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.
Brent Hargreaves says:
October 11, 2012 at 7:48 am
“the known unknowns plus the unknown unknowns”
Although gone from the public stage, Rumsfeld was not bland!
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/donaldrums148142.html
Neo says:
October 11, 2012 at 8:51 am
There are no facts, only interpretations. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Only until Reality rears it’s beautiful head…
In the past, I’ve had to clean my computer screen because someone on this blog made a particularly witty comment. However, today is the first time I’ve had to clean my screen because of uncontrollable tearing. Kevin’s plight is just too much to take (sob).
Kevin’s admission that climategate made a difference just demonstrates what a keen mind he has. However, I’d like to ask Kevin the following question: “Was it the fact that the climategate emails were made public or the content of the climategate emails that had the (sob) negative effects?” Maybe, just maybe, Kevin can grasp the obvious truth that all “negative” effects (at least negative in Kevin’s keen mind) of climategate were the direct responsibility of “the climategate team’s behavior”–kind of like “the team” shot itself in its collective foot.
“… with a larger group it’s harder to reach a consensus …”
Why oh why did they not pick more people from the 97% and fewer from the 3%?!?
Are blonders blander?
Wasn’t there a statement in one of the climategate e-mails from some one-time pooh-bah in the IPCC that future AR work wouldn’t have much payoff? If anyone knows what I’m referring to, please put it on the record.
Dear WUWT – please jump on this story from the AP. “The increase in Antarctic ice is due to AGW.”HELP!
11:40AM EST October 11. 2012 – WASHINGTON (AP) — The ice goes on seemingly forever in a white pancake-flat landscape, stretching farther than ever before. And yet in this confounding region of the world, that spreading ice may be a cockeyed signal of man-made climate change, scientists say.
This is Antarctica, the polar opposite of the Arctic.
While the North Pole has been losing sea ice over the years, the water nearest the South Pole has been gaining it. Antarctic sea ice hit a record 7.51 million square miles in September. That happened just days after reports of the biggest loss of Arctic sea ice on record.
Climate change skeptics have seized on the Antarctic ice to argue that the globe isn’t warming and that scientists are ignoring the southern continent because it’s not convenient. But scientists say the skeptics are misinterpreting what’s happening and why.
Shifts in wind patterns and the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year – both related to human activity – are probably behind the increase in ice, experts say. This subtle growth in winter sea ice since scientists began measuring it in 1979 was initially surprising, they say, but makes sense the more it is studied.
“A warming world can have complex and sometimes surprising consequences,” researcher Ted Maksym said this week from an Australian research vessel surrounded by Antarctic sea ice. He is with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
There were several “coffee meet screen” moments in this thread, too many to quote! Thanks for brightening my day!
As for Trenberth, I still have the same question I’ve always had.
Which would be the greater travesty? Finding out you were wrong about the missing heat which would be a travesty for YOU or finding out that you were right which would be a travesty for billions?
SteveW says:
October 11, 2012 at 8:09 am
In the kingdom of the bland, the one idea man is king.
(I suspect I may have stolen that from a 20+ year old copy of 200AD)
Kevin’s computer models say Global Warming is happening.
Kevin’s data says the atmosphere is not warming.
Gradually, eventually Kevin’s computer models will yield to the dictates of reality.
Even on Planet Trenberth.
Even if it displeases Gaia.
Once again Mr. Proctor – very well done indeed. One of the most concise and pointed critiques of CAGW that I have seen anywhere. Please forgive me if I send it along to various of my green friends (and who knows, maybe some politicians too).
I’m rather perversely fond of engaging a group of CAGW believers at parties and asking them if the real problem isn’t just overpopulation, to which they uncritically agree. Then I propose that the answer to both problems is just a few hundred nuclear air-bursts over China and India, which would instantly reduce both their use of carbon fuels and population, while releasing a fund of beneficial aerosols, proven by the climate scientists to be only moderating factor against CO2.
At which point, my audience backs away a few feet, wondering when the music will start, and I put it to them, “We’ll, how exactly would you solve the problem?” Sensing their discomfort, my wife takes me by the arm and leads me to the wonderful goose-liver pâté…
The travesties AR-cumulate.
