From IEEE Spectrum – How to Fix the Climate-Change Panel
Questions for climate modeler and IPCC insider Kevin E. Trenberth
New Zealander Kevin E. Trenberth has been a lead author in the last three climate assessments produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and he shared in the 2007 Nobel Prize awarded to the IPCC. He is head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. IEEE Spectrum Contributing Editor William Sweet interviewed Trenberth about the impact of the theft last year of climate scientists’ e-mails from the University of East Anglia and proposals for reforming the IPCC.
IEEE Spectrum: You were a lead coauthor with Phil Jones of East Anglia of a key chapter in the latest IPCC assessment, and messages of yours were among the hacked e-mails that aroused such consternation.
Kevin E. Trenberth: One cherry-picked message saying we can’t account for current global warming and that this is a travesty went viral and got more than 100 000 hits online. But it was quite clear from the context that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in terms of short-term variability.
Spectrum: It seems to me the most damaging thing about the disclosed e-mails was not the issue of fraud or scientific misconduct but the perception of a bunker mentality among climate scientists. If they really know what they’re doing, why do they seem so defensive?
The full interview at IEEE Spectrum
h/t to WUWT reader Mark Hirst
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You don’t have to ask Mann for his recent data. You just have to go here for the data and here for supplementary data and code.
What data of Trenberth’s are you having trouble finding? The problem with Mann’s seems to be that your google-fu is weak.
It doesn’t really matter how thin it is amongst the nitrogen. What matters is how much there is of it.
It turns out that there is about 3,100,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Which is about 6kg over every square metre of the planet.
A 6kg, 1 m² blanket could have some effect, don’t you think?
Alas, no.
Wombat says:
November 1, 2010 at 12:32 am
It turns out that there is about 3,100,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Which is about 6kg over every square metre of the planet.
Which turns out to be an average of around 0.0006kg/m^3, up from a pre-industrial 0.0004kg/m^3
It makes plants grow more vigorously, but it doesn’t make much difference to temperature, because the claimed water vapour feedback isn’t happening.
Wombat says:
November 1, 2010 at 12:21 am
What data of Trenberth’s are you having trouble finding?
It’s more that we have a problem getting you to respond to what he said in a realistic way:
“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! ”
-Kevin Trenberth- Oct 2009
Which part of this do you not understand?
Wombat says:
October 31, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Its warming too fast for the biosphere to adapt or migrate.
1) According to Phil ‘Hide the decline’ Jones, there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995
2) At the latitude of the UK, average temperature fall by 1C for each 200 miles north you travel. I think even a tortoise should make 150 miles in 100 years.
RE:Wombat : (October 31, 2010 at 9:42 pm )
“Spector, perhaps the “thermal shocks of H2O condensation” are nearly balanced by the “thermal shocks of H2O evaporation”, so the net effect is practically zero.”
In these cases I am referring to the potential radiation that may me emitted by newly formed or newly extended clumps of H2O molecules while they are still in a highly excited state and still retain much of the initial heat of condensation. Most of the time, this condensation energy is probably shared as heat with surrounding atmosphere, but I think some of that energy may be released as special, unique wavelength photons that can pass through a considerable depth of clear air without being reabsorbed.
I would like to see a spectrum plot of how that 80W/m² ends up as radiation from the upper atmosphere escaping the earth.
Which is true, but it doesn’t matter how much Nitrogen is mixed with it. If a photon of the correct wavelength hits a CO2 atom it is absorbed. It doesn’t matter how much Nitrogen the photon passes through to hit it.
So, pressure broadening aside, the important aspect is 6kg of CO₂ above every square metre of the planet.
It’s not impossible to understand that this can cause 1.7W/m² of radiative forcing.
And it is. There is no suggestion outside extremist anti-scientific web forums that our physics of optics is broken.
It is indeed. There is 15% more water vapour in the atmosphere on average that there was 50 years ago.
And this is completely expected. Warmer air holds more water vapour before condensation starts, and also it evaporates water vapour more quickly.
And the climate sensitivity of about 3°C per doubling that is measured in a wide range of ways shows that water vapour feedback is happening.
Well, if you’re now saying that Trenberth’s data is available, that’s all good.
Close.
This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.
It’s a subtle difference, but what you said implies that there hasn’t been any warming over that period, whereas what Jones said was that the warming over that period was there, but not significant at the 95% level.
Since 1994 there was significant warming.
Most species of tree migrate even more slowly that tortoises.
I’ve never heard of such radiation. Is it measured in the Lab?
Wombat admits he doesn’t even know what we here have known here for years: that the devious Kevin Trenberth isn’t American. Wombat’s astonishing ignorance of such a basic fact shows that the guy probably lives in his mother’s basement; has no real life, and that his incessant thread-jacking fulfills his idea of existence.
Mr Wombat needs to get up to speed on this subject, and lighten up on the cutting & pasting of his debunked climate alarmist nonsense. It’s clear that he is new to this subject, and that he gets his misinformation from catastrophe-promoting echo chamber blogs. Unfortunately for Wombat, the planet is in no danger, as can be verified by its current Goldilocks temperature range: not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Maybe marsupialboi can falsify that statement, eh?
Wombat’s belief that the sensitivity number is what the IPCC claims is based on faith, not science. The IPCC’s numbers are bogus, selected only for their alarming conclusions.
For example, Miskolczi gives a zero sensitivity to CO2. Idso gives 0.1. Spencer gives 0.125. Schwartz gives 0.3, Chylek gives 0.38, Lindzen gives under 1.0… but the IPCC gives up to 6° C ?? WUWT?
Wombat’s cherry-picking of the scariest possible number is typical of the alarmist crowd. The IPCC’s job is to alarm the public in order to generate grant income; that’s what scamsters do, and Wombat is one of their enablers and apologists.
If I am wrong, Wombat can easily show that there is an agreed number for climate sensitivity. Or, he can continue to post his incessant – and factually wrong – cut ‘n’ pasted nonsense copied from RealClimate, climate progress, etc.
Wombat’s arguments have all been thoroughly deconstructed here in the past; it’s all in the WUWT archives. His tactic is to jump from one talking point to another, while never actually debating any of them in detail, and to clutter up the thread with previously falsified conjectures. It is the old alarmist tactic of always moving the goal posts, never sticking with one issue. That’s what climate alarmists do. It’s all they have, so they go with it.
If I’m wrong, it is very easy to demonstrate: Wombat can argue any one point in detail that he tries to make. I encourage him to stick to one issue, instead of being fixated on his cutting and pasting. He will quickly be set straight by scientific skeptics here, who, as always, have one simple challenge for Wombat-types: prove your assertions.
Wombat says:November 1, 2010 at 4:55 am
2) At the latitude of the UK, average temperature fall by 1C for each 200 miles north you travel. I think even a tortoise should make 150 miles in 100 years.
Most species of tree migrate even more slowly that tortoises.
You don’t know what you are talking about. “Most” tree species have some type of bouyant seed dispersal mechanism which can travel many miles per year, even hundreds for some species like cottonwood. “Many” tree species depend on distribution by birds or even coyotes and other animals, which eat the seeds and relieve themselves of viable seeds.
Range distribution is solely based on suitable habitat and/or competition at the landing site.
Smokey’s idea of knowledge of global warming is if you are aware of the which researchers are expatriates of which countries. He he doesn’t rate knowledge of the science.
He needs to wake up to the idea of scientific evidence, and the scientific process, and that trying to make points in the third person without providing evidence proves nothing. If the world were not too cold, not too not, but just right, I wonder how smokey thinks of the 40% drop in photoplanktons attributed to warming is “just right”. I wonder how he thinks that the 30% drop in biodiveristy over the last 35 years is “just right”.
He posts about climate change but seems to know nothing about its measured effects on coral reefs, on tundra communities, on subantarctic communities, or the extinction pressure of changing range to a non-overlapping range.
Amazing. He must have buried his head in the sand until now.
He makes no counterargument to the papers that have shown the climate sensitivity to be about 3°C in the past, but claims that because he has heard of half a dozen sensitivity estimates that are an order of magnitude lower than 95% of the peer reviewed research, it must be different from that now.
He provides no citations nor links to these estimates. Despite that his response is to quite well referenced posts.
Mr Smokey thinks that the IPCC has made an estimate of climate sensitivity. They have reported on the estimates of the scientific community. The irony is that he statements from mainstream science, and cries “cherry picking”, while suggesting that the climate sensitivity is 0.1 or 0.3 … or, and this one is really hard to imagine the physics behind … 0.
How a negative feedback can eliminate whatever caused the feedback, but still exist is new to mathematics, but not to smokey.
He is so removed from reality, science so much his view of evil, that he claims that a presentation of a scientific position must be a cut and paste from his own personal devil … blogs about climate change.
Google finds pages with an exact phrase if you surround it with quotes. Show me which posts I have cut and paste, smokey.
I have presented coherrent arguments, with many links to papers from the peer reviewed scientific literature. Smokey calls this “never actually debating any of them in detail”. You can’t get more detailed than linking to the papers, smokey.
I have one simple challenge for smokey. Prove your assertions.
What have I cut and paste?
Wombat says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:17 am
There is 15% more water vapour in the atmosphere on average that there was 50 years ago.
Not according to the NCEP re-analysis. What’s your source please?
Wombat says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:55 am
Most species of tree migrate even more slowly that tortoises.
Most species of tree weren’t killed off by the last ice age or the deglaciation following it. Life is more adaptable quicker than you seem to think. A lot of species have subspecies which thrive further north or south, or at higher or lower altitudes. These repopulate areas cleared by climate changes the previous inhabitants couldn’t tolerate.
Wombat says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:20 am
Well, if you’re now saying that Trenberth’s data is available, that’s all good.
Non-sequitur alert.
I’ll repeat the question:
Trenberth said (without making any data available to the rest of us):
“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! ”
-Kevin Trenberth- Oct 2009
Question for Wombat:
Which part of Trenberth’s statement do you not understand?
I didn’t say that there was part of Trenberth’s statement that I didn’t understand.
My point to which you are replying is unrelated. I was responding to the suggestion that Mann’s and Trenberth’s data were not readily available to the public, but that Spencer’s was.
I showed that Mann’s data and code was available online, and I was wondering which part of Trenberth’s data people thought wasn’t being made available.
So I ask again. Which of Trenberths papers are you having trouble locating the data for?
I’m not suggesting that I can find it, but I found Mann’s pretty quickly, so I wonder if I could.
Last glaciation. An ice age is when there’s significant ice sheets in both hemispheres. We’re in one now.
There’s a number of reasons why the current warming is causing a greater drop in biodiversity than the warming at the end of the last glaciation.
First and foremost is that this warming is much faster. A deglaciation is about 10°C or 12°C over about 5000 or 6000 years. Very rapid warming as far as the ice core record goes, but only about 0.02°C per decade. The current warming is conservatively (hadCru) 0.13°C per decade over the last 50 years. Six or seven times faster.
Secondly is that over-exploitation, habitat loss, and pollution have already thinned populations. The reduced access to genetic variation means reduced capacity to adapt quickly.
Thirdly is that in many areas human land use has separated wilderness areas into islands with no wildlife corridors to allow migration.
One things for sure. We are seeing a huge drop in biodiversity.
Word of mouth.
What is the value from the NCEP re-analysis, please?
I realize that; my realization was implicit in my remark in the paragraph following to the one you quoted, “They [the IPCC higher-ups] would have been familiar with the literature and realized in a general way what WG1 was going to conclude.” (So you realized that I realized that. Good point-scoring, though.)
I used the word “findings,” rather than “verdict” or “evaluation,” in order to “set up” my little bit of wordplay: ” … WG1′s catastrophic findings before the findings had been found.”
Though I concede that “findings” wasn’t the mot juste, it wasn’t far off. In common parlance, and in media-speak, it’s sometimes used synonymously with those other words when medical “meta-analyses” on the efficacy of various drugs and therapies are published. There have been several of these in the last three months, though I forget what they were about. They did get headlines. Their “verdicts” or “evaluations” were called “findings” in the media, though they only weighed up what had already been found.
Alas, they might as well be locked down in Michael Mann’s thumb drive. No one can be expected to take a full-time month out of his life getting up to speed on our “findings” (if I dare use the word).
What I hope Anthony will green-light, if it is possible, is to give editorial privileges to a select group of WUWTers to go through the archives and select by “consensus” (!) the best 10%. Then that material should be either highlighted in-place in yellow, flagged with a star, and/or copied to a boiled-down mini-WUWT that could be read in three days (full time). This place shouldn’t be just a chat-room; it should be a reference-source.
Most tortoises can travel hundreds of kilometres per year, and they don’t have to be cottonwoods.
Roger Knights says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:41 am
While I appreciate your relative candour, I still think that your objections to working group three are unjustifiable.
1°C warming has to be converted to consequences if the report is for policy-makers.
“… set a group in motion in parallel with WG1 to flesh out the full horror of WG1′s catastrophic findings before the findings had been found.” Isn’t only unjustifiable because the phrase “before the findings have been found” is wrong, but also because “flesh out the full horror” is implying a bias that doesn’t exist. Quite the opposite. Because the reports go through political review as well as scientific review, they end up tending towards the conservative.
Yep.
Foreign aid was provided in the case of the recent famine there: $133 million from the US and $28 million from the EU. (It may not have been given in a timely fashion, or delivered to its recipients–I don’t know.)
But to cite that instance and say nothing else is a diversive response to my claim that poor nations don’t pay the full market price for foodstuffs. “Food aid” subsidizes part of these payments in many cases. I suspect that additional food aid would kick in if sharply rising prices caused widespread famines.
(But I may be completely wrong. I’m nearly completely ignorant on the subject of food aid. As on nearly every subject, I rely on vague memories of material I’ve read in the media over the years.)
I note that the link you provided to Wikipedia claims that Sahel’s farmers have been cleared of the Western charge of causing the famine by poor farming practices, because global warming has now been fingered as the villain. This is what I would expect from a Connolley-controlled site.