From	Michael E. Mann	Date	Tue, 11 Mar 2003 08:14:49 -0500
To	Phil Jones, ray bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Scott Rutherford, Tom Crowley
CC	Keith Briffa, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Edward R. Cook, Keith Alverson, Mike MacCracken, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Michael E. Mann
Subject	Re: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Thanks Phil, (Tom: Congrats again!) The Soon & Baliunas paper couldn't have cleared a 'legitimate' peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility--that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn't just De Frietas, unfortunately I think this group also includes a member of my own department... The skeptics appear to have staged a 'coup' at "Climate Research" (it was a mediocre journal to begin with, but now its a mediocre journal with a definite 'purpose'). Folks might want to check out the editors and review editors: [1]http://www.int-res.com/journals/cr/crEditors.html In fact, Mike McCracken first pointed out this article to me, and he and I have discussed this a bit. I've cc'd Mike in on this as well, and I've included Peck too. I told Mike that I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted--the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper, which will be ignored by the community on the whole... It is pretty clear that thee skeptics here have staged a bit of a coup, even in the presence of a number of reasonable folks on the editorial board (Whetton, Goodess, ...). My guess is that Von Storch is actually with them (frankly, he's an odd individual, and I'm not sure he isn't himself somewhat of a skeptic himself), and without Von Storch on their side, they would have a very forceful personality promoting their new vision. There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon & Baliunas paper, that couldn't get published in a reputable journal. This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board... What do others think? mike At 08:49 AM 3/11/2003 +0000, Phil Jones wrote: Dear All, Apologies for sending this again. I was expecting a stack of emails this morning in response, but I inadvertently left Mike off (mistake in pasting) and picked up Tom's old address. Tom is busy though with another offspring ! I looked briefly at the paper last night and it is appalling - worst word I can think of today without the mood pepper appearing on the email ! I'll have time to read more at the weekend as I'm coming to the US for the DoE CCPP meeting at Charleston. Added Ed, Peck and Keith A. onto this list as well. I would like to have time to rise to the bait, but I have so much else on at the moment. As a few of us will be at the EGS/AGU meet in Nice, we should consider what to do there. The phrasing of the questions at the start of the paper determine the answer they get. They have no idea what multiproxy averaging does. By their logic, I could argue 1998 wasn't the warmest year globally, because it wasn't the warmest everywhere. With their LIA being 1300- 1900 and their MWP 800-1300, there appears (at my quick first reading) no discussion of synchroneity of the cool/warm periods. Even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at between 10-20% of grid boxes. Writing this I am becoming more convinced we should do something - even if this is just to state once and for all what we mean by the LIA and MWP. I think the skeptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set paleo back a number of years if it goes unchallenged. I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch. Cheers Phil Dear all, Tim Osborn has just come across this. Best to ignore probably, so don't let it spoil your day. I've not looked at it yet. It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice ! Cheers Phil X-Sender: f055@pop.uea.ac.uk X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 14:32:14 +0000 To: p.jones@uea From: Tim Osborn Subject: Soon & Baliunas Dr Timothy J Osborn | phone: +44 1603 592089 Senior Research Associate | fax: +44 1603 507784 Climatic Research Unit | e-mail: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk School of Environmental Sciences | web-site: University of East Anglia __________| [2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ Norwich NR4 7TJ | sunclock: UK | [3]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm 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 [4]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml References 1. http://www.int-res.com/journals/cr/crEditors.html 2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ 3. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm 4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml