date: Wed Feb 13 10:20:00 2008 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: A warning for Feb 7-8 to: Robert Marsh Bob, Thanks for the summary - more than I was expecting. If you can send me the two offending abstracts when you have some time. Courtillot doesn't seem to realise there are 4 groups - 2 in the US, the Russians still update theirs and then us. From reviewing and rejecting some of his papers, he seems to analyse the data in mysterious ways. I've told him where he can get the data, but he only seems to want the stuff we use here. He forgets the ocean and doesn't seem to want to read the IPCC report. I did hear from Jim. As I expected he was just there for his talk - although he did say he had some good an useful discussions with people at NOC, Soton. He later gave several interviews to journalists - the BBC and was in the Sunday Times last weekend. Cheers Phil At 09:52 13/02/2008, you wrote: Phil - The meeting was rather bizarre in scope, with positions ranging from "IPCC too cautious" (Hansen, Siddall) to "IPCC wrong" (see below). It was only modestly attended, but by an eclectic mix of people (30-50 at any one time). Most talks were sincere and specific in focus (volcanoes, ice sheets, CO2 sequestration, etc.). To be honest, I attended (and contributed a poster) to support my head-of-school (Andrew Roberts, a geomagnetist), who organized the meeting. He knows Courtillot from his discipline & invited him, but Andrew is no skeptic himself - indeed he's driving efforts at NOCS to reduce our carbon footprint. There were two climate skepic talks: Vincent Courtillot and Arnold & Robinson, "Solar modulation of atmospheric transport processes" (Dept. Physics & Astronomy, U. Leicester). Courtillot was fairly rude about the groups contributing air temperature data to the AR4, also ridiculing the fact that only two groups work on such important data (he expects more international competition, hence his belated efforts). He claims that the raw data is witheld due to some agreement - the point you to which you refer below. Based on his limited analysis of European (and a few N. American) station data, he concludes most continental scale warming comprises rapid regime shifts, inevitably linked to the sun (but without explanation). Pressed for an opinion, he believes that CO2 has a negligible influence on climate, and that by 2050 the world will be no warmer than the MWP. I wanted to question him publicly (on the evidence from other changes such as increasing OHC) but I didn't get the chance due to heavy & inevitable questioning on ethics of his casual attitude towards climate change. The other talk was more scientifically searching, drawing attention to influence of coronal mass ejections on the mesosphere, residual atmospheric circulation & teleconnections between high/low atmosphere & high/low latitudes that support the extent & pattern of surface warming. Arnold also claimed that CO2 doesn't really matter. I did pose a question to him, asking how he can ignore all the AR4 model evidence for attribution of 20th century warming to CO2, but he dismisses all OAGCMs as flawed in under-representing the high atmosphere/solar influence. I have abstracts for both talks that I can send on - are you interested to see them? Regards, Bob. On 6 Feb 2008, at 15:43, Phil Jones wrote: Bob, If you can send me a couple of sentences next week sometime that would be good. If Courtillot should go on about the CRU station data, then he can get almost the same data from NCDC. As you know, we do release the gridded data, which is what everybody wants. Cheers Phil At 14:39 06/02/2008, you wrote: Phil - I am indeed presenting a poster at the meeting tomorrow/Friday. I appreciate the forewarning! Speak soon - Bob. On 6 Feb 2008, at 13:36, Phil Jones wrote: Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------