date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:05:09 -0500 from: "Michael E. Mann" subject: Re: Fwd: draft to: Phil Jones , "raymond s. bradley" , mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu, jto@u.arizona.edu, tom crowley , k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk, crowley@duke.edu Dear All, Particularly the British among us--what's the latest you guys will have access to email today (Eastern Standard Time US please, since my brain is not working quick as well after all the sleep deprivation). I'm going to try to work w/ Annie Petsonk at EDF to incorporate their suggestions w/ those you guys have provided, but we'll probably need to finalize this and confirm authors by early afternoon east coast U.S. time... Will keep you posted of any developments as they occur. Thanks for all the wonderful advice, and your critical support at this particular time, mike At 09:16 AM 10/29/2003 +0000, Phil Jones wrote: Mike, I'm happy to sign up for this and Keith and Tim may like to as well, so cc'ing this reply to them as well. I'm off this afternoon to Newcastle so will be out of contact till I get there. I will have a chance to check email tomorrow am. Here are a few thoughts in the meantime: 1. Text needs a little fine tuning as Malcolm says and getting in dates of emails etc between you, Scott and them would be good. I doubt that such details will make it into the final piece, but they are useful background evidence. 2. I would really have a go at Schulz's second sentence --- 'If it withstands scrutiny .....' This is what the whole peer-review process is about and E&E have clearly failed to get the paper adequately reviewed. Papers do get scrutinized after publication, but this is almost always about the interpretation of results, not simple methodological flaws or clear mistakes. Perhaps, something like, The authors did not seem to stop to think why their results were so different from MBH. Any respectable scientists attempting to repeat or reanalyze earlier work would want to fully understand why the results were different. Any scientist wanting to publish such differences would want to check, double-even-triple check their results. The study here seems to have accepted the results, possibly because they appear at first glance to be the results they wanted. They should have stopped to think why they were so different, especially as several other groups have obtained essentially the same basic results as MBH, with different proxy networks and different methods of combining the results. Also, would the authors have published the results if the 'random' data had showed the opposite result. I guess it could have by chance, but I suspect they would have been more cautious as the result did not agree with their preconceptions. 3. Related to the above there is the fact that their results just don't look right. I always say that data analysts need to have a feel for the data. Here, the result just looks plain wrong. I try to drum this into my students and post-docs - saying go back and find the mistake, the results aren't right ! 4. Also need to cover the issue of Scott's inadvertent mistake. I've no idea how to do anything in Excel - except get any data out of it ! I'm told it is quite difficult to write out data in excel spreadsheet format. Back to the post-grads - they often come and say 'Excel can't do it' to which I retort then program the method from scratch in Fortran. I may be a dinosaur in this respect, but this helps understand the technique being used, as you have to go through it step by step. Need to fully cover any accusations of making the mistake deliberately. Anyway, have a few other things to do before going off at 11 Cheers Phil At 00:10 29/10/2003 -0500, Michael E. Mann wrote: oops, my draft op-ed was pasted at the end of that previous email. here it is up front, mike DRAFT REPLY TO USA TODAY OPINION PIECE The opinion piece "Researchers question key global-warming study" published in USA Today by Nick Schulz, describes a deeply flawed article published in a discredited journal "Energy and Environment" by two individuals with no scientific expertise. The article is deceptive on multiple accounts. It was not revealed that TechCentralStation.com, the website that the author Nick Shultz edits, receives considerable funding from Exxon-Mobile--this makes Schulz hardly disinterested matter in discussions of human-induced climate change and climate change policy. Schulz makes the blatantly false claim: Mann never made his data available online nor did many of the earlier researchers whose data Mann relied upon for his research. That by itself raises questions about the U.N. climate-change panel's scientific process. The data used by Mann and colleagues have been in the public domain for nearly two years, at the readily accessible website: [1]ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/ Had the authors of the study in question used the publicly available data provided by Mann and colleagues, they would have reproduced their overall results, and those of numerous other paleoclimatologists who have produced statistically indistinguishable results to those of Mann and colleagues. Instead, the authors requested from an associate of Mann and coworkers a specially formatted, spreadsheet version of the data set. There appear to have been some significant errors in that version of the dataset. Even though the authors detected some problems, they did not contact the associate who sent them the data to inquire about them. The spreadsheet version inadvertently appears to have overprinted much of the early data, rending the proxy data set prior to about 1600 erroneous. It is the use of the incorrect early values in the proxy series that lead to the wide divergence of the authors estimates from nearly all previously published estimates during the 15th and 16th centuries. The anomalous warmth they claim to reconstruct in those centuries is nothing more than an artifact of their having used scrambled early data in place of the correct data. There are other more minor sources of error. The authors misapplied the methodology of Mann et al by convoluting their previous estimated temperature patterns from one dataset with an inconsistent set of temperature estimates from an entirely different dataset. However, it is the use of scrambled estimates of the proxy data that is responsible for the huge errors in their estimates during the 15th-16th centuries. Had this paper been submitted to reputable scientific journal, such as Nature (where the original paper by Mann and colleagues was published) or Science, where high quality paleoclimatic work has often been published, the deep flaws would have quickly been uncovered in their method. Instead, the authors published their article in a social science journal, "Energy and Environment", with questionable editorial practices (as detailed in an article last September in the Chronicle of Higher Education). The journal "Energy and Environment" if it has any editorial integrity, will demand a retraction of the paper by McKitrick and McIntyre's, as the results presented are entirely spurious, and the conclusions wholly without merit. The assertion in dozens of more mainstream, scientific publications that late 20th century Northern Hemisphere average warmth is unprecedented not only in the past six centuries (as shown by Mann and colleagues in 1998), but at least the past millennium or longer is the conclusion of more than a dozen independent studies published in reputable scientific journals over the past several years and this latest deeply flawed study does nothing whatsoever to change those conclusions. At 12:03 AM 10/29/2003 -0500, Michael E. Mann wrote: I know how sick you guys are of this routine by now. hopefully, this is the last time. EDF wants to try to help me get a response to the USA Today opinion piece by Nick Schulz into tomorrows edition. She thinks we could use several co-authors from the paleo community, and Steve S thinks they'll have to print it, because Schulz completely lied about us supposedly not having provided our data in the public domain (they've been on a public website on our machine holocene since March '02 according to the dates on the files)... We need to finalize this by tomorrow afternoon. Can I get any/all of you to sign on w/ me. We'll work on revising and finalizing tomorrow morning/afternoon. let me know. thanks, mike p.s. the op-ed piece is pasted in below: Researchers question key global-warming study By Nick Schulz An important new paper in the journal Energy & Environment upsets a key scientific claim about climate change. If it withstands scrutiny, the collective scientific understanding of recent global warming might need an overhaul. A little background is needed to understand the importance of the new research behind this paper by Stephen McIntyre, a statistics expert who works in the mining industry, and Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario. As scientists and governments have tried to understand mankind's influence on the environment, global warming has become a primary concern. Do mankind's activities especially burning fossil fuels to create energy affect climate? If so, how? What should be done? These questions were so important that in 1988 the United Nations, along with the World Meteorological Organization, formed the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to study "human-induced climate change." Ten years after IPCC's founding, a paper from Michael Mann, now an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, and his colleagues in the journal Nature shook scientific and political circles. It reconstructed temperatures dating back to the year 1400 by looking at tree rings, ice cores and other so-called proxy records to derive a temperature signature. This was before the sophisticated climate-measuring equipment we use today. What Mann claimed to find was startling: The late-20th century was unusually warm warmer than at any time in the previous six centuries. (Later research by Mann extended the climate history back 1,000 years.) The reason? "It really looks like (the recent warming) can only be explained by greenhouse gases," Mann said then. His clear implication: The Earth's climate was changing dramatically, and mankind was responsible. Earth heats up? The U.N. used Mann's research to declare the 1990s "the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium." Countless news stories picked up on this idea that the past few years have been unusually warm. Efforts to limit the emission of the greenhouse gases blamed for this warming were bolstered by Mann's research. In fact, this week the Senate plans to consider legislation co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. McCain's Web site says, "Global warming is a growing problem. ... The 10 warmest years (on record) have all occurred since 1987." The statement is based on Mann's research. But what if it's not true? When McIntyre and McKitrick audited Mann's data to see whether its conclusions could be replicated, they discovered significant problems. Once they corrected the errors, the two researchers made a remarkable conclusion: The late 20th century was not unusually warm by historical standards. Not alone in his conclusion When asked about the paper, which had undergone review by other scientists before being published, Mann said he had heard about it but had not seen it. He called it a "political stunt" and said "dozens of independent studies published by leading journals" had come to conclusions similar to his. What's to guarantee McKitrick and McIntyre's research will withstand the kind of scrutiny they gave Mann's research? In an interview, McKitrick said, "If a study is going to be the basis for a major policy decision, then the original data must be disseminated and the results have to be reproducible. That's why in our case we have posted everything online and invite outside scrutiny." Mann never made his data available online nor did many of the earlier researchers whose data Mann relied upon for his research. That by itself raises questions about the U.N. climate-change panel's scientific process. It remains to be seen whether the McKitrick and McIntyre study will withstand the "outside scrutiny" they have asked for and will no doubt receive. But given the implications of the errors and problems they apparently have unearthed within the Mann study, the two researchers have done a tremendous service to science and the public, which should rely on facts to make informed public policy decisions. Nick Schulz is editor of TechCentralStation.com, a science, technology and public policy Web site. Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:58:21 -0500 To: Annie_Petsonk@environmentaldefense.org From: "Michael E. Mann" Subject: draft Cc: mann@virginia.edu Before midnight as promised :) here is a rough draft of an op-ed. Any help I can get from you or any associates of yours in refining this and getting this published will be very helpful. I can work on co-authors tomorrow morning. iPerhaps we can send something similar on to other newswire journalists such as Joan Lowey, etc... DRAFT REPLY TO USA TODAY OPINION PIECE The opinion piece "Researchers question key global-warming study" published in USA Today by Nick Schulz, describes a deeply flawed article published in a discredited journal "Energy and Environment" by two individuals with no scientific expertise. The article is deceptive on multiple accounts. It was not revealed that TechCentralStation.com, the website that the author Nick Shultz edits, receives considerable funding from Exxon-Mobile--this makes Schulz hardly disinterested matter in discussions of human-induced climate change and climate change policy. Schulz makes the blatantly false claim: Mann never made his data available online nor did many of the earlier researchers whose data Mann relied upon for his research. That by itself raises questions about the U.N. climate-change panel's scientific process. The data used by Mann and colleagues have been in the public domain for nearly two years, at the readily accessible website: [2]ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/ Had the authors of the study in question used the publicly available data provided by Mann and colleagues, they would have reproduced their overall results, and those of numerous other paleoclimatologists who have produced statistically indistinguishable results to those of Mann and colleagues. Instead, the authors requested from an associate of Mann and coworkers a specially formatted, spreadsheet version of the data set. There appear to have been some significant errors in that version of the dataset. Even though the authors detected some problems, they did not contact the associate who sent them the data to inquire about them. The spreadsheet version inadvertently appears to have overprinted much of the early data, rending the proxy data set prior to about 1600 erroneous. It is the use of the incorrect early values in the proxy series that lead to the wide divergence of the authors estimates from nearly all previously published estimates during the 15th and 16th centuries. The anomalous warmth they claim to reconstruct in those centuries is nothing more than an artifact of their having used scrambled early data in place of the correct data. There are other more minor sources of error. The authors misapplied the methodology of Mann et al by convoluting their previous estimated temperature patterns from one dataset with an inconsistent set of temperature estimates from an entirely different dataset. However, it is the use of scrambled estimates of the proxy data that is responsible for the huge errors in their estimates during the 15th-16th centuries. Had this paper been submitted to reputable scientific journal, such as Nature (where the original paper by Mann and colleagues was published) or Science, where high quality paleoclimatic work has often been published, the deep flaws would have quickly been uncovered in their method. Instead, the authors published their article in a social science journal, "Energy and Environment", with questionable editorial practices (as detailed in an article last September in the Chronicle of Higher Education). The journal "Energy and Environment" if it has any editorial integrity, will demand a retraction of the paper by McKitrick and McIntyre's, as the results presented are entirely spurious, and the conclusions wholly without merit. The assertion in dozens of more mainstream, scientific publications that late 20th century Northern Hemisphere average warmth is unprecedented not only in the past six centuries (as shown by Mann and colleagues in 1998), but at least the past millennium or longer is the conclusion of more than a dozen independent studies published in reputable scientific journals over the past several years and this latest deeply flawed study does nothing whatsoever to change those conclusions. 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 [3]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml ______________________________________________________________ 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 [4]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml ______________________________________________________________ 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 [5]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________ 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 [6]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml