Ben Santer
From Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Ben Santer is a man with a lot of accolades under his belt: A recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant; an E.O.Lawrence Award; a Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) Distinguished Scientist Fellowship; contributor to all four assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore; and now an American Geophysical Union fellowship.
But he’d give all the awards up if it meant he could present his research on human-induced climate change to a patient audience — an audience that would listen to all the facts before making judgments about reality of a “discernible human influence” on climate.
Human-induced climate change is likely to be one of the major environmental problems of the 21st century, and effective policies to mitigate human effects on climate will require sound scientific information.
Providing that information is what climate scientist Santer continues doing as the Laboratory’s winner of the AGU fellowship.
Santer, an expert in the climate change research community, has worked in the Laboratory’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) for nearly 20 years, and is a frequent contributor to congressional hearings on the science of climate change. He credits his success to the exceptional scientists he collaborated with at LLNL. “The best reward (award) is working together with great colleagues.”
In 1996, his chapter of the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report came to the cautious but then-controversial conclusion that the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
From that point on, it has been an uphill battle for Santer to show that climate models do, in fact, replicate many different observations of climate change, and that models can serve as a valuable tool for understanding the climate changes likely to occur over the 21st century. “Ideally, governments will use the best-available scientific information to make rational decisions on appropriate policy responses to the climate change problem,” Santer said.” My colleagues and I have the job of providing that information. The AGU fellowship gives me encouragement to continue PCMDI’s research into the nature and causes of climate change, and to continue explaining what we do, what we’ve learned and why our work matters.”
Only one in a thousand members is elected to AGU fellowship each year. Santer is one of six LLNL employees who have been elected an AGU fellow. Rick Ryerson, Bill Durham, Al Duba, Joyce Penner and Hugh Heard are the others.
Santer will receive his award at the December 2011 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco.
Santer’s achievements include:
- Pioneering use of novel pattern-based statistical techniques, called “fingerprint” methods, to identify the effects of human-caused changes in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles in observational surface temperature records.
- Analysis of atmospheric temperatures, water vapor, and the height of the stratosphere-troposphere boundary, showing that accurate model simulations of climate change require inclusion of radiative forcing from human activities.
- Contributions to the Scientific Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
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UPDATE: Steve McIntyre passes on this video link, featuring Dr. Ben Santer, to us in comments. Surely this must have been the work that wowed the AGU?
BTW if you want some real science, rather than “Santer Cartoon Science” regarding the snowpack loss on Kilimanjaro, try these:
Kilimanjaro regaining its snow cap
More proof that Kilimanjaro’s problems are man-made; but not what some think it is
Did you forget the /sarc tag on this post?
As a practicing demi-god, he should be satisfied with virtual accolades from within the virtual worlds that he nurtures.
To quote Monty Python:
@cbone
and you are?
@bernd
may your children weep
And an honorary member of Backslappers Anonymous.
As an aspiring scientist myself, I look to Ben Santer as my anti-role model. Of all the climategate e-mails, his were the worst of the lot.
I’ve been privy to the spectacle of seeing all kinds of accolades being directed to first class jerks. And have sometimes been at the receiving end of “jerk” intelligence and their special kind of superiority. It seems to be a fact of life that those who find being a jerk a rewarding way of life also tend to be at the top of a pile.
What kind of pile it happens to be I leave up to the imagination of the reader.
Erik Anderson says:
“…I look to Ben Santer as my anti-role model. Of all the climategate e-mails, his were the worst of the lot.”
True dat. Santer is a real vermin, one of the most despicable Climategate worms. This is a real indictment of the formerly great AGU, which has sold its soul to Mammon.
The AGU is being hijacked completely by the AGW promoters.
Well…it IS the AGU…they take care of their own.
After reading Santer’s “contributions” to the climategate e-mails, I have absolutely NO respect for the man. He apparently acts like a juvenile punk in front of the colleagues he purports to enjoy working with…
The old saying comes to mind “It’s who you know, not what you know” and at the same time, being well funded makes all the difference, doesn’t it!
Santer remains a blinkered ideologue, concerned not to promote objective scientific inquiry but to make his Green Gang bones preparatory to foisting willfully ruinous damage on coal, oil, nuclear energy economies in Gaia’s name.
Whatever Luddite sociopathology drives climate cultists to sabotage human ease-and-comfort at every opportunity, Santer exhibits it in spades. Like Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. he is complicit in the most massive, savagely destructive fraud in human history. Would-be commissars and gauleiters may cloak themselves with normative personae, but like Saleth Sar aka Pol Pot they are essentially Thanatist fanatics who want you dead.
They are just after money which is why people like Ben Santer gets support and rise to the top. Like lawyers that chase ambulances. Banksters that chase sub-prime loans. AGU is largely headed by academics and the ones at the top are as greedy a bunch as any other.
In the late 70’s and 80’s AGU was all about monitoring the nuclear test ban treaty. I know because I was there. Hundreds of millions in research money went in to it and this kept many academics on the gray train.
…follow the money.
I’m sorry, but I have nothing but utter contempt for Ben Santer. He admitted he went back and re-wrote portions of the IPCC report so that it was consistent with the polemic. His work is in the fantasy-land of computer modeling. On top of that he proffered to “beat the crap” out of Patrick Michaels. Why doesn’t he pick on someone his own age? Might I suggest Joe Bastardi in a cage match to the death? Should be a short bout…
I have good friends that work at Sandia National Labs and Los Alamos National Lab. Both have told me that Lawrence Livermore is where the nut jobs are housed.
Santer was a graduate of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia and figures prominently in the leaked emails of Climategate. Ironically, his doctoral thesis was from CRU, I believe under the supervision of Tom Wigley, on the inability of computer models to recreate the pressure patterns of the North Atlantic. The region was chosen because it had the best and most comprehensive weather records. Despite this it created large pressure patterns that simply don’t exist. This didn’t stop him, with other IPCC members, convincing the world that the IPCC models worked and their output were valid as the basis for globally changing climate and energy policies.
His involvement with the 1995 IPCC Report “Chapter 8” fiasco was an early warning signal of what was going on within the IPCC through members of the CRU. Fred Singer and a few others were vigorously attacked for daring to speak out.
The original Chapter 8 draft submitted by Santer and approved by the group didn’t have specific evidence of a human signal
“Finally we have come to the most difficult question of all: “When will the detection and unambiguous attribution of human-induced climate change occur?” In the light of the very large signal and noise uncertainties discussed in the Chapter, it is not surprising that the best answer to this question is, “We do not know.”
This was changed by Santer to accommodate the SPM to read,
“The body of statistical evidence in Chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points toward a discernible human influence on global climate.”
Here is how Singer and Avery explain the situation in their book.
“The IPCC’s Climate Change 1995 was reviewed by its consulting scientists in late 1995. The “Summary for Policy Makers” was approved in December, and the full report, including chapter 8, was accepted. However, after the printed report appeared in May 1996, the scientific reviewers discovered that major changes had been made “in the back room” after they had signed off on the science chapter’s contents. Santer, despite the shortcomings of the scientific evidence, had inserted strong endorsements of man-made warming in chapter 8 (of which he was the IPCC-appointed lead author):”
Other problems included the claim that the chapter was based on 130 peer-reviewed studies, but the actual chapter was primarily based on two papers by Santer. It was a precedent for the later dominance by lead authors of their chapter and what is put in the Summary for PolicyMakers (SPM)
Santer also deleted the following statements from the approved draft.
“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
· “While some of the pattern-base studies discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed] to [man-made] causes. Nor has any study quantified the magnitude of a greenhouse gas effect or aerosol effect in the observed data – an issue of primary relevance to policy makers.”
· “Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
· “While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”
· “When will an anthropogenic effect on climate be identified? It is not surprising that the best answer to this question is, `We do not know. “‘
At the time they were able to brush the incident under the rug because very few knew what was going on. Fred Singer knew and I knew, which is why I was honoured to share the stage with him at the First Heartland Conference in New York in 2008. But even that was before ClimateGate occurred and sceptics were the subject of the machinations of the CRU gang revealed in the emails and through RealClimate.
How much longer will such behaviour be rewarded?
Reminds me of the Nobel Peace Prize and Gore & Co.
So, Ben “The Power of Poop” Santer would give all the awards up if it meant he could present his research on human-induced climate change to a patient audience — an audience that would listen to all the facts before making judgments about reality of a “discernible human influence” on climate.
Once again, it’s just a communication problem. All we need to do is hear Ben out and be reasonable. Frankly, I don’t see any sign that the warmists are backing off… they’re doubling down. Santer just got another coat of whitewash.
LOL. They should also award him the Nobel peace prize, to emphasize how shallow and political these “prizes” are these days. What is funny an ironic is that NOBODY is fooled by all this crap!
By the way, here’s a story which illustrates how “effective” Santer and his ilk have been in convincing the world that their fantasies are real:
Gallup: Majority of Human Race Does Not See Global Warming as Serious Threat
Monday, April 25, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey
(CNSNews.com) – Most of the human race does not see global warming as a serious threat, according to a Gallup poll released last week that surveyed individuals in 111 countries.
—
Heh!
Wow, a whole “community” … “expert in climate change research” … isn’t that like being an expert in palm reading? Or perhaps ghost hunting? Astrology maybe? Expert of horoscopes?
harvey says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:06 pm
No, all of my children are old enough (ages from 19 to 32) to be LAUGHING at what these AGW acolytes spew.
Can I ask you just one question for starters: Have you actually read Gore’s “An Inconvient Truth”? Read it and understood it, that is? And you’re not laughing too??
Any folks here members of the AGU? Care to write a joint letter of resignation?
Santer should give up his awards as he could publish his proof on the internet and a patient audience will find him. But I guess he isn’t genius enough to figure that out.
Such awards are like hemorrhoids .
So or later, every a$$hole gets one.
In the not too distant past I spent many years on scientific advisory committees for LLNL. I never met or encountered this fellow, but he embarrasses me and, I think, the Livermore Laboratory which, despite what some of you must think, ordinarily maintains the highest standards for scientific research.
A lot of the blame for this scientific denigration goes back to Washington, of course, and, in particular, to Steve Chu and his cohort. What used to be outstanding DOE laboratories are being systematically gutted to advance the “climate” agenda (LBNL, of which Chu was Director, is the most glaring case). Sadly, they don’t have to compel most of the “scientists” in these laboratories; they go where the money and the accolades are. But I do emphasize “sadly”.
http://www.heartland.org/full/26365/Galileo_Silenced_Again_.html
Everyone should have resigned when this happened to Willie Soon and Dave Legates. The AGU has jumped the shark.
@ Tim Ball –
At the time they were able to brush the incident under the rug because very few knew what was going on.
I knew because my wife was the admin assistant to Dr Bob White at the time. And the shock wave that ran through AMS was a tsunami. She came home in shock that night because she couldn’t believe that scientists were that dishonest. A LOT of scientists withdrew their names from that report, but the IPCC issued it anyway.
This was one of my many motivations in becoming a skeptic.
The warmists are desperate. Their livelyhood is at stake and they won’t go quietly. We are witnessing the last thrashings of the defeated beast.
The bad news is that the beast won’t die completely. Just like it infiltrated and took over the environmental movement after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it’ll find another victim where it will plant it’s parasitic maggots and live on.
I wonder whose next?
my guess: Obesity
“Little head – little wit.
Big head – not a bit.”
[snip – funny but over the top]
How old is that cartoon? Don’t they know it’s now called ‘climate change’?
/Mr Lynn
@McIntyre – well, I’m at a loss for words after watching that vid. So wrong on so many levels…
McIntyre,
I made it a little over 2 minutes till I had to stop that Ben cartoon.
I’d like to know how long you made it the first time you watched it.
Did you go back and finish watching over several attmeps?
Steve McIntyre . . . PRESENTS
by Hippoworks —- Stop Global . . . Intro by Ben Santer
That was cruel, Steve. A warning next time would be appropriate.
And, yes, I know Santer is one of your “favorite” people.
I managed to watch about 3 minutes of that . . . You don’t want to know the rest of what I’m thinking.
I wish that were true, but unfortunately these guys are the close advisers (modern day viziers?) to those who now run most of the western world.
[snip – over the top]
The only award this guy needs is an Oscar for “Best Supporting Actor.”
Golly! Thanks so much to Steve McIntyre for sharing Ben Santer’s more erudite works with us. What a cartoon!
Thanks Tim Ball. I did not realise that Santer was yet another graduate of East Anglia who is tied up the scam. One day a good investigative journalist will dig deep into the history of the CRU and find out what really went on the late 1970’s and 80’s over there.
Maybe Donna Laframboise could have a go at it.
Pamela Gray says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:16 pm
I’ve been privy to the spectacle of seeing all kinds of accolades being directed to first class jerks. And have sometimes been at the receiving end of “jerk” intelligence and their special kind of superiority. It seems to be a fact of life that those who find being a jerk a rewarding way of life also tend to be at the top of a pile. What kind of pile it happens to be I leave up to the imagination of the reader.
===========================
One of the many reasons I love Pamela Gray. Well said.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
The good news just keeps on coming. I will nominate for the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science:https://grants.innovation.gov.au/scienceprize/pages/home.aspx
First prize is A$300,000 (US$321,000) and a gold medallion. I like both those things.
What will win it for me is that I have been credited (paper in press in an astrophysics journal) for discovery of the use of solar cycle length to predict climate.
After reading Santer’s email where he says he’d like to meet Pat Michaels in a dark alley, and watching his incredibly pathetic cartoons, I’m sickened to see AGU offer him anything beyond an invitation to grow up.
What I think he is deserving of is an invitation to Bully Beatdown.
Santer’s achievements include:
Pioneering use of novel pattern-based statistical techniques, called “fingerprint” methods, to identify the effects of human-caused changes in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles in observational surface temperature records.
And after 2 decades of manipulating the hotspot is still missing. Where is it Ben? Or is it just a figment of your over active imagination?
/Mango
I don’t deny climate change, I know climate changes
Ben Santer to Phil Jones on Wed, 25 Apr 2007 at 16:58:29 -0700:
“I looked at some of the stuff on the Climate Audit web site. I’d really
like to talk to a few of these “Auditors” in a dark alley.”
An exquisitely professional stance.
@Steve McIntyre says: April 25, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Yeah, Steve. That one sums up Ben Santer.
“The Power of Poop”.
The manipulations showing what can be done to become a fellow of the AGU were revealed in Climategate emails (slightly edited for clarity). All you have to do is get the help of a few buddies and manipulate a bit of data. It’s just routine for these dishonest guys such as Mann, Jones and Santer:
December 4, 2007: email 1196872660
June 2, 2008: email 1212435868
June 8, 2008: email 1212924720
June 11, 2008: email 1213201481
June 14, 2008: email 1213882741
January 29, 2009: email 1233249393
May 16, 2009: email 1242749575
Thank you Steve McIntyre, there went 3.09 minutes of my life that I could probably do with later on. I lasted till the song started before starting to shout at the puter screen.
A recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant
To paraphrase the late Patrick Moynihan, they’re ‘dumbing genius down.’ Unlike the genius
Barack ObamaHillary ClintonMichael MannJoe Romm, Santer didn’t make the National Merit Scholar cut in high school.Did Mann get his own desired AGU fellowship as payback having worked so hard orchestrating the usual suspects’ nominations for Dr Phil ?
It would be another travesty if he had. Interesting to see how its done. The Mann’s careerism comes shining through, doesn’t it?
Unless an individual worked long and hard on faking his/her facial expression (and has a special inborn knack for it), most of the things you need to know about a man or a woman is written openly on his/her face.
We’ve been taught by the harshest of teachers, the evolutionary selection process, over hundreds of thousands of years, to be instinctively alert to the true intentions and character of the person from the first sight (because those who needed a second sight may not have lived long enough to have descendants).
