date: Tue Oct 15 17:01:05 1996 from: Keith Briffa subject: New Scientist article to: Fred Pearce <100713.1311@CompuServe.COM> Dear Fred I have done a redraft of the article. I know you said not to rewrite it (preferably) but rather to correct, make notes suggestins etc. I thought about this for some time and realized that it woulld be far more difficult to indicate the precise places,the precise problems and the suggested corrections at all of the places I considered were subtle misinterpretations of what I said, or meant, or feel. It therefore seemed easier FOR BOTH OF US if I went through one attempt at what amounts to a simple rewording. This lets me change the inference , correct minor errors and fill in all your questions without having to explain the myriad details of where and why. Do not , please, grimace and get pissed off at my apparent cheek! Hopefully, you can see when you go through this draft that most of it is entirely yours and my changes are meant to be efficient and constructive. I hope you will be able to accept this version pretty much as it stands now. Incidentally, a pedantic point, but where you refer to a tree with rings about 30 microns wide being equivelent to a tree increasing its GIRTH by one centimetre in 100 years, should this not be 2 cms? Assuming the tree has a starting diameter of about 15 cm , after 100 years its diameter will be 15.6 cm (the rings occur on both sides of the tree) so that the cicumference change over this period will be 1.9 cm. There remain a couple of points for your consideration. Is it possible, somehow, to get the ADVANCE-10K name in and explained( i.e. the project title)? This is important to us as publicity in the context of our funding. Also, I spoke to you about the problem of anthropogenic influences ( i.e. increased CO2, nitrate fallout , increased UV radiation) possibly having an influence on recent tree growth and so complicating our efforts to use these recent data to define how we interpret past tree growth. Is it possible to put in some reference to me worrying about this? Finally, can you suggest to the editor that we put a footnote in to flag our home page which details all the objectives and participants ? (perhaps with the reference to the ADVANCE-10K acronym,title and grant number) I look forward to hearing from you and can send the text as ASCII, WORD or WORDPERFECT files - for now should I fax it and if so to where? cheers Keith