Wednesday
Aug222012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill McIntyre for Maddox
Aug 22, 2012 Climate: McIntyre BH reader Paul Matthews has nominated Steve McIntyre for the Maddox Prize, an award for someone who has stood up for science in the face of adversity.
I nominate Stephen McIntyre for the John Maddox Prize for standing up for science. He meets the requirements of the prize – he has raised concerns about misleading information about climate change, spoken up for rigorous evidence backed up by publicly available data, aided understanding of this complex issue through his papers, blog and talks, and faced difficulty and hostility with admirable equanimity.
The full nomination paper is here.
Reader Comments (35)
Good luck with that!
A fine idea, and Steve richly deserves it.
An excellent paper, and, if all things were equal ..............
Given that we'll probably have to wait a few years before nominating him for the Nobel, this will have to do in the meantime.
Gixxerboy:
A fine idea, and Steve richly deserves it.
Fully agree.
Great idea. In any case, I am sure Steve M will get good official recognition for his contributions - eventually.
(For those who haven't seen it yet) There's currently a very funny post at RC showing the contrast of Steve's modest and gentlemanly approach when compared with the 'unwilling' hockey stick posterboy. That guy invokes Jesus, Shakspeare and Lincoln to AGAIN highlight his unwilling role as an icon of the AGW world, and now a persecuted victim. "I soon found myself at the center of concerted attacks...Indeed, I wrote a book about my experiences [Amazon link]...I was forced to defend myself in the face of a well-organized and well-funded campaign by agenda driven front groups, politicians, and policy advocates to discredit me. "
Then below comment 13, we see HS members arguing amongst themselves (eric and mike). Eric thinks its wrong to apply a Nuremberg or even Hague-style trial to those with a different opinion. Mike thinks its ok to tackle these "crimes against humanity". Classic stuff. And further demonstration on how we seem to have two parallel universes with regard to the AGW debate.
I think SM's modest, methodical and rational approach will eventually win the day, and will deserve recognition.
The first Maddox prize will go to either Michael Mann or Jim Hansen.
For some time now I have been waving the idea that Steve ought to get a Nobel around. It's important to note that he has NEVER wavered from his stated position of maintaining that the science should be done properly. All the rest of us are well aware that this has now become a simple scam, that there is no science in the warmist position at all, and that political activism is needed to overcome it.
Steve has never lost faith in the ability of proper application of the scientific method to produce the right answer, in spite of overwhelming antagonism from the scientific establishment, who have continually played dirty politics to silence him.
I can't think of anyone else who can be said to have defended science better in one of its darkest hours.
Aug 22, 2012 at 8:27 AM | Richard Tol
You seem to be suggesting that the fix was in.
How unfortunate that those who could have at least attempted to avert the fixed decree by supporting Paul's well argued nomination (or that which was initially suggested by Jonathan Jones) have chosen not to do so.
I was being sarcastic.
Richard Tol "The first Maddox prize will go to either Michael Mann or Jim Hansen."
How amusing. :)
Though It would be have been brilliant if Mann or Hansen "has raised concerns about misleading information about climate change, spoken up for rigorous evidence backed up by publicly available data...." etc..
Anyway..very funny tongue in ironic cheek comment from Mr Tol..
But sadly most likely very accurate JS!
Mailman
Oh if only!..........
Can't think of anyone who deserves it more.
How about the Order of Canada, with the motto more aptly expressed in Steve's case 'Desiderantes meliorem mundum'?
It appears that Dr Philip Campbell (the Editor-in-Chief of Nature) is on the panel.
According to his Wiki bio 'Campbell was appointed a member of an independent panel established in February 2010 by the University of East Anglia to investigate the controversy surrounding the publication of emails sent by staff at the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Due to publicity about a 2009 interview with Chinese State Radio[12] during which he expressed support for the CRU scientists, he resigned just hours after the panel was launched.'
The audio interview is still available here
http://english.cri.cn/7146/2009/12/03/1901s533264.htm
"The first Maddox prize will go to either Michael Mann or Jim Hansen."
Probably, but then it will be generally referred to as the "Mad Ducks" prize.
Frankly Steve M doesn't stand a chance! If they can give a duplicitous decieving millionaire railway engineer with a PhD in economics (the world's leading climate scientist), & a venal mendacious money grabbing politician who lies through his arse, a Nobel Peace Prize, SM is unlikely to be rewarded for truth, honesty, integrity, & scientific rigour!!!!! After all, who the hell wants those last three qualities?
Good luck. I sincerely hope Steve is rewarded with this prize. It is well deserved.
Very well done indeed Paul. At this moment it matters not to me that Steve wins but that such a clear statement of why he should is on the record. Historians of science and its troubled interrelations with politics, take note.
Well done, that man.
Note also that Steve McIntyre is far from being a hardline, shrill anti-warmist. He has frequently said that he is at best agnostic in his views. That he has attracted such opprobrium indicates just how threatened the CAGW crowd are by the merest hint of impartial analysis of their work.
The would be no more worthy winner in my view.
The most reliable test that could be applied to select an appropriate winner would be the extent of and depth of hostility directed the way of the nominee from "mainstream scientists".
Steve would be a shoe in.
The sheer number, over many years now, of dedicated and truthful critics of the present, IPCC-sponsored, climate "consensus", makes any talk of justice on the personal level mere wishful fantasizing. Rewarding just one would be an affront to many other worthies (although of course that is the slipshod way of society). And as Alan the Brit"s comment above clearly indicates, you would first have to take away (hopefully forcefully, if not brutally) the Nobel Prizes already given out to various dregs -- and then consider all the misbegotten other prizes handed out over a generation, and all the peer-reviewed scientific papers that were dead wrong and alarmingly misleading. No, it has been and continues to be a veritable war (due to a general incompetence in dogma-ridden modern science), with ongoing casualties of good name and career, not to mention of deserved fame and financial amelioration. What is going on in the world -- and in the world of science -- is much larger than individuals, it is a general testing of man, with divisive, wrong-headed dogmas that too many grownup children (particularly "leaders") still cling to, both inside and outside of science.
How can I officially support Steve's nomination?
His statistical analyses were also endorsed by Professor David Hand, the then president of the Royal Statistical Society
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7589897/Hockey-stick-graph-was-exaggerated.html
Thanks for giving Maddox a good posthumous laugh. What's next ?
The Lucasian professorship for Pat Michaels ?
Who wants to bet that Michael Mann will win this prize?
I have been looking up John Maddox, and learn that in 1972 while editor of Nature he wrote a book called "The Doomsday Syndrome", reviewed at the time by New Scientist. Nature and New Scientist seem to have changed a bit since then.
I have got it from the library and so far only read the preface.
The suitability of Steve McIntyre for the John Maddox prize gets almost uncanny.
Recommended reading for climate scientists, sceptics and Russell.
How can I officially support Steve's nomination?
Aug 22, 2012 at 1:31 PM Don Keiller
================
I also ask that same question.
@ Shub.
That was my immediate fear.
From page 2 of the preface of Maddox's book:
Paul Mathews evidently hasn't troubled to read the rest of Maddox'sThe Doomsday Syndrome.
While a hammer to hype, Sir John did not suffer cranks gladl. Given climate contrarians serial embrace of slender reeds, from the statistical skulduggery of messers Michaels & Wegman to the astrophysical follies of Iron Sun enthusiasts and disbelievers in radiative forcing, I doubt Maddox would choose UKIP's side in the Climate Wars.
The truth be told, contrarian websites are often funnier by misadventure than Nature's late lamented Daedalus colum ever was on purpose.
Thank you Russell for your ill-informed and badly spelt speculation.
Readers may find what Maddox said about the dangers of climate change in 2009 more germane than what Matthews quotes- his 1972 critique of the Club of Rome report. Here's waht Sir John told John Brockman :
"So my view of the Club of Rome's argument on the Limits of Growth is just that. It's an economic question, always has been, and it will be in the future and it will be dealt with in economic terms.
But the other environmental problems that seem to me to be much more important, are those concerning the safety of people's lives... The big threat there has been, and remains, infection, which we've talked about. It seems to me another is global warming. Global warming is the scenario that's supposed to happen when, because of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature on the surface of the earth is increasing.
I'm in a very odd position on this. I accept that global warming, because of carbon dioxide, is going to be a reality at some stage in the future. I disagree with the way in which the forecasts have been made by the organization called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is under the UN umbrella, although it's really a child of the United Nations Environmental Agency and the World Meteorological Organization.
These people have produced so far two assessments of the seriousness of global warming, and they predict that during the next century the temperature will increase by between two and three degrees centigrade - which doesn't sound much but actually would be a lot... and it might even mean that in some parts of the United States, like Texas, it would become a bit like the Sahara.
But the real problem is that all this is based on computer modeling, and while I'm fully enthusiastic about computer modeling as a way of understanding scientific problems, and comprehending large amounts of data, I think it's dangerous to rely on computer modeling when you are trying to make predictions about the real world. In fact the satellites that have been used to measure the temperature show that the temperature is increasing less rapidly than the computer models predict, by a factor of three. So I think that the scenario is less gloomy than the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change says. On the other hand, it's going to happen sometime, and we have to do something about it.
...That's going to be such a terribly difficult negotiation and it's very hard to see how it could be completed in the next century.
Russell (3:46 PM) -
I think Maddox's commentary is spot on. There may be danger, but the computer models over-predict temperature change relative to observations. The part I'd disagree with is, "it's going to happen sometime, and we have to do something about it."
Taking Maddox's numbers at face value, "they predict that during the next century the temperature will increase by between two and three degrees centigrade" and "In fact the satellites that have been used to measure the temperature show that the temperature is increasing less rapidly than the computer models predict, by a factor of three", there does not seem to be any immediate threat. In a century, I suspect that -- even without any subsidizing of windmills, solar PV, tidal barrages &c -- the Earth's energy generation will have moved beyond fossil fuels. Predictions that far into the future are mere speculation.
Harold should follow Maddox example and do a little improptu dimensional analysis, bearing in mind that while human ingenuity is quite capable of finding new ways to economically extract resounces, it can't do a damn thing about the conservation of mass- the amount of air in circulation is constant, but what we add to it is not.
Your share of the air considered as a global commons is roughly 3/4 of a million tonnes , containing about 100 tonnes of CO2 produced by human endeavor in the course to date of the Industrial Revolution. It and the anthropogenic greenouse gases are already adding whole watts per square meter to the trapped energy budget of the Earth, with more watts per m2 in the literal and figurative pipeline. Whille the thermal mass of the ocean drags on the rate of temperature rise, it can't stop the computational wheels from turning, and the system presently in motion is- here's where the quatitative models come in , unlikely to come to rest until a century or more from now , by which time sheer inertia will have turned whole watts of concrete radiative forcing into whole degrees of climate change.
Neither Maddox or I ever called for a halt in the economic proceedings- the acute human cost of aabandoning industrial civilization would be atrocious.
But neither can something at once so subtle and pernicious as temperature inflation be safely ignored, or suffered to be made a political plaything of the ideologically corrupted on the left and the simply suborned on the right. The result is a conflict in which declarations of victory are no more connected to scientific outcomes ot the objective state of the art than the Thirty Years War.