John Abraham has replied to Christopher Monckton in their ongoing discussion. John Cook has posted the entire reply:
Thank you for taking the time to comment on my presentation. I encourage people to view both of our arguments and make their own conclusions. I stand by my work and welcome judgment by the public and the scientific community. My intention as a professional scientist is to help provide a public disclosure of your scientific methods. I continue to believe that your work seriously misrepresents the science upon which you rely.
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I would like to disclose some new information that I have unearthed. On your 13th slide (another slide with no attribution), you present a graph showing that the Beaufort Sea Ice is growing. Your slide gives the impression that since ice in the Beaufort Sea is growing, there is no concern about global warming. Despite the lack of a citation, I have been able to learn about its origin. The following citation should be useful in this regard for your records.
H. Melling, D. Riedel, and Ze’ev Gedalof, Trends in Thickness and Extent of Seasonal Pack Ice, Canadian Beaufort Sea, Geophysical Research Letters, 24, 1-5, 2005.
I have written to the lead author and he replied….
“You are correct in your assessment that statements in the paper were nuanced…. The change in atmospheric circulation is attributable to… no one really knows but human influence on the atmosphere emissions either of chloro-fluorocarbons or carbon dioxide is the primary candidate. However, with so much multi-year ice gone, it is easy to understand why we have much more open water in September.”
Click through for the whole thing. It’s definitely worth your time.
Clearly, John Abraham’s involvement is exceedingly bad news for Monckton and his followers. Abraham is conspicuously well qualified to take up this fight (see his response for some details), and it seems that he’s not about to fire off a few short posts or e-mails and then move on to something else. On top of it, he’s extremely polite. Monckton has committed the grave tactical error of not ignoring Abraham; he’s now faced with the prospect of choosing between quitting the public conversation or having his arguments, such as they are, dragged from the murky realm of denier sycophants into the bright light of scientific scrutiny.
We all owe Abraham an enormous debt for what he’s done already; I suspect that debt will only increase as this matter continues.
My one fear is how the deniers will try to intimidate Abraham in the coming days and weeks. (And I would bet my Internet connection that these attempts have already begun.) I fully expect to hear about some of the wackaloons in the denier camp, the ones who’ve already established a track record of sending death threats to scientists, contacting Abraham’s university, him, his family, etc.
