Michael E. MannNCSE is delighted to congratulate Michael E. Mann on receiving the European Geoscience Union's Hans Oeschger Medal for 2012, in honor of "his significant contributions to understanding decadal-centennial scale climate change over the last two millennia and for pioneering techniques to synthesize patterns and northern hemispheric time series of past climate using proxy data reconstructions." The citation explains, "Mann deserves the award on the basis of his important contributions to the understanding of climate change over the last two millennia but also for pioneering statistical techniques for isolating climate signals in noisy data," adding, "Mann’s climate reconstruction of the last 1000 years is popularly known as the 'Hockey Stick' and gave tremendous impetus to the study of historical climate change, even though some questions remains about the magnitude of these past changes. By doing so, he had to face escalating political and personal attacks. ... Mann exemplifies the courage that Oeschger hoped scientists should have, another reason for him to deserve the Oeschger Medal." A member of NCSE, Mann is Professor of Meteorology at the Pennsylvania State University and the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (Columbia University Press, 2012).