One wonders what Trenberth means by “successful”. I will venture a guess that he means successful in persuading people to believe something, or in moving governments to take action.
But we’re told the IPCC is a scientific endeavour.
‘”Second tier” science’, Kevin? You mean like the kind done by WWF or Greenpeace, and published in AR4?
And if the views of all the scientists who matter are as homogeneous as you’ve been claiming for so long, why would having more people involved make it harder to arrive at a consensus? I thought they all pretty much agreed on all of it?
Boy, one could go on all day about a few paragraphs …
Maybe this Kevin aspires to be second tier? him and his fellow travellers have perpetrated such a huge and damaging scam they deserve a banishment from the field and public purse of science. In the 1960s I remember reading in school books about the Vikings and their loss of Greenland to glaciers, printed books are great for being hard to edit or corrupt, hence the giant book burning festivals in europe in the last century. Also Ive seen the remains of roman vineyards in north England, so I was taught that it was well warmer back then and well cooler until the late 1800s.
So this soul and his gang mates want me to deny what Ive seen and believe his new faith? And no doubt they will get round to demanding our first born ? if all he gets is some hostility then he will have been very lucky indeed.
folks, i can’t speak for the US, but “bland, blander, blandest” is how it goes in the rest of the english-speaking world.
bland adj. bland·er, bland·est
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blandest
Gary Pearse says:
October 11, 2012 at 7:46 am
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.
In reference to Kevin’s co-conflator at UEA, would that become “philblandering’?
The semantics of the Doctor once again demonstrate that the position of CAGW is more important to him than the science.
starzmom says:
October 11, 2012 at 6:54 am
When I saw “blander” the word that came to my mind was “blather”.
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blather
1blath·er intransitive verb \ˈbla-thər\
blath·ered blath·er·ing \-th(ə-)riŋ\
Definition of BLATHER
: to talk foolishly at length —often used with on
— blath·er·er \-thər-ər\ noun
Origin of BLATHER
Old Norse blathra; akin to Middle High German blōdern to chatter
First Known Use: 1524
Rhymes with BLATHER
Cather, gather, lather, rather, slather
2blathernoun
Definition of BLATHER
1: voluble nonsensical or inconsequential talk or writing
2: stir, commotion
See blather defined for English-language learners »
Examples of BLATHER
listening to a lot of blather from politicians about who’s to blame for the bad economy
First Known Use of BLATHER
1719
Related to BLATHER
Synonyms: ado, alarums and excursions, ballyhoo, commotion, bluster, bobbery, bother, bustle, clatter, clutter [chiefly dialect], coil, corroboree [Australian], disturbance, do [chiefly dialect], foofaraw, fun, furor, furore, fuss, helter-skelter, hoo-ha (also hoo-hah), hoopla, hubble-bubble, hubbub, hullabaloo, hurly, hurly-burly, hurricane, hurry, hurry-scurry (or hurry-skurry), kerfuffle [chiefly British], moil, pandemonium, pother, row, ruckus, ruction, rumpus, shindy, splore [Scottish], squall, stew, stir, storm, to-do, tumult, turmoil, uproar, welter, whirl, williwaw, zoo
———
Works for me but I don’t know how the IPPC report could more blather than what “The Team” and Hansen have put out.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blander
bland (blnd)
adj. bland·er, bland·est
1. Characterized by a moderate, unperturbed, or tranquil quality, especially:
a. Pleasant in manner; smooth: a bland smile.
b. Not irritating or stimulating; soothing: a bland diet.
c. Exhibiting no personal worry, embarrassment, or concern: told a series of bland lies.
2.
a. Dull and insipid: a bland little drama.
b. Having little or no distinctive flavor: bland cooking.
Perhaps 1c is what he considers “a travesty”?
Earl Allen,
Please don’t insult Kiwis
”The science is solid, but with a larger group it’s harder to reach a consensus……..
LOL. The 97% is getting crowded out.
GHowe says:
Are blonders blander?
That jokes a blinder, but it would be a blunder to put the blander blonders through a blender.
“……hundreds of international experts…”
expert = former drip
What entered my mind on seeing blander, (which is correct btw,) was related to cooking…
Blender!
Seems perfect as they’re cooking the books and blending datasets in ways they shouldn’t be.
DaveE.