Von Storch: 'Stupid, politicized action by IPCC'

In email 0555 (February 2005) we see an exchange between Simon Tett of Met Office and Hans von Storch. Shortly before McIntyre’s and McKitrick’s (MM) GRL paper criticising the hockey stick had been published as had been my take on the whole affair in Natuurwetenschap & Techniek.

Tett has been asked by Defra to give an update about the literature in this area. He seems a bit desperate:

Keith/Hans/Chris,

Defra do ask the impossible! Can you help me?

Are there other papers I should be aware of?  Hans/Chris are the statistical criticisms of Mackintyre and McKitrick OK?

Philip — do you have any thoughts? [Beyond that the paleo community cannot do stats!]

This is quite an admission. Von Storch then answers:

Simon,

I think one should list three publications which have stirred some disucsions, namely ours, the one by Anders Moberg and colleagues and Steve Mcintyre’s  in GRL.

I would assign the following significance ot these articles (just among us, please):

— ours: methodical basis for hockey stick reconstruction is weak; discussion was unwisely limited by IPCC declaring MBH to be “true”. (Stupid, politicized action by IPCC, not MBH’s responsbilkity. 

IPCC did one more of these silly oversellings –  by showing the damage curve by Munich Re without proper caveat in the fig caption);

Von Storch then says MM are right:

Mc&Mc: As far as I can say (we did not redo the analysis, but Francis Zwires did) the identfied glitch is real. One should not do it this way.

Later in his email Von Storch mentions my hockey stick article quite favorably:

I should also mention the Crok analysis – Crok is a Dutch journalist who researched the whole field quite extensively. It turns out that the social process, within which the MBH Mc&Mc drama evolved, was certainy not geared twowards best science, but towards defending turfs and claims.