From	Michael E. Mann	Date	Thu, 02 Oct 2003 16:11:02 -0400
To	Robert Matthews
CC	Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Tim Osborn, Folland, Chris, Stott, Peter, David Viner - Climate Impacts LINK Project, Mike Hulme
Subject	Re:
Dear Mr. Matthews, Unfortunately Phil Jones is travelling and will probably be unable to offer a separate reply. Since your comments involve work that is his as well, I have therefore taken the liberty of copying your inquiry and this reply to several of his British colleagues. The comparisons made in our paper are well explained therein, and your statements belie the clearly-stated qualifications in our conclusions with regard to separate analyses of the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, and globe. An objective reading of our manuscript would readily reveal that the comments you refer to are scurrilous. These comments have not been made by scientists in the peer-reviewed literature, but rather, on a website that, according to published accounts, is run by individuals sponsored by ExxonMobile corportation, hardly an objective source of information. Owing to pressures on my time, I will not be able to respond to any further inquiries from you. Given your extremely poor past record of reporting on climate change issues, however, I will leave you with some final words. Professional journalists I am used to dealing with do not rely upon un-peer-reviewed claims off internet sites for their sources of information. They rely instead on peer-reviewed scientific research, and mainstream, rather than fringe, scientific opinion. Sincerely, Michael E. Mann At 08:30 PM 10/2/2003 +0100, Robert Matthews wrote: Dear Professor Mann I'm putting together a piece on global warming, and I'll be making reference to your paper in Geophysical Research Letters with Prof Jones on "Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia". When the paper came out, some critics argued that the paper actually showed that there have been three periods in the last 2000 years which were warmer than today (one just prior to AD 700, one just after, and one just prior to AD 1000). They also claimed that the paper could only conclude that current temperatures were warmer if one compared the proxy data with other data sets. (For an example of these arguments, see: [1]http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm) I'd be very interested to include your rebuttals to these arguments in the piece I'm doing. I must admit to being confused by why proxy data should be compared to instrumental data for the last part of the data-set. Shouldn't the comparison be a consistent one throughout ? With many thanks for your patience with this Robert Matthews ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Matthews Science Correspondent, The Sunday Telegraph C/o: 47 Victoria Road, Oxford, OX2 7QF Email: [2]r.matthews@physics.org Homepage: [3]www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk/People/ Tel: (+44)(0)1865 514 004 / Mob: 0790-651 9126 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________ 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.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n34c4.htm 2. mailto:r.matthews@physics.org 3. http://www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk/People/ 4. http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml