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
As a member of the general public and ‘uninitiated’, can I say thank you Ken, for understanding the limits of my rather average inteligence and not bothering me with those hard to understand error bars and that difficult to discipher raw data.
It is scientists like you, with your larger than average intelligence, who know what is truly best for me and for all mankind.
Clearly we need more IPCC resource to sieze upon every negative weather event so that we can warn the world that they are ALL GOING TO DIE!
Sadly, that is not very different from my understanding of his thinking. I had hoped for much better.
PJP says:
October 29, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I worked for Large Pharma for 40+ years, retiring last year.
So true. I had to produce data on stability and purity for drugs that were in clinical trials. I recently imagined what would have happened if back then I would have reported “happier” results sometimes. We had QC (Quality Control) the QA (Quality Assurance). For QC, we had to have all of our measurements witnessed, then initialed by a scientist with credentials in that particular discipline. Then the notebook had to be completed, signed and countersigned as “Read and Understood”. It did not stop there. At key times QA would come in. QA would have to insure that all of the numbers in the book comported with a computer printout, all of the instruments used had to have inspector’s certificates and calibration logs, all SOPs (standard operating procedures) had to be attached to all instruments, and all personnel involved had to have training certificates, updated at intervals. If the machine reported out in 8 significant figures, we had to report all 8. Then, according to protocols, rounding off numbers had be be done in only one way, and at fixed stages. All equipment software had to be determined by an automation expert, validated, and certified to make sure all of the numbers reported were accurate (since digital readouts were performed by spreadsheets, they had to be stepwise validated. The machines had to be assured that xxx voltage did indeed represent yyy digital magnitude.
Real pain in the butt! This happened in stages over the years, and each “assurance” step was a new headache. If your associate was out to potty break, you had to wait to do your measurement so he could look over your shoulder and sign and initial.
When QA came, it was like the Spanish Inquisition. If a mistake were made, and the data had already been submitted to archives or to FDA, then letters had to be written to start an investigation into cause and remediation, then write reports, etc.
But it seems to me that these “climate scientists” have no QC, no QA, no validation steps, no requisite training into SOP, no internal investigations into errors, no remediation, no RECORDS, no witnesses, or no operational reports.
No nothing! Not only do they have no witnesses to see if the weighings were recorded accurately, no QC or QA, but they had their fingers on the balances the whole time!!!
It just struck me: Trenberth is actually not a real scientist. He acts like one; goes through the motions of collecting data and analyzing it and reporting on it. But, how he actually does all that and the epistemology he uses in doing that is not that of a scientist, but that of an alchemist. What’s amazing is that, like in Islam, the “moderates” (by which I mean the real keepers of the faith) refuse to denounce the radicals among them. And so it was with the Crusades.
I’m just really flabbergasted by this realization — most climate “scientists” are not really scientists, despite their PhDs, university/ science agency employment, data, peer reviews, and conferences….
True scientists try to figure out how nature truly is. Most climate scientists try to prove that nature is the way they believe it to be. They KNOW they are right, but since the data won’t cooperate…
I’m… I’m speechless. Kevin Trenberth does not realize he is not a scientist. He truly thinks he is and his fellow are….
They have been caught in the act and guess who is hallucinating? Us of course…
Scientists almost always have to massage their data, exercising judgment about what might be defective and best disregarded.
The Universal Credo of Elitists: “Only by evading reality can we maintain our position as Elitists. The more the evasion, the greater the Elitism, the more we deserve to control the real World!”
sharper00 says:
October 29, 2010 at 11:50 am
So I guess all the people indignant over the idea of judgments being made on data and having it “massaged” don’t think there should be any correction for UHI or that a scientist shouldn’t decide to eliminate urban data in preference to rural.
Absolutely not true.
Of course there should be adjustments for issues like that.
But they should be fully documented and overt with the reasons and how they were done and the effect on the results,. Ideally for each site with reasoning for each site’s adjustments.
But that is NOT what happened – the ‘decline’ of the proxies was hidden as it would reduce their validity if it was shown that they had no relation to temperatures actually measured.
This is subterfuge not science. How do we know what other issues are being hidden that were not in the email release?
The entire field needs a little daylight on its data, inner workings and ‘adjustments’ – currently climate science has too high an albedo for anyone to be assured of the correctness of what they are told.
“….scientists almost always have to massage their data, exercising judgment about what might be defective and best disregarded…”
What informs that judgment?
I suspect Trenberth doesn’t realize how damaging that comment is.
IPCC ‘science’ is not a science at all, but a form of black art.
I was kind of hoping that Spectrum would pull itself out of its dive. But even after strong negative reaction from the engineering community over stuff they have been publishing the last 5 years or so, that they still publish propaganda pieces, proves to me that they have been consumed by the dark-side. IEEE itself, has been making decisions that have had me scratching my head.
Alas, poor Scientific Method, I knew it well, lo those many years ago. Now, it seems, Scientific Method has mostly been killed off by those to whom its care was entrusted, for their desire of government grant money and fame.
Their fame will be short lived, and they will proceed from fame to notoriety ere long. The last process has begun. Oh, how hard the mighty shall fall.
The point about the bunker mentality which was the focus of our book was this.
The bunker mentality drove the scientists to misconstrue steve McIntyre as a SKEPTIC backed by OIL, rather than a watchdog driven by his love of puzzles. Further, the bunker mentality drove them to change from being people who shared data (Jones gave Mcintyre data in 2002) to people who Fought the release of data. That change precipitated climategate as their efforts to fight the release of data took them to a place where they broke the law.
The chief spokesperson for the bunker approach was Mann.
——–
George E. Smith,
For me that was a useful summary of the earth system status versus model assumptions. Thanks.
John
RockyRoad says:
October 29, 2010 at 10:47 am
“Scientists almost always have to massage their data, exercising judgment about what might be defective and best disregarded”.
Really… Well, let me run this one by you and see how it sits:
“Bridge engineers almost always have to massage their designs, exercising judgment about what might be defective and best disregarded”.
Yep that’s why they don’t build bridges like this one any more! Safety factors are added into designs to allow for a margin of error, that’s ‘massaging the data’.
“…the theft last year of climate scientists’ e-mails from the University of East Anglia…”
I prefer to think of those copies of e-mails as having been liberated. Kinda like “Free Willie,” ya know.
I don’t think someone at UEA looked on a server and said, “Hey! Some e-mails are gone! I think they’ve been stolen.”
If UEA checks their server, I’m sure they’ll find nothing is missing.
“”””” Trenberth: There are three working groups—on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for greenhouse-gas mitigation. “””””
The Third group Trenberth says consists mostly of “Social Scientists”. Just what is a social scientist and just what would one know about the physical chemistry of greenhouse gases.
Does it not seem odd that right at the outset; before they even get to study the “Science” of climate, they already have a whole group who do nothing except figure out how to fix what they have already decided is the cause; namely greenhouse gases.
Odd; very odd !
I hold a NZ passport, how embarrassing.
Viv Evans says:
October 29, 2010 at 11:47 am
“Scientists almost always have to massage their data, exercising judgment about what might be defective and best disregarded.” – says Trenberth in the interview.
Is that so?
Sure, consider how much massaging Spencer does to his MSU data, don’t like the very high anomalies last January, just apply an ad hoc massage to move it to the summer.
“
Scientists almostMichael Mann, James Hansen, Phil Jones, Ben Santer and Tom Karl always have to massage their data, exercising judgment aboutwhat might be defective and best disregardedhow not to get caught”.“About 700 scientists can be involved in producing a single assessment report, and when the draft goes out for expert review, it might get 1400 to 1600 comments. Every comment goes into a huge Excel spreadsheet, and every comment is explicitly addressed”
REJECTED… REJECTED… REJECTED…
Steven Mosher says:
October 29, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Climate Gate was about Climate Bunker, now it’s time for other enlightening books about other Bunkers/Holy churches. 🙂
There is plenty of work for you ahead and for us to enjoy it. Buy more popcorn!
Kevin E. Trenberth said: “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.”
But his actual email message read:
“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.”
Trenberth can’t seem to tell warming from lack of warming, and despite his attempted spin, he actually meant “we don’t know where the heat’s going, and that’s a travesty for our side.” It wasn’t a travesty for science, but for the CAGW gravy train he and his cohorts are so anxious to keep riding.
OT: We are in need of the possibility of actually Smily faces to season our comments, specially devilish smileys.
Well, silly me. I forgot it was all about context – morons like me wouldn’t understand that – in context – that is just how scientists talk to each other every day. I suppose that includes conspiring to delete emails subject to FOI requests, using tricks to hide declines (which was really just a “clever thing to do” stupid me for even thinking otherwise) and old Kev there declaring that it is a “travesty” that they cannot show any warming for the last so-many years. It’s not like we should infer from that statement that these guys have an agenda to show warming, is it? No, don’t be such a lamebrain uninitiated idiot. Context. Always remember context.
Phil. says:
October 29, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Or this one.
http://www.rocketboom.com/blog/images/bridge_tay.jpg
Although Millikan discarded two thirds of the results from his oil drop experiment when calculating the charge on the electron. He also kept quiet about it. See (scroll down a bit).
http://www.practicalphysics.org/go/textonly/Guidance_162.html?topic_id=$parameters.topic_id&collection_id=%24parameters.collection_id
HAHA! Trenberth telling engineers that scientists always have to “massage” their data… WOW… I can’t help but laugh out loud. I think in the age old battle between scientists and engineers, the Engineers finally got a leg up on that comment alone.
Earth to Mr Trenberth, if Engineers massage their data, people die.