cc: Phil Jones , "raymond s. bradley" , Keith Briffa , Tim Osborn , Scott Rutherford , mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu, mann@virginia.edu, Annie_Petsonk@environmentaldefense.org, tom crowley date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:20:17 -0500 from: "Michael E. Mann" subject: Re: Advising British Government on paleoreconstructions to: peter.stott@metoffice.com, peter.stott@metoffice.com Hi Peter, Oops, sent the other emails to you w/out sending this exlpanation first... Thanks for getting in touch w/ me on this... its taken us a couple days to get to the bottom of their error, but we've got it! We're all drafting an op-ed reply for "USA Today" as I write this... Bottom line--they didn't use the correct proxy data. Rather than using the publically posted version of the proxy data, they used an excel file that they had requested from my associate Scott Rutherford in which multiple series were inadvertantly overprinted into single data columns. This renders the proxy data series for the period prior to about 1700 largely useless, and the series prior to 1600 or so completely meaningless. Thus, they're wacky result for the earlier centuries in particular. So, their results are completely wrong, and E&E will need to retract the paper. I'm forwarding more details now... mike At 11:23 AM 10/29/2003 +0000, Peter Stott wrote: Hi Mike, I am being asked for scientific advice by DEFRA (Dept of Environment here) who in their turn are being asked for help by the Foreign Office from people at the US Embassy who are trying to deal with the various climate sceptic stuff that is coming out. In particular I have seen the paper by McIntyre and McKitrick in Energy and Environment. Any ammunition you can give me on this paper would be very helpful, since I will have to try to inform the people at DEFRA and the FCO what we think of this scientifically. Thanks ! Peter -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr. Peter Stott Climate Scientist Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research London Road Bracknell Berkshire RG12 2SY United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1344 854011 Fax: +44 (0)1344 854898 E-mail:peter.stott@metoffice.com [1]http://www.metoffice.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From 10 November Address : Met Office Hadley Centre (Reading Unit) Meteorology Building, University of Reading Reading RG6 6BB Tel: +44 1189 378 5613 NOTE WILL ALSO BE AT EXETER PART OF EACH WEEK Mobile: 07753880683 ______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137 [2]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml