Mann gets Medal

Right. And Obama and Gore got the Nobel Prize.
It’s a Europe thing.

Joe Bastardi says:
November 16, 2011 at 7:50 pm
—————————————————————-
Joe: does that mean you lost all but two of your matches? LOL.
If you were a PSU wrestler, you were GOOD. Really good.

Tucci78,
Surely you must have recognized Raymond Bradley, after all, he has the coauthor of Mann’s most hated paper, MBH 99.
I also find it ironic that so many here love using the AMO to arguments against AGW. You do know who was co-author on the paper which found the (still disputed to some extent) AMO? That’s right, Michael E. Mann.

Under the circumstances, it becomes evident that this is one of those peer nominated awards.

Reminds me of Muttley from Wacky Races. He won lots of medals too…

At 8:13 PM on 16 November, in response to my request for background on the previous Hans Oeschger medalists, Rattus Norvegicus writes:

Surely you must have recognized Raymond Bradley, after all, he has the coauthor of Mann’s most hated paper, MBH 99.
I also find it ironic that so many here love using the AMO to arguments against AGW. You do know who was co-author on the paper which found the (still disputed to some extent) AMO? That’s right, Michael E. Mann.

I regret that among the many other three-letter acronyms (TLA) with which I’m not immediately familiar, “AMO” must be added.
WTF is “AMO,” please? The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation? Aviation Medical Officer? Association Members Only? A Miracle Occurs?
Hm. Considering Dr. Mann’s methodologies, that last “AMO” might be spot-on….

This medal should be presented on the top of a log book. GK

Yeah, I won a medal once. I won the fifty yard dash in the fifth grade in 1959. I think my mother lost it.

Why am I reminded of third world rulers bedecked in military medals ?

At 7:50 PM on 16 November, Joe Bastardi boasts:

Yah, well I hold the record for most wins by a PSU wrestler who grew up south of the Expressway and east of the Parkway (1) lettered in wrestling and got a degree in meteorology, and no one associated with the AGW movement will ever outdo that. so There ( just having some fun, okay)

Along the Cape May County coast, or that little patch of Atlantic County which includes Pleasantville, Ventnor, and Somers Point?
I think I still have some family down in Ocean City.

I would say that this award is just another lead-in to the Durbin Climate Circus.
Any bets that twenty to thirty years from now this award will be completely unknown especially if the grant money evaporates?
Also I wonder when it was decided to give the medal to Mann, before or after the Penn State football scandal….

savethesharks says:
November 16, 2011 at 7:45 pm
R. Gates says:
November 16, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Good for him. Congratulations!
==============================
OK. In a similar vein, then: “Good for Al Gore, Pachuri, Arafat, and Obama….for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.” Congratulations!”
Doesn’t mean much, does it??
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
————-
All these men will be remembered long after most of have turned to dust…but then again, so will Osama and Charles Manson.

HankH, it is absolutely true that this is a peer (peer here being the members of the EGU committee which decides who gets the award) nominated award. It speaks volumes about what Mann’s peers think about his work. He isn’t a bad or incompetent scientist. He’s pretty damn good.

The former B.C. premier was awarded with the Order of B.C., the province’s highest honour, for creating North America’s first carbon tax as well as the carbon offset purchase regime that every hospital and school board is compelled to participate in, even though he was not eligible for the award.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/09/05/bc-protest-gordon-campbell-order.html?cmp=rss
Corruption is rife throughout the AGW community. And please people, don’t use the words “post normal” when the proper term is “corrupt”.

davidmhoffer,
So you are very selective about what you consider to be good research by a person you revile, if, and only if, it may support your point of view. However, research by the same person that you don’t agree with is invalid? Please explain.

