From a story in The Melbourne Age:
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.
While he and his colleagues were cleared by a series of investigations, the people who hacked the email system at Britain’s University of East Anglia have never been caught, and the case was closed, unsolved, earlier this year.
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.
”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work,” Professor Trenberth said.
h/t Old Ranga from Oz
What happens to his argument when the numbers don’t add up? People like Dr. Trenberth see the majority of us as complete idiots, unable to see through the smoke and mirrors. These models are not accurate representations of the atmosphere – at best they model a tiny fraction of it – and extrapolating anything beyond that is full of “uncertainty.” I know, I use models in my work. They don’t always replicate reality.
Pretty much says it all about the impartiality of the writer.
So, I’m expecting more along the same lines… climate “scientists” realizing that the IPCC is out of their control, so therefore it’s wrong/bad/evil/etc.
Keep talking, Trenberth. And keep publishing these types of articles, “environmental” reporters… what happens is that rational people (there really are many of these!) start wondering what’s going on. It doesn’t take much research online to find out which is the more credible narrative. Here’s a hint: it’s not Trenberth’s…
Then again, what can you say about a man who claims “we know they are there” when discussing the links between weather and climate. I’m assuming that’s not quite what he meant to say.
It’s good start.
“While he and his colleagues were cleared by a series of investigations, the people who hacked the email system at Britain’s University of East Anglia have never been caught, and the case was closed, unsolved, earlier this year.”
Cleared of what? [/sarc so thick shovel is required]
At least it wasn’t a total bust. tallbloke’s computers got a two-week vacation out of it. [/sarc]
That’s such a sad story – where can I go to make a donation to the “Cause”.
Whoops I already pay taxes…no donation necessary.
One can only feel sorrow for the bruising to Professor Kevin Trenberth’s obviously fragile ego.
I wanted to find out the truth behind Trenberth’s one-fifth cut story. I googled NOAA budget cuts. I could not sort out any ACTUAL budget cut numbers, but what I did find was the most amazing amount of what we in the UK call shroud-waving. Which is when an organization faced with a threat comes out with all kinds of scare stories about how tragic the result will be. I suspect NOAA or their PR people, in defence of their budget, have been feeding stories into every US news outlet, every local or regional news medium, all carefully tuned to target any local concern. We are going to lose tsunami warnings, weather forecasts, critical marine programs, coastal erosion protection, you name it. Every dollar of reduction leads to a lost program, it seems. I know this is merely the game of funding, but we should be aware that Trenberth’s position here is just part of that game. And his respect for the numbers betrayed here does not bode well for his scientific work
Time to get a proper job, like some real research with real time data. Throw them models away Kevin they tell porkies.
Why do I keep hearing violins playing in the background?
Trenberth has got himself to blame. His Energy Budget is based on the mistaken belief that a pyrgeometer measures real energy flux when it is actually the vector sum of the Poynting vectors in the detector’s view angle; the subsidiary claim that the Earth emits IR as if it were an isolated black body in a vacuum.
The latter error is, to us professional engineers, a source of derision. How could these people be so stupid? Convection and radiation are coupled, a long established tenet of heat transfer engineering: http://www.thermopedia.com/content/204/
These people have wasted 30 years of research funding. The root paper in climate modelling, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, didn’t make this mistake. What on Earth led them to make assumption which were so wrong? Was it because the perpetual motion machine in the models gave imaginary positive feedback and the fake CO2-AGW scare, getting funding and fame?
What happened to scientific integrity?
”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work,” Professor Trenberth said.
It’s a rather simple relationship, isn’t it ? Climate is the long-term average of weather. The specific numbers only need work if one is trying to draw conclusions that aren’t readily demonstrable using basic statistics (or if the data being worked with is of such poor quality, it requires significant adjustment).
However, to say climate causes weather is like saying a newspaper report about a murder actually caused it.
From the Sydney Morning Herald version, Trenberth: ”An example would be Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where there was about 11 inches [28 centimetres] of rain. About one inch of that was due to human influence. Maybe that extra inch was enough to cause the levee to break.”
Sure New Orleans disaster was human made, but it was not climatic.
You don’t design sea defences within an inch of what is needed. There were warnings for years that the levee needed work. Just as years before the Fuckupshima sea wall was overwhelmed, they were warned of the possibility of a tsunami breaching the sea wall.
I suppose Kev would like to pretend that part of the force of that earthquake was due to man made CO2, without which the sea wall would have been able to withstand the tsunami .
He also shows how little he understands about hurricanes and sea level. It is the depression that causes the sea to rise, not amount of rain. Oh wait, but he did say “maybe”, so he’s not being totally misleading, disingenuous and cynical.
rogerknights says:
October 12, 2012 at 2:00 am
Attn. FOIA! This is your cue for Climategate 3.0!
Agreed!
Climategate 3.0?
Waiting for Doha, maybe?
But of course. 🙂 If Trenberth found a decrease in hurricane intensity or frequency would he let the media know about it via an interview? Of course not. We are dealing with a bunch of sneaky and in some case dishonorable and dishonest charlatans.
Here are the numbers Mr. Trenberth in a number of published papers showing no trend or the opposite of the alarmists’ claims.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/27/another-paper-shows-that-severe-weatherextreme-weather-has-no-trend-related-to-global-warming/
I don’t see many skeptics attacking the fact that CO2 absorbs IR.
–Bill Hunter
That’s correct, I don’t know anyone who disputes the fact that CO2 absorbs IR in certain narrow bandwidths. The question is, can this dissipative cooling effect be used to do something highly useful like increase the Earth’s average surface temperature? This is like an intelligence test for engineers.
It’s amazing that they are now able to distinguish between rain due to human influences and ordinary rain.
“..the level of vitriol and hate we received”
What goes around, comes around. Stick around Kevin, you have yet to experience all the hate and vitriol that skeptics have endured for almost 25 years.
There are real problems in the world that need funding far more than climate studies. It should be cut by 80% or more. No wonder scientists like Trenberth think reality is a “travesty” … they know they will be out of jobs if people find out.
Bob Malloy says: (October 12, 2012 at 1:45 am) “When South Australia was hit by a spring snow storm yesterday…”
And now it has moved up into our tropics, Bob:
” the level of vitriol and hate we received” ?
So can Pof Trenberth show any evidence of this hate? I mean apart from some odd nutters rants almost all I saw was legitimate questions about what the hell they were up to with our money and systems ?
Anopheles says:
October 12, 2012 at 2:49 am
Someone should investigate the claim based on actually year to year budget numbers for NCAR. They should be publicly available. Let us know if someone finds something interesting…
AGW Models are part of the hypothesis, they are not part of the data or part of scientific experimentation. Trenberth, the AGW hypothesis has been stated via models so I suggest you now get on with completing the rest of the required science that would actually prove or disprove man made CO2’s place in our ever changing climate.
Patrick says:
October 12, 2012 at 1:22 am
Here’s more from Trenberth.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/too-many-researchers-spoil-climate-studies-20121011-27fpm.html
Trying to back away from all the alarmist tripe?
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I don’t think It’s that at all. I think he is longing for the days when all the funding and attention went to him and a handful of mates.
Even worse, now that there are more people in the field it is harder to collude and browbeat everyone into singing from the hymn sheet as evangelically.
“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.”
Maybe Trenberth should ask Al Gore and his cronies to make up the short fall. I understand they have made billions off of us tax payers