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 The term “ClimateGate” should have been replaced by “swiftboating”.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.
————-
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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So, Trenberth’s excuse for using the “denier” label for those who disagree with what he terms “basic information about climate science” is some supposedly “nasty” emails he received? How convenient!
It would be interesting indeed to see what he considers “basic information”. Consensus science, anyone?
Onward, Climate soldiers, marching as to war,
With the dross that please us going on before.
Mann, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see his great stick go!
At the sign of triumph McKyntire’s host doth flee;
On then, Climate soldiers, on to victory!
Science’s foundations quiver at the shout of AWG;
Believers lift your voices, loud your anthems glee.
Like a mighty army moves the consensus driven;
Believers , we are treading where the grants are given .
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in thought and doctrine, one in banalty
Apologies to Baring-Gould
Well I don’t think I was ever “Skeptical”, and I am not now a “denier”.
There was a time when I could honestly say:- “I dunno !”, and that was the truth, I had no knowledge at all of the molecular absorption spectra of common so-called Greenhouse Gases; never had any cause to know any of that, and my first introduction to it was the GHG warming thesis. So I got busy learning what that was all about, and researching the physics and chemistry. I believe it ws Dr Willie (Wei-Hock) Soon, who first steered me to the proper region of the spectrum (on blogs).
I’m still a long way from understanding the mechanisms of the “greenhouse” effect; those that we lump under that misnomer heading; and I would never deny that such an effect exists; that’s fool’s gold territoty. I don’t and never have denied that climate changes; hell, I’ve lived through at least two full 30 year climate cycles; so I have experimentally observed that climate changes.
I don’t deny that humans are putting fossil fuel residue carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. We also are putting scrap plastic materials that are long lived. Humans are also putting fossil fuel residue Hydrogen into both the atmosphere, and the oceans and lakes. Who knows; maybe the H/D ratio is different for fossil fuels or for biological materials; what about the Tritium content.
You see putting these materials in the environment doesn’t mean that WE are responsible for the increases. Well I believe that the increases in plastic residues in the environment and the Pacific Trash Patch really is human caused; so maybe some of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is caused by us; how much, I have no idea, because I have not been convinced by any of the accounting numbers. That doesn’t mean I’m “skeptical” (which implies cautious disbelief); I just dunno.
So forest clearing (which I deplore) affects CO2 and the (local) climate,a nd we do that. I should distinguish between forest clearing, and clear cut forest farming. The former tends to turn rather poor soils that were supporting forests into very poor soils that will support not much of anything. The latter is an effective way to manage agricultural forestry; and the resultant replanting, is way more effective in carbon sinking than is stagnant old growth forest (which is carbon neutral); the support of which I strongly endorse.
But as to the whole claptrap that is collected under the heading of MMAGWCCC (Man Made Anthropogenic (wtm) Global Warming Catastrophic Climate Change); well I don’t believe a lot of what is claimed to be going on. I flat out don’t believe that high clouds warm the surface, and the higher the warmer. As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s the conditions on the ground beforehanfd that CAUSE the high clouds; not the other way round. I can find no process by which any extra water molecule anywhere in the atmosphere, at any geographical location on the planet, at any time, can somehow INCREASE the total amount of incoming solar energy radiation that reaches the surface of the earth (land or ocean); it ALWAYS reduces that amount of surface incident energy. Now in the spirit of ‘the exception that proves the rule’, one can imagine sunlight that strikes the atmosphere at grazing incidence at the limb, and goes on by out into space, given a clear sky. But put a nice cumulo nimbus thunderhead out there on the horizon, and the side of it can scatter (reflect) some of that otherwise lost solar energy, down to the ground. I’ll let you do the math on just how much of that there could possibly be. The cloud layer might be 8 miles thick out of 8,000 miles earth diameter, 0.1%; about the same effect as TSI variation over solar cycle. Oh don’t forget the curve ball in that pitch. Because of that cloud sitting there on the horizon, there is bound to be some sunlight that would have hit the ground, sans said cloud, but as a result of the cloud it first hits the cloud and then is scattered upwards out into space. Y’alls be careful sorting that all out now. I’ll stick with my conjecture; extra water in the atmosphere always reduces ground level incident solar energy input.
So no I’m not skeptical, and I’m not a denier of human influence; I simply don’t believe some of what is presented as science in this regard; and don’t even get me started on the lack of validity of the global Temperature sampling methodology. Climatists need to learn some Sampled Data Systems Theory; they also could do with a course on feedback; and what it is, and isn’t; don’t forget the time dependent response of feedback systems.
