Potsdam and German media embarrassed by cold weather, can't get stories straight (as American dollar signs float away like so many snow flakes)...

Potsdam official stated Cancun was about 'redistributing wealth': "Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.... One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. "...

• 12/23/10, "Potsdam Climate Institute now says to expect "warmer colder" winters!" P. Gosselin, No Tricks Zone

"The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the German media are now in full panic mode. They can no longer get their stories straight.

Desperate to stem the flood of doubt now sweeping Germany, as the country is gripped by its harshest December in 100 years, including record snowfalls in Potsdam, the hyper-

• alarmist PIK and the German media are now throwing all they’ve got to explain away
  
• the embarrassing cold.

For years they preached endlessly that Germany would be experiencing balmy, southern European-type winters. Snow indeed had been relegated to the history books. The tables have since turned.

Everybody had predicted a brutal winter

Back in late summer and fall, meteorologists like Piers Corbyn, Joe Bastardi, and other German private forecasters, were all predicting cold winters ahead. Even Russian and Polish scientists had forecast the possibility of the harshest winter in a 1000 years.

• But the PIK and Met Office climatologists scoffed.
  

• The Met Office in England even went so far as to forecast a mild and wet winter, again.

So far, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Germany have experienced one of the worst Decembers on record, if not the worst.

PIK suddenly sees the writing on the wall

By early November even the climate scientists at the notoriously dogmatic PIK eventually recognized the writing on the wall, and so

• scrambled to fabricate a cartoonish “new study”,
  

authored by PIK scientist Vladimir Petuchov, that suddenly predicted cold winters would be likely for Europe, and

• claimed it was consistent with global warming.
  

• Their models had just uncovered it.

The media blitz – conflicting stories

The heavy snows and extreme cold hit as expected. The public was caught off guard and demanded an explanation. And so the propaganda machinery switched into high gear. FOCUS online, two days ago on Tuesday, had the title Colder Winters Because of Global Warming.

• Der Spiegel and other major news outlets, along with radio and TV, all joined in spreading the PIK Soviet-like propaganda -
  

• all reporting this sudden new discovery by PIK.

Here Focus wrote how a PIK computer model shows how the disappearance of sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas influences the climate in northern continental regions. Less sea ice in these seas leads to release of energy into the atmosphere.

• "As a result, large-scale changes in air currents could occur so that polar winds make their way to Europe and North Asia, whereby the
• probability of cold winters triples.”

Emphasis added. They (PIK) aren’t sure and are simply floating this out. The study’s lead author Vladimir Petuchov then adds a line, which I think will become infamous down the road:

"Hard winters do not refute global warming, instead they more so confirm it.”

So, according to their latest climate models, global warming will lead to colder European winters. The probability of the such is 3 times higher. Now enters Stefan Rahmstorf.

No no…stop! Warming leads to warmer colder winters!

Meanwhile Stefan Rahmstorf is watching the back door. No matter what happens, they’ll all be able to say “We were right”. Also on Tuesday, the online Die Welt quotes Rahmstorf, also from the PIK, in an article titled:

• Hard Winter Not a Sign of Climate Change. (Petuchov to the contrary said that it was).

We will certainly have to anticipate milder winters rather than cold ones.”

Die Welt then adds:

PIK scientist Prof. Stephan Rahmstorf also points out that the “cold“ winters have gotten warmer.”

Stop right there. These guys can’t even get their stories straight! One PIK scientist says we’ll get warmer winters, while the other one says we’ll get colder ones. Well, which is it? Rahmstorf seems to be saying we’ll get colder winters that will be warmer. Oh, now I get it…global warming will now lead to warmer colder winters!

It was all recently discovered by their climate models

Dr. Peter Werner, also of the PIK, said on NDR Radio (also on Tuesday) that

• their climate models had just recently uncovered the Barents and Kara Sea phenomena,
  

• claiming it’s all consistent with man-made climate change.

Tuesday was a busy press release day for the alarmists in Potsdam. It also appears to have been a very chaotic one too.

Conclusion

So what can we conclude from all this? No matter what the climate does, they will be able to say their models predicted it. Falsification is impossible. Jared Olar of Echo-Pilot.com here says it best:

The natural sciences have terms for that kind of hypothesis. ‘Unfalsifiable’ is one of them.

‘Unscientific’ is another.

An idea may be true, but if it is incapable of being ‘falsified’ or proven wrong, then whatever else that idea is,

it certainly isn’t science.”"

'Hat tip for links: Dirk Maxeiner'

• Reference, confirming above article, 12/24/10, "Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists," Independent UK, by Steve Conor

Reference, 11/18/10, "IPCC official: Climate policy is about redistributing the world's wealth," GWPF

via Climate Depot