Some ClimateGate emails about cash for junk science: "10-12 million Euro looks like a reasonable guess for possible budget"

Email 517

[Keith Briffa, 2003] I have talked at length with Hans Brelen last week at a start up meeting of our EC project SOAP , and I am now sure that there will only be one opportunity for a large project that is specifically Palaeo based . It will be in the next call but one (due for a start of work in 1995) and will be a new instrument (ie IP or NoE). Hence it becomes more essential in my mind to think of refining HOLCLIM and DOCC , to bring them together. I still believe the Holocene is a better focus than the last glacial cycle or longer , and certainly that an IP is by far preferable to a NoE. Of course the scale of the work is also vital , as 10-12 million Euro looks like a reasonable guess for possible budget , and an integration of data and modelling seems ideal.

Email 5033

[Dr Reinhard Boehm, 2001] Should we try a 2-years or a 3-years project?

Can everybody live with roughly 300.000 Euro (This would result into somewhere between 1.5 and two millions, which we heard is a magnitude preferred by the commission). Please consider not only the sum of money but also how to spend it and how to fill it with a reasonable equivalent in work amount.

What is your feeling about the "Climate variability atlas of the Alps"? Is it good to have one main deliverable like that or should we better produce a number of smaller things?

2003 ClimateGate email

[Briffa] It seems definite that there will be money for a single (new instrument) project only , as we supposed . Some at the meeting spoke about a range of time scales and possible subject foci for the conference (and by implication also for the call) but I still feel strongly , on the evidence of other projects that I have heard are to be funded , that the need is for a sharper focus than was involved in our DOCC concept , and that the HOLIVAR approach is the optimum way forward. The problem will be scale of initiative (15-20 million seems a maximum likely request , with perhaps 12-15 a likely maximum award). The unified data / modelling route, as outlined in the HOLCLIM NoI seems the most likely candidate still.

2004 email

[Briffa] This Workpackage will also organise the aggregation of best possible climate forcing proxy evidence, as means of exploring links with the empirical climate data, but also as input to the significant effort in climate modelling to be undertaken in other workpackages. WorkPackage 1 has been divided into a number of sub themes or Tasks and these, along with the content of all Workpackages, is described in the attached document. Note that this is very much work in progress at this stage and your comments and input to all parts will be welcome. We will refine the wider list of collaborating institutes at a later stage.

At this stage we envisage a total budget application of about 17 million Euro with a nominal share of 5 million for WorkPackage 1.