More from the Spin Machine:
24 January 2011
ClimateGate affair: ‘Learn and move on’, say MPs
By Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News
“Inquiries into issues raised by 2009’s climate e-mail hack did have flaws, a committee of MPs concludes.
But despite questions over remits and omissions, they say it is time to make the changes needed and move on.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee does not find anything to challenge the prevailing view of human-induced global warming.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12269493
Ryan Maue says:
January 27, 2011 at 10:03 am
“I found the atmosphere in the room rather anticipatory for some sort of fireworks, but there was little debate or excitement… It is clear that this forum was a very safe place to deliver his opinions. “‘
I was thinking that the AMS rank and file meteorologists probably don’t get to go to these conferences(travel budget restrictions). They are, instead, meetings for academics and government types who, by and large, are CAGW true believers. Hence the lack of any confrontational questioning…
Is it not the case that in law one is innocent until proven guilty (poor old CO2 in this case). Trenberth would have it that one is guilty until proven innocent.
Mr Trenberth very much reminds me of a 21st Century Claudius Ptolomy trying to fit all weather events into his AGW theory yet his missing heat doesn’t fit the theory, like Ptolomy’s ideas that planets slow down, stop and move in reverse.
Sorry mate -not convincing enough.
Perhaps the size of his Ego is obscuring the size of his ability.
We have been told by “fellow travellers” of Dr Trenberth that individual severe climatic events are “weather” and not “climate”.
But perhaps we need somebody of his ability to let us know which climatic events are confirmation of AGW, and other climatic events (like record breaking cold) are just weather and of no interest.
Max Hugoson said Onward, Climate soldiers, marching as to war, . . . .
Yes, I would like that . . . . to see them kick Mother Nature’s butt . . . . I assure you (ok, I assert) she will get rid of them long before they get rid of her. . . .
Trenberth implored that we change the null hypothesis to put the onus of proof on the deniers…
That’s fine.
I accept his challenge.
My paper drops sometime this year.
I wished someone would have asked him about the Argo data and the total ocean heat content. Will the data from Josh Willis be withheld until Dr. Trenbreth can account for the lost heat? I think we are almost 3 months beyond when the data was supposed to be released.
Frank K. says:
January 27, 2011 at 5:12 am
OK i need to clean my monitor now very funny. 🙂
A denier, someone in denial.
Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. [wikipedia]
Trenberth: ” 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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
I hope he won’t accuse me of slander if I quote him out of context: “if the shoe fits, wear it”.
Very soon, the free money stream from the USA is going to dry up………they better get their money now before China cashes in.
Trenberth, as with CAGW: “Not even wrong!”
h/t Wolfgang Pauli
Don V
“If what Anthony has proven concerning the source of the data being biased, is as bad as it seems, then the the deck is heavily stacked against any future cooling trend ever showing up except in the minority of ‘rural’ sensors that remain active.”
Don’t be sanguine. The satellite data – UAH – is maintained by John Christy and Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama, and that will not be biased upwards.
It’s a trenberthy.
HAS says:
“”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.””
That’s not quite correct. In the case of the global climate, the Null Hypothesis is the range of temperatures, precipitation, trends and so on that existed before the recent rise in co2.
Any alternative hypothesis must be tested against those parameters, which together form the climate Null Hypothesis. If the increase in co2 hasn’t caused a measurable change outside of those parameters (and it hasn’t), then the Null Hypothesis is unfalsified, and the alternate hypothesis fails.
Trenberth hasn’t been able to falsify the Null Hypothesis, so now he wants to replace it with his own carefully selected alternate hypothesis, and then demand that skeptics have to, in essence, prove a negative.
That is so far beyond the Scientific Method that it is pseudo-science.
A week or so ago, I had an email correspondence with Kevin Trenberth. The correspondence speaks for itself as to Trenberth’s level of integrity. I can forward the original emails to anyone interested but here is a summary:
===========================
The Evidence for Man Caused Warming
ME: EXACTLY what is the SINGLE biggest piece of EVIDENCE that man’s CO2 is causing global warming ?
Trenberth: The planet is warming, it has to have a source [best seen in the rising sea level].
ME: You describe rising sea levels as being the evidence for man caused global warming. It had been my understanding that sea levels have been rising steadily for thousands of years and now at a very slow rate.
Trenberth: The rates have not been steady and picked up markedly in the mid 20th century and even more since 1990 or so. CO2 has been increasing since 1750 although mainly since 1850.
ME: Firstly, you said that sea levels are the evidence for man caused warming. Here is a graph I found, of sea levels for the past 8000 years.
Sea levels:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Holocene_Sea_Level.png
This seems to bear no relation at all to fossil fuel consumption (man’s CO2).
Fossil fuel consumption
http://renewableenergy.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/03/global_carbon_emission_by_type_to_4.png
As you can see man’s CO2 increased about 1200% after 1945 but the sea levels have flattened completely after the rapid rise 7000 years ago.
Am I missing something here ?
Trenberth: Please see the attached for SL in the last century or so. Since 1993 when we have altimeters in space the rate of rise is 3.3 mm/yr: higher than anything in past few hundred years.
ME: I give a summary of our discussion.
Trenberth: No. Keep me out of this. I do not agree with the following at all.
ME: I’m not surprised you want to be “kept out of this”. I’m sure you know that it is a tad ridiculous to suggest that rising sea levels are the “evidence” for man caused global warming.
Trenberth: Sea level does not rise without reason and in recent times there is good reason from human activities and rates have increased. The equilibrium time scale of the deep oceans is over 1000 years and so the system is not in equilibrium and changes previously reflect that.
Your comments are rubbish. Please don’t contact me any more.
Kevin Trenberth
=====================
Temperature Rising
ME: Phil Jones, University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, suggests there has been no significant warming since 1995. I was wondering if there is yet any accounting for this lack of global warming over the past 15 years, as the world’s CO2 generation continues to soar ?
Trenberth: Phil does not say that. the past decade is warmest on record and 2010 ties with 2005 as warmest year on record.
ME: You are also incorrect in your statement “Phil does not say that”. Phil Jones did say it, in a BBC interview, as I’m sure you are aware:
BBC – “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
PJ – “Yes, but only just.”
Trenberth: …no response …
If Trenberth thinks the Queensland floods were the result of AGW then maybe someone who knows his contact details can pass on the following link to him so can educate himself abit on the climate of Queensland ( NB. the paper refered to in the link was written in 2006 )
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/01/is-it-time-to-listen-to-so-called-deniers/#more-7359
In denial – your pant legs are wet and there are pyramids visible to the west.
“Trenberth implored that we change the null hypothesis to put the onus of proof on the deniers…”
The prove is already in and thats planet Earth with no alarming temperature rise over the past 100 years. No warming in the pipeline that anybody is aware of, no hotspot, no weather events that haven’t occured before, no cooling stratosphere since mid 1990’s (stable) and no positive feedback detected. Tenberth and his fellow alarmists choose to ignore these inconvenient facts and have shown here why this proves they are wrong. The biggest flaw that they can’t explain is how the rate of warming over the past century is going to increase at least four fold, just to achieve the lowest rise that may be regarded as CAGW. (>3c) With no CAGW, their evidence is wrong and us so called deniers have shown that indeed they are basing science on faith and opinions which is not supported by science.
Was this a rant from the heart of a believer or was it the bluster of politician buying time?
I would say the latter because
1. “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.” seems to indicate he is running away from debate with his critics.
2. he avoids the null hypothesis (again running away).
3. Only 2 questions (again running away).
and the jokes seem to be about reassuring himself the crowd are still onside and not about to lynch him.
This speech has the hallmarks of someone who is trapped and is trying to bluster his way through stormy weather in the hope that things will improve. But he seems to lack a strategy (such as winning a public debate against his critics) for making the good weather happen.
Mike Haseler says:
Nice try…but the analogy between those two groups doesn’t quite work that way. Rather, if you look closely, you find:
(1) Creationists arguing that the scientific community is actively keeping them out of journals, etc., etc. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed), just as “climate skeptics” make similar claims.
(2) In the case of both evolution /creationism and global warming, you have all of the respected scientific organizations on one side of the debate but a large majority of people refusing to accept the scientific evidence because they don’t like the conclusions.
(3) It just so happens that it is the “climate skeptics” side that has one of its very few well-published and reasonably respected-in-the-field scientists arguing that “intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism.” ( http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/ )
Those of us who have been involved in both the climate debates and the evolution debates know how the analogy between the two actually plays out.
Alan the Brit says:
January 27, 2011 at 1:54 am
Pedantic correction:
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
Voltaire
As a Queenslander, I am appalled that this fellow conveniently ignores the fact that there was nothing extreme about the recent floods. As readers of this blog know, 1974 was a much bigger rain event in Brisbane. But even it was dwarfed by the 1893 floods.
The problem with the floods this year has been the development of expensive housing and offices on the river flood plains. In 1974, the areas flooded were largely industrial. Sure, the city and residential areas were also flooded and it was a huge disaster. But it didn’t cost anywhere near as much in dollar terms as the recent floods.
It is the economic cost that is extraordinary this time. It has nothing to do with the weather or climate. It has everything to do with local planning laws, expensive residential developments in flood prone areas and the management of the Wivenhoe Dam.
Dr Trenberth has no credibility.