CBS evening news finally, after over two weeks, gets around to covering Climategate. Most interestingly, they have a short clip of an interview with Kevin Trenberth. Dr. Trenberth, as many recall said this in one of the CRU emails:
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.
Look at what Dr. Trenberth adds now:
h/t to WUWT reader LiamIam
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Oz (16:40:43) :
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.
~Dr. Kevin Trenberth
After Dr. Trenberth and his Climate Crisis Crew have rejected the obvious conclusion that the continuing increase in CO2 concentrations does not force a continuing increase in global mean temperature, then it isn’t surprising that they are stymied for an explanation for a lack of continued warming.
Honest people and good scientists would conclude that the hypothesis linking CO2 to a continuing or runaway rise in temperature has been falsified.
No, they would not. Are you just going to throw out 100+ years of evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? If you are, then further discussion is completely pointless. If not, then you have to accept that increasing atmospheric CO2 does cause an enhanced greenhouse effect. You also can’t ignore the last 40 years of global warming and pretend it didn’t happen just because one year (2008) it cooled one tenth of a degree (or appeared to).
In the paper I quoted from, Trenberth is saying that there is an “an estimated imbalance from the enhanced greenhouse effect of 0.9 ± 0.5 W/m² (with 90% confidence limits)”. Now, you could legitimately argue that in 2008 this imbalance may have been offset by a change in cloud cover, causing no actual warming in that year, but other explanations also have to be considered in which the energy was there but we were unable to identify it – Trenberth’s paper discusses all these issues and highlights how important it is that we have the technology in place to answer such questions. The ‘travesty’ he refers to is that the climate information system is currently not capable of doing so – although raw data which has yet to be made available may provide some answers. None of this constitutes global warming having been ‘falsified’.
Here is more of the discussion, Tom Wigley also is at a loss to explain why temps have not increased as they predicted…..
From: Tom Wigley
To: Kevin Trenberth
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:09:35 -0600
Cc: Michael Mann , Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Kevin,
I didn’t mean to offend you. But what you said was “we can’t account
for the lack of warming at the moment”. Now you say “we are no where
close to knowing where energy is going”. In my eyes these are two
different things — the second relates to our level of understanding,
and I agree that this is still lacking.
Tom.
++++++++++++++++++
Kevin Trenberth wrote:
> Hi Tom
> How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where
> close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to
> make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy
> budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the
> climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless
> as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a
> travesty!
> Kevin
>
> Tom Wigley wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the recent
>> lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to look at
>> the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic trend
>> relative to the pdf for unforced variability. The second is to remove
>> ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations from the observed data.
>>
>> Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The second
>> method leaves a significant warming over the past decade.
>>
>> These sums complement Kevin’s energy work.
>>
>> Kevin says … “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”. I do not
>> agree with this.
>>
>> Tom.
>>
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++
>>
>> Kevin Trenberth wrote:
>>> Hi all
>>> Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We
>>> are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past
>>> two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow.
>>> The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
>>> smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was
>>> about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.
>>> This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was
>>> canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
>>> weather).
>>>
>>> Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning:
>>> tracking Earth’s global energy. /Current Opinion in Environmental
>>> Sustainability/, *1*, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [PDF]
>>>
>>> (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
>>>
>>> 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. The CERES data published
>>> in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even
>>> more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is
>>> inadequate.
>>>
>>> That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC
>>> are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with
>>> ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the change in ENSO not real
>>> PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with the
>>> switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for
>>> first time since Sept 2007. see
>>> http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_current.ppt
>>>
>>>
Can anyone point to a data source for the amount of energy being radiated out to space in the two low frequency CO2 absorption bands? Surely tracking this would indicate how much more energy is being trapped by CO2 increases in the atmosphere. The alarmists claim that their theory is backed by Physics and hence the amount of energy in these bands making it out to space should represent the maximum that can be retained.
It is my understanding (based on what I’ve read) that these bands currently radiate zero energy into space because it is all trapped by existing CO2 but I’d like to see satellite graphs to confirm.
Why would this not be the upper bound on additional “greenhouse” effect fro CO2?
I would have tried asking the same Q on realclimate but it seems their recent relaxation of censorship is at an end, I was censored for responding to a particularly vacuous posting, my guess is mentioning upside-down proxies did me in.
So realclimate is back to their old tricks. If JK Rowling was writing about Gavin my guess is that her book would have been called “Gavin Schmidt and the Chamber of Echoes”
Gavin seems to invoke quite a deal of magic in dealing with inconvenient postings – mostly involving disappearance.
Actually I was having some trouble with the last book of the series until Climategate broke. Deathly Hallows sounds like CRU must feel right now.
Gavin Schmidt and the Philosopher stonewalling
Gavin Schmidt and the Prisoner of Dogma
Gavin Schmidt and the Planet of Fire
Gavin Schmidt and the Order of the Phonies
Gavin Schmidt and the Half Baked theory are other titles in the ongoing RealClimate series.
Icarus (16:55:57) :
“”The data says you’re wrong.””
What data? And don’t cherry pick.
Do you need to watch Anthony’s melting-freezing youtube video again?
“”Just as a matter of interest, what magnitude of change in global temperature do you think constitutes ‘trend’ rather than just natural variability, and over what length of time?””
What magnitude of change in global temperature do you think constitutes a ‘trend’ rather than just natural variability?
“”Can you justify your answers rather than just give unsupported figures?””
Can you justify your answers without using massaged data?
Icarus (18:02:03):
“None of this constitutes global warming having been ‘falsified’.”
You have it backwards. It is not ‘global warming’ [by which I assume you mean the CO2=CAGW hypothesis] that needs to be falsified.
The long held theory of natural climate variability is what your new conjecture must falsify. Because in order to replace the theory of natural variability, CO2=CAGW [AGW for short] must explain reality better than natural variability, and it must be capable of better predictions. It does neither.
As climatologist Dr Roy Spencer observes: No one has falsified the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability.
It is the alarmist crowd that must falsify the theory of natural variability, which has been the accepted climate theory for more than a hundred years. But now a new hypothesis – AGW – has appeared. In order to preempt the theory of natural variability, AGW must explain reality better than the long accepted theory of natural variability, and it must make more accurate predictions. It has failed.
Skeptics question the AGW hypothesis because there is no empirical evidence that human activity causes any measurable global warming. The putative “evidence” comes mainly from GCMs — computer climate models.
But models are not evidence; they are only tools. And climate models are unable to predict; they can not even predict today’s climate by hindcasting, using all current and previous climate data available.
Empirical evidence means real world evidence, which requires reproducible, testable and falsifiable measurements, showing that X increase in atmospheric CO2 results in X amount of warming. Despite enormous expense to date, such evidence is completely non-existent.
Empirical measurements have never shown that an increase in carbon dioxide causes a subsequent, quantifiable rise in global temperature. And geologically, a rise in CO2 is an effect that follows a rise in temperature; it is not a cause. Further, the recent coincidental rise in global temperature and CO2 has now broken down: CO2 and temperature trends have completely diverged for most of the past decade.
If you can falsify the theory of natural variability, in which the climate oscillates within historical parameters irrespective of CO2 levels, then I — and in fact the entire Western world — will sit up straight and pay attention. Because you will have been the first to do so.
Please keep that in mind when you feel the urge to write that ‘nothing has falsified global warming’. It is the empirically baseless assumption claiming that CO2 is the cause of any observed warming that must falsify the existing theory of natural variability. So far, it has failed.
Keneth Trenberth has accused the fans of climate gate as cherry-picking. But this isn’t the first time Trenberth objectivity and political motivation has been called into question. I suggest posting Chris Landsea’s resignation letter to the IPCC http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html
excerpt:
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.
My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author;
John M (09:41:40) :
‘ “China and India have agreed to cut their emissions”. What they’ve agreed to cut is their carbon instensity (emissions/economic output). A good thing to do, and frankly something that all technologically advancing countries will do, Copenhagen or no Copenhagen.’
I think this is ultimately the way out. I’ve been wondering for some time how most of the world’s politicians are going to find a wat to admit they’re wrong. This is the answer, except with “not increase” in place of a predetermined “cut”. This can be done in an advanced economy when people just buy a new car. Quite harmless, almost certainly beneficial.
DaveF (10:29:49) :
“It seems to me that reason why so many scientists have said they believe in AGW is because they have spent their lives working to a high set of professional standards, and simply couldn’t believe that their colleagues in Climate Science could be so dishonest. I think that the long term outcome of this affair will be an increasing scepticism of AGW in the general scientific community. This acorn will become an oak.”
Bravo! This is one of the major reasons I think the long-term trend is with us, and that we need only keep our cool to let the acorn sprout. The scientific societies that endorsed AGW did so primarily on trust. (I’m sure they didn’t invite contrarians in to rebut the rebuttals that the alarmists provided them. They simply concluded that the debate was over.) Now that outsiders can see climatology’s close-mindedness, cliquishness, bullying behavior, and worse “under the rock,” I’m sure many of them are going to have second thoughts.
Ditto the media. I think that the reason they haven’t been covering Climategate immediately is that many of them have been genuinely shocked and bewildered, and need time to come to terms with this. (I also think lots of them are waiting to see which way the wind is blowing, and are scared to get too far out of line.)
There is no way that this elephant can be hustled under the rug. Therefore, mainstream opinion is going to have to give contrarian views and spokesmen some respect and a place at the table, and concede that the science is at least somewhat unsettled. That’s enough for the moment. Once the momentum has shifted (in a month or two?), then we can press for independent reviews of “the science” to sort out the mess.
P Wilson
“It seems that they are a myopic bunch who are convinced so much of the dogma of global warming that they need to erase anything that doesn’t conform to it.”
That’s what it looks like. Scientists from other disciplines will detect this unscientific attitude.
Paul Vaughn:
“Btw: For a good laugh, take a look at the hopeless attempts at spin being conducted over at RC.”
You’ve given me a good laugh already.
I am an infrequent commenter here.
Hide the decline refers to the palaeo data not corresponding to measured data.
I have problems with this as do many others.
I also have problems with past records being changed, eg.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
That is the US lower 48 records.
There was a time that 1934 was warmest, followed by 1998; 2006 was only close
NOW, 2006 & 1998 tie for warmest with 1934 later in the series!
I was so disgusted with this modification, I didn’t check which was actually 3rd.
I guess this will end up in the spam bin as all my recent posts have! If you want us to continue watching, sort this spam problem out please.
DaveE.
[Reply: you are not the only one with the same problem. I suspect it has something to do with WordPress. But as you can see, your comments do get posted. You are not being censored. ~dbs, mod.]
Icarus (16:55:57) :
As always, when your ilk cannot answer a question you sidestep.
So I’ll ask again: please provide a link to where I can read that UHI is accounted for in your quote.
Icarus (18:02:03) :
If you are not going to address the flaws in your points then please save your sidestepping for someone else. I am not going to play your game with you.
wobble (18:33:04) :
You’re just going to get a bunch of distraction from Icarus. He has addressed nothing I asked him for. He has fallen back on the usual alarmists game of obfuscation. And what he is saying is the same old stuff they always say.
DaveE (19:36:48) :
Dave,
One of my comments earlier didn’t appear for a while too. But after some time it did. I really don’t think you are being censored. You are one of the most leveled headed and careful commenters.
And about GISS–CEI is suing for their slow FOI response. Maybe NASA will comply.
jmacqueen (18:03:19) :
Here is more of the discussion, Tom Wigley also is at a loss to explain why temps have not increased as they predicted…..
Well, the old standby troll Icarus has an explanation. It’s a quote from some book of a guy kicking around some ideas for the cooling. It’s less reliable than the Mann Hockey Stick.
Icarus: "None of this constitutes global warming having been ‘falsified’.
And none of us are saying it does.
Why paint with such a broad brush, Icarus? Or are you on the defensive??
However the recent cooling from the the observations…as opposed to the extrapolations…are quite intriguing.
Res ipsa loquiter….
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ar4-a1b-a2.gif
Regardless, your “40 years of warming” is hardly a mega-cycle in the PDO or the AMO….so you can’t positively prove the 40 years for your cause.
Not by a long shot….
You just go on keep flying around too close to the sun.
It ain’t cool to fool with Mother Nature like you climate wizards are trying to do.
And chances are She will find a way to melt your wings…even if it is in the middle of a deep solar minimum.
So no, “global warming” (as you say) has not been falsified. Point taken.
The earth has indeed warmed. Its called recovery from the Little Ice Age.
But ANTHROPOGENIC global warming, (which you do not say, but imply) does not need falsifying.
It, pathetic scientific specimen that it is, falsifies itself.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
From “I Wonderland – A Virtual Extortion”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that this is all like that movie “Wag the Dog?” I’m living in a virtual world where everything around me is computer generated and under the control of a self-righteous religious cult??? And they have conspired to manage my behavior by using psy-ops, torture, endless propaganda and psychological assault??? All in order to steal my worldly assets and turn me into an Orwellian frugalaton??? Then tell me they’re ‘saving’ me and millions of others and to be grateful???
