Dr. Kevin Trenberth has another travesty on his hands. UPDATE: Commenter Lee Harvey has the best point I’ve seen so far.
The next IPCC report will be “blander”; it’s now “harder to gain a consensus”; Climategate “made an immense difference”
From the Brisbane Times: Climate scientist loses faith in the IPCC
AS THE world’s elite global warming experts begin poring over the drafts of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report this week, one leading scientist doesn’t believe the process should be happening at all.
”I think it will be less successful than the last assessment, and I think it will be blander – I’m disappointed in what I’ve seen so far,” said Kevin Trenberth, the head of the climate analysis section at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research.
…Dozens of Australian scientists are among hundreds of international experts who started reviewing the IPCC’s fifth summary report this week, with the final version to be published next September.
…
But Professor Trenberth believes too many researchers and too much ”second tier” science are diluting the report’s quality, and that science has jumped far ahead of the lumbering process. ”There are more people, it’s more diffuse, it’s harder to gain a consensus – quite frankly I find the whole process very depressing,” he said. ”The science is solid, but with a larger group it’s harder to reach a consensus, and updates every six years are just too slow. After the fifth assessment, we should push on with a different format.”
…
Professor Trenberth is a bruised survivor of the so-called ”climategate” scandal, which involved the theft and publication of thousands of emails that had been sent between some of the world’s most influential climate researchers.
…
Professor Trenberth believes it had a big impact on public debates about climate science. ”It made an immense difference – the level of vitriol and hate we received,” he said. ”Not only do we have waves of attacks when we publish and it ends up on a denialist website, but it has affected politicians.”
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently had its climate change-related research budget slashed by a fifth, affecting Professor Trenberth’s peers, as a result of online campaigns against climate scientists, he said. He believes uncertainties in climate change models scientists rely upon is being falsely inflated as a general uncertainty about the status of climate science.
h/t to Tom Nelson
UPDATE: Lee Harvey says in comments:
No Kevin, the problem isn’t that the Denialists are aligned against you.
The problem is that reality is aligned against you.
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Looks like a case of the bland leading the bland.
Kiwi Kev’s IPCC “reality” show is coming to an end. Maybe he could parlay that into a slot on Survivor, which still seems to be going strong.
There, there Kevin. Never mind one day you will wake to reality and all will be clear.
You’re conflating Trenberth with Phil Jones.
PS: Re “Santer’s Secret Sauce,” my allusion was to:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/06/madrid-1995-was-this-the-tipping-point-in-the-corruption-of-climate-science-2/
Hm! Where did Trenberth got his title?
Oxford International University? Standford University? A cornflake box?
It’s like a quotation from Scooby Doo: “We would’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that pesky reality…”
Blimey, these Climate Scientists™ are an emotional lot, aren’t they? Jones, Trenberth, Mann, Santer… all prone to letting it colour their actions and the way they’re viewed. Nothing wrong with emotion, but the process of science really should be a dispassionate thing.
I frankly couldn’t give a t*ss if he finds it depressing (that’s his problem), but it’s almost like he – and others – are trying to win arguments by appearing pathetic.
The next IPCC report will be “blander”
Isn’t this kind of like saying “greater than infinity”?
Bill says: ” On my older PC, I had at least 5 or 6 programs I could use to fit a trend line.”
Half the problem is this naive obsession with fitting so-called “trends”. There is nothing linear about any aspect of climate. A linear model is just about the most inappropriate model to choose for most things in climate science.
You really are not going to get far if you are trying to do your scientific data processing on Excel. If a scientist can’t use Excel I don’t see that as fault. It might mean he spends his time using more appropriate tools.
Actually, I think the ‘can’t do it on Excel thing was his co-defendant Phil Jones. If he could not fit a straight line with _anything_ , there’s a problem.
Just think of it as a decline to hide our tricks Kevin.
What a hypocritical bloviator Trenbarth is. Almost every week there is a new study that casts even more doubt on the “settled science” of global warming.
Perhaps Kevin Trenberth could not get his claims that the ratio of record highs to record low temps is 10:1 in AR5, because of John Christy’s recent testimony before Congress, which showed that record lows exceed record highs.
But it remains to be seen if AR5 is “blander” or not.
A blander IPCC report will be less of a blunder.
LeeHarvey says:
October 11, 2012 at 7:00 am
“The problem is that reality is aligned against you.”
That’s a brilliant line.
It’s really like the whole climate is conspiring against their CO2 hypothesis.
Trenberth , who is happier to question the reliability of their whole sensor network than to conceive that there may be a fault in their model. His “travesty” remark was off the record, between friends. It has the ring of being genuine.
It just shows how disconnected from reality this little clique had become.
We should not underestimate the power of faith !
Blander… lets not lose this word, it’s a doozy. It deserves to become a verb and noun, too. e.g. What is he blandering about? How did he cook up all this blander. It could be employed only with post-modern stuff.
Really? Is this “slashed by a fifth” in real-world terms — meaning this year’s budget spends 20% less dollars than last year’s? Or is this “slashed by a fifth” in Washington big government speak — meaning the actual increase in dollar expenditures is 20% less than the projected increase.
In real-world terms, your budget is “slashed by a fifth” if you had $10 million last year and this year you only have $8 million. In Washington big government speak, “slashed by a fifth” means you had $10 million last year and only $10.8 million this year, but you were projected to have $11 million.
But I digress. If the NOAA climate change budget has actually been cut even under President Obama, maybe there is hope. Now if we could just ratched up the “slashed by” ratio to two thirds, or nine tenths …
He’s a Kiwi, not a POM, bro.
They say like they want to hear it, eh?
🙂
The best bit of the 4th IPCC report was the graph showing the various forcings, and especially the “LOSU” associated with each – the level of scientific understanding, sometimes high and sometimes low. Joking aside, this does deserve credit. Let’s hope that the next report admits that the known unknowns plus the unknown unknowns make the entire industry a waste of time.
”Not only do we have waves of attacks when we publish and it ends up on a denialist website, but it has affected politicians.”
Politicians are affected by votes. Voters are affected by green politics. It’s called “democracy”. A definition can be found in most dictionaries.
what Trenberth means by there being now too many scientists and too much second tier science
is that he and his like minded little clique are no longer able to have the field to themselves in guiding policy, saying what should and should not be in the report etc
One might think “The Team” won’t be too pleased about the feelings Trenberth has expressed about the upcoming AR5. Mann must be fuming!!! Tee-hee! That’s okay. Mann didn’t understand Trenberth’s travesty email, and he won’t understand this inteview.
Whose idea was it to standardize thermometers in the first place?
Many thanks to Tom Nelson and Anthony. This interview was quite revealing.
good comment from Lee – but in truth it is Trenberth who is against reality (reality just is what it is and takes no sides!)
as someone else mentioned, KT is definitely no ”scientist” to come out with this kind of BS…