Tom Nelson captures this delicious irony, apparently it isn’t a travesty any more, it’s the sun.
Has Global Warming Stalled? | Royal Meteorological Society
[Trenberth] “Warming” really means heating, and so it can be manifested in many ways. Rising surface temperatures are just one manifestation. Melting Arctic sea ice is another. So is melting of glaciers and other land ice that contribute to rising sea levels. Increasing the water cycle and invigorating storms is yet another…Another prominent source of natural variability in the Earth’s energy imbalance is changes in the sun itself, seen most clearly as the sunspot cycle. From 2005 to 2010 the sun went into a quiet phase and the warming energy imbalance is estimated to have dropped by about 10 to 15%.
…Human induced global warming really kicked in during the 1970s, and warming has been pretty steady since then…Focusing on the wiggles and ignoring the bigger picture of unabated warming is foolhardy, but one promoted by climate change deniers. Global sea level keeps marching up at a rate of over 30 cm per century since 1992 (when global measurements via altimetry on satellites were made possible), and that is perhaps a better indicator that global warming continues unabated.
Kevin Trenberth’s REAL travesty | Climate Sanity
[Trenberth in Climategate1, 2009] The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
Uncertainty about “invigorating storms” must be the new unaccountable travesty.
From an interview after the Moore, OK tornado in Scientific American:
[Q:] I know this kind of extreme weather is part of the territory in the middle of the country, but is climate change going to make such extreme weather more likely or more powerful?
[A: Trenberth] Of course, tornadoes are very much a weather phenomenon. They come from certain thunderstorms, usually supercell thunderstorms that are in a wind shear environment that promotes rotation. That environment is most common in spring across the U.S. when the storm track is just the right distance from the Gulf [of Mexico] and other sources of moisture.
The main climate change connection is via the basic instability of the low-level air that creates the convection and thunderstorms in the first place. Warmer and moister conditions are the key for unstable air. The oceans are warmer because of climate change.
The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10 percent effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 33 percent effect in terms of damage. (It is highly nonlinear, for 10 percent it is 1.1 to the power of three = 1.33.) So there is a chain of events, and climate change mainly affects the first link: the basic buoyancy of the air is increased. Whether that translates into a supercell storm and one with a tornado is largely chance weather.
Those pterodactyls must have been dodging tornadoes right and left. –AGF
?????
Travesty Trenberth continues to dance on the head of a pin of ever reducing size.
Q: Are tornado much more a weather phenomenon than are gentle breezes, gentle rain, late snowstorms, and a thousand other observations?
I suggest a “weather phenomenon scale”, like the Fujita scale that measures how much the phenomenon is like weather…so a warm summer day with fair weather cumulus is a WP0, an unusually cold spring and late thaw is a WP1, a warm winter with an early thaw is a WP4, and a tropical storm that strikes a heavily populated, and badly planned section of coastline coincident with high tide is a WP5. You get the idea, a WP5 is a “real weather phenomenon.”
Isn’t lapse rate; or the juxtaposition of dry air against moist; or cold and dry against warm and moist the real issue here?
Is this the first of the “Walking It Back Waltz”?
Does Kevin have something to back this up with, or is he speaking his opinion ex-rectum?
You’d think that Kevin would know that the ‘key for unstable air’ is lighter air underlying heavier air (for whatever reason).
So when it is warming, the sun is irrelevant. A laughable proposition.
While not warming, the sun is right back in fashion.
Classic.
The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10 percent effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 33 percent effect in terms of damage. (It is highly nonlinear, for 10 percent it is 1.1 to the power of three = 1.33.)
That 10% (from where?) with a power of three (from where?) cuts both ways.
If what he says is true, the we should see 33% increases in tornadic and hurricane activity.
We see nothing of the sort.
So work it backwards. What IF we see a 10% increase in activity? By Trenberth’s algebra climate change can only be (1.1^(1/3))-1) or 3% of instability.
We don’t even see a 10% increase in major storms. There is evidence and theory that there has been a decrease in such weather events.
[Trenberth in Climategate1, 2009] The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
Don’t fool yourself, you can’t even account for the warming.
11 years of data and we know that in 100 years that seas will be 30cm higher? I wish mutual funds worked the same way.
He’s like Wile E. Coyote, still running a good while after he’s already over the cliff.
Pulling (expletive) straight out of his (expletive), again I see….
So “Another prominent source of natural variability in the Earth’s energy imbalance is changes in the sun itself, seen most clearly as the sunspot cycle. From 2005 to 2010 the sun went into a quiet phase and the warming energy imbalance is estimated to have dropped by about 10 to 15%.”
What are the other sources of natural variability? Maybe if we can find them all they will add up to 100%
Good grief… that made my eyes cross. From where on earth did this creep into the sunlight:
It is highly nonlinear, for 10 percent it is 1.1 to the power of three = 1.33.
Is this a new attempt to say, “Look, we know AGW is tiny compared to what we said it would be back when you believed us implicitly, but it really punches above its weight. Trust me.”?
And,
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”
I guess his plan is to retreat to NZ and hide amongst the culturally correct.
He is an excellent example of government funded education.
Absolutely astounding someone so accomplished could talk this way. It’s like he is completely in a fabricated model world and takes no heed of real-world data with those tornado statements.
I have to assume by “damage” – a pure-science climate term if there ever was one – he is using the tried and true climate measurement of DOLLARS. Because, indeed, the only place where you can find an increasing graph related to tornadoes is that one. So the graphs that say the strength and frequency of tornadoes are not increasing are irrelevant but the amount of damage they do, that’s up, and CO2 is the cause.
Dumbfounded.
So when it is warming, the sun is irrelevant. A laughable proposition.
While not warming, the sun is right back in fashion.
Classic.
———————————————————————————————–
Great statement.
And Gleick and the likes have the gall to say that so called ‘Skeptics’ cherry pick what they want. They are cartoon masters: Gleick-ity-Gleik …… barba trick!
Don’t ask me why, but when I read what he said, images of a top hat, cane, and tap shoes came to my mind.
the irony is they finally came up with a gimmick to elevate their science from laughing stock…
….weathermen to climate scientist…to something that at least sounds credible
and ended up making bigger fools of themselves
Surely there has to come a point when real scientists actually respond to this kind of nonsense.
Another prominent source of natural variability in the Earth’s energy imbalance is changes in the sun itself, seen most clearly as the sunspot cycle.
Next thing he has to learn is how to calculate the Natural Variability and how it works
Here is the graphic illustration:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NaturalVariability.htm
NOAA:
”The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
Kevin Trenberth:
“We find exactly the same sort of flat periods in climate model projections, lasting easily up to 15years in length.”
What am I missing?
SST is going down so his argument falls in the water.it is the cooling from the top causing the increased differential between poles and equator.
“Global sea level keeps marching up at a rate of over 30 cm per century since 1992….”
lol
Well Kevin Trenberth must know that the answer to his missing heating (verb) is right in front of his face.
Experiment:- Go to any location in the generally inhabited or inhabitable region of the earth; maybe that’s between +/- 60 deg. latitudes or so.
Do this on any day of the year.
Experimental preconditions: clear sky, no clouds above about 30 degrees above the horizon.
Time ; any time within about 3 hours before or after local noon..
Experimental procedure: point your broad band radiometer more or less directly at the sun; which should be visible, and measure the incident irradiance (W/m^2) reaching the earth surface, wherever the hell it is that you went.
NOWHERE will you ever get a measurement, that is within +/- 20% of the stated value that Kevin Trenberth claims you should get (izzat 240 W/m^2 or 250).
There you go Kevin; that’s where your missing heating (verb) is.
If you don’t get a reading of around 1,000 W/m^2, you simply don’t know how to follow instructions.
“Warmer and moister conditions are the key for unstable air.” Absolutely no mention that a tornado forms when warm and COOL air meet.
If you’ve ever been in a tornado producing storm, one of the most remarkable things is feeling the temperature drop remarkably fast.
Kev is saying that before 2005 higher solar forcing was responsible for how much of the warming ?
ckb says:
I have to assume by “damage” – a pure-science climate term if there ever was one – he is using the tried and true climate measurement of DOLLARS. Because, indeed, the only place where you can find an increasing graph related to tornadoes is that one. So the graphs that say the strength and frequency of tornadoes are not increasing are irrelevant but the amount of damage they do, that’s up, and CO2 is the cause.
Dumbfounded.
Why dumbfounded? That actually makes sense.
CO2 is produced by the use of fossil fuels, and produces greater plant growth. Together, these two factors act to produce a larger, wealthier population. The larger the population is, the more likely it is that some part of it will intersect with an extreme weathe event. The wealthier the population is, the greater the value of the stuff that gets knocked over.
See, CO2 is eeeeeevilllllll …
But somehow the number of F4/5’s have been decreasing. I guess they’re hiding along with the heat.
He can’t get anything right can he ?? He even calls people who don’t deny climate change climate change deniers. Has he ever got anything right ??
What a fourth-rate (if that) scientific doofus.
“Who ever told you you could work with men ??” … Ricky Roma, Glengarry, Glen Ross
VERY bad language alert (sorry Mods, please delete if it’s too OTT, but it really is how I feel about this cretin, and it did win a Pulitzer Prize for David Mamet):
[snip – policy violation – multiple sockpuppet identities including: Realist2, Gina, Peeved, Realist2, and now “NotAGolfer”, banned, – mod]
[snip – policy violation – multiple sockpuppet identities including: Realist2, Gina, Peeved, Realist2, and now “NotAGolfer”, banned, – mod]
“The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10 percent effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 33 percent effect in terms of damage. (It is highly nonlinear, for 10 percent it is 1.1 to the power of three = 1.33.) ”
This is again a completely baffling stupidity by a key warmist. The energy of wind rises with the third power of its speed. How is the energy contained in a wind related to damage? Under a certain threshold not much at all will happen in terms of damage. Over that threshold your building is likely to be totalled. Yes, it’s nonlinear but that’s the only thing he got right.
These people seem to think the moment they throw a number at a journalist they can from there make up anything they want to.
James Evans says:
May 22, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Surely there has to come a point when real scientists actually respond to this kind of nonsense.
When your adversary is digging himself a hole, don’t stop him.
When the whole house of AGW collapses, perhaps Trenberth can ‘Take the 5th Amendment’ and refuse to incriminate himself, like the Obama IRS administrations Lois Lerner has just done to preclude her testimony to a Congressional hearing on Obamas IRS targeting political groups opposed to his socialist agenda. Now there is where some real heat is building!
MtK
How are we warming oceans that have about 100000x the heat capacity of the atmosphere with the atmosphere? Most heat rises not sinks to sea level. Even if all the heat fell into the oceans it would take thousands of years to raise their temperatures.
Kevin Kilty says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:17 am
Oh yes, and from the temperatures here in Idaho, I can guarantee we’ll be sending more cold dry air toward the Midwest.
Werner Brozek says:
May 22, 2013 at 12:23 pm
He conveniently forgot to tell you that’s the consequence of pulling the plug.
Or I could drop the humor and call Trenberth a doggone out-and-out LIAR!
Has anybody here ever heard of a “climate model projection” from the Warmistas flat-lining for any significant period of time?? I certainly haven’t.
“The main climate change connection is via the basic instability of the low-level air that creates the convection and thunderstorms in the first place. Warmer and moister conditions are the key for unstable air. The oceans are warmer because of climate change.”
The only problem with that is the Gulf of Mexico which was the origin for the warm air is very cold for this time of year (click on the ENSO/SST link in the right column –>>> and go to the SST anomalies map). The real reason for the severe instability was that the cold front was also exceptionally cold for this time of year. So both the warm sector and the cold sector were trying to out-do each other in cold anomaly. As is pointed out it is the contrast between the layers and the wind-shear that lead to the severe instability and rotating super-cells. There is no warming here Kevin – move along now.
So a 17 year period of warming from 81 (first year to exceed 1944) to 98 is highly significant but a 16 year period of steady temperatures without warming is just “wiggles”. Boy, they better hope there is some warming in the next year or the period of no warming is going to be longer than the period of warming.
“Global sea level keeps marching up at a rate of over 30 cm per century since 1992 (when global measurements via altimetry on satellites were made possible), and that is perhaps a better indicator that global warming continues unabated.”
What? The sea level was rising at the same rate before 1980 too. How the hell is that a good indicator?
RockyRoad says:
May 22, 2013 at 1:12 pm
“Has anybody here ever heard of a “climate model projection” from the Warmistas flat-lining for any significant period of time?? I certainly haven’t. ”
I think last year someone suggested that as the temperature plateaued for about the 12th or 13th year the minions [small m] of climate modelers searched through hundreds, maybe thousands, of Monte Carlo simulations and found one or a couple that had “flat periods” of 15 years. Then they must have found one of 16 years because the claim was made that it would take 17 years to confirm a trend. I think they then overclocked their computer to run thousands more simulations hoping to find a longer “flat period” and turned the hardware into ashes. Okay, I made that last part up.
It is interesting that Kevin Trentberth is now appealing to the slowdown in the solar magnetic cycle to help explain the lack of warming for the last 16 years.
I wonder how he would explain cooling? If there was cooling would he apologize, admit that 97% of the right thinking climate scientists were not correct. Would he state that he is sorry for the IPCC reports that has been used to justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year on green scams that have not significantly reduce the increase in CO2 emissions.
Will he ever admit that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is beneficial due to its impact on plant life and the slight warming due to the increase in atmospheric CO is beneficial, as it helps to offset global cooling?
Trentberth may not, however, other climate scientists will if there is cooling.
Trentberth has been on center stage, a lead author for the IPCC, and active in the media for the last 10 years pushing the warmist agenda. An activist losses the independent perspective required to solve scientific problems which helps to explain how the greatest scientific blunder in history appears to have been made.
The logical explanation for the fact that there has been 16 years of no warming is that the majority of the 20th century warming was the warming phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle, caused by solar magnetic cycle modulation of planetary clouds rather than due to increases in atmospheric CO2.
After 20 years of none stop warmist propaganda, it is difficult to even consider that possibility. Based on what has happened before, if the 20th century warming was a D-O cycle, the same regions that warmed in the 20th century will now experience the most cooling (i.e. Arctic, Greenland ice sheet, and high Northern latitudes.)
It there was cooling; it is interesting to try to imagine how the media and the public would response to the cooling.
What would their response be shown when they are shown the Greenland Ice sheet temperature data for the last 11,000 years?
The Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles are clearly evident in the Greenland ice sheet data. The climatologists accept the Greenland Ice sheet temperature data. The specialists have known about the D-O cycles for at least 15 years.
Why did no one propose that the 20th century warming was the warming phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle? (i.e CO2 warming is not reversible, the forcing mechanism that caused the D-O cycle is reversible which makes it possible for the planet to now cool.)
Why did the warmist scientists not explain that the AGW theory predicted that the majority of the warming should occur in the tropics, not high northern latitudes? The pattern of the 20th century warming does not match the CO2 forcing mechanism.
The observational evidence and related analysis does not support the assertion that the majority of the 20th century warming was caused by an increase in atmospheric CO2.
The extreme AGW mechanism require that there be tropospheric warming in the tropical region to amplify the CO2 warming. There is no observed tropical tropospheric warming. In addition, there is unequivocal analysis that is supported by surface temperature change records and by ocean temperature data that the planet resists forcing changes by increasing or decreasing cloud cover in the tropics thereby reflecting more or less short wave radiation off into space.
Did no one notice that the regions of the planet that warmed in the 20th century (Arctic, Greenland Ice sheet, high Northern latitudes) are the same regions that warmed during the past D-O cycles?
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
At the above site, the following graph, a comparison of the past solar cycles 21, 22, and 23 to the new cycle 24 is provided. That graph is update every six months or so.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
This is a graph, that is also located at the above site, that compares solar cycle 24 to the weakest solar magnetic cycles in the last 150 years.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_similar_cycles.png
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/74103.pdf
The Sun-Climate Connection by John A. Eddy, National Solar Observatory
Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate during the Holocene
A more recent oceanographic study, based on reconstructions of the North Atlantic climate during the Holocene epoch, has found what may be the most compelling link between climate and the changing Sun: in this case an apparent regional climatic response to a series of prolonged episodes of suppressed solar activity, like the Maunder Minimum, each lasting from 50 to 150 years8.
The paleoclimatic data, covering the full span of the present interglacial epoch, are a record of the concentration of identifiable mineral tracers in layered sediments on the sea floor of the northern North Atlantic Ocean. The tracers originate on the land and are carried out to sea in drift ice. Their presence in seafloor samples at different locations in the surrounding ocean reflects the southward expansion of cooler, ice-bearing water: thus serving as indicators of changing climatic conditions at high Northern latitudes. The study demonstrates that the sub-polar North Atlantic Ocean has experienced nine distinctive expansions of cooler water in the past 11,000 years, occurring roughly every 1000 to 2000 years, with a mean spacing of about 1350 years.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns…. ….Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe. … …..Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
@William Howard Astley.
Could you consider not writing small novels as comments?
Trenberth has discovered the Climate Force Multiplier!
Beware the power and size of Trenberth’s Cubes!
I note Enso has turned a bit negative now. If Canada’s spring makes any significant contribution to May’s temps, then 2012 is heading for half way in the cool bins. It’s getting close to time for NOAA, the climate fellows in Colorado, HadCRUt et al to stop updating the graphs until they’ve made necessary adjustments and counterclockwise thumbtack rotation of the temp record to account for the coriolus effect that is twisting it downwards. (sarc/off)
Cue Leif Svalgaard … oh, never mind, he’s said it so many times we can just look it up:
… and numerous repetitions of above.
So to get fewer tornados we need to reduce the temperature difference between air coming south from Canada and air coming north from the Gulf of Mexico. Now if we got the Canadians and the Mexicans together and said “either Canada has to get warmer or Mexico has to get colder”, which option do you think would more likely win favor with both sides?
CAGW proposes warming disproportionate in the coldest regions. Violent weather is driven by temperature differences. Therefor the CAGW models must predict fewer and less intense weather events. Right?
The most humorous part of the post is where he warns us about 30 cm of ocean rise in a century. This is 1.2 inches per decade, 3 mm per year. This is on the high side of the 9 observed inches over the last 140 years, but is equivalent to the rate of sea rise last seen roughly 70 years ago, within the natural variation of the observed tidal gauge data. We can ask whether or not the satellite data is, in fact accurate, if it is being “massaged” to support a particular conclusion, if it is presenting a perfectly natural swing that has nothing to do with climate per se. No matter how one answers the question, however, the rate is not catastrophic — the next twelve inches over a century are no more “catastrophic” than the last 9 inches over a century plus — if it persists at 3 mm/year.
He also needs to get his story and that of Hansen straight. Hansen regularly, even routinely, predicts 1 to 5 meters of SLR by the end of the century. In fact, 1 is on the low end of what he claimed even remotely possible on his TED Talks show — he said in a carefully scripted aside that he personally thought it would be 5. If >>TRENBERTH<< is dropping back to 12 or 13 inches (still very probably on the high side, given flat global temperatures) then the entire doomsday scenario Hansen has so carefully constructed disappears. Almost all of the supposed “catastrophic” aspects of CAGW come from enormous SLR. Take them out of the picture — a placid inch or inch plus per decade — and nobody will even notice, any more than they noticed the last 9 inches of rise. We just don’t live long enough to see more than a few inches of that — if it persists.
No wonder that they are falling back on egregious claims about extreme weather. And the tragic thing is, this is one of the easiest ways to lie. “Extreme” weather events are normal. A temperature record is set somewhere on the planet every day. All it takes to convince the idiots in the crowd of anthropogenic global warming is to make sure that every time a record is set (every day, that is) it is made known to the public. Every time an “extreme” storm hits — whether or not it is, in fact, all that extreme — be sure to attribute it to CAGW. The only way to disprove their assertion that e.g. Sandy was due to CAGW or CACC (since it is no longer warming) is to do a serious statistical study of hurricane frequency and power (which is in fact routinely done and which shows no increase in either one, if anything the contrary). Or tornado frequency and power, again, at historical lows if anything. Or rainfall (boring, no real droughts, no real floods). Or heat waves (always one happening somewhere, but no pattern of extreme heat everywhere). Or cold waves (because they have managed to make COLD weather part of their dialectic, blaming it on CACC now that CAGW is manifestly in hibernation).
There is no statistical evidence that the current global climate — the aggregated weather — is in any way abnormal, or for that matter changing in any statistically significant way either warmer or cooler, wetter or drier, more or less extreme, over the last 16 years. Even cherrypicking at the level of individual events (which is very close to being pure “antiscience”) is wearing thin for the CAGW/CACC crowd. Sadly, they are at this point invested well past the point of no return in the picture they have painted up to this point. Every year that passes without dramatic “climate change”, even with all of the anecdotes they can collect and amplify beyond all reason, is one year closer to not only the end of careers but considerable public humiliation AND the end of careers.
What will Trenberth do, if there is no measurable warming for another five years? What will he do if tide gauge data splits from satellite data the way LTT has split from the land record? What will he do if (shudder) it starts to cool?
I hear that there are always jobs as Wal-Mart greeters available. He can work right next to James Hansen and Phil Jones.
We all want to save the world. But what if the world doesn’t need saving, or if the real thing the world needs saving from is lies and distortions of reality that kill people in the third world by diverting resources away from providing them with desperately needed energy and into half-baked schemes that even if the risk they supposedly address is real will not prevent the very disaster being predicted?
In order to really help to save the world, Trenberth should stop playing the anecdotal evidence game, acknowledge that just as the statistically sound analysis of the data not only doesn’t support Hansen’s 5 meter SLR, it doesn’t at the moment support any sort of catastrophic scenario at all. It might warm anywhere from 1 to 2 degrees K more by the end of the century, and only some unknown fraction of that is attributable to anthropogenic activity. The sea could rise by a whole foot — or not. The Greenland ice is safe. The Antarctic ice is not only safe, it is growing. Alaska is setting records for cold (just as anecdotal as heat records, but one that is understandable in terms of global decadal oscillations). Finally, even WITHOUT the word-saving crap, the world is still going to move towards a better balance of renewable and fossil fuel energy resources, not because it saves the world but because as technology advances, it will save money. In two decades the entire issue will be moot.
In the meantime, it might be nice to help all of the poor people in India and Africa and South America who live in a state of abject energy poverty, condemned to unclean water, dung fueled cooking fires, a day that reaches from sunup to sundown (no artificial lights), hand washing of clothes in parasite-laden streams, and so on to access more, cheaper energy by removing the entirely artificial price supports and barriers intended to force people away from “demon carbon” while still not permitting them to use the sensible carbon free alternatives, such as Uranium or Thorium nuclear power en masse.
How about it, Dr. Trenberth? Care to save not a whale, but rather a few million children, not in eighty or ninety years but right now? All it takes is real honesty.
rgb
“The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10 percent effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 33 percent effect in terms of damage.” –Kevin “Travesty” Trenberth.
Dave says: “Don’t ask me why, but when I read what he said, images of a top hat, cane, and tap shoes came to my mind.”
After Trenberth’s outrageously unscientific hand-waving as he attempts to blame an extra 0.01% of CO2 in the air for more storm variability, with no calculations to back it up, this is what came to my mind:
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/willie-the-hand-jive-by-johnny-otis-1957-oldiestelevision-com/L9pEipfcSXrr9ALLriYCvg
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
May 22, 2013 at 3:10 pm
“So to get fewer tornados we need to reduce the temperature difference between air coming south from Canada and air coming north from the Gulf of Mexico. Now if we got the Canadians and the Mexicans together and said “either Canada has to get warmer or Mexico has to get colder”, which option do you think would more likely win favor with both sides?”
Gotta be careful here, most Canadians would probably like colder to extend outdoor hockey season.
“Another prominent source of natural variability in the Earth’s energy imbalance is changes in the sun itself, seen most clearly as the sunspot cycle. From 2005 to 2010 the sun went into a quiet phase and the warming energy imbalance is estimated to have dropped by about 10 to 15%.”
I wonder how this will play out in AR5?
C’mon Kev, level with us now!
Way back in high school I had a history teacher who had formerly been studying for the priesthood. Well, he got married at the last minute. And his wife had been studying to become (no surprise here) a nun. Now he acted just like someone who had narrowly missed a bullet, by mere millimeters, and having missed it, immediately discovered the treats that bullet would’ve deprived him of. Of course I’m talking about sex here.
And, in our history class that’s all he talked about. He wasn’t really in a legal position to give adolescent males useful information. Nor could he be very specific. But it insured that we learned absolutely nothing about history.
But we still had to pass the damn tests. They were essay tests. Anyway, here’s an example of how I passed them: I’d get a question like; “Who was Colonel Hornblower?” Now, it was a long time ago so I don’t know if that was or is the real name but it sticks in my mind ’cause it sure sounds like a 1700s English military kind of name (or perhaps a Freudian slip for what the teacher was actually talking about).
Anyway, I’d get that question, put two and two together, figure he had to be important in one way or the other or he wouldn’t have been brought up. Ok, so I know that much. He’s obviously a colonel, heck, the question just told me that. And, since he was a colonel it probably had to be a wartime kind of thing. I’m good to go.
So here was my answer, “An important colonel during the war.”
The teacher actually marked that answer correct. I couldn’t tell you what year, what war, what country, nothing. Nothing at all, but I got it right. And I guess technically it was.
Can one see a parallel here with Trenberth? I have a nagging suspicion (Christopher Landsea, a hurricane expert who resigned from the IPCC could possibly confirm this) that, at least when it comes to hurricanes our dear Kevin has been winging it. How many other answers of his were, “An important colonel during the war.”
The problem for him now, regarding the missing heat, is phrased a little more like this:
What is gkgijjgfihgthjgjjhhfughvcbnhjku?
Let’s see you wing that one, Mr. Trenberth?
An Super Solar Eclipse took place on May 9 – 10 (UTC), 2013, with a magnitude of 0.9544. Obviously CO2 was to blame. My model projects that we could experience as many as 87 more of these extreme events by the end of this century.
Our grandchildren may never know what the Sun looks like.
If Obama gets impeached over the IRS scandal, does that mean Global warming will finally be over?????
Fifteen years of non-warming is a meaningless blip but one tornado is proof of AGW. Got it.
I guess when all that missing heat emerges from the Double Secret Probationary Travesty Layer in the oceans we will be in real trouble.
rgbatduke says:
May 22, 2013 at 3:38 pm
He also needs to get his story and that of Hansen straight. Hansen regularly, even routinely, predicts 1 to 5 meters of SLR by the end of the century.
————————————
Thank you rgb, not only for this post, but also for some of the other fine posts this past couple of days, not to mention the other exceptional posts that have helped shape many people’s thinking on this blog.
You mention Hansen, and I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. I could probably do the calculation myself, but I’m sure it would be way easier for you to do.
I was wondering if Hansen is actually the quantifiable record holder in getting something wrong, in the whole history of human scientific endeavor.
Just what would it take for the oceans to boil. Let’s say we had two doublings of CO2 – 280 X2 X2 ppm = 1120 ppm, on a background of 30,000 – 40,000 ppm of water vapor over the oceans in the tropics, and let’s give him a hundred years for it to effect the boiling (makes the saying ” a watched pot never boils” a bit lightweight, doesn’t it?). How many orders of magnitude was the guy off by ?? …. even if you don’t include Doppler shift overlap, line broadening effects at sea level, etc. etc., the additional back radiation from purported anthropogenic CO2 absorbed by the ocean, would be close to zero. Multiply that by the humongous volume and temperature of the world’s oceans, and I have to believe he could be off by a hundred orders of magnitude.
Whatever is the number, has any “scientist” in the history of mankind ever been off by so many zeros ??
This might be important, as I think that, in his new position, he will be rearing his ugly head once again. It will be nice to have a big mallet to play whack-a-fraud with.
In 2009 he couldn’t account for the lack of warming, and it was a “travesty”. Now, four years later, the some 16 years without warming is a mere “wiggle”, and besides, he now can account for it; by some physics-defying feat it is transmogrifying into making the oceans rise. CO2 is indeed amazing stuff.
Then, Dr Trenberth better inform NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center because some of us regular folk can use google effectively and get different info from what he’s peddling. [Emphasis in original]
Trenberths faith is admirable and one must respect such religious fervor.
A purely agnostic question here for anybody who might have enough information to make a stab at the calculation: is it possible that a significant portion of the ‘missing heat’ has actually been utilised melting of ice?
To turn H2O from ice at 0 degrees centigrade to water at 0 degrees centigrade requires latent heat. Specifically it requires 334 kilojoules of heat to melt a kilogram of ice without actually raising its temperature.
Regardless of the cause of the recent ‘global warming’ (and I do like Bob Tisdale’s take on it), if you consider at the satellite data, there does seem to have sufficient been net warming to have melted quite a lot of the ice over the arctic ocean. There has been far less melting, and possibly a net gain in the Antarctic, and some net loss or gain from other localised ice caps, glaciers, etc. But presumably it is possible to make a reasonable estimate of any net loss of global ice cover form the satellite data.
From the point of view of purely scientific interest, it would be very interesting to make the calculation as to how much heat has been used up in the latent heat of fusion of global ice melt.
So, is there anybody here who has access to such data and could calculate this for us?
With regards,
LK
Having read this post again I have come to the conclusion that Kevin Trenberth was clumsily trying to explain that a 10% increase in wind speed is a 33% increase in the energy in the wind because wind power in an open air stream is proportional to the third power of the wind speed.
He ought therefore to be taken to task over whether global warming has produced a 10% increase in wind speeds, either in common weather events or in extreme weather events.
I am very dubious that such is the case.
“@William Howard Astley. Could you consider not writing small novels as comments?”
Amen, but I never read any comment over two screens long. Unless it’s from rgbatduke.
Tom J asks: “What is gkgijjgfihgthjgjjhhfughvcbnhjku?”
“Easy one. It’s a volcano in Iceland.” –Kevin
Mark Bofill says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:21 am
………..is he speaking his opinion ex-rectum?
LOL, nearly choked on your Latin. You nailed it.
Larry Kirk says:
May 22, 2013 at 6:14 pm
A purely agnostic question here for anybody who might have enough information to make a stab at the calculation: is it possible that a significant portion of the ‘missing heat’ has actually been utilised melting of ice?
==========================
Larry, I think this was probably inadvertent, but you actually did ask the “when did you stop beating your wife?” question so, in that regard, it could be construed as not really an agnostic question.
Many on here would tell you that the so-called “missing heat” is well past Alpha centauri by now.
Global sea ice cover as a proxy for heat and/or missing heat doesn’t tell us much other than changes are indistinguishable from zero (check the sidebar). Like the rest of the CAGW theory – indistinguishable from zero.
Polar ice volume is probably something that the frauds will try to push, as the lay person can’t look at it daily on a satellite, but that’s only the ones who are too unsophisticated to know that the jig is up and want to continue their their fake-scientist lives for money, and also want to continue to be planet-saving heroes at their grannies’ knitting circles.
@ philincalifornia
Phil, I was treading lightly, seeking a scientific answer to a genuine scientific question whilst hoping to avoid a welter abuse from some who might have thought I was batting for the other side. Perhaps I should have phrased it more carefully: ‘A question from a climate agnostic here..’
(This climate agnostic being one who swings wildly between his Bob Carter-like geologist’s conviction that there is nothing remotely unusual, or to any appearances unnatural, about the recent erratic ‘global’ warming, which looks just like the usual, constant natural climate change of the past half million years, and some concern at the steady rise of the Keeling Curve and the equally rational open question: “What if I am wrong?” )
Not quite sure that I asked a “When did you stop beating your wife?” question. I did use the word ‘stab’, but not in the marital context.
Now let me look at that sidebar..
jorgekafkazar says:May 22, 2013 at 7:20 pm
Amen, but I never read any comment over two screens long. Unless it’s from rgbatduke.
Ha ah … gotta 100% agree with that!
(well, the last bit anyway!)
Mark Bofill says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:21 am
“….is he speaking his opinion ex-rectum?”
In China it is: “He who speaketh from both ends.”
Those flat periods were probably allowed–but in the event of a major volcanic eruption. That condition must have slipped Trenberth’s mind. (Anyway, that’s his get-out if he’s challenged about it.)
[Q:] I know this kind of extreme weather is part of the territory in the middle of the country, but is climate change going to make such extreme weather more likely or more powerful?
{A} Answer: more likely, no. More powerful, no.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=257
@ philincalifornia
I didn’t find what I was looking for on the sidebar unfortunately. I as looking for ice VOLUME data, but could only find ice sheet AREA data. For floating ice sheets such as the Arctic ice sheet, the ice volume can be calculated with extreme accuracy from high resolution satellite-borne radar altimetry of the ice surface. The volume of ice thus mapped above mean sea level is then approximately nine times the total volume of ice in the ice sheet.
Satellite-borne radar altimeter readings are typically accurate to a vertical resolution of a few centimetres, so no matter what your opinion of the ethics of particular end users, the data itself will not be fraudulent. It will be extremely accurate, and is of great scientific value.
I do think I know where I can get hold of it though, so that is where I shall redirect my question to.
This may be off topic- but- the poster you used to illustrate this post is incorrect. My son pointed out that the data referred to on the poster was from August 1997 to August 2012. However way you spin it- that’s only 15 years!
C’mon guys- must do better!
The enemy might be useless at math(s) but disinterested observers will be. How can you win over the disinterested when your facts are wrong? Are we not in danger of being as bad as the bad boys?
Trenberth cannot understand the lack of heating because his models are wrong based on a theory that is wrong.
Back to the drawing board Kevin.
Larry Kirk says:
May 22, 2013 at 8:37 pm
======================
Sorry Larry. I’ve been in such anti-Trenberth vitriol mode that I probably came across as too harsh on you – even though I wasn’t trying to be.
The “when did you stop beating your wife question” referred to the fact that you ask about
“missing heat” as if it’s a fact that (and I assumed you were referring to “Trenberth’s missing heat”) exists. That’s all. The better explanation is to be found in the null hypothesis, which would, if he was a credible scientist, direct Trenberth to look at the data and then come to a conclusion rather than make a conclusion and then not be able to figure out what happened to any data supporting that conclusion (which is a feature common to not only him, but also a lot of the warmists who post on here). This is really bad science.
I read papers on polar ice volume several months, maybe even years ago, but I don’t go around looking for them any more because, quite frankly, I don’t believe much of anything that comes out of a climatologist model, so I won’t actually learn anything other than the product of a pack of lies and/or the bad science mentioned above, i.e. they will feel that they are being good little old planet-savers if the conclusion says that there’s less ice and make the models fit their preconceived purported, and probably wrong, “planet-saving” conclusion. So I directed you to the sidebar for ice extent only. I might look around later for some ice volume references if I get time, but others might be able to help.
‘Whether that translates into a supercell storm and one with a tornado is largely chance weather’.
Chance?
Spare a little sympathy for the people who do the donkey work of programming these models. Were I a programmer, one of the world’s best, thoroughly versed in logic and highly skilled in humouring those to whom I answer and a will to give of my best, how on earth would I go about factoring in the perfidy of pure chance answering to no known paradigm?
@ philincalifornia
That’s fine.. I did use the term ‘missing heat’ rather sloppily, simply having picked it out from the above. I haven’t actually dug my way too deeply into and out of the Trenberth thing, as I am more interested in the physical evidence and the hard science that derives from it. Those sort of political who-said-what and who is right or wrong controversies tend to make my eyes glaze over..
The use of satellite radar altimetry in the remote sensing of oceans and ice is fascinating tool, which maps the surface of these two global terrains in great detail and at very precise vertical resolution, and the ocean surface is far from flat, thanks to gravity anomalies over ocean floor topographic features and varying rock types, and to the lateral slope across north/south ocean surface currents due to the coriolis effect).
When I was first introduced to it back in 1985, all we had was the Seasat data, from a fantastically powerful active radar satellite, powered by a small nuclear plant, which mapped the earth’s oceans many times over in about three months but then unfortunately self-destructed. Since then, its successor, Cryosat-1, was destroyed during launch about 10 years ago. But Cryosat-2 was launched successfully a couple of years ago and is now fully commissioned and in active mode. I am sure it has acquired a huge amount of data by now, and we are already starting to see some of the results of this coming out earlier this year. It’s good science. Money far from wasted. One to watch out for.
With regards,
LK
He really doesn’t have a clue, does he..?
When I read babble like Trenberth’s I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…
The only recourse for me is to apply some humor – so without further ado…
HOW TO TALK “SCIENCE” WITH KEVIN TENBERTH
“Warming” really means heating, except when it’s not, then it’s cooling. Rising surface temperatures are just one manifestation, except the temperatures aren’t rising now – but forget that, it doesn’t matter anyway!
Melting Arctic sea ice is another. So is melting of glaciers and other land ice that contribute to rising sea levels. In fact, we at NCAR have calculated that if all the ice in every glass of ice tea on this planet melted completely, it would raise the sea level by 10 feet world wide. Ice tea melt is a major problem that my group is currently addressing.
Another prominent source of natural variability is sun itself, seen most clearly as the sunspot cycle. We have, in fact, determined from our research that if we had no sun, it would NOT be very good for our planet. Also too much sun is no good…so use lots of suncreen, people!
Human induced global warming really kicked in during the 1970s when I first got my degree. Lucky me – lots of cash for my chosen profession! And warming has been pretty steady since then…especially in the summer. I’m sure most people have felt warmer in the summer than the winter – that’s global warming! If it feels like it’s getting cooler, it’s really not – that’s all in your head.
Focusing on the wiggles in global warming and ignoring the bigger picture is foolhardy, something promoted by Koch-head, frack-loving rednecks of the denial-sphere! Global sea level keeps marching up at a rate of over 30 cm per century since 1992, and that is perhaps a better indicator that global warming continues unabated. In fact, I’m so freaked out about sea level rise that I wear a life vest at all times now…
THANK YOU KEVIN! JOIN US AGAIN NEXT TIME FOR ANOTHER EPISODE OF HOW TO TALK A “SCIENCE” WITH KEVEN TRENBERTH…
Trenberth : ”“Warming” really means heating, and so it can be manifested in many ways. Rising surface temperatures are just one manifestation. Melting Arctic sea ice is another. So is melting of glaciers and other land ice that contribute to rising sea levels. Increasing the water cycle and invigorating storms is yet another”
So, melting Arctic sea ice is a manifestation of heating but increases in Antarctic sea ice isn’t a manifestation of cooling?
Land ice has been retreating and sea level increasing since the last glaciation. It really is a long term trend from way back before anthropologic influences could have possibly mattered.
What does “increasing the water cycle” mean? Is there water in places there wasn’t water before? Does water move through the cycle faster? Is there more water in the cycle? Or more water in parts of the cycle? Is there any evidence for any of this?
Since storms are driven by temperature differentials how exactly does warming invigorate storms? If warmer and wetter really meant more tornadoes then why doesn’t Brazil have as many Tornadoes as the US?
Denial that your hypothesis is wrong can be manifested in many ways. Making more and more elaborate and absurd excuses for the failed hypothesis is one. Avoiding public debate of the merits of the hypothesis, creating pseudo-consensuses, deriding critics, employing logical fallacies, and hiding declines are others.
Dave says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:57 am
Don’t ask me why, but when I read what he said, images of a top hat, cane, and tap shoes came to my mind.
__________________________________________________________________________
Oh yes, we both reached for
The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun
Did anyone else see Amanpour interview CNN’s climate guy who, asked if the tornado was the result of global warming, told her, “No.” He also went on to point out that very particular conditions were necessary including a large mass of cold air, a large mass of warm moist air and just the right topography.
They showed a map of the world where tornados are common and none of the sites featured only-hot conditions.
Trenberth is essentially saying this is not true. It was nice to hear someone on a major network say straight out that devastating tornados ‘are not caused by global warming’.
For anyine unfamiliar with the CFACT website, I strongly recommend visiting it – there are some really good articles there by Paul Driessen, Marc Morano and others. Their billboards are classic (check out the one on polar bears).
“””””…..Larry Kirk says:
May 22, 2013 at 6:14 pm
A purely agnostic question here for anybody who might have enough information to make a stab at the calculation: is it possible that a significant portion of the ‘missing heat’ has actually been utilised melting of ice?
To turn H2O from ice at 0 degrees centigrade to water at 0 degrees centigrade requires latent heat. Specifically it requires 334 kilojoules of heat to melt a kilogram of ice without actually raising its temperature. …..”””””