Rattus Norvegicus says:
November 16, 2011 at 10:28 pm
davidmhoffer,
So you are very selective about what you consider to be good research by a person you revile, if, and only if, it may support your point of view. However, research by the same person that you don’t agree with is invalid? Please explain.>>>
Your position was that you find it ironic that some people cite the AMO to support their anti-CAGW position and that Michael Mann had a hand in that research. I never said if I thought it was good research or not. I don’t know, and for the purpose of taking you to task on your original comment, I don’t care. He is being taken to task for having frabricated many of his results. That he produced other results at some point that perhaps supported a different perspective is immaterial.
Well, unless he fabricated those too.
There is well performed science underpinning the AMO. Doesn’t matter who did it if it done well. There is fradulant science underpinning CAGW. Who did it and why suddenly is important. If Michael Mann went into a bank and withdrew money from his own account, and the next day robbed the same bank at gun point, would you excuse the crime because yeserday he played by the rules, so its OK for him to break them today?

Second prize is two Hans Oeschger medals.

Leftists love awards. It keeps plebian minds from independent thought. That’s why the New SCOTUS Justice Elana Kagan has more honors and honorary doctorates than senior Justices on form the Right, serving a decade or two, or even three.

Maybe Mann, along with others, should be nominated for some fiction awards.

It was an artistic hockey stick! Don’t be such a meany ; you’re causing global warming, or freezing, or what’s the next waterloo?

I think this says more about the EGU than it does about Mann. They claim “The hockey stick demonstrated that temperatures had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels”. I thought it demonstrated the truth of the phrase “There are lies, damn lies and statistics”.

I received a medal for winning a sack race when I was eight. What’s more I didn’t cheat…

In the British forces there is (was??) a long-standing joke about our American friends getting medals with their cornflakes* but at least, in the words of the song, “They don’t give a Purple Heart for a fallen arch”.
Having already lowered the established standards for science, it seems the climate science community would like to drop the bar on gongs too!
* It’s only jealousy because they get more than us 😉

I’m not surprised about this because of something I read in the climategate emails. Who was it that was trying to help get Phil Jones some sort of recognition or into some organization and was expecting to get nice letters of recommendation later? Kind of like ‘I’ll get everybody to support you and you can do the same for me.’ Makes one wonder how things work in their world.

Judging by the number of “snip”s in the first few comments, a lot of people feel about the same as I do about the quality and accuracy of Mann’s work. And hairstyle.
Fact is, as far as I can tell the majority of Mann’s contribution has been thoroughly and scientifically debunked. Being debunked is a particular kind of insult… usually it’s rumors and conspiracy theories that need debunking, not an individual’s work.
The thing about the hockey stick: it IS iconic, yes. But just because something is iconic doesn’t in any way imply accuracy. I’m certain most people think that thing has stood the test of rigorous peer-reviewed scrutiny. And if not, hey, we should all “do our part” to “tackle” “climate change”… just in case. Because, you know, we can’t afford to be wrong.
Anyway, this actually sounds like something that could be an episode of Big Bang Theory… except all of the guys on that show are actually… um… intelligent…

As an engineer I find it very depressing that institutions that should promote science for the benefit of humanity (the first thing we are impressed with in engineering) do the exact opposite. On what seems a daily basis they drag themselves into political frauds for the only purpose of remaining on the correct side of politically correct money dispensers. Awards in science have become as nonsensical as those for journalim (see Kouric, Katie).

Interesting that Ray Bradley was one member of the panel awarding the medal!!
http://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/award-medal-committees.html
Oh, and that Phil Jones is also a previous recipient – what a small incestuous world climate science is!!

DirkH says:
November 17, 2011 at 3:07 am
“When something starts with European and ends with Union you know it’s corrupt.”
Totally agree Dirk, after all it was the EU that made sure there were mountains of money available for climate scientists but only if they came up with the ‘right’ answers of course –
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43291

Climate scientists giving other climate scientists medals. Congratulations.
And a life time supply of turd polish to boot.

It’s a sting to get him out of the country, right ?
regarDS

The Hans Oeschger Medal Committee (source):
Dominique Raynaud (Chair) – 2008 Winner
Thomas Stocker – 2009 Winner, “Co-Chair Working Group I, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (since 2008)” (info).
Francoise Gasse – 2010 Winner
Jean Jouzel – Vice President of IPCC Scientific Council
Robert Delmas – 2011 Winner
and
Ray Bradley – 2007 Winner and Mann’s “Hockey Stick” co-author.
Yup, truly a fitting Peer Reviewed award for Michael Mann. I’m sure all the past winners will be glad to have Mann in their illustrious group in the years to come.

