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
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.
@ur momisugly 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.
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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?