From	Burgess Jacquelin Prof (ENV)	Date	Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:40:59 +0100
To	Phil Jones
Subject	RE: Possible problem looming
Thanks Phil, I will keep your email and hope we don't have to mobilise. This is very close to harassment, isn't it. Jacquie -----Original Message----- From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk] Sent: 11 September 2007 14:06 To: Burgess Jacquelin Prof (ENV) Cc: Mcgarvie Michael Mr (ACAD) Subject: Possible problem looming Jacquie, I've been in discussion with Michael over the past several months about a number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for CRU data. I've responded to one and will be responding to another in the next few days. Michael suggested I bring you up to speed on the issue. To cut a very long story short, I'm attaching 3 things that relate to what's happened since responding to the first request. 1. A paper from 1990 by me and others in Nature. The request was for the station data from the rural station networks in the three regions studied. This led to a person in London (Douglas Keenan) putting some material on his website claiming fraud against one of the co-authors on the paper (Wei-Chyung Wang of the State University of Albany, SUNY, in NY, USA). He then put an allegation of fraud into SUNY against Wang. SUNY are dealing with this - not quickly, but I have seen Wang's response. 2. Keenan then submitted a paper (attached) to the world's worst journal, Energy and Environment. According to Wang this is in breach of an agreement with SUNY not to do anything whilst the allegation is being dealt with. According to Wang, SUNY have told Keenan this. I was sent the paper to comment on the factual allegations in the paper. After discussing this with Wang (who informed SUNY) I sent 9 comments. 3. My comments - with Keenan's responses embedded within (this is the new bit for you Michael). I have subsequently told the E&E guest editor that Keenan's response to my point # 5 is wrong. I sent him Tao et al. (1991) so he can see this. Keenan's response to my point 7 illustrates his arrogance. I have loads more background to all this, and it has taken some time over the last few weeks and months in responding. You are now partly up to speed on the issue. I'm away next week. I don't know when E&E might publish, nor when the SUNY review process (which is being dealt with by their Director of Research) will conclude. Wang and I both know that the allegations are groundless, but it is likely it will not look good when it first comes out. This is just another of the attempts by climate skeptics to get the public and the media thinking that there is disagreement amongst scientists and that we shouldn't be doing anything about global warming. I will be discussing this with some IPCC people when I meet them in early October. Cheers Phil Phil, Thanks for forwarding this. I am shocked about this - if a formal review is underway at the University of Albany it is surely improper to publish a paper in a journal about the matter! I suggest that you alert Jacquie Burgess to this, as the new Head of School. I would like to suggest that we ask Dave Palmer to comment on the events on the FOIA request - I don't think I fully agree with the story presented here. Do you agree? I also think we should alert the Press Office in due course. Regards Michael Michael McGarvie Senior Faculty Manager Faculty of Science Room 0.22C University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ tel: 01603 593229 fax: 01603 593045 m.mcgarvie@uea.ac.uk 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----