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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Population increased for many other reasons than climate.
The issue is more direct. Every change affects things. And for at least the next two degrees of warming (assuming that much), many will die from warming. And around four times as many lives will be saved from the effects of cold.
In those terms, and from a strictly human perspective, a mild warming would be wonderful.
Moreover, Wombat et al., over the past 6 decades the standard of living in the U.S., for example, has significantly increased, an occurrence which is necessarily related to the increase in its use of fossil fuel – but which the CO2AGW climate change scientists instead claim is causing a net disease state world-wide, including right here in the U.S. [~”the world has a fever”].
Therefore, the CO2AGW climate change scientists are obviously wrong, and what they claim is the cause of an alleged disease is actually the/a cure for the real disease – being underdeveloped, a fact which India and China have also recognized.
When are the ipcc Cimate Scientists going to start dealing scientifically with these facts?
evanmjones;
And for at least the next two degrees of warming (assuming that much), many will die from warming. And around four times as many lives will be saved from the effects of cold.>>
Then add in the additional lives saved from hunger by longer growing seasons, larger crop yields, and increased amounts of arable land. Then add to that the increased wealth in north temperate climates as they can divert energy from winter heating bills dropping to other endeavours, not to mention using less fossil fuel in the process. Not to mention that gasoline engines would have an increase in efficiency as winter temps are well below peak efficiency, and so fuel economy would improve along with engine life which would put still more money in their pockets to pursue other endeavours.
Of course that would just be further proof of how unfair capitalism is, taking more advantage of warming temperatures than the developing world can, since the poor bessoten dicatorships that govern them are mostly in the warmer parts of the world which the IPCC says will see the least temperature change. The only solution to those ignorant capitalists hogging all the benefits for themselves will be to come up with some other excuse to tax the new wealth out of their pockets and into those of the dictators.
Not that I am worried it will happen since ocean heat content is in decline, has been for a while, air temps have been flat for 15 years… and where the ocean goes, the atmosphere shall follow, a small child being dragged by one hand by a parent who outweighs the child by a factor of 1400 to 1.
It should be high time that ipcc Climate Scientists start being clear about what they are saying, instead trying to manipulate people by means of verbal constructions, including unscientific statements, designed solely to manipulate, instead of being intended to inform people’s understanding. But in the face of the fact that ipcc Climate Science is no more than a massive Propaganda Operation, the latter will simply not happen.
Right, Wombat?
I think even more revealing tha the original travesty email are Tom Wigley and Kevin Trenberth’s follow up comments:
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
@Phil.: I’m a bit puzzled by your argument. You quote from something without giving any citation. For all I know this is a hit piece from Mother Jones or Huffpost. That aside, misbehavior on one person’s part (or one organization) doesn’t prove your point. I acknowledged that some people in the drug development field will misbehave- it’s just like any other field of human endeavor. However, over time these things tend to be found and corrected, and when they are the consequences are severe. GSK just paid a $750 million settlement to deal with problems of this nature (related in this case to lack of manufacturing controls at one of their facilities).
Wombat says:
October 29, 2010 at 3:47 pm
I hold a NZ passport, how embarrassing.
Trenberth is the second most cited scientist on climate science papers that contributed to the IPCC working group one report in 2007.
You should be proud that someone originally from NZ has achieved such a height in his profession.
Well Wombat, as a leader of a religious movement how does Trenberth stack up against the Pope?
BTW, wombats are adapted to live in cold conditions, just as well, as Australia has been much colder this year than last, a prophetic choice for your screen name!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wombat
I didn’t know Trenberth was religious. I am only aware of him as a scientists. It wasn’t until I read this thread that I learned that he wasn’t American by birth.
The IPCC working group one report is the one that I am most familiar with.
It makes a sound and well referenced description of the science.
Certainly there are concessions to length, that have allowed some sections to be misinterpreted. And here I’m thinking of the 9.2.2 where the counterscientific climate movement have claimed that the heating at the top of the troposphere is a fingerprint of greenhouse warming.
In fact the fingerprints of greenhouse warming is the warming of the troposphere with the cooling of the stratosphere. And the exaggerated warming at the poles is the fingerprint of CO2 warming.
But overall, I certainly don’t get this claim that it is unscientific or manipulative.
Using the random number generator on random.org, I have selected a page then paragraph from chapter 9. This is it:
“Another approach for assessing the regional influence of
external forcing is to apply detection and attribution analyses
to observations in specific continental- or sub-continental
scale regions. A number of studies using a range of models
and examining various continental- or sub-continental scale
land areas find a detectable human influence on 20th-century
temperature changes, either by considering the 100-year period
from 1900 or the 50-year period from 1950. Stott (2003)
detects the warming effects of increasing greenhouse gas
concentrations in six continental-scale regions over the 1900
to 2000 period, using HadCM3 simulations. In most regions,
he finds that cooling from sulphate aerosols counteracts some
of the greenhouse warming. However, the separate detection of
a sulphate aerosol signal in regional analyses remains difficult
because of lower signal-to-noise ratios, loss of large-scale
spatial features of response such as hemispheric asymmetry that
help to distinguish different signals, and greater modelling and
forcing uncertainty at smaller scales. Zwiers and Zhang (2003)
also detect human influence using two models (CGCM1 and
CGCM2; see Table 8.1, McAvaney et al., 2001) over the 1950 to
2000 period in a series of nested regions, beginning with the full
global domain and descending to separate continental domains
for North America and Eurasia. Zhang et al. (2006) update this
study using additional models (HadCM2 and HadCM3). They
find evidence that climates in both continental domains have
been influenced by anthropogenic emissions during 1950 to
2000, and generally also in the sub-continental domains (Figure
9.11). This finding is robust to the exclusion of NAO/Arctic
Oscillation (AO) related variability, which is associated with
part of the warming in Central Asia and could itself be related
to anthropogenic forcing (Section 9.5.3). As the spatial scales
considered become smaller, the uncertainty in estimated signal
amplitudes (as demonstrated by the size of the vertical bars
in Figure 9.11) becomes larger, reducing the signal-to-noise
ratio (see also Stott and Tett, 1998). The signal-to-noise ratio,
however, also depends on the strength of the climate change
and the local level of natural variability, and therefore differs
between regions. Most of the results noted above hold even
if the estimate of internal climate variability from the control
simulation is doubled.”
Now I think that it is pretty dry, and see very little in the way of emotive language.
Can you point out in this passage
1) The verbal constructions that you are talking about
and
2) The Unscientific statements you designed solely to manipulate that you are talking about.
You’re lucky.
In Australia, six decades ago, one could afford a house and a family on one income, and it didn’t have to be above the median. Today to buy a house in the city, you need a middle-management salary or two incomes.
I don’t see the necessity of that relation at all. For that to be necessary, you would have to claim that all stone age cultures had identical standards of living, because they all used no fossil fuels. Do you claim that?
You would also have to claim that because France generates a lot of its electricity from Nuclear power plants, they must have a lower standard of living than if they switched to coal. Can you please explain the mechanism around how this would happen?
Most of the increased arable land falls in Canada or Russia. Neither country has much malnutrition.
The increased failure of crops due to the disruption of the monsoons in Africa and India, and increased flooding and increased drought is occurring in the Sahel and horn of Africa, and in parts of South East Asia and the Subcontinent. Death by starvation has increased.
Do you have a plan for getting this increased food production to those who need it, and can’t afford it?
Because it’s not working yet.
I hadn’t heard that. Do you have a citation?
The last I read were those studies that showed that in industrialised nations heat killed much more than cold. And I think of the least developed nations as nearer the tropics … Africa and South Asia, Pacific Islands … certainly there are exceptions Mongolia, probably parts of the old Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, I find this statistic surprising, and I would love to believe it.
The ASA ruling is the opposite of your claim.
The conspiracy theory. Unscientific by being unfalsifyable.
1) They’re criminals!
– response: They were cleared by investigations by a wide range of national and international bodies.
2) That’s part of the conspiracy!
– response: Do you really think that a university would risk the only thing it has to sell, its reputation, by bribing national an international organisations?
3) Yes!
– response […]
With all the deep and bitter academic conflicts that I am aware of in academia, this global conspiracy of climate scientists is more laughable than the moon hoaxers claims.
Malnutrition and diarrhoea, mostly.
Drought and flooding on the horn of Africa have not been declining.
Flooding on the subcontinent has also not been declining.
No. It looks a lot like you’re making stuff up. Do you have a citation for the decrease in drought in the Sahel and Horn of Africa over the last 30 years?
Diarrhoea is caused by flooding or drought, because the former pollutes the water supplies with sewerage and the latter forces people to use less clean water supplies.
The mechanism is very different from Malaria and Dengue fever, which are increasing because climate change has moved the range of the insect vector. (Along with most other plants and animals on the planet).
Climate is not the only thing that mosquitoes need. Still open water is another, and that limits the change in range of the vector that is not independent of development. (And neither do all parts of the world have the same malaria, and they are vastly different in their virulence.)
That’s the sort of thing that I would expect to see in the scientific literature rather than the public press. Have you looked there?
I don’t have a Phd in atmospheric physics or optics. And I don’t think that we who don’t would be a very good choice of people to create a valid theory of upper atmosphere cooling.
But I didn’t know there was a controversy. The greenhouse effect traps warmth below. So up in the stratosphere, there is less heat coming from below, the same from above, and so cooling is expected.
And also measured.
Again, this is outside the reach of most autodidacts. I would look in the scholarly literature.
I can’t believe this argument about deaths caused by AGW. In the first place, there’s been no major temperature increase to date. The horror stories are all in the future. So anyone arguing in this vein is either bonkers or supremely disingenuous.
This is one of the curious things about warmists – they will embrace any argument that, superficially, favors their viewpoint. Even if in doing so they undermine their basic position. And all the while, they seem perfectly oblivious to the difficulties they’re creating for themselves.
re:
Isn’t this why people started using statistics – so they wouldn’t have to “massage their data”? Isn’t this what R. A. Fisher nailed Mendel on? I’d love to hear what Trenberth has to say about that little contoversy. (Incidentally, in my opinion Mendel is off the hook, since his major paper was a summary work – rather than a scientific report in the modern sense – which included representative data. Plus the fact that his work was done long before the modern era of experimental design. On the other hand the CRUtape boys deserve no such free pass.)
I assume from the fact that Lomborg is advocating for a carbon-tax that this calculation doesn’t project forward?
Still, if you have a link, I’ll be happy to read a charismatic economist’s view on epidemiology.
The WHO have also done studies though.
http://conservationmedicine.org/papers/Patz_et_al_Nature%202005.pdf
YeAh, but that amount of warming, without strong positive feedbacks, would not cause the catastrophes these social scientists have been recruited to prognosticate about. THAT’S what’s controversial.
A CV containing the phrase “served as IPCC lead author on … in …” has great value to its possessor.
Good grascious Wombat, you’re a prolific little troll aren’t you! The worst of it is that in addition to being prolific, you are also articulate and clearly understand that a half truth is more difficult to dispute than an unfounded outrageous claim, yet you manager to make a few via oblique references rather than presenting facts and logic. The first electronic Wombat I encountered was a little known command line in the nearly forgotten VAX/VMS operating system that produced, for no apparent reason, a rather detailed description of a wombat. It was a benign infestation however, contrary to the current version. I haven’t the time to debunk all your half truths, but I’ll knock off a few right now:
Wombat;
The IPCC working group one report is the one that I am most familiar with.
It makes a sound and well referenced description of the science.>>
I suggest you read the summary for policy makers which, in the context of climate debate in regard to what to do (or not do) is THE most important one as it is written for decision makers at the most senior levels of government, and it is the one on which those decision makers not of a science background rely. It is full of distortions and alarmism. Further, WG1 is by no means sound science. Many of the definitions and explanations are not wrong, but neither are they explicit to the point of being accurate from a scientific perspective. Case in point, in another thread I noted that WG1 refers to forcing “at the tropopause”, that exactly what that means in undefined and may or may not mean “Top of Atmosphere” as is commonly accepted, and further, sensitivity to that forcing is calculated as a range, but WG1 does not define where the measurement of that sensitivity occurs. Another commenter took me to taks and advised that sensitivity is calculated at the surface, and this is common knowledge. I asked him to provide a pointer to that definition in WG1, and after a considerable effort on his part, he admitted that he could not find a definition to that effect, nor any definition that was clear and specific for that matter. While you choose a random number generator to turn up a quote which you then point to and say “see, nothing out of the ordinary” let’s do some real science which requires methodicaly working through the document. Having done so, I can advise that WG1 does not in my opinion meet scientific standards, and as regards climate forcing of greenhouse gases on surface temperatures, may I quote the following from AR4 WG1 2.8.2
” It should be noted that a perturbation to the surface energy budget involves sensible and latent heat fluxes besides solar and longwave irradiance; therefore, it can quantitatively be very different from the RF, which is calculated at the tropopause, and thus is not representative of the energy balance perturbation to the surface-troposphere (climate) system. While the surface forcing adds to the overall description of the total perturbation brought about by an agent, the RF and surface forcing should not be directly compared…”
Despite which they proceed to do just that, going so far as to define it as linear!
Wombat;
The ASA ruling is the opposite of your claim.>>
You can’t make something true by calling it a ruling. They expressed an opinion, and a vague one at that.
Wombat;
No. It looks a lot like you’re making stuff up. Do you have a citation for the decrease in drought in the Sahel and Horn of Africa over the last 30 years?>>
Wow, I make a comment about global decline of severe weather events and you come right back with but but but lookit what’s happening in Sahel and Horn of Africa, accuse me of making something up, and then demand a citation to support something I never said. Climate is cyclical, the historical record is replete with examples of droughts and flooding coming and going world wide. What has a specific area like Sahel and Horn of Africa got to do with it? Do they represent the entire globe? I said that severe weather events have declined globaly. If you want a cite to support what I actually said instead of what you claim I said, http://knowledgedrift.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/cyclone-energy.png
Wombat;
The last I read were those studies that showed that in industrialised nations heat killed much more than cold. >>
In an earlier commented I pointed out that deaths attributed to cold in the UK alone surpass on a regular basis the highest incidence of heat related deaths in all of Europe in the worst heat wave in recent memory, which has not, interestingly, been repeated.
Wombat;
The mechanism is very different from Malaria and Dengue fever, which are increasing because climate change has moved the range of the insect vector.>>
If you had ever taken a walk during the summer in Canada’s northland, you would know that is a total pot of huey. Those regions have skeeters so thick they crawl through your hair to bite your scalp. That was true this year and 100 years ago. Their range goes WAY past those aread reporting malaria and dengue, always has, and has nothing to do with it.
Wombat;
Most of the increased arable land falls in Canada or Russia. Neither country has much malnutrition. Do you have a plan for getting this increased food production to those who need it, and can’t afford it?>>
Putting aside your claim re Canada or Russia, are you kidding me? Last I checked Canada and Russia both export food. Do you suppose that they sell grain all over the world that never gets delivered? Do you suppose that the way they do it now will suddenly stop working? As for those who can’t afford it, may I point out that we have a global surplus right now, yet they can’t get/afford it. Has nothing to do with climate has everything to do with corruption and totalitarian rule in developing countries. As to your tirade about monsoons etc being disrupted and causing crop failure, I advise you to look up the rice production statistics world wide by country and you will find that production is not just higher across the board, it is a LOT higher in recent years, so where is this disruption you speak of?
Sorry I have to get back to a family obligation regarding cleaning of a garage or I would address the balance of your blatherings as well. I suggest you take your pants off and wear them on your head though, because if I was you I would be pretty embarrased right now at just how see through my bullarky is and wouldn’t want anyone to recognize me.
Probly shudnt of said that, he’ll snip it out of contect and claim ad hominem attack.
“But I didn’t know there was a controversy. The greenhouse effect traps warmth below. So up in the stratosphere, there is less heat coming from below, the same from above, and so cooling is expected.”
———–
This is a most fascinating perspective, Wombat. I will not trouble you for a more thorough explanation but I would ask you, since you have most excellent answers for all questions, what is the ideal temperature for the Earth’s atmosphere, measured at 1.5 metres above grade and averaged over all latitudes, all seasons and all times of the day?
This should not be much of a challenge, so I will venture to importune you further with regard to the region of the Earth that is Vancouver Island, Canada.
Please be as candid as you can be, in spite of my earnest wish that the ideal average temperature be several degrees higher than it currently is.
Do you think that the looming catastrophe caused by our profligate oxidation of dead diatoms and the concomitant surge of inappropriate triatomic atmospheric constituents offers an interesting economic opportunity for the owners of temperate climate real estate who would sell their chilly assets to heat-fleeing Inuit or inundation-dreading Maldiveans?
hey Wombat;
I’m back. Got time for one more before I hit the hay. Your statement somewhere previous in regard to AR4 WG1 being a scientific document. Following is verbatim from AR4 WG1 2.3.8
“A significant increase in the clear-sky longwave downward flux was found to be due to an enhanced greenhouse effect after combining the measurements with model calculations to estimate the contribution from increases in temperature and humidity.”
Let’s see. They start with something they measured, then combined it with some outputs from a model… what’s a model again? Oh yeah, its a computer program that produces results based on your assumptions and in order to be valid has to be tested against real world measurements to show accuracy… did they do that? No….
So we have some actual measurements combined with unproven assumptions to produce estimates from which they draw the conclusion that the observed change was due to a specific cause, being greenhouse effect. They may in fact be correct. But proof this isn’t, evidence it isn’t and science it isn’t.
G’night.
Sleep Tight.
But remember that the bedbugs in the tropics are the size of small dogs and they have increased their range due to global warming and they bight. You know why there’s no Boogey Man under your bed? They ate him.
(With all the nightmares running around in this guys head I figured I would add one)
It is the rate of change that is problematic to biodiversity.
In terms of human infrastructure, we’re getting a bit out of my field of knowledge. Some areas, such as the Sahel, the rainfall is sensitive to global (or Atlantic surface temperature, I think I recall). It’s pretty hard to make a call, because although the droughts are probably attributable to anthropogenic climate change, we don’t know that more warming won’t swing it back again.
The question is should we be gambling with the lives and cultures of millions of people from the cradle of humanity, without consideration of the value of those lives?
Sea level rise will become increasingly expensive as it increases. I guess optimal would be no more increase. I know that there are suburbs in my city that will be in big infrastructure trouble with 100mm more rise.
Northern Summer Sea ice loss, similarly, it would be best for no more, just in terms of extinction pressure by habitat reduction on the ecosystem up there. Saliently the pinnipeds that use the ice for breeding.
In terms of water security and flooding in the subcontinent, probably, optimal is a bit cooler than now. Snowfall is good, because is supplies meltwater to rivers reasonably constantly.
In terms of oceanic biodiversity, the increasing incidence of bleaching is complicated. It seems that there’s one family of the coral symbiote that is resistant to climate change, and there’s one that isn’t. They colonise each other’s corals, but they don’t thrive – the coral strongly prefers its symbiote for some reason.
In any case it is very serious for oceanic productivity, because one in every four inhabitants of the oceans spends at least part of their life-cycle in coral reefs.
But the more serious still is the 40% drop in phytoplankton population, at is attributed to rises in sea surface temperatures. This is a nasty positive feedback because it is a 20% reduction in global photosynthetic mass, so natural cycling of CO₂ from the atmosphere is down 20%. But also this is the bottom of the food web in the oceans. 40% less phytoplankton must result in about 40% reduction everywhere further up the web.
It’s all pretty grim really.