From: Phil Jones To: santer1@llnl.gov, Tom Wigley Subject: Re: Schles suggestion Date: Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008 Cc: mann , Gavin Schmidt , Karl Taylor , peter gleckler Ben, When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions - one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school - the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. I've got to know the FOI person quite well and the Chief Librarian - who deals with appeals. The VC is also aware of what is going on - at least for one of the requests, but probably doesn't know the number we're dealing with. We are in double figures. One issue is that these requests aren't that widely known within the School. So I don't know who else at UEA may be getting them. CRU is moving up the ladder of requests at UEA though - we're way behind computing though. We're away of requests going to others in the UK - MOHC, Reading, DEFRA and Imperial College. So spelling out all the detail to the LLNL management should be the first thing you do. I hope that Dave is being supportive at PCMDI. The inadvertent email I sent last month has led to a Data Protection Act request sent by a certain Canadian, saying that the email maligned his scientific credibility with his peers! If he pays 10 pounds (which he hasn't yet) I am supposed to go through my emails and he can get anything I've written about him. About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little - if anything at all. This legislation is different from the FOI - it is supposed to be used to find put why you might have a poor credit rating ! In response to FOI and EIR requests, we've put up some data - mainly paleo data. Each request generally leads to more - to explain what we've put up. Every time, so far, that hasn't led to anything being added - instead just statements saying read what is in the papers and what is on the web site! Tim Osborn sent one such response (via the FOI person) earlier this week. We've never sent programs, any codes and manuals. In the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise results will be out in 2 weeks time. These are expensive to produce and take too much time, so from next year we'll be moving onto a metric based system. The metrics will be # and amounts of grants, papers and citations etc. I did flippantly suggest that the # of FOI requests you get should be another. When you look at CA, they only look papers from a handful of people. They will start on another coming out in The Holocene early next year. Gavin and Mike are on this with loads of others. I've told both exactly what will appear on CA once they get access to it! Cheers Phil At 01:17 03/12/2008, Ben Santer wrote: Dear Tom, I think that the idea of a Commentary in Science or Nature is a good one. Steve Sherwood made a similar suggestion. I'd be perfectly happy NOT to be involved in such a Commentary. My involvement would look too self-serving. One of the problems is that I'm caught in a real Catch-22 situation. At present, I'm damned and publicly vilified because I refused to provide McIntyre with the data he requested. But had I acceded to McIntyre's initial request for climate model data, I'm convinced (based on the past experiences of Mike Mann, Phil, and Gavin) that I would have spent years of my scientific career dealing with demands for further explanations, additional data, Fortran code, etc. (Phil has been complying with FOIA requests from McIntyre and his cronies for over two years). And if I ever denied a single request for further information, McIntyre would have rubbed his hands gleefully and written: "You see - he's guilty as charged!" on his website. You and I have spent over a decade of our scientific careers on the MSU issue, Tom. During much of that time, we've had to do science in "reactive mode", responding to the latest outrageous claims and inept science by John Christy, David Douglass, or S. Fred Singer. For the remainder of my scientific career, I'd like to dictate my own research agenda. I don't want that agenda driven by the constant need to respond to Christy, Douglass, and Singer. And I certainly don't want to spend years of my life interacting with the likes of Steven McIntyre. I hope LLNL management will provide me with their full support. If they do not, I'm fully prepared to seek employment elsewhere. With best regards, Ben Tom Wigley wrote: Ben, Re the idea Michael sent around (to Revkin et al.) this is something that Nature or Science might like as a Commentary. It might even be possible to include some indirect reference to the Mc audit issue. The notes I sent could be a starting point. One problem is that you could not be first author as this would look like garnering publicity for your own work (as the 2 key papers are both Santer et al.) Even having me as the first author may not work. An ideal person would be Tom Karl, who sent me a response saying "nice summary". What do you think? Tom. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin D. Santer Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory P.O. Box 808, Mail Stop L-103 Livermore, CA 94550, U.S.A. Tel: (925) 422-3840 FAX: (925) 422-7675 email: santer1@llnl.gov ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------