Appraised of the fact that David Falkner had uttered at 7:58 PM on 16 November an OT post consisting of nothing but personal insult addressed to me (“I remember you. Yes, it must be hard to see with your head in there.“), Mr. Watts had inserted:

REPLY: “…lance this pustule of a Falkner?” Please, use plain English to describe your request. And no, you don’t get to declare “open anything”, it isn’t your blog. If you want to go off on a tear, do it someplace else. – Anthony

Mr. Watts, you had objected in another thread to my engagement in the discussion of matters peripheral but pertinent to the patterns of conduct demonstrated by the administration of the institution where Dr. Michael E. Mann is presently employed, as well as to my incidental focus on the clinically pernicious effects of perpetuating a wildly popular, hysterical, hypocritical, and false concept. I believe I described it as “the psychiatric equivalent of a death sentence.”
Think of that concept as a sort of medical equivalent of the CAGW fraud.
Mr. Falkner was one of several vociferous…people…who had received my observations in that thread with insult addressed not to the substance of my comments but to me personally, and in his cited post, insult was the entirety of Mr. Falkner‘s contribution to discussion.
Because this “isn’t [my] blog,” I took pains to provide you with notification of Mr. Falkner‘s conduct before addressing this pustule directly and incisively.
After all, it is “your blog.”

This is a just another example where awardees are selected less on the basis of the truth veracity of their accomplishments and more on the basis of the alignment of the message of their exploits with the political motivations of the organization(s) behind the selection.
It happens way too often and diminishes the selection of those whom are deserving. At some point you’d hope that the selecting organizations would feel the damage to their reputations, but that is certainly wishful thinking.

Medals are overrated – We don’t need no stinking badges to spot a looney
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/25/article-2018506-0D27C52100000578-476_306x490.jpg

At 2:20 AM on 17 November, Joe Horner had written that:

In the British forces there is (was??) a long-standing joke about our American friends getting medals with their cornflakes* but at least, in the words of the song, “They don’t give a Purple Heart for a fallen arch”.

This World War Two observation about the U.S. Army (and the U.S. Army Air Forces in particular) was prevalent also in the United States’ Naval Service, especially in the U.S. Marine Corps, and it wasn’t unknown among the dogface soldiers – the guys on the sharp end – themselves.
Look up cartoonist Bill Mauldin, and check out his Stars and Stripes cartoon” captioned:

Mauldin got a lot of flack from the brassbound West Point Protective Association lifers for that innocent little comment about medals handed out to the REMFs like Chiclets.

According to the source above (http://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/awards-and-medals/award/hans-oeschger.html), they have this:
“…It is reserved for scientists for their outstanding achievements in ice research and/or short term climatic changes (past, present, future)…”
And Mann qualified for this in what way? If using ice core data (proxies) to ESTIMATE temperatures over the past thousand years makes him eligible, imagine what awards he’d get if he really applied himself.
I’ve watched ice melt in a glass of scotch. Can I get the award, too?

I earned a Rifle Expert medal in the United States Marine Corps which essentially means I can, among other things, reliably put neat little 5.56 millimeter holes in a Hans Oeschger medal from a distance of 100 yards in the offhand standing position with an open sight M-16 combat assault rifle.
But speaking of Hans reminds me of Switzerland where Hans spent his entire life. Switzerland, the “other Germany” which didn’t take sides in World War II. The country where all the biggest criminals hide their money. Switzerland, where heinous crimes committed in other countries are just not their concern. Kind of makes you wonder why they’d be concernced about environmental carnage given they happily hold the booty from oil profiteers in their anonymous no-questions-asked banking industry. I would waste a bullet putting a hole in the Hans Oeschger medal unless some criminal happened to be wearing it at the time…

