date: Fri Sep 26 18:13:01 2003 from: Mike Hulme subject: letter to PiPG to: p.jones,new_Mark Phil, Mark, For your interest, this is the letter I am sending to PiPG on Monday. Phil - which issue of EOS was Mike Mann's article in? Thanks, Mike ____________________________________________ 29 September 2003 Professor B.W.Atkinson Department of ??????????? Queen Mary College University of London London ???????????????? Dear Bruce, I am writing to resign from my position as Editorial Adviser for the journal Progress in Physical Geography. I do this reluctantly since I believe the journal continues to fulfil a useful and important niche in the geographical sciences I remember my relying heavily upon the journal as an undergraduate geographer more than 20 years ago. I reached this decision after seeing the September 2003 issue of the journal in which I noticed that Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have been asked to provide the annual progress reports for global warming for the journal and after reading their first contribution. This choice of authorship truly baffles me. Both authors are in a department of astrophysics. Neither author is a geographer or climatologist by training. Neither author has published extensively in the field of human-induced climate change. And one of the relatively few scientific peer-reviewed articles they have published in the field of climate change - Soon, W., and S.Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003 seriously questions their credentials to provide accurate and authoritative reviews in the area of global warming (see article published a few weeks ago in the AGU weekly EOS: On past temperatures and anomalous late-20th century warmth by Mann,M.E., Ammann,C.M., Bradley,R.S., Briffa,K.R., Crowley,T.J., Jones,P.D., Oppenheimer,M., Osborn,T.J., Overpeck,J.T., Rutherford,S., Trenberth,K.E., Wigley,T.M.L.; and also the editorial from the publisher in the journal Climate Research by Otto Kinne Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storms, vol. 24:197-198; I attach copies of these articles for your interest). You will gather that I strongly disagree with your choice of author(s) for this annual review. Given that my views as an Editorial Adviser to the journal presumably invited into that capacity to cover the general area of climate change, although maybe I presume too much were not even sought, let alone listened to, I utterly fail to see the point of my continuing in this role or my name being associated with the journal. I would of course be interested to hear of your selection criteria and of your process that led to these two authors being invited to provide the global warming review for the journal. Might I ask that you copy my letter to the member of Arnold publishing staff who is responsible for PiPG. Yours sincerely, Professor Mike Hulme