date: Tue Jun 24 10:09:31 2003
from: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: Hellooooo- back
to: "Raymond S. Bradley" <rbradley@geo.umass.edu>

   Hi Ray
   thanks for the communication -
   True I had said to Malcolm that I thought you had expunged me from your "people to interact
   with " list  - most likely because of my extremely poor contribution to (and lack of frank
   communication over ) the Chapter in the PAGES  book. Truth is , my back was bad and got
   worse towards the end of last year and I had to drop a couple of things , which I really do
   not like doing. I could have said a lot more about the Chapter but the main content was
   good and as you put in so much effort on it I did not want to seem churlish . I still think
   it is very useful summary of the state of things , which is what it was meant to be. I hope
   that did not influence your judgement re that Palaeoclimate Group , for which you have
   mistakenly chosen to include Phil instead of me !
   Now to the comments re the EOS piece. I believe you criticised the inclusion of the 2000
   (Eurasian ) tree-ring series (since reiterated by Malcolm). Fair enough , though again
   misguided in my opinion if on the basis of "contains few data " or " has weak climate
   response" . I was perfectly happy  to drop it ( I never suggested its inclusion in the
   first place), but I find it somewhat ironic that it should be replaced with the latest
   (Mann and Jones) series that contains the same three series plus a mixture of other far
   more dubious (not to say bad ) series - I agree with the remarks you made re some of these
   (particularly the Chinese series) in your recent email to someone. I consider that this new
   series (plus the illustration of the Western US series in the EOS) piece will "stimulate
   further discussion " in the field , both between we palaeo-types and the Sceptics . I and
   Tim have been left to submit this and the balance of pressure seems to be to submit as is -
   if we remove the suspicious Chinese series we would have to delay things further (Ellen is
   hassling for us to submit) and , anyway, it is still contained in the Long series. I am of
   the opinion that the points made in the piece still stand - and by signing on , we are not
   individually sanctioning all the curves or data used in the illustrations ( There are
   genuine problems with ALL of them). We will therefore , add Malcolm's name and submit the
   version we now have. Hope this OK with all.
   Finally, Mike and I have been asked (by Lennart Bengtsson) to present a paper at the
   CLIVAR/PAGES Conference next year in Baltimore
   [1]http://www.clivar2004.[2]org.
    Our bit is about the climate (Global /Hemisphere ) of the instrumental  period , but I
   take this to be the last 1000 years . We will be asking our co conspirators (ie the EOS
   list) to be joint contributors (though Peck is presenting another similar subject (longer
   period) paper - the precise balance between these time scales needs to be struck yet). Also
   I am organising a session at a European Community Conference to be held next year in
   Holland - my session is "How warm was the Medieval period in the context of the late
   Holocene" and although I will probably not be asking you (or me!) to present one of the two
   invited papers (but I might end up asking you) I hope and  expect that you, and the rest
   ,to agree to be authors of one of them. I hope you will be able to ? I believe you are
   writing a paper with Malcolm and Henry on the MWP? Can you give me an idea of its scope ? I
   am hoping to do something of a large review of the "contribution of tree-ring data to
   global climate histories" along with Ed and others.
   Sorry about you problems , but remember life is sweet and best wishes to Jane.
   Keith
   At 02:31 PM 6/22/03 -0400, you wrote:

     Hi Keef:
     Why is it raining so much here?  New York has just surpassed the June 1903 record of
     ~10inches, and it's only June 22nd....right now it's teeming down...could be a monsoon.
     No doubt global warming must have something to do with it...or that cut-off Low that's
     stuck here...
     Malcolm said you are feeling a bit better after a pretty rough time of it.  I've been
     meaning to write and give you my sympathy.   I've occasionally had back problems that
     have been debilitating, but nothing like you've had, I'm sure.  Anyway, I was happy to
     hear that things are picking up for you.
      The last month here has been pretty grim--the Soon & Baliunas business has opened my
     eyes to the devious and cynical nature of the Bush Administration--it's far worse than I
     imagined.  Pretty depressing.  Then the University budget got slaughtered-- we've had
     cuts amounting to 29% over the last couple of years....and I also had a couple of NSF
     proposals turned down....then Jane's knee problems forced us to cancel our walking
     holiday in France.
       Time to move to Canada --or anywhere-- I think...
     I reckon we've had an inch of rain in the past two hours.....high temperature for the
     year was back in April....
     So I hope I cheered you up!
     Ray
     Raymond S. Bradley
     Distinguished Professor
     Director, Climate System Research Center*
     Department of Geosciences
     Morrill Science Center
     611 North Pleasant Street
     AMHERST, MA 01003-9297
     Tel: 413-545-2120
     Fax: 413-545-1200
     *Climate System Research Center: 413-545-0659
             <[3]http://www.paleoclimate.org>
     Paleoclimatology Book Web Site: [4]http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/paleo/html

   --
   Professor Keith Briffa,
   Climatic Research Unit
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.

   Phone: +44-1603-593909
   Fax: +44-1603-507784
   [5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[6]/

