From: Phil Jones To: Michael Mann Subject: Re: attacks against Keith Date: Wed Sep 30 17:12:54 2009 Cc: Gavin Schmidt , Tim Osborn Mike, I realized you'd have many more bad emails! As for MJ2003 what we used was an average of Fennoscan, Yamal and Taymir (as one of the series). Briffa et al (2001) was just referred to in that as a ref to RCS. The paper also talks about N Eurasia, so the sites get a mention. At 16:06 30/09/2009, Michael Mann wrote: Hi Phil, lets not get into the topic of hate mail. I promise you I could fill your inbox w/ a very long list of vitriolic attacks, diatribes, and threats I've received. Its part of the attack of the corporate-funded attack machine, i.e. its a direct and highly intended outcome of a highly orchestrated, heavily-funded corporate attack campaign. We saw it over the summer w/ the health insurance industry trying to defeat Obama's health plan, we'll see it now as the U.S. Senate moves on to focus on the cap & trade bill that passed congress this summer. It isn't coincidental that the original McIntyre and McKitrick E&E paper w/ press release came out the day before the U.S. senate was considering the McCain Lieberman climate bill in '05. we're doing the best we can to expose this. I hope our Realclimate post goes some ways to exposing the campaign and pre-emptively deal w/ the continued onslaught we can expect over the next month. thanks for alerting us to that detail of Kaufman et al which I'd overlooked. We'd already asked Darrell if he could compute a Yamal-less version of his series, but as you point out he's really already done this! And Osborn and Briffa '06 is also immune to this issue, as it eliminated any combination of up to 3 of the proxies and showed the result was essentially the same (fair to say this Tim?). Also, is it fair to say that this particular version of Keith's Yamal series was not what we used in Mann and Jones '03 (we reference Briffa et al '01)? thanks for the help! We're hoping to have something up tomorrow at the latest, and any updates at your end will be extremely helpful to the case, mike On Sep 30, 2009, at 10:30 AM, Phil Jones wrote: Mike, Gavin, The short note may not say much. As you're aware Kaufman et al have a plot without trees - their plots shows trees, lakes and ice separately. Another issue is science by blog sites - and the then immediate response mode. Science ought to work through the peer-review system..... sure you've said all these things before. We're getting a handful of nasty emails coming and requests for comments on other blog sites. One email has gone to the University Registrar because of the language used. Keith had one that said he was responsible for millions of deaths! Even one reading far too much into his off ill message. Even though I've had loads of FOIs and nasty emails, a few in the last 2 days have been the worst yet. I'm realizing more what those working on animal experiments must have gone through. Cheers Phil At 14:56 30/09/2009, Michael Mann wrote: great--thanks Tim, sounds like we have a plan. in our post, which we'll target for tomorrow as well, we'll simply link to whatever CRU puts up and re-iterate the sentiment of the temporary short response (i.e. that there was no cherry-picking, a careful and defensible selection procedure was used) and we'll mostly focus on the broader issues, i.e. that any impact of this one series in the vast array of paleoclimate reconstructions (and the importance of the paleoclimate reconstructions themselves) has been over-stated, why these sorts of attacks are not legitimate science, etc. mike On Sep 30, 2009, at 9:51 AM, Gavin Schmidt wrote: of course. we're preparing a 'bigger picture' response and will link directly to CRU and maybe quote from it directly. ============= Gavin Schmidt NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies 2880 Broadway New York, NY 10025 Tel: (212) 678 5627 Email: [1]gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov URL: [2]http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Tim Osborn wrote: Hi Mike and Gavin, Keith's temporarily come in to get a handle on all this, but it will take time. Likely outcome is (1) brief holding note that no cherry-picking was done and demonstrating data selection is defendable by our time tomorrow; (2) longer piece with more evaluation etc. in around a week. No point is posting something that turns out to be wrong. Keith may post them on the CRU website, but presumably they could be linked to from a RealClimate page or, if Keith agrees, be reproduced on RealClimate? Cheers Tim At 14:16 30/09/2009, Michael Mann wrote: Hi Tim, Just checking if there are any further developments here, i.e. some more info from either Tom or Keith. Gavin and I feel we need to do something on RealClimate on this quickly, probably by later today. thanks in advance for any help you can offer, mike On Sep 29, 2009, at 3:46 AM, Tim Osborn wrote: Hi Mike and Gavin, thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith. I'll pass on your best wishes for his recovery when I next speak to Keith. He's been off almost 4 months now and won't be back for at least another month (barring a couple of lectures that he's keen to do in October as part of a gradual return). Hopefully he'll be properly back in November. Regarding Yamal, I'm afraid I know very little about the whole thing -- other than that I am 100% confident that "The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result" is complete crap. Having one's integrity questioned like this must make your blood boil (as I'm sure you know, with both of you having been the target of numerous such attacks). Though it would be nice to shield Keith from this during his recovery, I think Keith will already have heard about this because he had recently been asked to look at CA in relation to the Kaufman threads (Keith was a co-author on that and Darrell had asked Keith to help with a response to the criticisms). Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted about this (also he wasn't involved in the Yamal chronology being discussed, though he has been involved in a regional reconstruction that we've recently been working towards that uses these -- and more -- data). Perhaps Phil and I should talk with Tom and also see if Keith is already considering a response. Off to lecture for a couple of hours now... Cheers Tim Dr Timothy J Osborn, Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK e-mail: <[3]mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk >[4]t.osborn@uea.ac.uk phone: +44 1603 592089 fax: +44 1603 507784 web: < [5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ > [6]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ sunclock: < [7]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm > [8]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm -- Michael E. Mann Professor Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075 503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663 The Pennsylvania State University email: <[9]mailto:mann@psu.edu >[10]mann@psu.edu University Park, PA 16802-5013 website: < [11]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html > [12]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html "Dire Predictions" book site: < [13]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html > [14]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html Dr Timothy J Osborn, Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK e-mail: [15]t.osborn@uea.ac.uk phone: +44 1603 592089 fax: +44 1603 507784 web: [16]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ sunclock: [17]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm -- Michael E. Mann Professor Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075 503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663 The Pennsylvania State University email: [18]mann@psu.edu University Park, PA 16802-5013 website: [19]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html "Dire Predictions" book site: [20]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email [21]p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Michael E. Mann Professor Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075 503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663 The Pennsylvania State University email: [22]mann@psu.edu University Park, PA 16802-5013 website: [23]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html "Dire Predictions" book site: [24]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- References Visible links 1. mailto:gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov 2. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin 3. mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk 4. mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk 5. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ 6. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ 7. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm 8. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm 9. mailto:mann@psu.edu 10. mailto:mann@psu.edu 11. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html 12. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html 13. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html 14. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html 15. mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk 16. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ 17. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm 18. mailto:mann@psu.edu 19. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html 20. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html 21. mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk 22. mailto:mann@psu.edu 23. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html 24. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html Hidden links: 25. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ 26. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm 27. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html 28. http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html