Gradually, the ice seems to be melting – if not at the polar caps, then at least in the climate debates: for the first time, a widely recognized expert has changed camps. Lennart Bengtsson, the Swedish climatologist, meteorologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, has now joined the GWPF’s academic advisory council. Bengtsson’s arguments do not sound like the radicalism of old age. Rather, he exhorts his colleagues to be more prudent and empirical. For the uninitiated, this approach may be comforting, because the climate debate has long been a highly complex issue. Now, for the first time, an expert like Bengtsson admits that he and others like him fare little better: how the world’s climate will develop in coming years and decades remains pure speculation. --Hans Jörg Müller, Basler Zeitung, 7 May 2014
