Email 4321, Sept 2003: Mike Hulme sees that Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have been asked to provide the annual progress reports for global warming for the PiPG journal, resigns as Editorial Advisor

Email 4321

I am writing to resign from my position as Editorial Adviser for the journal Progress in
Physical Geography...I reached this decision after seeing the September 2003 issue of the journal in which I
noticed that Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have been asked to provide the annual progress
reports for global warming for the journal and after reading their first contribution.
This choice of authorship truly baffles me. Both authors are in a department of
astrophysics. Neither author is a geographer or climatologist by training. Neither author
has published extensively in the field of human-induced climate change...
You will gather that I strongly disagree with your choice of author(s) for this annual
review. Given that my views as an Editorial Adviser to the journal presumably invited
into that capacity to cover the general area of climate change, although maybe I presume
too much were not even sought, let alone listened to, I utterly fail to see the point of
my continuing in this role or my name being associated with the journal. I would of course
be interested to hear of your selection criteria and of your process that led to these two
authors being invited to provide the global warming review for the journal.
Might I ask that you copy my letter to the member of Arnold publishing staff who is
responsible for PiPG.