Yes.”
Roger Knights (19:35:43) “You’ve given me a good laugh already.”
Glad to hear that we agree.
~Icarus
No, they would not. Are you just going to throw out 100+ years of evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?(strawman argument, your words not mine) If you are, then further discussion is completely pointless. If not, then you have to accept that increasing atmospheric CO2 does cause an enhanced greenhouse effect.(false, CO2 has continued to rise, temperatures have reached stasis and declined for 8 years) You also can’t ignore the last 40 years of global warming and pretend it didn’t happen just because one year (2008) it cooled one tenth of a degree (or appeared to).
FAIL
2009-40 years is 1979 a period during which “climate” experts postulated that we were on the verge on another Ice Age.
Rural temperatures in the U.S. haven’t, on average, been rising for the past 100 years, only urban surface stations reacting to the UHI effect indict a rise, while satellite data disagrees with the surface station temperatures.
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.
~Dr. Kevin Trenberth- Climate Crisis Zealot who disagrees with Icarus
The hypothesis is that rising CO2, and CO2 is still rising, leads directly to rising temperature and ,hysterically, a runaway effect.
The is the “proven” hypothesis the Copenhagen Climate Conference is predicated upon and the hoax tempting the politicians to wreck the economies of the civilized world by radically cutting carbon emissions.
The hypothesis has been falsified.
CO2 does not drive temperature regardless of the undisputed fact that it is a greenhouse gas.
Icarus (16:55:57) :
Are you trying to say the cooling trend the earth is in is not statistically significant? Is that what you meant by “what magnitude of change in global temperature do you think constitutes ‘trend’ rather than just natural variability, and over what length of time?” If it is you may to recheck your math on that.
We could go back to the Medieval Warm Period. That should settle your argument.
Roger Knights (19:35:43)
Thankyou for the kind word; keep watering the acorn.
[Reply: you are not the only one with the same problem. I suspect it has something to do with WordPress. But as you can see, your comments do get posted. You are not being censored. ~dbs, mod.]
I’m sorry if I gave the impression I felt I was being censored. I know that is not the case.
I am aware that others have had the same problem too.
I was just pointing up that the spam filter has a problem and that is an annoyance, especially as being able to see the message awaiting moderation enables quick fixes to errors within ones posts.
DaveE.
photon without a Higgs (22:15:46) :
Icarus (16:55:57) :
Are you trying to say the cooling trend the earth is in is not statistically significant?
There is no ‘cooling trend’. The Earth is still warming at around 0.2°C per decade, as it has for several decades.
However, let’s suppose you’re right. How much temperature anomaly constitutes a trend (or deviation from a trend), and why? Is it 0.1°C? 0.4°C? 0.7°C? How long does it have to persist for you to be confident that it represents a real long-term change, and why?
“”There is no ‘cooling trend’. The Earth is still warming at around 0.2°C per decade, as it has for several decades.””
What data are you using? And what are your start and stop dates?
Are you seriously confident that “several decades” adequately describes a global temperature trend?
trends are either benign or not. Even the change from the balmy MWP to the LIA was relatively benign, although the change from the LIA to the Modern warm period was even more to the advantage of organic life on earth. However, nothing remarkable can be recorded in the last 40 years, in fact, supposing the data is massaged, which it obviously is, then the warm trend that caused alarm and climate conference revelry was the period from 1979-1998, as caused by the pacific climate shift – not that anyone really noticed any cataclysm in 1998 – Prior to that was a relatively benign cooling period of 35-40 years, preceded by a warming period from the beginning of the century, when temperatures were the same, or slightly warmer than today.
Its a flat trend thus, since 1900, and even if the figures were thrashed, deleted and contorted to produce 0.2 per decade, then I can’t say that’s a bad thing at all, unless you’re an outright misanthrope.
Incidentally, this has nothing to do with *greenhouse gases*. They are limited according to forcings, and, of course, their wavelength at which they absorb small amounts of radiation.
you can download raw data from various weather stations, or natiopnal meteoroligical organisations, and even johm-daly.com which uses raw data from NASA and CRU, just to see how cheeky and galling those closed circle of statisitcs manipulators have been.
Warming Trend for 2 select locations since 1873,
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/suzuki.htm
or not.
(no real cooling trend either, though)