Hans von Storch

51
Hans von Storch bigraphy, stories - German meteorologist

Hans von Storch : biography

13 August 1949 –

Hans von Storch (born 13 August 1949 in Wyk auf Föhr, Schleswig-Holstein) is a German climate scientist. He is a Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, and (since 2001) Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre (previously: GKSS Research Center) in Geesthacht, Germany. He is a member of the advisory boards of the journals Journal of Climate and Annals of Geophysics.

Opinion on global warming

He said that global warming exists:

"Based on the scientific evidence, I am convinced that we are facing anthropogenic climate change brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."

He is also known for an article in Der Spiegel he co-wrote with Nico Stehr, which states that:

"Scientific research faces a crisis because its public figures are overselling the issues to gain attention in a hotly contested market for newsworthy information."
"The alarmists think that climate change is something extremely dangerous, extremely bad and that overselling a little bit, if it serves a good purpose, is not that bad."

In December 2009, he expressed concern about the credibility of climate scientists and compared Global Warming alarmism to the German Waldsterben (Forest dieback) hype of the 1980s: Guest post by Hans Von Storch at Roger A. Pielke, Jr.’s Blog, 5 December 2009

Research about the forest die back in Germany may serve as an example at the other end of the spectrum. The science of forest damages was in the 1980s heavily politicized, and used as support for a specific preconceived "good" policy of environmental protection. The resulting overselling and dramatization broke down in the 1990s, and news about adverse developments in German forests is now a hard sell in Germany. An observer wrote in 2004: "The damage for the scientists is enormous. Nobody believes them any longer." Of course, the damage was not only limited to the forest researchers, but also to other environmental scientists and politicians as well.

In January 2011, Storch was counted among the 100 most influential Germans by the Focus magazine for being a "climate realist".

In June 20, 2013, Storch has stated "So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year."Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter (June 20, 2013). . Der Spiegel. Retrieved June 26, 2013.

Selected publications

Donald Duck

In 1977, Hans von Storch co-founded a 100-member Donald Duck Club, defending Donald Duck against the accusations of indecent behavior. Between 1976 and 1985 he was publisher of a magazine on Donald Duck, Der Hamburger Donaldist.

Climate Research controversy

In 2003 von Storch was appointed as editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Research (having been on the editorial board since 1994), with effect from 1 August 2003, after a controversial article (Soon and Baliunas 2003) had raised questions about the decentralised review process (with no editor-in-chief); and the editorial policy of one editor, Chris de Freitas. Von Storch drafted and circulated an editorial on the new regime, reserving for himself the right to censor manuscripts accepted by the editors, but following the publisher’s refusal to publish it unless all editors serving on the board endorsed the new policy, von Storch resigned four days before he was due to start his new position. Four other editors later followed. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.”