date: Fri Sep 26 18:13:01 2003
from: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>
subject: letter to PiPG
to: p.jones,new_Mark

   Phil, Mark,
   For your interest, this is the letter I am sending to PiPG on Monday.  Phil - which issue
   of EOS was Mike Mann's article in?
   Thanks,
   Mike
   ____________________________________________
   29 September 2003
   Professor B.W.Atkinson
   Department of ???????????
   Queen Mary College
   University of London
   London ????????????????
   Dear Bruce,
   I am writing to resign from my position as Editorial Adviser for the journal Progress in
   Physical Geography.  I do this reluctantly since I believe the journal continues to fulfil
   a useful and important niche in the geographical sciences  I remember my relying heavily
   upon the journal as an undergraduate geographer more than 20 years ago.
   I reached this decision after seeing the September 2003 issue of the journal in which I
   noticed that Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have been asked to provide the annual progress
   reports for global warming for the journal  and after reading their first contribution.
   This choice of authorship truly baffles me.  Both authors are in a department of
   astrophysics.  Neither author is a geographer or climatologist by training.  Neither author
   has published extensively in the field of human-induced climate change.  And one of the
   relatively few scientific peer-reviewed articles they have published in the field of
   climate change - Soon, W., and S.Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the
   past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003  seriously questions their credentials
   to provide accurate and authoritative reviews in the area of global warming (see article
   published a few weeks ago in the AGU weekly EOS: On past temperatures and anomalous
   late-20th century warmth by Mann,M.E., Ammann,C.M., Bradley,R.S., Briffa,K.R.,
   Crowley,T.J., Jones,P.D., Oppenheimer,M., Osborn,T.J., Overpeck,J.T., Rutherford,S.,
   Trenberth,K.E., Wigley,T.M.L.; and also the editorial from the publisher in the journal
   Climate Research by Otto Kinne Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storms,
   vol. 24:197-198; I attach copies of these articles for your interest).
   You will gather that I strongly disagree with your choice of author(s) for this annual
   review.  Given that my views as an Editorial Adviser to the journal  presumably invited
   into that capacity to cover the general area of climate change, although maybe I presume
   too much  were not even sought, let alone listened to, I utterly fail to see the point of
   my continuing in this role or my name being associated with the journal.  I would of course
   be interested to hear of your selection criteria and of your process that led to these two
   authors being invited to provide the global warming review for the journal.
   Might I ask that you copy my letter to the member of Arnold publishing staff who is
   responsible for PiPG.
   Yours sincerely,
   Professor Mike Hulme
