Post by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Dr. Trenberth delivered his highly-anticipated presentation at the American Meteorological Society 91st Annual Meeting in Seattle on Wednesday. The talk was titled “Promoting climate information and communication of climate change“, and an overflowing crowd of several hundred listened for about 20-minutes, then scattered. Those that read the preprint online (version 3 now) and expected Trenberth to back off on his rhetoric were sorely disappointed. Dr. Trenberth
- vigorously defended himself against the out-of-context slanderous claims from ClimateGate emails
- cheerfully promoted the science of the IPCC regardless of silly errors [like the Himalayan Glaciers — Telegraph Jan 27 news article]
- threw Phil Jones under the bus for being naive about “keeping papers out”
- doubled-down on the denier vitriol
- trashed the media for insufficiently sympathetic and woefully inaccurate climate change coverage
- attributed a dozen recent extreme weather events to global warming including the Queensland flooding
- and finally suggested that the “null hypothesis” concerning AGW attribution be turned on its head.
All in all, it was the stemwinder that everyone expected from the preprint preview/fiasco. Details from the talk follow…
I sat in the rear-most row of the conference room and took some notes on my laptop during the proceedings. I have quotes that can be confirmed when the AMS publishes their presentations online likely in the next month or so. Otherwise, I am paraphrasing the slides that were presented.
The presentation was dedicated to Dr. Stephen Schneider who passed away last July. Trenberth described the ClimateGate incident as an “illegal email hacking” that spawned viral attacks on scientists. The emails were used to “damn the IPCC and many of us”, and included conversations that were clearly not for human public consumption. The term “ClimateGate” should have been replaced by “swiftboating”. Trenberth himself was not embarrassed per se, just dismayed about the viral nature of the coverage. He went on to explain the “can’t find the heat / travesty” email, and said he was not particularly upset with what was put out in the public domain in terms of his email correspondence. According to him, ClimateGate simply proved that scientists were human. There was “some evidence of a lack of openness” but all following reviews/inquiries found no problems with the science.
Trenberth then discussed the small errors in the IPCC report (Himalayan glaciers), but there were no major changes to the overall IPCC conclusions. He admitted that the IPCC handled the “errors” rather poorly and left some scientists “hung out to dry”. Trenberth had not seen the Phil Jones email (Trenberth was not cc’ed) that said “we are gonna keep these papers out of the IPCC”, but blamed Jones for being naive about the process. Regardless, the papers, which Trenberth snidely commented “weren’t very good anyways” were indeed not excluded. (The system worked.) The “It’s a Travesty” is still accurate, but Trenberth believes that the missing heat is somewhere in the oceans, maybe below 300 – 700 meters depth. It was just a cherry-picked email anyways.
Deniers: in the AMS preprint, which Trenberth described as garnering plenty of “nasty email responses” the term is heavily used. Trenberth defined it in the talk as someone that simply rejects basic information about climate science. There is a difference between skeptics and deniers, though it was not explicitly delved into. Trenberth lamented exasperation with the deniers and suggested that he and everyone else simply not debate nor grant them visibility or a platform by engaging with them. Good advice — with the obligatory quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan about having your own set of facts. Indeed, on the distinction between deniers and skeptics, he said “if the shoe fits, wear it”. The audience chuckled.
Media: same as preprint. Trenberth lamented the trend that blogs and media contaminate the discourse with an increasing trend of uninformed opinions. He has seen his colleagues get burned when they engage with the media often through misquotation or slanted coverage. He suggested that a scientist feed the media a story and exclusively promote your own stuff in order to tell a story or generate news. Some quotes from Thomas Friedman on a Meet the Press from Sept 6, 2009 were read, but I didn’t jot them all down because he reminds me of Paul Krugman.
Nature of climate change: It’s winter he declared, that’s why it is cold and snowy. The audience laughed loudly at that quip. Natural variability is ongoing and when the natural warmth and AGW are in the same direction, as with the recently waned El Nino, then “records will be broken”. He showed the obligatory shifting of the bell-curve to demonstrate changes in extreme events with global warming by moving the entire distribution to the right.
The null hypothesis has been (prove at 95% confidence level) that “there is no human influence on climate” which required folks to prove otherwise. However, with the IPCC declaration of “unequivocal warming due to humans”, Trenberth implored that we change the null hypothesis to put the onus of proof on the deniers: “There is a human influence on climate.” Therefore, the following events would not have happened or as bad or something (not clear what he meant/implied) without the human influence on climate:
Flooding in Pakistan, Russian drought, heat wave, and wildfires, flooding in the US including the rainstorm in Nashville, the active Atlantic hurricane season, and Snowmageddon.
The key is the 4% increase in moisture or water vapor over the past 4-decades shown in anomalous SSTs. The Queensland flooding is also due to SST increases and “indeed global warming” related, but he also mentioned La Nina. He suggested that we use these events (disasters) as teachable moments to “straighten out the media”, “inform the public and politicians”, and resolve renewed US leadership in climate science.
The two audience questions were brief and ancillary to Trenberth’s thesis.
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This talk is one of the opening salvos in a well-coordinated broadside initiative to redeem and repackage climate science, climate scientists, and climate policy in the eyes of the public. This “re-education” campaign needs a brand name. Together We Thrive and Win the Future are taken
Promoting climate information and communication of climate change
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The Anti-synthesis of “scientist” best describes this rant.
The difference between skeptics and “deniers” is obvious. Skeptics look at new data, and see how it fits with their current ideas, and change their ideas if necessary. “Deniers” try and evaluate new data to see if it confirms their ideas. If it doesn’t, they attack it.
A new brand name? Well, we might recycle a bit. How about “Kraft Durch Freude” or “Arbeit Macht Frei“?
Maybe “Kauft Nicht Bei ClimateGate!” ?
When something hasn’t been working, it’s tempting to go back and just do it harder.
Better to stay locked in a worldview than face its collapse and consequent depression.
Of course it is always someone else’s fault that it wasn’t working — the media, deniers, etc.
He is on the teat and it is going to take amputation of the teat to stop him.
Also, look out for the renewable pea and thimble trick where they use” clean energy” taxes instead of carbon taxes to drive everyone into the poor house.
It’s a travesty that i can’t find his missing brain.
vigorously defended himself against the out-of-context slanderous claims from ClimateGate emails ..
“out of context”… yeah, that’s the ticket
Thanks for the great summary, Ryan. I guess it is safe to say that the audience was mostly agreeing with Trenberth during his presentation? Why only two questions? What is the reaction to Trenberth’s proposal re: the null hypothesis? Was/is that a popular proposal amount climate and weather scientists?
[ryanm: the second question was about regional climate projections, but trenberth did not take the bait. he simply said that we need to educate ourselves more. No one disagreed vocally, so I guess they all agreed]
Ryan N. Maue
Was Trenberth warming received?
John
[warmly? yeah, the room was crowded, but there weren’t any heckles or gasps or anything unprofessional]
The onus remains to prove that there is a human influence on climate and to quantify that effect.
Floods, heat waves, drought etc have always happened. It may be that many or most of these ‘extreme’ events can be compared to a similar or worse occurence in the same locality, even in the recent past (e.g the worst flooding for 100 years, i.e. a flood must have occurred 100 years ago that was worse). However the onus is on a.n.other to analyse the historical record and demonstrate with the required confidence that this particular flood etc is abnormal and subsequently prove that it is due to human influences.
If the null hypothesis is inverted then people will have to spend their time correcting bad science from the people proposing AGW and which claims to demonstrate its effects, e.g. the hockey stick, penguin die off in Antarctica (truly found to be a human induced effect – but unfortunately due to the monitoring device fitted to their wings making them less able to hunt and find a mate), melting glaciers in the Himalaya, increased hurricanes, smearing of temperatures in the Antarctic, huge sea level rises etc.
John Brookes says:
The difference between skeptics and “deniers” is obvious. Skeptics look at new data, and see how it fits with their current ideas, and change their ideas if necessary. “Deniers” try and evaluate new data to see if it confirms their ideas. If it doesn’t, they attack it.
No.
The difference between skeptic and “denier” is that “Denier” term was created by AGW proponents to destroy people who they disagree with. Any other explanations should be treated as attempts to justify usage of a disgusting term and make it look like it has some foundation in history.
The “denier” is term that creates moral equivalence between someone AGW folks disagree with and people who deny, and implicitly and explicitly condone, the genocide perpetrated on entire race. “Skeptic” just didn’t do it for propaganda purposes, it did not have necessary effect of completely destroying someones point of view before that point of view was even presented, destroying it on grounds completely unrelated to the arguments being presented.
So, I’ll ask you, sir, do you make your claims from ignorance or are you belong to those who’s goals are to “mainstream” the term?
We are all indebted to Ryan for taking notes and offering this essay.
As for a campaign name, I think perhaps: “Climatic Attitude Adjustments”
[ryanm: thanks anthony. small world: i sat next to dr. susan solomon while i took notes]
The AGW saints are “doubling down”
Question is what happen when they run out of chips?
Geesh, it almost makes you embarrassed to call yourself a scientist.
Building a Better Climate!
Warmists of the World Unite!
Onward Climate Soldiers!
War on Warming!
Consensus Uber Alles!
Surely this is exactly the kind of rant that deserves any ad hominem attack he receives?
Campaign names:
Climate Conformity Coalition, Climate Forcing Education Association, The Partnership for Climate Hygienics.
Thanks Ryan
Following the pre print in WUWT a few weeks ago I emailed Dr Trenberth to complain about the use of the word ‘Deniers’. The deliberate connotations to us in Europe in particular are highly unpleasant. My father in law was one of the first to enter a concentration camp in 1945 as part of the British Army and the experience affected him for the rest of his life.
I had a reasonably civil reply back from him-my email had in itself been perfectly reasonable. However, it was obvious that he had been innundated with numerous abusive emails which I think had only served to harden his position.
Personally I think it does no good at all to be unpleasantly combative and abusive to such as Dr Trenberth (and Dr Mann et al) as this will only reinforce their prejudices.
on the nature of their ‘opposition.’
tonyb
Law of Unintended Consequences
Trenberth Null Hypothesis revised with Implications?
The null hypothesis has been (prove at 95% confidence level) that “there is no human influence on climate” which required folks to prove otherwise. However, with the IPCC declaration of “unequivocal warming due to humans”, Trenberth implored that we change the null hypothesis to put the onus of proof on the deniers: There is a human influence on climate” [and the records and climate modeling of climate science], therefore, the following events such as [global warming alarmism, climate change alarm, climate disruption anxiety and associated worldwide economic disruption and impoverishment] would not have happened or [been] as bad or something…without the human influence on climate [records and climate modeling].
What I like about this speech is that it takes a refutable position. We should reverse the null hypothesis.
Well, where is the evidence which suggests this? The IPCC posits scenarios based on computer models based on data which is, itself, suspect. As evidence that the null hypothesis should be abandoned it is weak. And weakened further by the “missing heat” the “trick” and the last decade of either cooling or no significant warming.
Trenberth has drawn a line in the sand. He has no evidence, no observations and, frankly, no case. But he has done us all the favour of demanding the scientifically incoherent. And we should do him the courtesy of demonstrating the incoherence of his position.
“The emails were used to “damn the IPCC and many of us”, and included conversations that were clearly not for human consumption.”
Obviously only the ‘Gods’ should have access to the emails and the fact that us heathens even presume to understand the deep meaning of them is a travesty that should be punishable. He should start to realise soon that the reason that his pedestal is shaking is because there is an axe man called reality at the bottom.
ha ha that should be enought to get me another grant
This is not the sober, careful and scientific evaluation of a man who is sure of himself and his position. It is the whining rant of a weak man who sees his position crumbling around him and who is desperately fearful that his mana is blowing away in the cold wind of the real world. I see this, and many other similar ‘pronouncements’, as growing evidence that the game is up! And they know it!
Udar says:
January 26, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Re-read what John Brookes said, the explanation of “Deniers” was directed at AGW believers IMHO.
This is a manifestation of Formosa’s Law, which states:
The truly insane have enough on their plates without us adding to it.
So yes, I think we should go easy on Trenberth and other AGW proponents … they have a hard enough time dealing with the facts, let alone they get part of the abuse they inflict on those they disagree with reflected at them.
/semi-sarc