[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the comments:

*****************************************EXCERPT***************************************

• mfo says:

  June 26, 2012 at 6:44 am

  Quick and rough transcript courtesy of a friendly typist:

  Roger Sowell:

  In your famous paper that you co-authored with Dr Briffa and Dr Hughes in 1998, indeed you showed one result from that today with the Hockey Stick graph, you showed a warming since 1960.

  However you chose to not use tree core data after 1960 and instead to splice in the instrumental temperature record. In effect to hide the decline of the trees after 1960.…

  How do you respond to the charge that the tree ring data was cherry picked to show a desired result and that Mr Steve McIntyre has falsified your work by showing that the premise of a hockey stick falls apart when all the data is used?

  ++++++++++++++++++++++

  Dr Mann:

  Okay there are a number of factually incorrect things that you’ve said there, one of which is that I co-authored a paper with Keith Briffa. I think you’re referring to the paper that we published in Nature in 1998, myself, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. Keith Briffa was not a co-author of that paper and in fact it’s an important point because you’ve actually conflated two entirely unrelated studies.

  The study you’re actually referring to is a study by Keith Briffa and colleagues that I was not part of, and the original paper that they published in 1998, also in Nature, was about the decline you’re talking about.

  It was hardly hidden. The paper that they published in 1998 was specifically about a problem known as the divergence problem where in the particular type of tree ring data that they used in their study, which we did not use in our study, by the way, that particular data exhibit this enigmatic decline in the response to temperatures after 1960.

  And so their original paper was actually about how that particular type of data can not be used to depict temperature trends in recent centuries, because of the enigmatic change in the response of trees.

  Now scientists have been studying for more than a decade now why it might be that those particular data, late wood density, maximum late wood density, from high latitude trees they were using, why that happens, why there is a decline in the response of temperature.

  And there are various factors that scientists think might be responsible, including pollution, other limiting conditions that are now taking control of tree growth that are unrelated to temperature.

  So unfortunately you conflated two completely unrelated things in a way that led to, you know, a claim, sort of an allegation about our work, that simply has no basis in reality.

  It’s part of why I wrote The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, to try to clear the record with regard to many of the specious attacks and criticisms that have been made against me and my colleagues over the years in an effort to try to discredit our work.

  Typically in an effort to try to discredit the entire work of the world’s climate scientists that establishes the reality of human caused climate change.

  Because some people do feel threatened by that conclusion and rather than, unfortunately, rather than engaging in the good faith debate that can be had about what to do about the problem.

  That’s part of why we’re here today. What can we do about the problem? We can have a good faith debate about that. There’s a worthy debate to be had, about that, and there are valid opinions on all sides.

  But there isn’t a worthy debate to be had any more about the reality of human caused climate change.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Final sentence:

But there isn’t a worthy debate to be had any more about the reality of human caused climate change.

The Gravy Train pays so very well,....the FIGHT continues.!!!!