The question of origin vs. the question of validity

There’s a good example from the Climategate emails showing a completely difference response to Jones and I making the same comment to IPCC authors.

In the thread of email 609 (2005-08-01), Jones had asked AR4 chapter 6 author Tim Osborn why they hadn’t shown the Law Dome d18O series (shown in Jones et al 1998 and Jones and Mann 2004) as one of the (scarce) SH proxies in their graphic, a query reported by Osborn to his chapter 6 co-authors as follows:

Phil Jones took a look and asked why we hadn’t included the Law Dome d18O ice core series from Tas van Ommen – but perhaps you’ve already discussed such things in earlier emails?

In my review comments to the AR4 Second Draft, I asked exactly the same question.

6-1231 B 34:12 34:12
What happened to the Law Dome proxy? Why isn’t it shown?
[Stephen McIntyre (Reviewer’s comment ID #: 309-115)]

Coordinating Lead Author Overpeck (CG1- 709. 1153233036.txt) sneered that a so-called “expert” reviewer would ask such a question:

Hi Tim, Ricardo and friends – your suggestion to leave the figure unchanged makes sense to me. Of course, we need to discuss the Law Dome ambiguity clearly and BRIEFLY in the text, and also in the response to “expert” review comments (sometimes, it is hard to use that term “expert”…).

In the incident in question, they were aware that the Law Dome d18O record, one of very few well-dated SH proxies, had a warm MWP. They elected not to show Law Dome d18O in the figure, but to insert a short CYA discussion of Law Dome in the running text.

The difference in attitude to the same comment being made by Phil Jones and by me could hardly be more stark.

While I’m sure that they could with considerable probability identify comments by McKitrick and/or me, by knowing for sure, they were disposed to argue against the comments rather than consider them seriously.

It seems to me that there’s a process interaction between two unusual features of IPCC review here: (1) that the Lead Authors ultimately decide on whether or not to consider a review comment; (2) the naming of the reviewers.