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.
     =============
     Gavin Schmidt
     NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies
     2880 Broadway
     New York, NY 10025
     Tel: (212) 678 5627
     Email: [1]gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov URL: [2]http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin
     On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Tim Osborn wrote:

     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