My! The trolls have been about! Now, after his efforts for Jones we really need to see the emails that brought about this farcical lump of bronze! I wonder how much carbon was consumed in nudging the award and actually forging ( 😉 ) it

I don’t get it. Why is the director of “Miami Vice” and “Heat” getting a climate medal? 😀

James Sexton says:
November 16, 2011 at 11:04 pm
He gave up any credibility he could have had with the Tijlander debacle
Exactly. That EGU (or “Rattus Norvegicus”) just ignore this, tells me that they either don’t understand how bad the Tiljander data abuse was (which is a shame, since Mann was responsible for abusing it again just a few months ago, as one of the authors of Kemp 2011), or that they are willing to sacrifice the quality of science for their own political agenda.

I fully expected Mann to winn a medal – the Trofim Lysenko medal.
The Trofim Lysenko medal is awarded to that scientist, who, in the opinion of the committee, has made the greatest effort to pervert and twist the cause of science for political ends.
He is best known for the “hockey stick,” a chart he and his co-authors published in 1999 using cherry picked climate data such as tree-rings found in only one tiny corner of the planet. By dint of supreme effort, Mann extracted those rings which by chance happened to show minute, hockey-stick like tendencies, and weighted them 396 times. The hockey stick then purported to demonstrate that temperatures had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels and is the subject of Mann’s new book, “How I was mistaken for a climate scientist.”
When asked for his reaction, Mann replied: “I can do science, me.”

From Dave Springer on November 17, 2011 at 7:14 am:

Was my comment about me receiving an “Rifle Expert” medal in the United States Marine Corps over the top or something? I mean just because I talked about being able to put 5.56 millimeter holes in Hans Oeschger medals from a great distance didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to do that while any recipients were wearing them.

Bah. A real “rifle expert” would be using at least 7.62x51mm NATO. I thought Marines trained to shoot people, not poodles!

That is the problem with whitewash, if the first coat is inadequate, you have to keep adding new coats.

From Mr Lynn on November 17, 2011 at 8:28 am:

Late in the day, but I agree. This blog’s civility is one of the reasons it’s so widely respected, and that diminishes it.

Civility is a wonderful thing, among ladies and gentlemen who respect the rules of polite discourse. But given the frequently-encountered quality of the opposition and their noted ability to resort to base disparaging attacks, when the insistent continual usage of politeness would be seen as weakness, I take comfort that Anthony is fully capable, if needed, of informing a deserving individual that they are indeed a f***ing b****rd who’s full of sh*t.
😉
[REPLY: I don’t recall Anthony ever using that terminology. -REP]

Let us listen to a scientist deserving of such commendation for contributions to climatology.
—————————————————-
November 17, 2011
Why BEST Will Not Settle the Climate Debate
By S. Fred Singer
Global warming has re-entered public consciousness in recent days, partly because of the buzz surrounding the release of warming results from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. The reaction of the “warmistas” has been jubilant, yet hilariously wrong. Will they ever learn?
They’ve latched on to the BEST result as their last best hope for rescuing misbegotten schemes to control emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2. Leading the pack has been the Washington Post (Oct. 25), whose columnist tried to write off Republican presidential candidates Bachmann, Cain, and Perry as “cynical diehards,” deniers, idiots, or whatever.
I sent the WP a letter pointing out obvious errors, but I got a peculiar response. It turned out that they were willing to publish my letter, but not my credentials as emeritus professor at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Apparently, they were concerned that readers might gain the impression that I knew something about climate.
Unfortunately, it has become expedient (for those who condemn CO2 as the cause of warming) to deride their opponents with terms like “climate deniers.” A complacent and inattentive media has made the problem worse, by giving the impression that anyone who doesn’t buy the CO2 hypothesis doesn’t believe that climate changes, and hence is a total Luddite. Even the WSJ got carried away. Prof. Richard Muller, the originator and leader of the BEST study, complained to me that some eager editor changed the title of his op-ed (Oct. 21) to “The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism” from his original “Cooling the Global Warming Debate. ”
The (formerly respected) scientific journal Nature chimed in and announced in an (Oct. 26) editorial[i] that any results confirming “climate change” (meaning anthropogenic global warming — AGW) are welcome, even when released before peer review. Of course, we’ve known for many years that Nature does not welcome any contrary science results, but it’s nice to have this confirmation.
Their hearts filled with bubbling joy and their brains befuddled, none of the warmistas have apparently listened to the somewhat skeptical pronouncements from Prof. Muller. He emphasizes that the analysis is based only on land data, covering less than 30% of the earth’s surface and housing recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in the U.S. and Western Europe. In addition, he admits that 70% of U.S. stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is probably worse. He disclaims to know the cause of the warming found by BEST and favors naturally caused oscillations of the atmosphere-ocean system that no climate model has yet simulated or explained.
The fact that the BEST results agree with previously published analyses of warming trends from land stations may indicate only that there is something very wrong with all of these. There are two entirely different ways to interpret this agreement on surface warming. It might indicate important confirmation, but logic allows for an alternate possibility: since both results rely on surface thermometers, they are not really independent and could be subject to similar fundamental errors. For example, both datasets could be affected by urban heat islands or other non-global effects — like local heating of airports, where traffic has been growing steadily.
But the main reason I have remained a skeptic is that the atmosphere, unlike the land surface, has shown no warming during the crucial period (1978-1997), either over land or over ocean, according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons. And did you know that climate models run on high-speed computers all insist that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface — and so does atmospheric theory?
BEST has no data from the oceans, which cover 71% of the planet’s surface. True, oceans are not subject to urban heat islands, but they have problems with instrumentation. It is very likely that the reported warming during 1978-97 is simply an artifact — the result of the measurement scheme rather than an actual warming. Anyway, supporting data don’t show any ocean warming, either.
And finally, we have non-thermometer temperature data from so-called proxies: tree rings, ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, stalagmites. Most of these haven’t shown any warming since 1940!
Contrary to some commentary, BEST in no way confirms the scientifically discredited hockey stick graph, which was based on multi-proxy analysis and had been so eagerly adopted by climate alarmists. In fact, the hockey stick authors never published their post-1978 temperatures in their 1998 paper in Nature — or since. Their proxy record suddenly just stops in 1978 — and is then replaced by a thermometer record that shows rapid warming. The reason for hiding the post-1978 proxy data: it’s likely that they show no warming. Why don’t we try to find out?
None of the warmistas can explain why the climate hasn’t warmed in the 21st century, while CO2 has been increasing rapidly. It’s no wonder that Herman Cain, a former math and computer science major in college, says that “man-made global warming is poppycock” (NYT, Nov. 12). He blames climate fears on “scientists who tried to concoct the science” and “were busted because they tried to manipulate the data.”
Mr. Cain is not far from the truth — at least when one listens to Rich Muller. Muller’s careful to make no claim whatsoever that the warming he finds is due to human causes. He tells us that one third of the stations show cooling, not warming. Muller admits that “the uncertainty [involved in these stations] is large compared to the analyses of global warming.” He nevertheless insists that if he uses a large enough set of bad numbers, he could get a good average. I am not so sure.
Muller thinks that he has eliminated the effects of local heating, like urban heat islands. But this is a difficult undertaking, and many doubt that the BEST study has been successful in this respect. Some of Muller’s severest critics are fellow physicists: Lubos Motl in the Czech Republic and Don Rapp in California. Somewhat harshly, perhaps, Rapp would change the study designation from BEST to “WORST” (World Overview of Representative Station Temperatures).
I am one of those doubters. While many view the apparent agreement of BEST with previous analyses as confirmation, I wonder about the logic. It might be a good idea if BEST would carry out some prudent internal cheeks:
** Plot number of stations used between 1970 and 2000 and make sure that there have been no significant changes in what I call the “demographics”: station latitudes, altitudes, or anything that could induce an artificial warming trend.
**I would pay particular attention to the fraction of temperature records from airport stations — generally considered among the best-maintained, but subject to large increases in local warming.
** I would also decompose the global record of BEST into regions to see if the results hold up.
Of course, the most important checks must come from records that are independent of weather station thermometers: atmospheric temperatures, ocean temperatures, and temperatures from non-thermometer proxy data. But even then, it may be difficult to pinpoint the exact causes of climate change.
I conclude, therefore, that the balance of evidence favors little if any global warming during 1978-1997. It contradicts the main conclusion of the IPCC — i.e., that recent warming is “very likely” (90-99% certain) caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases like CO2.
And finally, what to do if CO2 is the main cause, and if a modest warming has bad consequences — as so many blindly assume? I am afraid that the BEST project and Muller are of no help.
On the one hand, Muller is dismissive of policies to control CO2 emissions in the U.S. — much less in his State of California. In an Oct. 31 interview with the Capital Report of New Mexico, he stated:
… the public needs to know this, that anything we do in the United States will not affect global warming by a significant amount. Because, all projections show that most of the future carbon dioxide is going to be coming from China, India, and the developing world. … [A]nything we do that will not be followed by China and India is basically wasted.
On the other hand, Muller told MSNBC’s Morning Joe (Nov.14):
[W]e’re getting very steep warming … we are dumping enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we’re working in a dangerous realm, where I think, we may really have trouble in the next coming decades.
So take your choice. But remember — there is no evidence at all for significant future warming. BEST is a valuable effort, but it does not settle the climate debate.