Persistent brainwashing can blunt this intuitive skill but most of the people use it every day, especially in important, unstable, or dangerous situations — usually without consciously realizing that they are judging people by their faces and body language alone.
Look with open eyes, alert to any sign of danger and deception. Look at the pictured face as you would look at the stranger that suddenly appeared without invitation in your guestroom. Is it a friendly face? Can you trust this person? Should you call the police? Is it a time to grab your shotgun and ask him to get lost ASAP? Or should you shoot without warning?
What, in this kind of a situation, would be your reaction to Ben Santer?
Just look at his face!
@ Phil Bratby above. Thanks for posting these emails, very germane. From the emails above about AGU nominations for fellowship it is clear that some years after Wegman et al, the Fiddlestick Team carry on with their back scratching without a care in the world.
Phil says 52 papers, Mann says 62?
Can anyone throw any light on Henry’s exotic locations?
Notice how Mann seems to be going beyond the call of duty in putting together Phil’s application and then one year later he asks Phil to return the compliment. (wink).
Is Mann a controlling mind?
I am astonished that the AGU would honour Ben Santer because, they say,
“Santer’s achievements include:
■Pioneering use of novel pattern-based statistical techniques, called “fingerprint” methods, to identify the effects of human-caused changes in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles in observational surface temperature records.”
However, Santer’s work in this regard is tantamount to scientific fraud in that it utilised a short sequence selected from a data set because the data he selected fitted his claim and he failed to report the rest of the data set.
The matter was exposed in a ‘Letter’ to Nature magazine by Michaels and Knappenburger which can be read at
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/Michaels_Knappenberger_Nature96.pdf
In that link, please note the graph.
The ‘filled’ black dots are the ones selected and reported by Santer and the line in (a) is the trend that Santer reported as showing the ‘fingerprint’ he had detected.
The unfilled dots either side of those used by Santer are the remainder of the data set that was available to Santer for analysis.
In the light of these documented facts, the AGU would have been more reasonable if it had expelled Santer instead of elevating him to be a Fellow for his “use of novel pattern-based statistical techniques”.
Richard
jae says:
April 25, 2011 at 8:03 pm
LOL. They should also award him the Nobel peace prize, to emphasize how shallow and political these “prizes” are these days. What is funny an ironic is that NOBODY is fooled by all this crap!
RockyRoad says:
April 25, 2011 at 8:15 pm
harvey says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:06 pm
@bernd
may your children weep
No, all of my children are old enough (ages from 19 to 32) to be LAUGHING at what these AGW acolytes spew.
_________
This is not for LAUGHING and it’s not FUNNY. It’s very very DANGEROUS.
Like Lisa P Jackson EPA or Janet Napolitano Homeland Security or Timothy Geithner Treasury and many more. Very very dangerous. They also thought A. Hitler was a nobody. It’s all about making us slaves. If they win in the USA it’s over. look how they want to get rid of the constitution. And the Patriot Act ? Same thing. 1984
Peer review
Larry and Curly agreed that Moe is awesome, just as Curly and Moe agreed that Larry is awesome, and just as Larry and Moe agreed that Curly is awesome. — Don Surber
When I got my teaching quals, a friendly professor gave me a warning;
“Remember that any big organisation is like a sewerage settling tank – the big chunks ALWAYS float to the top!”
Seems quite appropriate for Santer.
Yes human-statistical-induced climate change will probably, most likely, under any circumstances, be the most important thing they’ll work with during the 21st century. It is what they do for a living, after all, and come 22ed century they all be dead.
Just writing, this time to wish Tim Ball all the best in the future and to let him know I no longer bother to read CFP.
And to Steve McIntyre; I watched the whole cartoon in one go and came away with the idea that Ben Santer must believe the “Snows on Kilimanjaro” will be gone by 2020. – So, it may be an idea to keep that video as future proof of what Santer and his gang were teaching our children in the beginning of the 21st century. – The nasty CO2 critters seem to be able to trap the sunshine too.
Is it just coincidence that his initials are BS?
