date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:26:33 -0000 from: "Glenn McGregor" subject: RE: Update on response to Douglass et al. to: "Tim Osborn" Tim thanks for your comprehensive response I have no problem treating the Santer et al contribution as a full paper. I just assumed that they wanted to publish a comment. So if you would like to relay this to BS I would be grateful. Needless to say my offer of a quick turn around time etc still stands Yes you are correct about the forecast - tried to do a mountain flight for the 2nd time today but cancelled due to cloud cover over Everest and environs Best Glenn -----Original Message----- From: Tim Osborn [mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 11:25 AM To: Glenn McGregor Subject: RE: Update on response to Douglass et al. Hi again Glenn, I emailed Ben Santer to say that his submission would be dealt with as quickly as possible. He thanked you for offering to expedite it. However it turns out that there is a second reason for his reluctance to submit to IJC, which is that if the submission is treated as a comment on Douglass et al., they may get the last word with a response to his comment. He says that this would be unfair because (these are Ben's arguments, not mine): (1) Douglass et al. was essentially a comment on his previously published work (Santer et al., 2005, Science) and yet wasn't treated as such. (2) He has done a substantial amount of new work that will be included, hence it is more than just a comment on Douglass et al. (3) The Douglass et al. paper had done earlier rounds of submission. It was rejected by GRL at least twice - he knows this because Ben and two others reviewed it and it never appeared. Ben spent a long time on one of these reviews and pointed out most of the points that will be in his new submission! None of these were followed up by Douglass et al., so why should they get the last word in a comment/response when they've had previous opportunity to correct errors. (4) Based on his years of experience dealing with Douglass, Christy and Singer, he expects that their last word would attempt to obfuscate rather than to admit any serious scientific errors. Ben will submit it to IJC only as an independent contribution and not as a comment on Douglass et al. This would leave Douglass the opportunity to submit a comment on Ben's paper; if he chose to do so, then Ben would be able to respond with a reply to the comment. However Ben is unsure whether you would want to treat his submission as an independent contribution, since it will clearly be directly critical of Douglass et al. Obviously he would like to know how it would be treated prior to final preparation and submission. Personally I get less worked up than some people do when occasional papers turn out to be in error (if this is the case here)... the scientific record will become clear in time, in my view, and this will be so wherever the Santer piece gets published and whoever has the last word in this particular exchange. Nevertheless, Ben is quite clear that he will submit to IJC only if it is treated as a new contribution... and that's up to you (I appreciate it may be a difficult one to answer without actually seeing his submission!). Regarding reviewers, I could certainly help out by finding some willing and available... Francis Zwiers might be willing to look at it, and I there are various other people quite independent from either Santer or Douglass. Hope Kathmandu is fun (weather forecast looks somewhat cloudy!) Cheers Tim Dr Timothy J Osborn, Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK e-mail: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk phone: +44 1603 592089 fax: +44 1603 507784 web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ sunclock: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm