From: Michael Mann mann@meteo.psu.edu
To: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Re: attacks against Keith
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:06:20 -0400
Cc: Gavin Schmidt gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov , Tim Osborn t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
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.
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
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.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm
From: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk
To: Michael Mann mann@meteo.psu.edu
Subject: Re: attacks against Keith
Date: Wed Sep 30 17:12:54 2009
Cc: Gavin Schmidt gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov , Tim Osborn t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
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.
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
Yes science, political science, that is now brought to it’s rightful place. Obama did good.