Michael Mann enlists the National Science Foundation in the hokey stick cover-up.
From the Climategate 2.0 collection, Michael Mann advises Tim Osborn on how how duck data requests from Steve McIntyre. Note Mann’s invocation of the National Science Foundation to aid and abet the cover-up.
The e-mail exchange is below.
———————————————
cc: mann@virginia.edu
date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 08:37:17 -0500
from: “Michael E. Mann”
subject: Re: Fwd: Mann, Bradley and Hughes
to: Tim Osborn , Michael Oppenheimer
, Phil Jones
, Keith Briffa
, , , Tom
Wigley , tom crowley , Gabi Hegerl
, Jonathan Overpeck ,
rbradley@geo.umass.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
Dear Tim,
Thanks for the message These guys, as Tom W has noted previously, seem to simply to
simply
want to try to make as big a stink as possible here. They didn’t get the media attention
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they wanted (and got blasted in the one mainstream news article on this that appeared
in
USA Today a couple weeks back), and they haven’t been taken seriously by the scientific
community so I guess they’re trying to generate any controversies they can. I would
STRONGLY encourage you not to bother responding to any of their emails under any
circumstancdes. History has proven consistently (talk to Phil!) that they’ll simply try to
take anything you say out of context, and turn your own words on you. This is what they
did
w/ the attempts on our part to help then in response to their initial inquiries, which they
twist and distort in their comments below (we I only told them I wouldn’t respond to
further inquiries after the tone of their emails had become unacceptable, and their hostile
intent clear–something this guy, as just about everything else, conveniently distorts…
They’ve been making threats against NSF about supposed data policies and even
against Ray,
Tom Crowley, and others too, claiming that they have a right to all of our data and
computer programs (the hubris!). Confidentially, NSF lawyers have found their threats
baseless as well as obnoxious, and will be telling them formally that NSF policy in no
way
legally requires funded scientists to provided their data (let alone computer codes!) for
public access, but scientists are *encouraged* to provide their data. NSF will be telling
them to stop pestering them. I’m forwarding a formal email (based on numerous informal
discussion w/ Dave Verardo) to NSF, which is confidential (!), that provides some more
information….
As we all know, we had made all of our data available previously, so the accusations by
these bozos are baselss, though we agree that we would have given more care to the
completeness of documentation had we known a stunt like this was to be pulled by the
contrarians..
Confidentially, we will be releasing a revised, more user-friendly version of the dataste
(all of the data, including the CRU temperature dataset we used, which isn’t available
any
longer) in concert w/ our published reply tto their paper, submitted to “Climatic
Change”—will keep you posted on status to their paper. We can make a copy of the
manuscript available to anyone who wants to see it, but we don’t want to corrupt the
potential reviewer pool prior to selection of reviewers, so we’ve resisted sending this
out to colleagues yet. The data will also be available on Nature’s supplementary
information website (we’re working w/ Nature on this right now).
mike
At 02:34 PM 12/8/2003 +0000, Tim Osborn wrote:
Dear all,
see the forwarded message. McIntyre is attempting to rope CRU into the ongoing fallout
from their paper in E&E, apparently because we “published” MBH’s preliminary
response by
posting it on our website.
Anyone got any comments, before I reply to say that I don’t consider appearance on a
web
page as publication, and hence we aren’t in a position to ask MBH for any data or
programs.
Cheers
Tim
From: “Steve McIntyre”
To: “Tim Osborn”
Cc: “Sonja.B-C” , “Ross McKitrick”
Subject: Mann, Bradley and Hughes
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 15:57:06 -0500
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
Dear Dr. Osborn,
We regret that you declined our offer to submit our forthcoming paper to CRU/UEA for
review, especially since you had been critical about Energy & Environment review
policies. Our offer reflected our desire for the highest possible standard of public
debate on these matters.
UEA/CRU recently published an article by Mann, Bradley and Hughes (“MBH-r”)
responding
to our paper in Energy & Environment, together with your own editorial comments. We
are
seeking the following supplementary information in connection with this article and
commentary:
1) an identification of the 159 series, referred to in MBH-r;
2) a copy of the computer programs used to collate input data and generate the
output data plotted in the Figure in MBH-r;
3) verification that these programs are the same as the corresponding programs
used
in MBH98 and, if not, a copy of the programs used to collate input data and generate
output data for MBH98.
We have requested this information from Professor Mann, but he has refused and has
cut
off further communication. In your capacity as publishers of his response article, we
accordingly request the information from you directly.
We have some other concerns with your own commentary on our article in Energy &
Environment. We do not claim to show that 15th century temperatures were higher than
20th century temperatures. We only claim that application of MBH methods to corrected
and updated data do not entitle MBH to claim 20th century uniqueness. We do not
endorse
the MBH98 methods and consequently did not put forward a reconstruction of our own.
You also stated that we did not attempt to investigate the differences of results with
MBH. This is untrue and indeed unfair. The email record shows clearly that we sought
clarifications from Mann, first on our inability to replicate his temperature principal
components calculations and secondly on both verification of the integrity of the
dataset sent to us and on further particulars of his reconstruction methodology, noting
problems in the early period. Mann refused to answer and stated that he would not
respond to further inquiries on the subject. It is unfair of you to blame us for the
fact that the correspondence ended there without satisfactory resolution.
Full disclosure of the data and methods used in MBH-r (and MBH98), as requested
above,
will allow all interested observers to quickly get to the core points of disagreement in
our analyses.
Thank you for your consideration.
Stephen McIntyre/Ross McKitrick
Dr Timothy J Osborn
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
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Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
e-mail: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
phone: +44 1603 592089
fax: +44 1603 507784
web: [1]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/
sunclock: [2]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm
______________________________________________________________
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
[3]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml