Kevin Trenberth's rebuttal of David Harsayni's editorial in the Denver Post of December 16, 2009, concerning the misrepresentation of his emails and the statement: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t."

19 December 2009

David Harsayni, in the editorial Denver Post 12/16/09, declared his biases of being a global warming denier “with bad intentions” and then goes onto to attack me and my work.

The reason for the attack by Harsayni was because of the content of some of my emails thatwere stolen. It should be a matter of concern to everyone that emails and personal information about individuals, including me, were illegally taken from the University of East Anglia through a hacking incident. The selective publication of some stolen emails taken out of context and distorted is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with the climate change issue in a responsible way, and has now been propagated by the Denver Post. Instead there should be condemnation of the abuse, misuse and downright lies about the emails.

In my case, one cherry-picked email quote has gone viral and at last check it was featured in over 49,000 items (in Google). Here is the quote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability.

Obviously Harsayni was not interested in the correct interpretation of the quote, as I offered to answer any questions but he declined to engage in any way. I also pointed out that a lot of information is available on my web site, including the paper.

I am not responsible for policy decisions of the government. I am bound to supply the best information and scientific facts on which such policy should be based, however. Unlike your editorials evidently, all of my work is peer reviewed, and I am proud to be one the most highly cited scientists in all of geophysics. I am also fully accountable to all the sources of funding through regular reports. Harsayni seems to think that because some of my funding comes from the federal government he should have access to all of my emails. Does he expect this for all of our military personnel, all Medicare recipients, and millions of others who get government funds? I do not work for the government. Please visit my and NCAR’s web pages for a full account of what we do.

Scientific facts don’t change by abusing the messenger. Global warming is happening and will continue. Nature will continue to respond, and there will be consequences. Wishful thinking by Harsayni will not make that go away. A more fruitful approach would be to plan for the changes and slow them down.

Kevin Trenberth
Web page: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenbert.html