By

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

October 18, 2007

Trenberth’s Twenty-Three Scientific Errors in One Short Article   Kevin Trenberth (Rocky Mountain News, October 24), commenting on Mike Rosen’s article expressing legitimate doubts about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, makes 23 scientific mistakes, each of which falls in the direction of magnifying the unjustifiable alarm stoked by panicky politicians and extravagantly-funded environmentalists in cahoots with a shrinking clique of scientists in denial of observational climate data.  

Error 1. Trenberth says he has played “a major role” in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for 20 years, implying that he is part of the scientific mainstream on climate change. However, he has appeared on a public platform opposing the consistent findings of the IPCC that there is no reason to suppose that hurricanes have become or will become more frequent as a result of “global warming”, and little reason to imagine that they will become more intense. His misconduct led to objections by Dr. Chris Landsea, who resigned as lead author for the IPCC on hurricanes when the bureaucracy failed to act on his objections.

Error 2. Trenberth says most recent warming was “not from 1900 to 1940, but after 1970.” In fact, according to the land and sea temperature records of the National Climate Data Center the rate of warming in the 1920s and 1930s, before humankind had much influence on climate, was as great as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the IPCC’s previous report in 2001, there has been no statistically-significant “global warming” at all.ⁱ

Lower tropospheric temperature anomaly since 1979 as measured by satellite-mounted microwave sounding units (MSU; from http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2). When the warming effect of El Ninos, and the cooling effect of the El Chichon and Pinatubo volcanic eruptions, are discounted, little if any greenhouse-forced warming is apparent for the last 25 years (Gray, 2006). Note also that these tropospheric measurements agree with the ground-based thermometer series (Below) in recording no significant warming since 1998, and probably none since 1982.ⁱⁱ 

Combined annual land surface-air and sea surface global temperature anomalies (⁰C) for 1980-2005 relative to a 1961-1990-average baseline (data from Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia). Though a warming of perhaps 0.3⁰ C is recorded between 1980 and 1998 (a marked El Nino year), no warming has occurred in the seven subsequent years despite continued large increases in human-sourced atmospheric carbon dioxide.ⁱⁱⁱ

Combined annual land surface-air and sea surface global temperature anomalies (⁰C) for 1861-2001 relative to a 1961-1990-average baseline, and plotted with the estimated two standard error uncertainty (after IPCC, 2001, Fig. 2). Also plotted, without error bars, is the estimated curve of atmospheric carbon dioxide values over the same period. Note the lack of correspondence between the two curves, and especially that cooling accompanied the marked increase in carbon dioxide emissions between 1950 and 1970.^iv  

Error 3. Trenberth says, “We can prove – using climate models – that it is due to human influences changing the composition of the atmosphere”. One cannot prove anything with numerical forecasting models: Lorenz (1963) demonstrated, in his landmark paper that founded chaos theory, that climate forecasting for more than a few weeks ahead is altogether impossible.^v Computer models are merely expensive forms of elaborate guesswork, to which the foolish cling in the near-total absence of any analytical basis in theoretical physics for the absurdly exaggerated effects of insignificant increases in the atmospheric content of trace gases on temperature that are imagined by the IPCC. 

Error 8. Trenberth says, “Human-induced warming has, however, increased water vapor over the global oceans by 4 per cent since 1970 and over land by 2-3%.” By the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, the space occupied by the atmosphere is capable of carrying near-exponentially more water vapor as temperature rises. However, Trenberth is again illogical in assuming that the fact of warming and of its consequences reveals the cause. Natural warming increases the atmospheric concentration of water vapor just as anthropogenic warming does.

Error 9. Trenberth says the “human-induced” warming provides “fuel for more powerful storms”. It does no such thing.[i] It is a matter of record that the mean annual number and intensity of severe hurricanes shows no change in 100 years, while tropical cyclones and typhoons have actually fallen in number. Several peer-reviewed papers attest to the influence of wind-shear in moderating what might otherwise be stronger storms. Outside the tropics, it is widely accepted that warmer weather will mean fewer and milder storms.  

Error 11. Trenberth says climate change “has not happened at current rates for thousands of years”. In fact, one need only go back to the 18^th century to find that in central England between 1700 and 1735 the mean atmospheric temperature rose by 2.2 degrees Celsius in a third of a century compared with 0.8 Celsius, most of it natural, in the 20^th century. The Mediaeval, Roman and Bronze Age warm periods were warmer than the present, as were each of the last four ice ages. The temporal resolution of the ice-cores upon which “thousands of years” of temperature reconstructions are based is insufficient to allow us to draw any conclusions whatsoever as to the rates at which temperatures changed during previous ice ages.  

Error 12. Trenberth says, “Solar activity does not dwarf all other factors.” There is insufficient data to draw this conclusion. Solanki et al. (2005), say, “The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional. The previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago … During the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of  the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity. Almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.”  

Error 16. Trenberth says, “Of course we will adapt, but with how much loss of life and hardship brought on by climate change?” Though the IPCC fatuously estimates that 150,000 people a year are being killed by “global warming” – a “global warming” that is not in fact happening – the truth is that warmer weather kills fewer people than cooler weather, which is why in the US alone it is estimated that thanks to warmer weather 174,000 fewer people a year are dying because of cold.^ix  

Error 17. Trenberth says, “At least we should plan for the coming changes.” The “precautionary principle” – plan against a danger even if the scientific basis for it is unsound or incomplete - killed 30 to 50 million people from malaria when the environmental movement succeeded in getting DDT banned worldwide. Before the ban, 30 years ago, just 50,000 people a year were killed by malaria. After the ban, the mean annual death-rate rose to 1 million. On 15 September 2006, the World Health Organization at last lifted this murderous ban, caused by needless and heedless “planning”. Its spokesman said that science and the data had to replace politics in future. Trenberth, please note. 

Conclusions

Trenberth’s shallow analysis discredits both him and the IPCC in which he plays “a major part”. The likelihood that Trenberth, in a short article, would have made as many as 23 errors all falling in the direction of undue alarmism and flagrant exaggeration by mere accident is less than 1 in 8 million. Sir John Houghton, the first chairman of the IPCC, in which Trenberth plays “a major part”, wrote in 1994 that “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.” If Trenberth and the IPCC, in which he plays “a major part”, go on announcing disasters when none are in truth at all likely, then indeed no one will listen, and no one should. From now on, we want honest, unbiased science. No more lies. Tell us the unvarnished, unexaggerated truth. Then, and only then, we will listen.