Interesting blog on the Telegraph comment pages from one of the more mainstream commentators:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/8081276/Spending-Review-Honesty-is-the-best-policy-before-the-bigger-fuel-bills-start-to-bite.html

You might want to put up a post about another smear attempt. Read this discussion of a letter from Mann, Ehrlich and Rahmstorf to Nature.

Not only is this blatant ad hominem, it's bad ad hominem. As far as I can tell, the only connection that Greenberg has with the Marshall Institute, is that he once participated in a roundtable discussion, which the Marshall Institute published. The fact that Mann et al. linked to sourcewatch.org, which exists solely to provide "dirt" against any non-consensus thinker, is enough to discredit anything they wrote.

It's another in the vein of the Anderegg et al. PNAS "blacklist" article.

UK government's Food Standards Agency, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia (who else?) urges everybody goes vegetarian, and also urges organic vegetarian diet in schools, hospitals and at other public institutions.

Allowed: Vegetables, pulses, yoghurt - if grown organically

Not allowed: Beef, cheese, cocoa, tea, coffee

Why? To cut greenhouse gas emissions of course!

I personally find it funny how eating hippie rabbit food is not only fashionable, among certain classes, but now virtuous too! So virtuous that it must be imposed on the rest of us.

Maybe somebody should nominate it for Anthony Watt's climate craziness of the week?

Donna Laframboise over at nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/ has been posting an example a day of AR4 lead authors who were graduate students and in at least one case a former Green Peace staffer. Great reading and her efforts deserve wider distribution.

Hi Bish, you have probably seen this, but just in case.

http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/21/bradley-tries-to-deal/#comments

I find it difficult to comment

And "acidifying" oceans, of course.

Scarcely has the push begun to create a vast bidioversity scare, while America tries to make AGW a threat to health, and GW becomes "Climate disruption" in order to cover the coming cold winter, not to mention any other sort of weather, when I read :

".... the British government warned that climate change represents a growing threat to the country's security as part of its Strategic Defence and Security
Review."http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/21/climate-change-superpowers

They seem to have got everything covered now....

William M Connolley - now thinks code shoud be published - some interesting comments as well..

Progress?

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/10/publishing_code.php#more

How about a Bishop Hill meet at this.....

Reading University: Climate change - the science explained
Wednesday 10 November 2010, 8pm
Palmer Building, Whiteknights

Professor Nigel Arnell, Walker Institute Director
http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/people/index.htm

With all the media attention on climate change, it can be hard to separate media hype from scientific fact. So what is the science behind climate change? How are people warming the climate and to what extent does it vary naturally? This talk will describe the risks posed by climate change for water, food, and biodiversity focusing on what we know and, importantly, what we don't know. There will also be a chance to put your questions to a panel of experts.

http://www.reading.ac.uk/publiclectureseries/
http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/publiclectureseries/2010ClimateChange.pdf

---------

I just rang MY OLD University up, and the panel of experts is from within Reading university, and presumably the Walker Institute.

As at least one of these people was co-editor along with Sir John Houghton, of the 2001 IPCC report with 'The Hockey Stick' in it,

and, Arnell is an IPCC lead author in the second, third and fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, he has also contributed to the recent Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.

----------- It should be very interesting... -------------------

I rang them up, and had a chat with a young person there, and they even thought/had doubts on man made global warming!. Put through to someone organising it, and had an interesting conversation..

This is event is being put on BECAUSE of what has happened in the media (or not) in the last year.. So I think Climategate questions will be fair game..

ONLY 400 seats, and they expect it to be FULL, first come first served.

BE nice if anybody goes I have lots of friends at Reading...
If I go, I will probably be reasonably quiet. I'll try to arrange a back up physicist.

It turns out a family friend, from the toddler group, of the church where Houghton gave a Transitions town speech -( I'm an honourary toddler group 'mum') is an astrophyscisist. She was fast tracked in the European Space Centre Programs, and was a Operations Director - for the European Space Centre.... then onto satellite consultancy to various heads of state.

Not a man made global warming fan. She couldn't get a baby sitter for Houghton's speech.
Hopefully she can for this one......

-------------------------------------

I wonder if Professor Arnell has read ANY of the climategate emails...
If only the one, which Phil Jones forwards (that ARNELL was copied on) onto Michael Mann, saying.....

Your EYES ONLY.

Please DELETE after reading.......

It was a heads up, because various other scientists (possibly Professor Arnell as well) had been saying that Mann should release his code, following MM's paper (debunking Mann's hockey stick) - 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear all,
I agree with most of what has been said so far. Reproducibility is the key word. If the
Mann el al material (to be) posted on the website is sufficient to ensure reproducibility, then there is no compelling need to force them to hand it out. If not,then the source code is warranted. Also, even if there is no compelling need to make the source code public, doing it anyway would clearly be beneficial for the entire debate.
Yours,
Christian
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian Azar
Professor
Department of physical resource theory
Chalmers University of Technology

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Phil Jones replied, he seemed a bit upset that only Michael Mann's graph got al the press attention, amongst other things.....

Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:37:29 +0000
To: Christian Azar <christian.azar@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, christian.pfister@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: AW: CLIMATIC CHANGE needs your advice
Cc: "'David G. VICTOR'" <dgvictor@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, 'Katarina Kivel' <kivel@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,

N.W.Arnell@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,

frtca@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, d.camuffo@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, scohen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, pmfearn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jfoley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, pgleick@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
harvey@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, ahs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rwk@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
rik.leemans@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, diana.liverman@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mccarl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, lindam@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rmoss@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, ogilvie@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, barrie.pittock@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, pollard@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, nj.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, crosenzweig@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, j.salinger@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, h.j.schellnhuber@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, F.I.Woodward@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, gyohe@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, leonid@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Dear Steve et al,
I've been away this week until today. Although the responses so far all make valid
points, I will add my thoughts. I should say I have been more involved in all the exchanges
between Mike and MM so I'm probably biased in Mike's favour. I will try and be impartial,
though, but I did write a paper with Mike (which came out in GRL in Aug 2003) and we currently have
a long paper tentatively accepted by Reviews of Geophysics. With the latter all 4 reviewers think the paper is fine, but the sections referring to MM and papers by Soon and Baliunas are not and our language is strong.

We need to work on this.

Back to the question in hand:

1. The papers that MM refer came out in Nature in 1998 and to a lesser extent in GRL
in1999. These reviewers did not request the data (all the proxy series) and the code. So,
acceding to the request for this to do the review is setting a VERY dangerous precedent. Mike has made all the data series and this is all anyone should need.

Making model code available is something else.

2. The code is basically irrelevant in this whole issue. In the GRL paper (in 2003 Mann
and Jones), we simply average all the series we use together. The result is pretty much
the same as MBH in 1998, Nature and MBH in 1999 in GRL.

3. As many of you know I calculate gridded and global/hemispheric temperature time
series each month. Groups at NCDC and NASA/GISS do this as well. We don't exchange codes
- we do occasionally though for the data. The code here is trivial as it is in the paleo work. MBH get spatial patterns but the bottom line (the 1000 year series of global temps) is almost the same if you simply average. The patterns give more, though, when it comes to trying to understand what has caused the changes - eg by comparison with models. MM are only interested in the NH/Global 1000-year time series - in fact only in the MBH work from 1400.

4. What has always intrigued me in this whole debate, is why the skeptics (for want of a better term
always pick on Mike. There are several other series that I've produced, Keith Briffa has and Tom Crowley. Jan Esper's work has produced a slightly different series but we don't get bombarded by MM.

[Phil seems a bit miffed]
Mike's paper wasn't the first. It was in Nature and is well-used by IPCC.

I suspect the skeptics wish to concentrate their effort onto oneperson as they did with Ben Santer after the second IPCC report.

5. Mike may respond too strongly to MM, but don't we all decide not to work with or co-operate with people we do not get on with or do not like their views. Mike will say that MM are disingenuous, but I'm not sure how many of you realise how vicious the attack on him has been.

I will give you an example. When MM came out, we had several press calls (I don't normally get press calls about my papers unless I really work at it - I very rarely do). This was about a paper in E&E, which when we eventually got it several days later was appalling. I found out later that the authors were in contact with the reviewers up to a week before the article appeared. So there is peer review and peer review !! Here the peer review was done by like-minded colleagues.

Anyway, I'm straying from the point.

Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa and I felt we should put something on our web site about the paper and directs people to Mike's site and also to E&E and the MM's site. MM have hounded us about this for the last four months. In the MM article, they have a diagram which says 'corrected version' when comparing with MBH.

We have seen people refer to this paper (MM) as an alternative reconstruction - yet when we said this is our paragraph MM claim they are not putting forward a new reconstruction but criticizing MBH 1998 !! We have decided to remove the sentence on our web page just to stop these emails. But if a
corrected version isn't a new or alternative reconstruction I don't know what is.

So, in conclusion, I would side with Mike in this regard. In trying to be scrupulously fair, Steve, you've opened up a whole can of worms. If you do decide to put the Mann response into CC then I suspect you will need an editorial. MM will want to respond also.

I know you've had open and frank exchanges in CC before, but your email clearly shows that you think this is in a different league. MM and E&E didn't give Mann the chance to respond when they put their paper in, but this is a too simplistic. It needs to be pointed out in an editorial though - I'm not offering by the way.

I could go on and on ....

Cheers
Phil

--------------------------------------------------------------

That is what Phil Jones said to everyone...
He then forwarded the above email onto Michael Mann....
I'll let everyone interpret it for themselves.....

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: CLIMATIC CHANGE needs your advice - YOUR EYES ONLY !!!!!
Date: Fri Jan 16 13:25:59 2004

Mike,

This is for YOURS EYES ONLY. Delete after reading - please ! I'm trying to redress the balance. One reply from Pfister said you should make all available !! Pot calling thekettle black - Christian doesn't make his methods available.

I replied to the wrong Christian message so you don't get to see what he said.

Probably best.

Told Steve separately and to get more advice from a few others as well as Kluwer and legal.

PLEASE DELETE - just for you, not even Ray and Malcolm

Cheers
Phil

Addendum from the Telegraph,

Overall Defra will have to cut £700 million, the largest cut of any department outside the Treasury. Environment campaigners are relieved funding for conservation was not harder hit. But the fact remains that money for wildlife will be squeezed. Also flooding and animal disease prevention, despite the risks to public safety.

£7 billion to be sent overseas!!!!