report, which was issued in 2007, forecast an ocean level rise of up to 59 centimeters by the end of the century. Now, the UN experts must once again sift through hundreds of reports, and the haggling over their findings is not unlike the bargaining for the best price at the bazaar. On the one hand, researchers have published forecasts that are far higher than the result reported in the last IPCC report. On the other, sea level measurements have yet to prove any meaningful rise though there is agreement that they are, on global average, rising.

Outdoing Each Other's Predictions
 
In recent days, the debate over the IPCC forecast has heated up. Some 4,000 experts gathered in Melbourne, Australia last week for a meeting of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). And it seems almost as though they are in competition to outdo one-another's predictions.
NASA climate researcher James Hansen, for example, warns in a paper published this month that sea levels could rise by five meters in the next 90 years -- nine times higher than the maximum cited in the last IPCC report. He insists that he has found indications that sea levels in the future could rise by as much as five centimeters per year.

Hansen, say some climatologists, is risking his reputation with such an extreme forecast. Three years ago, researchers found that a rise of over two meters per century is impossible because so much ice simply can't melt in such a short time. Furthermore, current measurements show a rise of just three millimeters per year.

An additional recent study, written by Jim Houston from the Engineer Research Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi and Bob Dean from the University of Florida in Gainsville for the Journal of Coastal Research, argues that sea levels have risen steadily for the last 100 years -- and that there has been no acceleration at all in recent years.

A reply was not long in coming. In the current issue of the Journal of Coastal Research, Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research argues that Houston and Dean only included sea level calculations beginning in the 1930s. He says that if one chooses a year from the previous century, an accelerated rise can be seen.

Fluctuation