Larry, I prefer to think of the latent heat energy of fusion of ice, as being 80 calories per gram.
Yes I know a calorie is actually a quantity of food; but let’s ignore that.
So at 80 calories per gram, melting ice consumes enough heat energy, to raise the Temperature of that ice water, all the way up to 80 deg. C ( if you put it into already melted water.)
That puts the magnitude of it in perspective.
Even more impressive, is the latent heat energy of evaporation, which I believe is about 590 calories per gram for water at 100 deg. C. So it takes almost six times the heat energy to evaporate the water, as it does to raise it from ice Temperature to boiling Temperature.
Conversely, when you get 100 deg. C steam on your skin, it is going to dump 590 calories per gram of latent heat energy plus another 63 calories per gram, to bring that water down to normal body Temperature (37 deg. C).
That is why steam is so lethal.
PS “heat” is a verb; a process; unless it is “heat energy”, in which case, it is an adjective. “heat” is not a noun.
The guy has no choice like Mad Mann , his professional career and personel standard rest on AGW , it that goes he is toast . So all he can do is double down and hope .
But like Mann his rantings does much good work for the very people and ideas he hates . His another that when he falls we will be surpised to find who lines up to kick him on the way down, its just a shame they have to wait until then to do it .
The so-called warming of the last 150+ years is just another “wiggle”. It certainly isn’t global, by any stretch of the imagination. Kevvy is very selective in his wiggle-matching.
Jeff Alberts points out this Kevin Trenberth nonsense:
“Focusing on the wiggles and ignoring the bigger picture of unabated warming is foolhardy, but one promoted by climate change deniers.”
If I ever have the opportunity, I will ask Trenberth: what, exactly, is a “climate change denier”?
Because the only folks who fit that description are Michael Mann’s acolytes; those who accept Mann’s Hockey Stick chart — a chart which clearly shows that global temperatures had never changed much, prior to the industrial revolution.
Of course, Mann could only fabricate that chart by censoring [selectively cherry-picking] the data he used. Now Mann and Trenberth label anyone who disagrees with their catastrophic global warming narrative as ‘climate change deniers’. That rhetorical tactic is certainly a lot easier than explaining the questionable data sets that Mann used.
I guess you can’t stand the heat.
“””””…..Jeff Alberts says:
May 23, 2013 at 8:47 pm
PS “heat” is a verb; a process; unless it is “heat energy”, in which case, it is an adjective. “heat” is not a noun.
I guess you can’t stand the heat…….”””””
It’s actually the EM radiation that gets to me. My body then makes all the “heat energy” I need.
@ George E Smith
Thanks George. I do appreciate that ‘heat’ can be a verb. It is also a noun though, and commonly used as such in physics, as in ‘latent heat of fusion’, which you rightly point out is rather large for the ice-water transition, relative to the specific heat capacity of the resulting water as you then increase its temperature by a further degree centigrade. ‘Heat’ is also noun in common usage in expressions such as: ‘He sheltered from the heat of the day in a small cave; ‘In the heat of the moment, she said something that she would later regret..’, etc. You can check the OED.
When I say appreciate though, I really do mean it. One part of me is as mindful of the sanctity of correctly written and spoken English as any other grammar school and university educated Brit. But having spent the last thirty five years in another country, where many of the inhabitants say and write things such as: “I wouldn’t of done that mate..” or “I took the dog, tied him up out the back an shot him.”, and where a lot of them grew up in homes where English was not the first language, I have learned to be a more pragmatic (except when replying to the text messages and emails of our children!)
Your point about the value of the latent heat of fusion of ice, relative to the specific heat capacity of water is exactly the one that is currently interesting me. I am not even sure who this Trenberth person is, and judging from the comments here it is probably not worth me finding out. But if it’s the reality of physics we are interested in: yes, you can lose an awful lot of potential temperature rise of water simply in melting a significant quantity of ice. So when WUWT has an article about someone or other’s ‘missing heat’, I can’t help but start to wonder about the physics.
But talking of WUWT, I think I must delete it from my favourites list once again. It is far too distracting for the undisciplined when they are trying to work alone from home!
Lysenko would have been delighted. This is exactly how science should NOT be conducted: Insist on the correctness of a hypothesis (AGW) and then sort the data into two categories – that which falsifies or conflicts with the hypothesis, and is to be ignored, and that which can, in some fashion, be construed as to be consistent with the hypothesis which, of course, is to be accepted as the relevant data. In other words, we are now to ignore the temperature record, the previous gold standard for AGW advocates, and measure the hypothesis in terms of other kinds of data that have a far less demonstrable connection to climate trends. To paraphrase Dan Rather, the issue is the importance of the hypothesis itself, not its validity.
“Trenberth] “Warming” really means heating, and so it can be manifested in many ways. Rising surface temperatures are just one manifestation. Melting Arctic sea ice is another. So is melting of glaciers and other land ice that contribute to rising sea levels.”
There is a difference where surface temperatures show the overall trend in energy changes only in the atmosphere. Arctic ice and glaciers whether melting or not are local changes and happen regarding whatever the overall atmosphere energy does. Local environments unlike on the global scale are affected by the change in distribution of energy within the system and a warming is not required for this to occur. Arctic ice and glaciers have been melting since the Little Ice Age, no warming in surface temperatures over recent years just concludes that the ice has not reached equilibrium from the the LIA. A very short window of melting in summer means it takes many decades just to reach equilibrium. Arctic ice has been declining during a long period where there has been no increasing global temperatures.
The difference between global surface temperatures with Arctic ice and glaciers are that a change in distribution of energy in the system doesn’t support warming or heating. Only a heating of overall energy supports a warming and so no it can’t be manifested in many ways because a change in energy flow within the system is not the same as heating.
Let’s not forgot the glaciers which are not melting and Antarctica that is not affected in the same way as the Arctic with a change in the distribution of energy via the ocean.
Canada has just two seasonal national sports:
Winter — hockey
Summer — waiting for hockey