Junkscience.com writes:
Did Michael Mann falsely claim to coin a famous climate term actually coined by someone else?
In Mann’s new book “The Hockey Stick and Climate Wars”, Mann writes:
The multidecadal oscillation I’d helped discover would nonethless become a cause celebre among climate change contrarians. It would even get a name: the “Atlantic Multidecadal oscillation” (AMO) — a moniker I coined off the cuff in a phone interview with science writer Dick Kerr. [footnote omitted; it reiterates the same claim]
But in an e-mail exchange with Dick Kerr today, Kerr wrote to JunkScience.com:
Steve, yes, I must confess. They just had a paper out on this phenomenon, but I needed a convenient label to write the news story. So I followed meteorological naming conventions and suggested AMO. That was okay with Mike for a news story. Subsequent papers in the literature also found it handy but had no source but my story in Science, so they would cite me. Looks fine because such a citation appears to be a scientific paper in a prestigious journal. “Oscillation” has since begun to fall out of favor because it conveys too strong a sense of regularity. We’ll see how long AMO hangs in there.
Adding credibility to Kerr’s version is the below post on Mann’s RealClimate web site.
But there’s far more to this story, as I’ve discovered in the discussions that went on in my email group.
From the discussion:
I have been bugged by Mann’s revisionist story on this point for a while now (since he has made such claim several times in the past …)
The document from Juan this morning—his interview printed in Scientific American March 2012 issue, p. 74, “I coined the term “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation [AMO]” …”
just pushed me over the edge …
Only one possibility left for this to be TRUE—that Richard Kerr from Science come out to say that he heard it from Mann first during the interview for his June 16, 2000 article (see attached, where this AMO phrase appeared for the first time …)
Dave pointed me to this story in RC storyline on AMO:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation-amo/
which also point to Kerr as the source …
we can see from Steve’s blog that a lot of Mann worshipers found this AMO coinage to be key … (especially john cook of skeptical science)
http://junkscience.com/2012/02/09/mann-or-myth-part-1/
(sorry Steve Schlesinger and Ramankutty 1994 did not come up with that phrase … i know this is WIKI saying … I know Schlesinger aka Elvis—his hair and sideburns look like Mr. Elvis of Graceland!)
if you can be burdened to check this 2000 paper by Delworth and Mann, you can see that in however many thousand words they wrote —they never mentioned AMO—so what is the chance of Mann coining AMO during his brilliant interview by Richard Kerr as Mann would also claimed in his new book?
Note that I was into this multidecadal variability thing also by 1994 …Mann printed an interesting paper with Keff Park and Ray Bradley in 1995 in Nature … also no AMO being said … so I really do not think we can let him get away with this possible lie …
And…
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) was identified by Schlesinger and Ramankutty in 1994.[1]
Enfield, D.B., A. M. Mestas-Nunez and P.J. Trimble, 2001: The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and it’s relation to rainfall and river flows in the continental U.S.. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 28, 2077-2080.
So it appears that when the phenomenon was identified in 1994 by Schlesinger and Ramankutty, the abbreviation didn’t get used until Dick Kerr suggested it for an article he was writing.
Here is the full email exchange with Steve Milloy of junkscience.com:
From: Steve Milloy <milloy@xxx.xxx>Date: March 8, 2012 10:42:18 AM ESTTo: Richard Kerr <rkerr@xxxxx.xxx>Subject: Re: Question about Mann, AMODick,Will note the confusion/uncertainty.But note that RealClimate credited you in a 2004 posting.Thanks,SteveOn Mar 8, 2012, at 10:37 AM, Richard Kerr wrote:Steve,A clarification is required concerning the coining of the term “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” or AMO. It turns out that my recollection, as I recounted it to you, differs from Michael Mann’s recollection (which I had not been aware of). I have always assumed that I suggested the obvious term to him and had him okay it, he recalls my asking for a term and his suggesting it.That was a long time ago. My handwritten notes from the phone interview were discarded after some years in the course of routine cleaning and condensing of my files. My recollection could well be faulty, encouraged by all those ego-stroking citations of my news story in the refereed literature. There is no way to say whose recollection is fuzzier, and it matters not.DickRichard A. KerrSenior Writer, Science
phone 202 xxx-xxxx
fax 202 xxx-xxxx
rkerr@xxxxx.xxx
1200 New York Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20005
>>> Richard Kerr 3/7/2012 4:35 PM >>>Steve, yes, I must confess. They just had a paper out on this phenomenon, but I needed a convenient label to write the news story. So I followed meteorological naming conventions and suggested AMO. That was okay with Mike for a news story. Subsequent papers in the literature also found it handy but had no source but my story in Science, so they would cite me. Looks fine because such a citation appears to be a scientific paper in a prestigious journal. “Oscillation” has since begun to fall out of favor because it conveys too strong a sense of regularity. We’ll see how long AMO hangs in there.DickRichard A. KerrSenior Writer, Science
phone 202 xxx-xxxx
fax 202 xxx-xxxx
rkerr@xxxxxx.xxx
1200 New York Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20005
So who’s recollection is “fuzzier? Mann or Kerr’s. Since RealClimate gave Kerr credit in 2004, and not RealClimate co-founder Mann, I’d go with Kerr having a more accurate recollection. It seems there isn’t any ego going on with Kerr in his exchanges. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
With all the other credibility issues cited in Mann’s book, we may have a case of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
I think Mann’s “credit report” just took a hit. It may be harder to get government loans grants now.
Related articles
- Climate’s Stolen Valor: Did Mann lie about coining ‘Atlantic multidecadal oscillation’? (junkscience.com)
- A detailed review of Mann’s book: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars as it relates to the Wegman report to Congress (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Mann in damage control mode over ‘AMO’ coinage? (junkscience.com)
- Mann or Myth: Part 1 (junkscience.com)
- Mann on Irreproducible Results in Thompson (PNAS 2006) (climateaudit.org)
UPDATE: In my email group discussion this morning, Dr. Christopher Essex proposes a new naming convention for the AMO and other similar series. After Steve McIntyre gave his nod (and a wink) for the naming I wrote:
I’m with Steve on the new naming. That way, Mann doesn’t have to fight Kerr for credit [on the AMO].
Happy to put this up on WUWT in the article and give you full credit Chris, so that scholarly discussions in the future can trace back to the moment that Widely-averaged Times series Fluctuation made it into the lexicon. – Anthony
And he agreed, so here it is:
But Demetris, you know full well that the world is filled with Fourier determinist chauvinists who will recoil at the notion that things are not fundamentally deterministic and not usefully decomposable into Fourier modes. Although I have walked on both sides of the deterministic stochastic divide, I am not sure that I am even comfortable with simple “fluctuation”. It seems kind of nihilistic to me, but this is perhaps more a matter of taste that is not in the domain of falsifiability. But objections noted perhaps we could call it the Atlantic Widely-averaged Times series Fluctuation: AWTF. And we could have the El Nino Southern WTF etc. 😉 -c
____________________Dr. Christopher Essex,Professor and Associate Chair,Department of Applied Mathematicsthe University of Western OntarioLondon, Canada
Demetris Koutsoyiannis gets a mention too:
Forgive my disability in catching the playful remarks (in English)…I hope Steve and Antony can credit me for inspiring you to coin the WTF acronym for these phenomena…Cheers, Demetris
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There is something odd about global temperature data in 1960-1970 period which needs closer attention.
There is a good correlation between the global temperature and the AMO up to 1960 (r2=0.54), and even better on one (incredible r2=0.955) from 1970-2011.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-AMO.htm
I do not think that climate scientists should either ignore it (if real), or get away with it if not.
Re-posted from JC’s Climate etc.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/08/lindzens-seminar-part-ii/#comment-183042
If arrogance is any indication……….
Let’s be clear. I didn’t coin NPD. Somebody else did.
Kerr (2000) coined the phrase “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” (AMO) to describe the idea of a persistent multidecadal signal in Atlantic sector
climate.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4038.1
Manuscript received 16 December 2005, in final form 5 July 2006)
Typical delusion of grandeur symptom, in keeping with the balance of Mann’s personality and the overall condition known as “warmist syndrome”.
