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.”
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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.
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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.
“The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently had its climate change-related research budget slashed by a fifth”
Now, that’s painful. The upside, of course, is that climate scientists can easily build consensus around this fact. Especially if the activist kind is willing to abandon the idea of sustainability, for an ever increasing public debt is clearly not sustainable.
G. S. Williams:
If Kiwis wish to not be insulted, perhaps they should start a recall campaign.
Good old Kevin ‘Travesty’ Trenberth appears to be howling into the darkness at his own ineptitude, and hopping up and down like a one-legged man at an arse-kicking competition.
A rather unedifying spectacle, but definitely worth a chuckle!
I think people are glossing over the most important thing Trenberth says here…he’s not saying that these new scientists are qualified, and the IPCC chose these new scientists because they consider them to be qualified (well, we know better, but that’s the IPCC line). What this means is that Trenberth is saying that the Consensus was achieved by keeping the input to a small “in crowd” of scientists, and that when the LARGER QUALIFIED scientific community is consulted, there IS NO CONSENSUS.
Trenberth is saying the Consensus was always artificially achieved by excluding the input of a larger group of qualified scientists. That’s a big admission.
Maybe the exposure of AGW alarmism could form the basis for a new Scooby-Doo film?
SHAGGY: “Scooby, it’s getting hotter! We’re all gonna fry!”
VELMA: “No, wait! The crazy professor has just turned up the thermostat! All we have to do is turn it down again!”
FRED: “And look who’s trying to cash his investments and sneak away! It’s Big Al, disguised as an environmentalist!
DAPHNE: “Kevin and I have reached an understanding, guys. He’s going to turn State’s Evidence in return for immunity from prosecution.”
THE TEAM (in chorus): “And we would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling deniers!”
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.
Wow! There goes another opportunity for a serious group think session. What has the world come to?
In light of recent events, can we say that Kevin Trenberth is the Lance Armstrong of climate science? Just as Michael Mann is the Jerry Sandusky of climate science. Like two peas in a pod, they are.
“The next IPCC report will be blander; it’s now harder to gain a consensus”
A whiter shade of pale…
How can he claim that there are too many people involved when they surveyed 10 000 scientists and they got 97% to agree!!
(sarc)
James Bull
I checked under the sofa cushions. Bad news for Trenberth: No missing heat, just a few stale peanuts.
So what’s with this ‘second tier’ publication business? Is a second tier publication one that dares to print factual papers on temperatures, ice and solar activities without first checking with a ‘first tier’ team member if it ok, pretty please?
Does a ‘second tier’ publication have an editor who is not under the thumb of a climate clique cohort willing and able to pull rank and threaten a rapid descent into penury?
And what is a ‘first tier’ publication? Is it one that prints promises to find all that missing heat?
Reality is aligned against these totalitarians.
re: Latimer Alder’s “climateer”, I like it, reminds me of mouseketeer, and the Mickey Mouse science that the crew uses.
”There are more people, it’s more diffuse, it’s harder to gain a consensus”
Too many schnooks roil the troth.
With the previous report, the team virtually had a free ride. AR4 had several years as ‘the’ authoritative last word on ‘the science’. It is only relatively recently, and in a fairly piecemeal way, that it has been taken apart, both scientifically, by WUWT and many other great sites, and politically, eg. Donna Laframboise’s ‘Delinquent Teenager’.
Sceptics/realists are armed, ready and eager for the next one. It will instantly be forensically examined by the many, now well established, sceptical sites. This was not the position last time, and the CAGWers know they will not be able to get away with sloppy, biased work this time. Also, they no longer have the uncritical support they enjoyed from their less extreme supporters, scientific and political, Their desperation is obvious.
Too many non-Team scientists are getting involved, so it’s harder to reach (= enforce) consensus.
Which is how science may yet right itself.
Put the data in a blender
What comes out is getting blander
Kevin thought he’d played a blinder
But we know it was a blunder
A Lovell, “Sceptics/realists are armed, ready and eager for the next one. It will instantly be forensically examined by the many, now well established, sceptical sites. This was not the position last time, and the CAGWers know they will not be able to get away with sloppy, biased work this time.”
Sorry, but even since climategate and all the other ‘gates, the alarmists have continued to trot out unsustainable rubbish. They will continue to say/write/publish lies until they are subjected to dismissal, incarceration, or better still six weeks in the stocks in a public square with plenty of rotten tomatoes on hand.
“the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming will be much worse than the last one.”
Robert Orr, UN under secretary general for planning, November, 2010, while discussing the IPCC AR5.
“Well thank you IPCC authors for letting us know what is really behind that “very likely” assessment of attribution 20th century warming. A lot of overbloated over confidence that cannot survive a few years of cooling.”
Prof. Judith Curry, October 2011
“For the most part, those who strongly support climate action do not do so because they’ve been rationally persuaded; in fact, they tend to be quite ignorant of the scientific details. People who reject climate science tend to know the most about it, because they’re motivated to learn about it in order to reject it.”
David Roberts, Grist, October 2011
Kevin Trenberth, 2012- “The next IPCC report will be blander; it’s now harder to gain a consensus”
Kevin is now looking for his missing heat and his missing consensus. Perhaps its due to chronic exposure to Boulder’s second-hand cannabis exhaust laced with toxic OCO.
Maybe the EPA could fund a study…
Trenberth blurts- “”The science is solid, but with a larger group it’s harder to reach a consensus,…”
Umm, this is quite the revelation. Trenberth has just stated that the IPCC report is about reaching a consensus about something OTHER than the science.
Kevin, when you say ‘solid’ science, I do not think it means what you think it means.
OK, I confess I added the unspoken introductory clause.
But it is amazing what fear of having to actually justify your generalizations and conclusions will do, isn’t it?
The report will be “blander”; As in a dull read?
Not exciting, no catastrophe, no “blame the humans”, no “few survivors”.
No, it’ll be a dull scientific read. Only interesting to scientists. Well gosh shucks…