From	Eystein Jansen	Date	Fri, 20 May 2005 23:30:47 +0200
To	imprint-ssc@bjerknes.uib.no
CC	Thomas Stocker, André Berger
Subject	Urgent-next step
Dear friends of the Imprint - SSC, After seeing the evaluation summary of our proposal, and not least the same for Millennium, it is clear to me that we have been very badly treated, first by the public advice from the Commission in Utrecht who advised the community to create a proposal which we did, but which is orthogonal to what they now have decided to negotiate, later by the random way we were reviewed and the many inconsistencies in the evaluation. Compared to this the Millennium review was full of subjective phrases and a number of negative aspects were glossed over. The review is an insult, and it appears likely that elements in the panel bear some grudges against our community. In order to get the 0.5 point difference between Imprint and Millennium they had to give a number of very imbalanced statements. They also had to raise the management score of Millennium to 4 by the xtended panel despite critisisms by the reviewers that the management was not well laid out. I feel that the review was very biased and the result is that they will probably fund a project with only limited relevance to the call, and miss a major opportunity of integrating European paleoclimate research and climate modelling and create a new major step forward. We have been advised to send a formal letter of complaint to the Commission, asking for a renewed evaluation, not because we think there is a good chance that it will lead to much, but we think it is important that they know that they have upset a community consisting of top level European scientists, This may help us in the longer term. The advice I have got is to send this to Pierre Valette, co-signed by the key partners, both their PIs and head of administration, with copies to our individual national members of the Global Change Panel of the EU. So far there is no formal decision on which proposal to fund, this may happen in September after negotiations with the selected proposals. There is a seldom precedence in Europe that such an intervention has been successful, but very rarely. In phrasing such a letter we have to be very careful and make sure our message is clear and fair, but I think it needs to be done. I would therefore ask you to respond immediately to this mail as to whether you think we should go this route or not. We will then in a few days send out a draft for comments, if you agree that we shall send in a complaint. We have to move fast here, so I hope you will be quick. Concerning the other proposals on what to do, there are many good ideas, and I think we should have a meeting in the autumn to discuss the strategy of securing paleo in the 7th Framwork program. The text is out for review now, and we all need to suggest changes through our national representatives. I will distribute a list of who this is for the various countries over the week-end. I am also working on formulating text to help launch our ideas in teh European Parliament via Atte´s wife. Best wishes, Eystein