This is Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Luning, 'Die Kalte Sonne' (the cold Sun). It has now been published in English under the title 'The Neglected Sun'. In this, two formerly staunch CAGW scientists took a breath and decided climate models have been hopelessly distorted by the IPCC and their environmentalist bedfellows. Interestingly, they do not dispute that co2 causes warming – it is the degree of that warming that concerns them (and the way climate science virtually ignores the role of the Sun). The authors cite over 900 sources (all of them peer reviewed, assuming that has any meaning – but principally to counter alarmist criticism). Their conclusion is that the Sun plays an important role that is under estimated – see http://notrickszone.com/2013/07/15/controversial-skeptic-book-die-kalte-…
This is interesting as it comes at a time when an Earth facing CME has distorted Piers Corbyn's forecasts at www.weatheraction.com which he freely acknowledges. The jet stream has now been shunted above northern Scotland.
Vahrenholt, a chemistry professor, was heavily involved in renewable energy installations, responsible for a number of wind farms. After a few years he was puzzled as to why the wind farms had not lived up to expectations – the wind was not turning the blades as much as the sales geeks had claimed. The wind was not as windy as it was cracked up to be by the wind experts – and the windy politicos. He came across a paper by Lockwood who said Europe's climate correlated with solar activity – and as the Sun had been quiet over recent years so too was the wind.
In 2009 he was asked by the IPCC to review a draft report on renewable energy as a result of his experience with wind farms. They were not to know he had grown restless with the hype but when he identified 293 errors and deficiencies in the report nobody wanted to know. Luning, a geologist aquaintance, gave him a copy of Andrew Montford's book, 'The Hockey Stick Illusion' – and it opened his eyes. Luning and Vahrenholt went on to write Die Kalte Sonne.
Some media sources are now hedging bets – publishing the odd sceptical article (just in case the CAGW bubble bursts on their watch). The latest to do so is The Spectator – see www.spectator.co.uk/features/8959941/whats-wrong-with-the-met-office/ where Rupert Darwall makes a stinging attack on climate scientists and the IPCC (many of them working for the Met Office). This clearly stung the powers that be at the Met Office as they came back, fast and furious (but missing the boat) at http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/the-spectator-how-accurate… … and they obviously think they are rather good as after all the government has just given a million pounds of our hard earned taxes in order to purchase a new super computer – to get their models wrong even faster.
Bishop Hill (home of Andrew Montford) has both stories. It also has another interesting story – on the Sahel – see www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/7/14/the-greening-of-the-sahel.html … and harks back to something I posted some months ago, a concerted attempt to encourage plants and trees to grow in the savannah belt (the Sahel, or Sudan) that seperates the Sahara desert from the equatorial rain forest. He quotes an article on the subject by Geoffrey Lean, a noted environmentalist and CAGW convert. It has been recognised for several years that co2 is beneficial to plants – but Lean is not concerned so much with this aspect. He is referring to the deliberate encouragement of allowing trees to grow (stopping animals nibbling at the shoots and humans from using young trees as fuel). It seems to have worked as trees have encouraged higher crop yields – in Lean's view. The issue is a bit more complicated than presented at this blog and is in fact a deliberate policy by the politicos in the region who got together and decided to try and do something about the growth of the desert – overtaking the Sahel as the human and animal population grew disproportionately (and so on).