Talk:Fritz Vahrenholt

future tense still there -- in sentence about "mid-2012"
Only one sentence in this article mentions "RWE Innogy".

As of the current version of this article, (and at least 20 or so previous versions, all of which are more recent than mid-2012 ["!"], that sentence reads:"From February 2008 he was CEO of electric power company RWE subsidiary RWE Innogy, a post he will step down from in mid-2012."

IMHO the use of the present tense (in "he will step down") there, is WAY overdue for some refactoring, since it is now 2015, which is way past "mid-2012".

Is there any data on whether or not Mr. Vahrenholt did indeed "step down from" that "post" ... either "in mid-2012" or at some other time? If so, then I would be happy to just change (or, someone else could do it!) the future tense ("he will step down") to the past tense ("he stepped down"), in that sentence. (If appropriate.)

Otherwise, if there are no objections [that seem convincing or at least "reasonable" and "good faith"], then my intention is to change that sentence (the one that mentions "RWE Innogy") to read as follows:"From February 2008 he was CEO of electric power company RWE subsidiary RWE Innogy, a post from which he was expected to step down in mid-2012."

Any comments? :-) ! Thank you. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 20:01, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * It turns out Vahrenholt stepped up, from CEO to board chair. There were a bunch of articles published in Jan 2012 saying this would happen the following June. Finding a reliable citeable source that it happened is proving a little difficult.
 * In both this article and The German Wikipedia article, the cite number 1 title seems to translate as "Fritz Vahrenholt moves to Supervisory Board." But the URL is dead. The business magazine that published that article seems to be gone and its domain name reassigned.
 * An interview in Der Spiegel in June 2012 calls him "outgoing head" ("scheidender Chef des Ökostromkonzerns RWE Innogy"). He was questioned several times whether his contrary views on climate change were causing him to be forced out of management, and he says it was planned in his contract and he will remain on the board. But is no clear statement of what post he left and when. That information was kind of assumed.
 * Other articles published later ID him as former manager and other such things.
 * Vahrentholt is in a database that seems to be run by German magazine "Wirtschafts Woche", which I think is roughly "Business Week". It sets his ending date as CEO at June 2012. I will put that reference in the article, but somebody will probably have to clean it up as I don't know German.
 * Maybe somebody with access to archives of a German business newswire might be able to dig up a suitable cite.
 * And maybe somebody can find an archived copy of cite 1 this and in the German article.
 * M.boli (talk) 03:51, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

BLP noticeboard
Section = 109 BLP articles labelled "Climate Change Deniers" all at once. This article was placed in a "climate change deniers" category. After discussion on [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive232#109_BLP_articles_labelled_.22Climate_Change_Deniers.22_all_at_once WP:BLPN] and [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_October_16#Category:Climate_Change_deniers WP:CFD] the category was deleted. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150620050818/http://www.wirtschaftsmagazin-ruhr.de/index.php?id=50&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=2400&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=17&cHash=02edcee332 to http://www.wirtschaftsmagazin-ruhr.de/index.php?id=50&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=2400&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=17&cHash=02edcee332
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Is realclimate off limits?
Not long ago somebody added an assertion that some predictions in Die Kalte Sonne have not panned out. But there was no citation, so I found an article by Stefan Rahmstorf Record Heat Despite a Cold Sun. Which has reverted for violating wp:BLPSPS (self-published sources used as references in BLPs). Come to think of it, possibly this article should contain a pointer to Vahrenholt and Lüning's web site in any case. M.boli (talk) 21:03, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I agree that Realclimate.org should be counted as a self-published blog. It is moderated by a collective of leading climate scientists, and its posts are generally written by the scientists.
 * However if people don't agree, and the citation remains deleted, then what about the original assertion?
 * Should I tag it as cite-needed?
 * Or should I delete it?
 * Another possibility might be to restore the Realclimate article, and note that Vahrenholt and Lüning are still sticking by their theory. A citation for that would be recent articles in their site diekaltesonne.de.
 * Note: Alternate references specifically mentioning that predictions in Die Kalte Sonne have been wrong would be useful. But I found only two, and both cite the Rahmstorf piece. M.boli (talk)
 * And Vahrenholt blogs (surprise) about how wrong Stefan Rahmstorf is about matters climatological, for example here. So we have two people with academic qualifications (Vahrenholt has a chemistry doctorate which we don't mention) who criticize each other's work via self-published sources. In multiple discussions on BLP:Talk, most recently here, an overwhelming majority of editors have been against adding an exception for scientific blogs, so neither Rahmstorf's blog nor Vahrenholt's blog is acceptable. As for the content that was cited, which was added by Meerwind7, policy says it should be removed "immediately" but perhaps someone can find a reliable source. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:19, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Righto. Vahrenholt's doctorate is mentioned in the biographical part of the article. Indeed, Vahrenholt is sticking by his theory, that was what I was suggesting we might include if we had a reference to RealClimate. I'll put a fact template on it right now. M.boli (talk) 01:24, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Yes, the doctorate is mentioned, I erred. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

"undo two edits with dishonest edit summaries"
I just undid two edits. They had the edit summaries "Improved accuracy, updated content." and "Fixed spelling error." - the second of which, in articles about pseudoscience or pseudoscientists, is often a disguise for edits introducing pseudoscience POV. Sure thing, when I looked at the diff from both edits, there were the WP:PROFRINGE POV changes, so I undid both, saying "undo two edits with dishonest edit summaries". But then I noticed that the second one was actually really a sort of spelling error - replacing the British "sceptic" by the American "skeptic". And "improved accuracy", although untrue, may have been the user's honest opinion. So, my edit summary was in error. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:03, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Deutschen Wildtier Stiftung
I think the story of Vahrenholt's disassocation from Deutschen Wildtier Stiftung probably belongs in this article, but it seems more nuanced than the original (now deleted) edit said.

The article in Die Welt says that Vahrenholt sent a letter espousing climate do-almost-nothing policies to all the legislators, and he was fired because the organization did not want to be associated with climate skepticism. The article also says the organization is in turmoil.

To my mind, this strikes me as odd. Vahrenholt is a prominent denier, co-author of a book espousing a theory that human contribution to climate change is much smaller than natural changes. How does Wildtier Stiftung appoint Vahrenholt as director and not be associated with climate skepticism? But that question is unimportant. I think that a more accurate summary of the firing could be in this article. Maybe there are other references which clarify whether the letter went out over the organization's name? And certainly the subsequent turmoil deserves to be mentioned.

To be clear, De Welt says about Vahrenholt's letter (from Google Translate):

In this letter, the 70-year-old does not doubt the human influence on global warming. But the honorary professor argued that "a net-zero target figure for global CO2 emissions is not required at all". According to his models, all that needs to be achieved is that global emissions do not continue to rise after 2030. This does not make the industrialized countries “free from emission reductions”, but reduces the dangers of a more radical climate protection policy for the economy and jobs. Vahrenholt took similar positions in interviews.

Anybody want to take a crack at it? I don't speak (or more accurately, read) very much German. M.boli (talk) 15:10, 12 October 2020 (UTC)