date: Fri Oct 31 16:48:59 2003 from: Keith Briffa subject: Fwd: Attack on Mann et al (IPCC) work to: mann@virginia.edu, rbradley@geo.umass.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu Mike et al Here is what we sent to Heike - I suspect she will forward it to the New York News desk. I am happy to approach others later and you should definitely send to Dick Kerr. We have drafted a posting for CLIMLIST and the skeptics site but Tim is sending these in from home . I have to turn to doing the final PhD proposal here now because the deadline is tonight . At least your response in the in the public domain and I think it is pitched right and was a good decision. Lets see how things go from here and pick up the issue of further supporting statements , work etc when you see how the chips fall. Mike , you need to have a few drinks and step away from this now for a while - take counsel from Ray and Malcolm and take a deserved rest. Have a good weekend all of you - signing off for a few days. Keith Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:33:21 +0000 To: h.langenberg@nature.com From: Keith Briffa Subject: Attack on Mann et al (IPCC) work Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk, p.jones@uea.ac.uk Dear Heike following on from our 'phone conversation this morning , I am attaching a response by Mann and his colleagues , to what seems at this time to be a seriously flawed so-called "audit" of their well known paper originally published in Nature in 1998. The "audit" was published (with free-access) in Energy and Environment (Vol.14, No6.) see - http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ee_openaccess.htm News of this audit , by McInyre and McKitrick (MM) is spreading rapidly and has already been reported in USA Today see- http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-10-28-schulz_x.htm and is likely to be picked up by the wider press in the near future. The amazing and depressing aspect of this is that Mann and his colleagues were never given the opportunity to see or comment on the MM paper before it was published . Nor were they given the chance to comment before the newspaper article . It seems , from a necessarily cursory and indirect examination of MM work by Mann, that MM have made serious errors in their analysis that likely completely negate their results (they reconstruct anomalous warmth in the 15th century AD, in direct contradiction of the Mann et al work) . The reason I feel you may be interested in doing a news item on this issue is that the MM work has also , already been cited in the US Senate , in a blatant attempt to influence the political debate ,when clearly the work has not been subject to any independent scientific scrutiny . Myself , Tim Osborn and Phil Jones (all at this Unit) are submitting a comment on this to CLIMLIST (and will post a copy of Mann et al reply), where the MM work has also been widely circulated . If you or your colleagues think this is a suitable subject for a news item , I suggest you contact Mike Mann directly Michael Mann Office: (434) 924-7770 Cell: (434) 825-3969 mann@virginia.edu Our interest in this affair is from the standpoint of preserving the integrity of the scientific process - we are independent observers of the Mann work on Northern Hemisphere temperatures , see eg Our Science perspectives piece on Esper et al. [1]http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/295/5563/2227?ijkey=6U4G9GwPALryA&keyty pe=ref&siteid=sci However , in this case we worry that a bad precedent is being set , when a paper (seemingly badly refereed ? ) so much at odds with other work , is so widely and quickly spun, when the authors , or independent researchers have no opportunity to examine, or answer the controversial conclusions. The issue may also come at you from another angle; Fred Singer , who I believe is actively organising a greenhouse skeptic lobby in Washington , has declared his intention to demand , from Nature, an official retraction of the original Mann et al 1998 paper, justified by the publication of the MM work. Such a request is patent nonsense. yours sincerely Professor Keith R. Briffa Dr. Timothy J. Osborn Professor Philip D.Jones Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784 -- Professor Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Phone: +44-1603-593909 Fax: +44-1603-507784 [2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[3]/