It might as well be the Al Gore award. Who cares?

Someone should send them the video of Muller’s mauling of the Hockey Stick.

I hope folks don’t think Mike Mann’s current sabbatical from his duties at
Penn State was designed for him to take a break from his efforts to rehabilitate
his once-brilliant “Hockey Stick creator” status in the eyes of academia,
politics, and the judicial system.
He, through dedicated members of the “Team”, has been giving lectures on
how the Climategate e-mails should be interpreted, on how torturing data via
specially designed statistical treatments (including the use of tainted upside
down analysis) is an “acceptible” practice, and what a great but temperamental
guy he is.
He’s happy to see critics of his methods and conclusions tarred with epithets
ranging from misguided to outright “liars”. However, he’s not saying anything
like that under oath or from a witness stand.
Who are you going to believe ? The facts or his CV ?

Bob said:
November 16, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Back in the old days, Mann was less of a believer and more of a scientist.
————————————————————-
That’s why they gave him the medal – they’re trying to hide the decline 😉

Anyone remeber the CRU “climategate” e-mails where Mann approaches Jones with a promise to ahem “influence” the selection commitee , he names them all too, for a medal/award (AGU???) on his side of the Atlantic. Mann, later, sweetly reminded Jones of his duty and lo, Mann was the recipient of some award – can’t remember which – in the uk. Can you hear the sound of backs being scratched?

They gave him the medal – because of the likeness ON THE MEDAL 🙂
I expect Gaven will get one as he too, looks like Hans Oeschger.
Possibly, in the works Richard Black???

Bill Illis says:
November 17, 2011 at 5:00 am
2000 was just the period when the community was starting to recognize that the North Atlantic’s oscillations were being connected with different climate patterns around the world in a number of different papers. An important one in 1999 connected rainfall patterns in Brazil and West Africa very closely with the oscillations. Before that, there was no AMO and the science didn’t start to address it until after that. Think about that, just 10 years ago.
=================================================
Exactly. As always, well said, Bill.
Most people would not know of the AMO or the MJO were it not for a few prescient scientists like yourself (and others such as Joe Bastardi who clued me in on these teleconnections years ago).
There is so much we’ve yet to learn….that it certainly does not give us the license to arrogantly proclaim “the science is settled” on either side of the issue, no doubt.
Because in reality, with science, which is truth, there is no “side”.
Long live the truth.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

He will probably get an Order of Australia for services to the ATO.

Re the turd polish – didn’t Mythbusters polish turds until they shone? Is that the same thing?

“The medal was established in 2001 in recognition of the scientific achievements of Hans Oeschger to honor outstanding scientists whose work is related to climate: past, present and future.”
Oh, it’s one of those Hallmark Mother’s Day deals.