“Pioneering use of novel pattern-based statistical techniques, called “fingerprint” methods,”
And some day, he’ll read the forensics literature regarding the perils of FMR and FNMR, or as Richard S Courtney points out, he may already be aware of those. The rest of the AGU may not.
Steve McIntyre says:
April 25, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Heck Steve! I only clicked the vid because you posted it! Now I have to bleach my ears and eyes!
At what point will honest people stop supporting and cooperating with the AGU and other organizations which aid and abet this conduct?
Richard Feynman had some thoughts on how people get chosen to be in these type of organizations. You might be surprised at what he says.
“I don’t like honors…..”
Tim Ball says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:49 pm
How much longer will such behaviour be rewarded?
It would seem that as soon as the large amounts of money sent to study ‘manmade global warming’ leaves so will the behavior.
… A contributor to all four assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)……
A reasonable scientist, who cared about his own reputation and that of the institution he may work for, would surely be washing his hands from any reference to the IPCC…
So Santer is now a Fellow with the American Geopolitical Union (AGU). Good for him.
Richard Feynman, what a “fine man”.
Beth Cooper says:
April 26, 2011 at 4:36 am
“Is it just coincidence that his initials are BS?”
hehe.
It is also the same initials as for Baldur von Schirach.
Go watch Atlas Shrugged part I. I think Ben was in the movie.
I think I could take him. It might go 18 rounds though, and he would probably fight via a proxy armed with a hockey stick.
/yes of course its sarcasm.
That video reminds me of my own first grade terror:
Mind you, that 1974 video had no effect on making me brush my teeth. It managed to scare the pants off of me, and I recall I ran home that day. I still didn’t brush regularly though.
Somewhere I remember Richard Lindzen writing about how the activists got a member into each key organization, and then that member opened the door to enough other activists, via legal loopholes, to have the capacity to sway the vote.
Lucy Skywalker:
The paper in which Richard Lindzen details the problem – and names names – is a shocking and entertaining read. It is;
Lindzen RS, ‘Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?’ Physics and Society (2008).
It can be read as a pdf at
http://climatephysics.com/2008/08/31/lindzen-climate-science-is-it-currently-designed-to-answer-questions/
Everybody needs to read it.
Richard
But, it is possible for members/fellows to revolt?
It was at the UK Royal Society last November anyway:
The UK’s national academy of science, the Royal Society, has launched a new guide to the science of climate change.
The guide has been updated partly as a result of complaints by 43 of the Royal Society’s members who were concerned about the tone of its previous guide. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11438570
Below is an excerpt from Ben Santer’s email of December 2, 2008 in which he acknowledges that he got a complaint from DOE headquarters that ” my behavior is bringing LLNL’s good name into disrepute.”
“Dear folks,
There has been some additional fallout from the publication of our paper in the International Journal of Climatology. After reading Steven McIntyre’s discussion of our paper on climateaudit.com (and reading about my failure to provide McIntyre with the data he requested), an official at Department Of Energy headquarters has written to Cherry Murray at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), claiming that my behavior is bringing LLNL’s good name into disrepute. Cherry is the Principal Associate Director for Science and Technology at LLNL, and reports to LLNL’s Director (George Miller). ”
My source for this is:
http://www.assassinationscience.com/climategate/
The web link has a long series of the famous climategate emails, with commentary. Santer’s are highlighted in purple font. Reading the emails is quite illuminating and entertaining. I am skeptical of the email content as reported by others, so I prefer to read them myself.
After the ‘beat the crap’ comment, Santer continues to Phil Jones: “The only reason these guys are going after you is because your work is of crucial importance – it changed the way the world thinks about human effects on climate.” This is what I would say of Santer himself.
But Santer’s crucial importance to the history of science is much more than that he help change the way the world thinks about AGW. And so I am impelled to make a belated comment on this post to follow the comments of Tom Ball and Jim Owen (Jim – I want to know more!).
What happened late in 1995 to Chapter 8 of the IPCC report will go down in history as a turning point, not only in the corruption of the IPCC, but in the political corruption of public-funded science. And Santer seems to be the man who carried the standard of environmental activism over the line.
Up until this point the IPCC was holding back against the likes of Hansen and their apocalyptic senarios. Restrained. Conservative. Despite the pressures.
And then as the LLNL puff (quoted above) puts it, Santer’s chapter of the IPCC’s SAR concluding that the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” This was the breakthrough. This got the headlines. Then Kyoto. And the rest is history.
Sure, science has been corrupted by politics before, but never so pervasively. Santer did what Hansen couldn’t do, and so he stands heroic — head and shoulders above Jones, Mann and all those who followed in the wake. In fact, I suggest that his belated inclusion, his interpolation, of ‘discernible human influence’ might become for environmental activist in Science, what 1 john 5:7-8 has become for Trinitarianism in Theology.
‘But he’d give all the awards up if it meant he could present his research on human-induced climate change to a patient audience — an audience that would listen to all the facts before making judgments about reality of a “discernible human influence” on climate.’
Here is a guy that might sit patiently and listen to all the facts:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/10k-for-the-first-person-to-prove-weve-caused-climate-change/
berniel:
With respect, I think you miss a critically important point in your post at April 27, 2011 at 6:13 am .
Ben Santer was lead Author of Chapter 8 of the TAR and, therefore, he must take most responsibility for the infamous insertion into that Chapter of the statement saying
“the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”.
But, importantly, that statement was based on his analysis that utilised a short sequence selected from a data set and he failed to report the rest of the data set. This analysis was then published shortly before publication of the TAR and before it was possible to publish any revelation of the scandal of that analysis.
The scandalous nature of that analysis is fully explained in the letter published in Nature from Knappeneberger and Michaels and I link to it from my above post at April 26, 2011 at 2:02 am.
But, as I point out in that post, Santer is being awarded his Fellowship of the AGU specifically because he conducted that analysis! So, Santer is being rewarded for the pseudoscience he conducted to enable him to make the changes to the TAR which you do not like.
Richard
Steve McIntyre watched the entire video I’m sure. He has amazing powers of concentration and focus. He has been wading through this stuff for many more years than most of us. There is absolutely no way that I could have waded through all of the baloney and nonsense that he has seen and then analyzed it and critiqued it for the rest of us. Totally amazing feat.
Richard S Courtney says:
April 27, 2011 at 7:16 am
Thanks.
(I think you mean SAR not TAR.)
So, let me see if I have this right…
The published IPCC 2nd report Chapter 8 cites 2 papers by Santer to support ‘fingerprinting’, one peer reviewed and published in Climate Dynamics #12 (Dec?) 1995 , and the other a PCMDI report (not peer reviewed?). While reservation about attribution continue to be expressed in the body of Chapter 8, in the published version of SAR there is nonetheless the conclusion that “the body of statistical evidence in Chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points towards a discernible human influence on global climate.” This stands in support of the SAR WGpI Summary for Policy Makers “balance of evidence” statement (and the press release and the page 1 headlines etc.)
So, the support for this conclusion that was given by Santer’s fingerprinting work (as published) not only had not benefited from full exposure to peer review (pre- and post- publication) but was not reviewed in the IPCC scientific review process (because it was inserted after that had ended).
What the Knappeneberger and Michaels correspondence in Nature does is show that a proper review of this ‘fingerprinting work (as published in i>Nature 1996) reveals that it does not support these conclusions of the IPCC report. (No wonder Santer had strong negative feeling’s towards Michaels, as expressed in the 2009 email!)
Now, what you point out is that today in 2011 Santer’s work on fingerprinting is being cited as a reason for granting him an awarded — an award for work that has brought into question for its scientific credibility.
I would add that Santer is being given this award not only on the supposed merit of this ‘fingerprinting’ work, but also for the supposed merit of its public and political impact through its support for the IPCC conclusions and so forth (headlines, Kyoto etc).
This suggest that by making this award the AGU is (knowingly?) supporting corrupted processes in science, and in this way contributing to the corruption of science.
Ben Santer was named as one of the newly elected members of the US National Academy of Sciences yesterday (May 3).
http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=News_May_3_2011_member_election