Email 4993, May 2003, Michael Mann rants against unbelievers Soon/Baliunas/C. Idso/S. Idso; claims to know their motivations; somehow also knows that "NYT, Scientific American, and a few other journalists are working on exposes of Baliunas and co., and those should appear soon"

Email 4993

[Michael Mann] This is crap of the worst kind--it was written explicitly for political purposes; there is no science there at all--the mainstream media completely ignored it, having figured that out, but various right-wing groups (such as "Western Fuels Association") have continued to try to promote this in fringe media circles and through political channels within washington DC (so the story continued to appear on web sites like "Techcentralstation" and Murdoch-supported newspapers).

I'll forward a whole bunch of emails (in confidence) that should clarify the situation. We've all decided that this is so bad a direct response cannot even be made. Phil Jones and I, and Ray Bradley, Henry Diaz, and Malcolm Hughes are writing two review papers which will dismiss much of what they've said....

p.s. NYT, Scientific American, and a few other journalists are working on exposes of Baliunas and co., and those should appear soon. It looks like Chris Defrietas, the editor at "Climate Research" responsible for publishing the Baliunas et al piece, and numerous other dubious other awful articles by "skeptics" over the past couple years, will be dismissed as a result of this latest act.

CfA Press Release

Cambridge, MA - A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

Smithsonian astronomers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, with co-authors Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and David Legates (Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware), compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers