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
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Just previous to the IPCC’s 15th Conference-of-Parties aka “COP 15” in December 2009, that November’s “Climategate” revelations terminally derailed Warmist propaganda blatted out for two decades by the Green Gang of peculating scamsters from Al Gore to Railroad Bill Pachauri down.
Dispassionate, objective, even rational scientific debate has never been AGW cultists’ point at all. At root, extreme-radical Luddite sociopaths such as Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Keith Farnish seized on this Doomsday Narrative to promote egregious frauds promulgated by the likes of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth in any number of assiduously corrupt venues.
The object here is never scientific conjecture, positing testable hypotheses, but the explicitly totalitarian One World Order described in detail by death-eating thanatists like Kentti Linkola and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, anti-Enlightenment reactionaries bent literally on regressing to pre-medieval times. By all means, refute these agents’ smoke-screen findings at length and in detail, but do not ever pretend that addressing them in good-faith debate will make the slightest difference.
Psst… Trenberth, [snip], if your activity demonstrates a serious lack of INTEGRITY, expect people to question your actions and statement.
You and your ilk made your bed… now lie in it.
NOAA received shovel-ready ARRA stimulus funds starting in 2009.
$830 million total for NOAA.
Of this, $170 million “to be used for climate modeling activities, including supercomputing procurement, and research into climate change.”
Perhaps Trenberth’s funding cuts coincide with the termination of the *temporary* ARRA stimulus funds.
In Washington, a three percent increase is a 20 % cut.
Using government math, the rate of increase for FY 2012 was cut by 81% (from 16% to 3%). It’s worse than we thought!
NOAA Budget
2010 actual — $ 4,748.7 million — increase
2011 request – 5,554.5 million 17%
2011 actual — 4,748,7 million 0%
2012 request – 5,497.7 million 16%
2012 actual — 4,906.6 million 3%
2013 request – 5,060.5 million 3%
__Jim says, but I _don’t_ take it that you _do not_ assert that additional IR flux will not cause nearby CO2 molecules to vibrate at some proportionately higher amplitude?
After my earlier challenge to AlecM about the need for simple clear explanatory language, I rest my case…!
This, so much this. I can not understand how someone who calls themselves a scientist can take the output from a computer model and call it data. They are indeed the hypothesis that should be tested — when you plug in forcing numbers for CO2 and H2O vapor and feedbacks, and then run the model, you should be taking those results and comparing them to actual, real-world measurements for validation. What you do NOT do is take the output and use it in an attempt to terrify people into giving you more money, power, or whatever.
I think this behavior, more than anything else, is what makes me think it’s a conspiracy rather than just incorrect science and someone’s favorite theory. Anyone who ever took first-year physics for non-majors would know better than to do what they’re doing.
”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work,” Professor Trenberth said.”
“Torture numbers enough, and they’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
We have been warned, ladies and gentlemen.
– – – – –
It still is shocking to see the continued media bias when they state that the CG1 and CG2 emails were stolen by someone outside of the UEA CRU community. The investigating police and UEA CRU did not supply to the public any evidence of theft by outsider; they merely stated that they think so.
The alternate possibility of a ‘whistleblower act’ by an insider(s), which would not be ‘theft’, remains as valid as the outsider theft possibility. Both possibilities remain equally reasonable until the full details of the investigation are provided. I am impatiently waiting for the investigation details.
The media reporting in this case is intellectually dishonest.
John
commieBob says: October 12, 2012 at 6:27 am
The ONLY way the earth can get rid of heat is by radiation.
Isn’t the emphasis on “ONLY” a little strong. It is very likely true that the dominant method of earth heat loss is radiation–but the ONLY method? As I understand it, the mass of a helium gas molecule is small enough that a fraction of helium gas molecules at temperatures around 290 K possess a velocity that is in excess of the earth’s escape velocity (the velocity needed to leave the earth entirely). As a result, atmospheric helium near the upper atmosphere will escape to space. Isn’t this a non-radiative means of heat transfer to space?
Furthermore, in addition to absorbing IR radiation, greenhouse gases radiate. Isn’t it possible that the processes of (a) heat transfer to greenhouse gases via, evaporation (water to the greenhouse gas water vapor), conduction and radiation near the earth’s surface, (b) convection of the heated gases to higher altitudes, and (c) radiation from those gases to space have a net cooling effect on the surface temperature of the earth?
****
AlecM says:
October 12, 2012 at 3:29 am
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/
****
Trenberth’s & other team-player responses have been “it’s all taken care of in the physics of the models” or something-such.
Ahhh, yes! You have stumbled upon the dirty little secret of the budget process in the U.S. Actually, I don’t doubt that the process is identical the world over. Let’s say I have an agency with a $100 million budget for climate related studies. Next year I ask for $120 million. The evil Republicans say “No, you get $116 million.” Now I run around whining about my 20% budget cut. But wait, you say! It’s actually a 16% increase! No, in the la-la land inhabited by rent seekers a reduction of your increase is a budget cut. Franz Kafk, call your office.
They could erase the decrease in present funding by adjusting past funding levels downward.
I bet they could even make this year the most funded year ever.
Use by Trenberth of the term “denialist website” says it all really.
“Believer” and “non-believer” do perfectly well, without the nasty connotations…
And what a cry-baby. Grow a pair, Mr. T.
Commiebob: “The ONLY way the earth can get rid of heat is by radiation.”
Very true: the Trenberth perpetual motion machine exaggerates IR absorption in the atmosphere ~5x changing the heat transfer to mostly radiation. In reality, it’s mostly convection until near TOA, That heat energy is lost to space as IR. The other mistake is to assume DOWN emissivity at TOA =1; it’s zero because there can be no direct thermalisation of IR from kinetic factors.
The dip in the CO2 band at TOA is self-absorption of emission from the dry upper atmosphere, not evidence of IR from the surface being absorbed.
_Jim: “Is AlecM is familiar with the field of IR Spectroscopy?”
Yes and I worked for a very long time modelling and measuring IR heat transmission to and from GHGs. The problem with climate science is that it adds to net IR UP [UP PV** – DOWN PV] the DOWN PV, making the claimed black body emission for 16°C. This is a fabrication because most of the UP PV can do no work as it annihilates the DOWN PV [assuming a normal temperature gradient]. This is the most basic axiom of radiation physics, Poynting’s Theorem, and is why when you calculate a radiation equilibrium you subtract the S-B flux of the cooler body from the S-B flux of the hotter body taking account emissivities,absorptivities and geometrical view factor.
**Poynting Vector which for a plane wave averages epsilon0.c.E0^2/2. The UP and DOWN PVs
add together as the vector sum.
David Socrates; I am writing the radiation physics paper now. All I am doing is to transfer standard physics to replace the 6 basic mistakes made by Trenbetth, Hansen et. al. To be fair they inherited mistakes by, e.g. Sagan from van der Hulst, and Houghton. Sagan did not account for an important second optical effect which makes thunderclouds with rain drops convected to the top the highest albedo: the small drop claim was totally spurious to get AR4 approved. Houghton’s mistake was not to look at the boundary conditions properly when you use the two-stream approximation, itself imaginary because only net flux is real, and claimed lower atmosphere was a black body emitter [although later he talked of grey body emission]. In reality each GHG band switches off surface emission by the process of PV annihilation although the subtlety is in the side bands.
The reason why climate science went to the trouble of fabricating the BB UP IR needs explaining because it is not a real energy flux. Did they really not check other fields of study which show this is impossible except for an isolated body in a vacuum?
_Jim: “However, you do look to be alluding to an assertion that the IR path straight-to-space is ‘blocked’ by saturation, but I _don’t_ take it that you _do not_ assert that additional IR flux will not cause nearby CO2 molecules to vibrate at some proportionately higher amplitude?”
A good point. the first answer is that the GHG IR is turned off at source. The reduction of total emissivity caused surface temperature to rise to keep convection + radiation a constant sum at equilibrium. However, the side-bands are also important so it’s not that simple and needs to be worked out – think of the phenomenon of band inversion in optical spectroscopy.
Absolutely correct that CO2 is having a disastrous effect on this planet.
The Global Financial Meltdown can be directly attributed to the direct and indirect funding of this nonsense.
We know that there is a link between the Meltdown and the funding, we just have to work on the specific numbers.
”With the links between weather and climate for instance – we know they are there, but the specific numbers need work,” Professor Trenberth said.
How much funding do you need for this? You guys don’t gather data in the field. You operate models. Even Dr Mann says they couldn’t collect recent data from tree rings because of difficulty and cost so Steven McIntyre did his famous collection of bristle cones and back to Starbucks for coffee in Colorado in a few hours! It seems that it cost $50B or so to get where we are today in consensus climate science – being pushed to the wall by unfunded sceptics.
outtheback says:
“Absolutely correct that CO2 is having a disastrous effect on this planet.”
You sound like a lunatic. Prove me wrong. Provide hard data showing a direct connection between rising CO2 and harm or damage to the planet.
****
commieBob says:
October 12, 2012 at 6:27 am
The ONLY way the earth can get rid of heat is by radiation.
****
True. But the avg radiating altitude/temp is constantly moderated by convection. Convection pushes relatively warm, IR-radiating vapor/liquid/frozen water upward to high altitudes & increases heat-loss (also often reflects some incoming solar). Assuming warmer temps cause convection to increase, that’s negative feedback. The actual CO2 effect will be less than the simple theoretical doubling effect of ~1.2C.
D Böehm says:
October 12, 2012 at 10:14 am
I think (hope?) that outtheback was being sarcastic!
Kev-in-UK,
If so, then my apologies. That is why Anthony requests a “/sarc” tag, if the comment was intended to be sarcasm.
Kev-in-Uk says:
October 12, 2012 at 10:29 am
D Böehm says:
October 12, 2012 at 10:14 am
I think (hope?) that outtheback was being sarcastic!
————————————
I’m sure he was. Made me smile out loud anyway.
Just have to work on the specific numbers – it is priceless, really.
I wonder if Kev Trenberth worries about the third tranche of yet to be revealed/released Climategate emails???
– – – – –
I think when we see any of the public’s and the scientific community’s increasing rejection of both Trenberth’s work and his behavior, it is caused essentially by Trenberth himself. His work and behavior inspires little confidence in me of his ability to conduct publicly funded climate research in a truly open and fully transparent way. His activities have the appearance ( see CG1 & CG2 ) of being fundamentally biased by cloaked activist alarmism . . . while he was being funded by the US public.
I see the more open and transparent part of the climate science community, using a more objectively balanced and open scientific process, is self correcting for the deficiencies of the seemingly cloaked and biased nature of Trenberth’s work. It appears that the scientific community and public have largely moved on past Trenberth’s previous attempts (with the ‘teams’ aid ) to block the vital open process of scientific skepticism. I suggest that scientists do understand that open scientific skepticism is an essential aspect of all balanced and objective scientific processes. Given Trenberth did not understand that, then it more reason to mitigate against his continued influence in climate science.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
John
Now, that is a truly profound observation. They actually “know” there are links between climate and weather!! Remarkable.
D Böehm says:
October 12, 2012 at 10:34 am
I think the progression to funding for this junk, to the Global financial meltdown made the /sarc unnecessary.
DaveE.