A Climatology Conspiracy?

David Douglas and John Christy have posted “A Climatology Conspiracy “ on the American Thinker blog.  My brief summary of their posting is as follows:

Douglas, Christy, Pearson and Singer (DCPS) submitted a paper to the International Journal of Climatology (IJC) and it was peer reviewed, accepted and published on line on 5 December 2007.  The paper demonstrated that the IPCC climate models that predicted significant “global warming” were largely in disagreed with the observational data.

Thanks to the Climategate release of emails from the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) we know how Team Hockey Stick (THS) reacted to the paper’s publication.  Notified by Andy Revkin of the New York Times, who said the team “…really do need a scrub of singer/christy/etc. effort.”, THS sprang into action.

Taking the lead was Ben Santer, who did not want to respond directly to the DCPS paper because the authors of the DCPS would get the customary “final word”. The plan called for Santer to prepare a paper for submittal to the IJC that will dispose of the DCPS arguments; however there was a problem with this plan in that the Santer paper was about a year behind the already published DCPS.  Tim Osborn of CRU, who is also on the editorial board of IJC, contacted the editor of the IJC, Glenn McGregor, who, according to Osborn , “promises to do everything he can to achieve a quick turn-around” of the Santer paper.  Osborn also says in his email:  “(and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed you and Phil only) that he (McGregor] may be able to hold back the hardcopy (i.e., the print/copy version) appearance of Douglas et al., possibly so that any accepted Santer et al comment could appear along side it.)”.  Thus, on 11 January 2008, THS is informed that it is agreed that the print versions of both papers will be published side-by-side.  They will expedite the process do by identifying in “advance reviewers who are both suitable and available” and delaying the print version of the DCPS paper.

On the 15 November 2008, both papers, Santer and DCPS appear in print.  The DCPS paper waited over eleven months to appear in print and the Santer paper took only 36 days.

Any errors in the preceding summary are mine. The full posting includes even more intrigue and it is a must read.   The full posting by Douglas and Christie can be read here.

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