2004 email: Phil Jones on why he thought the last 20 years was warmer than the Medieval Warm Period: "This is all gut feeling, no science"; warmist Tom Wigley also calls the hockey stick "a very sloppy piece of work"

2004 ClimateGate email

M&M [McIntyre and McKitrick?] are completely wrong in virtually everything they say or do. I have sent them countless data series that were used in the Jones/Mann Reviews of Geophysics papers. I got scant thanks from them for doing this - only an email saying I had some of the data series wrong, associated with the wrong year/decade. I wasted a few hours checking what I'd done and got no thanks for pointing their mistake out to them.... Bottom line - their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility. Must got to Florence now. Back in Nov 1. Cheers Phil

At 20:46 21/10/2004, you wrote:

Phil, I have just read the M&M stuff critcizing MBH. A lot of it seems valid to me. At the very least MBH is a very sloppy piece of work -- an opinion I have held for some time. Presumably what you have done with Keith is better? -- or is it? I get asked about this a lot. Can you give me a brief heads up? Mike is too deep into this to be helpful. Tom [Wigley]

Prof. Phil Jones