From	Edward R. Cook	Date	Mon, 10 Sep 2001 16:45:18 -0400
To	Keith Briffa
Subject	Re: the real message
Hi Keith, You probably haven't seen the newest version, which has not yet been submitted, but I CLEARLY state that several of the data sets/sites used in the paper have been used before and I reference all of the relevant papers. I never implied anywhere that this was the first successful use of RCS. I also reference your Quat. Sci. Rev. paper and your Age Banding paper. I also state in the concluding section that what has been shown is not new, but it is somewhat novel (the separation of the data into RC curve classes and the regionalization of the data on the scale described) and informative. I stand by that completely. So, the version I am working on covers (hopefully) some of your concerns/complaints. I will do my best to be "fair" before I finally submit it. However, this is a Report to Science (~2500 word limit), so I can't do the kind of review of the literature and detailed discussiion of results that would be possible in more normal size papers. Sorry for sounding a bit testy here. I've been fielding a whole raft of questions, comments, and criticisms from Mike Mann, Tom Crowley, and Malcolm Hughes. Some of them useful, many of them tiresome or besides the point. I never wanted to get involved in this quixotic game of producing the next great NH temperature reconstruction because of the professional politics and sensitivities involved. All I wanted to do was demonstate with Jan that Broecker was wrong, something that you have obviously done a few times before but in journals that Broecker and others don't follow closely (I guess. I should also say that the amount of ignorance about tree rings in the global change/paleo/modeling community is staggering given what has been published. Like it or not, they simply don't read our papers.). In so doing, it seemed reasonable to compare the RCS chronology against the hockey stick because that is the series that Broecker was railing against. That is why I didn't bother to compare the series against all the other records produced by you, Phil, and others. Jan originally did that, but I chose to restrict the comparison to tighten the focus of the paper. More reference to your results is clearly justified, so maybe I was wrong here. This all reinforces my determination to leave this NH/global temperature reconstruction junk behind me once I get this paper submitted. It's not worth the aggravation. However, the paper is something that I need to do for Jan. And I still think it is a good paper. Cheers, Ed >What I really mean is that you have written this paper implying that you >are getting low-frequency NH temperatures out of tree-ring data for the >first time- using the RCS. You set up this question then use a lot of data >in your analysis and the RCS as though they have not been analysed like >this before and then show you get more of a LIA than Mann , while >ignoring the fact that I have already produced calibrated summer >temperature curves (in the Science Perspective piece) from RCS ring width >data in Sweden , Urals , Taimyr and (in the JGR paper) using banded >density - which both show more low frequency than MBH. The real question is >whether MBH use data in tropical and mid latitudes that supress what is >really a high latitude summer signal in their northen predictors ? I just >don't think you are being very fair here- despite how many times you cite >me ( perhaps the citations should anyway reflect the useful contributions >to a particular area even if they number more than a token couple) >that's off my chest now >cheers >Keith > >-- >Professor Keith Briffa, >Climatic Research Unit >University of East Anglia >Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. > >Phone: +44-1603-593909 >Fax: +44-1603-507784 > >http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/ ================================== Dr. Edward R. Cook Doherty Senior Scholar Tree-Ring Laboratory Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Palisades, New York 10964 USA Email: drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu Phone: 845-365-8618 Fax: 845-365-8152 ==================================