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 The term “ClimateGate” should have been replaced by “swiftboating”.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
“Nature of climate change: It’s winter he declared, that’s why it is cold and snowy. The audience laughed loudly at that quip.”
I have seen many ignorant dolts saying the same thing in the Guardian CiF, but I could not imagine such a high scientific figure to stoop so low and to be so misleading.
I believe any references to heatwaves and other similar summer phenomena should be abolished as indicators of a warming planet, since it is always hot and dry in summers.
Watching the band playing on the Titanic – is what comes to mind!
Play louder Trenberth – that way you won’t hear the water coming!
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.
The “It’s a Travesty” is still accurate, but Madoff believes that the missing money is somewhere in the oceans, maybe below 300 – 700 meters depth. It was just a cherry-picked SEC investigation anyways.
Col. Mustard says it was Mr. Green with the e-mail from the library who was responsible for the disappearance and concealment of the heat.
Olly olly oxen free
Heat heat
Come out now
For all to see!
TonyB:
“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.’”
The best course is for criticism to be reality based. ClimateGate (and the whitewash investigations and the pathetic lack of response by the vast majority of climate scientists to ClimateGate) revealed there is something rotten in the core of climate science. The corrupt ClimateGate climate scientists are in an existential struggle for their professional life. Being nice to them is not going to suddenly make them honest. Much better to brand them as the corrupt, politicized abusers of the scientific process that they are.
The man is in complete denial if he thinks the msm do not support and promote the unsupported alarmist assertions emanating from self named climate scientists such as himself and his fellow hockey team members.
He has no science to support the promotion of his political views and thus requires the scientific method of onus of proof to be altered.
Anyway whatever ever happened to loyalty amongst theives.
Teacher. Where’s your homework?
Trenberth. I lost it.
Teacher. How do you think you did?
Trenberth. Brilliantly Sir as usual.
Teacher. Where did you lose it?
Trenberth. At the bottom of the oceans.
Teacher. Good answer clever boy so I’m going to give you minus 10 out of 10. Please Trenberth no squealing again to the school inspectorate?
inpostion says:January 27, 2011 at 12:21 am
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?
Inpostion, that is the whole point of trying to reverse the hypothesis. This is the post modernist approach — everything is subject and therefore anyone and everyone (except deniers) can have an opinion. And so science is “proved” by the consensus … and as the only idiots that are stupid enough to state their opinion on a subject where there is next to no fact are the idiots in the warmist camp, the “consensus” (of all “sceintists who were stupid enough to say they knew) was that mankind causes global “warming” (or as it is now global “pausing” … get it 9/10 cats prefer catnip …. paws … for those in the US it’s a cat food advert that got banned)
So, post modernist science rejects the notion of the null hypothesis, replacing it with the concept that everything is subject and what matters is individual interpretation.
Clearly this is now causing a problem for Trenberth, because real scientists are taking exception to their charade.
So, he’s trying to graft post modernist BS onto real science, by admitting he needs a null hypothesis, but making the null hypthosis the Post modernist concept of the “consensus”.
What in effect he is trying to do is say: “in a subject where there is little if any real evidence, get enough people to guess what they think is happening …. and then the Null Hypothesis is what these people guessed and then it is up to everyone else to disprove this guess using the real evidence which they didn’t have to prove their BS in the first place.
It’s the equivalent of having a task of climbing a mountain …. and getting round the problem by redefining the top of the mountain as being the base camp from where you start.
Dunno. I really do not.
As I understand it the AMS is quite small, some ?15.000? members some of whom are presumably of Trenberth’s persuasion.
Others maybe not, but it seems strange that he should launch such a disconnected diatribe unless he felt it would be effectually endorsed by the immediate listeners, but that might or might not be by the membership as a whole.
Again dunno. I have no idea what they think.
But given the publicity this will get in the blogosphere if the not the MSM it seems a peculiar thing to do. A politician of some extreme views might do this to the little band of faithful to spur them on certain in the knowledge that it is hardly likely that it will be reported more widely or sully the carefully nutured title of a reasonable politico.
As your correspondent remarks the tiny size of the AGW crowd is shown by the company he sat next to, does that really represent the whole membership of the AMS? Or the actual strength of the AGW crowd? that they can only muster a handful of supporters for prominent meetings. Or possibly the lethargy of the membership who simply can’t be bothered with this balderdash? and who can blame them?
As I said baffled, bemused and bewildered here.
Kindest Regards
Sorry that should say: “in the post modernist approach to science, everything is subjective … i.e. its personal opinion that is important, not silly pre-post-moderists ideas like: evidence, null hypothesis, experimentation.
… you can see why post modernist philosophy is so attractive to the climategate team!
I thought these two presentations from past AMS conferences were interesting. They are about the lack of trends in the global precipitation record of the past 2 decades.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/17Air17Sat9Coas/techprogram/paper_174154.htm
http://ams.confex.com/ams/17Air17Sat9Coas/techprogram/paper_174358.htm
The first seems fairly conclusive. The second is from a still yet incomplete data set (this one is mentioned in Pielke Snr. lastest post). The data is best seen by clicking on the “recorded presentation” link on these pages and requires installing some simple software but it seems worth while. The fact that water vapour increases along side temperature but that this doesn’t lead to an increase in precipitation seems like an interesting observation. Especially at the moment when extreme rainfall is being linked to climate change is a quite simplistic way.
tonyb says: January 27, 2011 at 12:16 am
I am aware of the existence of brownshirts ON BOTH SIDES whose main activity seems to be to send threats direct to people without posting on blogs to say what they are doing; so blogs are not aware and don’t feel the need to take any responsibility for policing or at least clearly disown such people. I believe this includes death threats to people on both sides. This simply cements divisions into place and makes dialogue harder if not impossible.
We don’t know the content of what was emailed to Trenberth, and I doubt if he will tell. But I think it might help a lot, to have some kind of public disclaimer sent to any appropriate people on occasions like this, disowning any abusive language or threats. I hope this message reaches Lisbon too.
Only two questions? Then there wasn’t much point in being there. The question I would have asked him would have been about the work of Dr. Aiguo Dai, who credits Trenberth as a mentor and one of his reviewers. I’d want to know why the implications of Wentz’s work in Science reporting that the AR4 models reproduce less than one half the increase in precipitation observed in the recent warming, was not cited and discussed in Dai’s assessment of the risk of drought based upon those same AR4 model results? He allowed Dai to avoid literature that seriously undermines the credibility of any conclusion of increased drought risk based upon those models. From Trenberth’s attempts at dismissal, denial, avoidance of debate, and selective review of the literature, it appears he is not interested in doing science. A scientist who truly thinks the his hypothesis is supported by the data, doesn’t avoid the weaknesses in his argument, but addresses them forthrightly.
About what you would expect really. This is a man woefully trying to save his reputation and failing miserably. I can’t see him backing down.
Extreme religious cult and political leaders all share the same philosophy: “Don’t debate your beliefs with anyone – never risk having the minds of the faithful contaminated by the truth and facts.”
As demonstrated yet again here, the high priests of the AGW cult are no different.
I have an hypothesis.
My hypothesis is that no more than 50% of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (over 90% likely) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
I propose that this be the climate “null hypothesis” and I defy anyone to falsify it.
It sounds like he was likable enough, but taking a strong stance. I agree with some of his points about differences between skeptics and deniers. Clearly he was well prepared for this venue and played well to the crowd.
He seems like a much better choice than someone like Mann who would not nearly be so likable. I trust Anthony’s instincts that this is the start of the next salvo to convince the world that they know what they are talking about.
They know a lot, it is too bad they can’t see the correct conclusion.
John Kehr
He may indeed be correct, that some or even all of what he has claimed was attributable to global warming. So what, just prove that it was & he’s home ‘n dry! Stop living in the dark ages making wild unsupportable witch-finder-general claims about it. He is like the Wet Office, anything & everything remotely calamatous weather-wise is attributed to AGW, without proof! “No specific event can be directly attributabel to Climate Change, but this is the sort of event that we would expect to occur!” I translate to say “no this is not attributable to Climate Change but it is really!” If only they would just listen to themselves now & again.
I used to work in a small office where light-hearted debates & arguments would take place. One respected colleague used to often use the following paraphrasing of the late great Abraham Lincoln, & I ‘m sure I’ve said this before,but…”it’s a free country, you’re entitled to be wrong, & I’ll defend to the death your right, to be wrong!” That of course was back in the days when the UK was a “free” country. Free from namby-pamby, wishy-washy, politically correct, do-gooders,who want no one offended by anybody but causing incalculable offence in all directions in the process. Given the latest thought crimes committed by a couple of football commentators recently I rest my case! Trenberth & his like will not go quietly into the night, there is too much money at stake & his pension plan may not be complete just now.
Heh, ‘Swiftboat’ he said. There’s a generic clue. Man, do we have a culture war, or what?
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A student of mine also attended the talk, his comments are posted at Climate Etc.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/23/ams-annual-meeting/#comment-34887
Ryan, I gotta tell you, two years ago in May I had the pleasure of presenting your ACE graph to a literary group discussing Mooney’s ‘Storm World’. There was a cloud modeler leading the discussion. I’m not sure when I’ve had such fun.
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Whatever the null hypothesis, a paper supporting AGW, no matter how shoddy, is much more likely to be accepted than a paper opposing AGW, no matter how well argued and supported. Science simply accepts the proposition at a political level. Man is numerous, therefore climate must be being affected, therefore anything saying how is not subjected to particular scrutiny, while the opposing view is heavily scrutinized.
I am more than a little surprised and disapointed that the AMS gave Trenberth time, space and a venue for his alarmist and dishonest nonsense. How can a group of science professionals take seriously Trenberth’s assertions that a bunch of heat is hiding in the cold water of the ocean deeps, or even listen to that concept without laughing? He is making the type of specious claims attributing the cause of occasional but not unprecedented weather events to AGW that one reads in the Guardian’s CiF by G Monbiot’s sycophants, such as the connection between the Australian floods and AGW being the ‘increased water in the hydrological cycle’, when the current Australian floods are less severe than previous floods that have occurred in the short timespan since Europeans first settled there.
I also agree that sending him nasty letters and emails will not make him alter his stance – true believers appear to relish recieving nasty stuff as it reinforces their ideas of something akin to matyrdom in the name of their cause, no matter how dishonest or just plain wrong.
Just to remind – the null hypothesis is simply what the experimenter wishes it to be for the purpose of his/her experiment. There is no preordained null hypothesis, and the choice of it carries no presumptive weight..
Dr T should be encouraged to adopt a null hypothesis “made made GHGs cause more than 50% of the recent warming” and test it rigorously. This would mean that his experimental effort (to the extent that he participates in any) would be focused on rejecting this. The discipline of him doing this would improve climate science, and not inhibit anyone else choosing whatever they felt was the null hypothesis appropriate to their own experiment.
Dr T is out of his depth on this stuff.
The tone of the comments on this topic seem a bit smug. The facts on the ground are that the AMS itself, the APS, the NAS, the Royal Society, etc, etc,, are all committed to promoting urgent CO2 reductions. The MSM and the politicians follow these Authorities. You get the feeling that the commenters at WUWT think they are winning the battle. Perhaps skeptics have landed an odd lucky shot, but the IPCC is still winning the war. Lets see a body like the AMS modify its official statement on the issue.
The arrogance of this guy is of monumental proportions.
He’s making a great contributions to the skeptic case.
When you have been looking for a long time for the “missing heat” and still can’t find it, as Trenberth has attempted to do for years now, you can only come with two conclusions;
1. The “missing heat” is not missing, it doesn’t actually exist.
2. The “missing heat” exists only in your mind.
Kevin Trenberth believes in his own fairy stories.