At some point, he will recall having invented the Internet, and the real fun will begin.
Steven Milloy, and now you by reprinting this, seem to be going to incredible lengths to “get” Michael Mann. As Kerr himself says:
So, neither of them can really remember if Kerr suggested the name and Mann okayed it or if Mann coined the term in response to Kerr asking Mann what to call it. Exactly what makes this important?!?!
Self-obsessed and desperate for validation… how sad. Before any defend him by saying “it’s not important”, well, no, who coined the term isn’t important. What is important is that if he is falsely claiming authorship of anything at all, whatever credibility he had left takes a beating. Again. It just keeps happening to him, and he does it to himself…
AMO, or North Atlantic SST imprints its shape to the whole “global” record. Funny that by Mann, AMO caused “part of 191040 warming” and “a bit of 1980-2000 warming”. Since these warming periods are undistinguishable in its duration or steepness, the above claims are nonsense, or unqualified guesses at best. Alleged anthropogenic warming is nothing more than combined period of positive AMO phase, positive NAO phase and lot of positive ENSO events, probably tied together.
I am pretty sure it was Al Gore who invented AMO.
When you are a legend in your own mind, your own mind tends to create legends.
That would be a mirror you are looking at Mikey.
Mann’s self appointed ability to bask in the reflective glow of history appears more and more akin to the late but great North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. Perhaps in future years we’ll learn that Mann invented golf! Or the greatest of puzzles the rubix cube!
Using the ‘Tobacco Industry’ comparison was the big give away.
Well, when your buddy invented the internet, you gotta do SOMETHING to keep up with him!
…and I see kwinterkorn was thinking along the same lines, but I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST!
Juraj V. says: March 8, 2012 at 10:11 am
Alleged anthropogenic warming is nothing more than combined period of positive AMO phase, positive NAO phase…
Since the AMO appears to be strongly correlated to the preceding NAO (or one of its components) I think the above could be due to a general misunderstanding of the AMO-NAO relationship:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/theAMO-NAO.htm
Sorry Don, but you were both late to that party, AND I HAVE A GOATEE!.
This is beyond stupid. Does anyone know who coined the word lightbulb? But would we confuse that coining with its invention? If Edison claimed he coined the term but it turned out his memory was faulty would we think less of him?
Hmm a controversy eh ?
Maybe we need to call in the professionals to deteremine who coined the famous AMO acronym, I would suggest buying a black mask, a striped jumper and a bag with ‘Swag’ written on it in bold letters.
Then we could call GIGO Gleike out of retirement , for one last job
There was a crooked Mann,
Who had a crooked Stick,
He spun a crooked Line,
To sell a crooked Book.
Joel Shore says:
March 8, 2012 at 10:03 am
Perfectly acceptable behaviour for a member of the Warmista eh? Mann took credit for coining AMO and its now known he likely did not not coin AMO. However add this “little” incident to all the other incidents and it becomes increasingly apparent that the Mann is a fraud.
Next we will hear that he created the term “hockey puck” to go with his imaginary stick.
Steven Hales says:
March 8, 2012 at 10:37 am
This is beyond stupid. Does anyone know who coined the word lightbulb? But would we confuse that coining with its invention? If Edison claimed he coined the term but it turned out his memory was faulty would we think less of him?
Ummm, I think if Edison said he could read ancient temperatures from tree rings, and then falsely claimed he coined the term “alternating current” because he heard it somewhere, it would be a problem.
Analogies should not just go beyond stuipid, but beyond Uranus.
Can you guys keep a secret? I don’t think Michael Mann is a good person.
Don’t tell anyone I told you. Thanks.
Fabricationgate?
It seems the climate orthodoxers (non-contrarians) have a nasty habit of fabrication and misrepresentation. Causuistry and guile have no place in science, or at least they didn’t used to, but I guess they do now in our post-post-modern world.
This was a totally worthless post until Essex coined the term AWTF.