Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind

Filed under: Climate ScienceIPCCskeptics— group @ 24 February 2010 

Guest commentary from Ben Santer

Part 2 of a series discussing the recent Guardian articles

A recent story by Fred Pearce in the February 9th online edition of the Guardian (“Victory

for openness as IPCC climate scientist opens up lab doors”) covers some of the more 

publicized aspects of the last 14 years of my scientific career. I am glad that Mr. Pearce’s 

account illuminates some of the non-scientific difficulties I have faced. However, his account 

also repeats unfounded allegations that I engaged in dubious professional conduct. In a 

number of instances, Mr Pearce provides links to these allegations, but does not provide a 

balanced account of the rebuttals to them. Nor does he give links to locations where these 

rebuttals can be found. I am taking this opportunity to correct Mr. Pearce’s omissions, to 

reply to the key allegations, and to supply links to more detailed responses.

Another concern relates to Mr. Pearce’s discussion of the “openness” issue mentioned in the 

title and sub-title of his story. A naïve reader of Mr. Pearce’s article might infer from the subtitle (“Ben Santer had a change of heart about data transparency...”) that my scientific 

research was not conducted in an open and transparent manner until I experienced “a change 

of heart”.

This inference would be completely incorrect. As I discuss below, my research into the 

nature and causes of climate change has always been performed in an open, transparent, and 

collegial manner. Virtually all of the scientific papers I have published over the course of my 

career involve multi-institutional teams of scientists with expertise in climate modeling, the 

development of observational datasets, and climate model evaluation. The model and 

observational data used in my research is not proprietary – it is freely available to researchers 

anywhere in the world.

The 1995 IPCC Report: The “scientific cleansing” allegation

Mr. Pearce begins by repeating some of the allegations of misconduct that arose after 

publication (in 1996) of the Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the Intergovernmental 

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These allegations targeted Chapter 8 of the SAR, which 

dealt with the “Detection of Climate Change, and Attribution of Causes”. The IPCC SAR 

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reached the historic finding that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human 

influence on global climate”. Information presented in Chapter 8 provided substantial support 

for this finding.

I served as the Convening Lead Author (CLA) of Chapter 8. There were three principal 

criticisms of my conduct as CLA. All three allegations are baseless. They have been refuted

on many occasions, and in many different fora. All three allegations make an appearance in 

Mr. Pearce’s story, but there are no links to the detailed responses to these claims.

The first allegation was that I had engaged in “scientific cleansing”. This allegation 

originated with the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) – a group of businesses “opposing 

immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

In May 1996, a document entitled “The IPCC: Institutionalized ‘Scientific Cleansing’?” was 

widely circulated to the press and politicians. In this document, the Global Climate Coalition 

claimed that after a key Plenary Meeting of the IPCC in Madrid in November 1995, all 

scientific uncertainties had been purged from Chapter 8. The GCC’s “scientific cleansing” 

allegation was soon repeated in an article in Energy Daily (May 22, 1996) and in an editorial 

in the Washington Times (May 24, 1996). It was also prominently featured in the World 

Climate Report, a publication edited by Professor Patrick J. Michaels (June 10, 1996).

This “scientific cleansing” claim is categorically untrue. There was no “scientific cleansing”. 

Roughly 20% of the published version of Chapter 8 specifically addressed uncertainties in 

scientific studies of the causes of climate change. In discussing the “scientific cleansing” 

issue, Mr. Pearce claims that many of the caveats in Chapter 8 “did not make it to the 

summary for policy-makers”. This is incorrect.

The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the IPCC SAR is four-and-a-half pages long. 

Roughly one page of the SPM discusses results from Chapter 8. The final paragraph of that 

page deals specifically with uncertainties, and notes that:

“Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because 

the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there 

are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long term 

natural variability and the time-evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in 

concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes”.

Contrary to Mr. Pearce’s assertion, important caveats did “make it to the summary for policymakers”. And the “discernible human influence” conclusion of both Chapter 8 and the 

Summary for Policymakers has been substantiated by many subsequent national and 

international assessments of climate science.

There were several reasons why Chapter 8 was a target for unfounded “scientific cleansing” 

allegations. First, the Global Climate Coalitions’s “scientific cleansing” charges were 

released to the media in May 1996. At that time, Cambridge University Press had not yet 

published the IPCC Second Assessment Report in the United States. Because of this delay in 

the Report’s U.S. publication, many U.S. commentators on the “scientific cleansing” claims 

had not even read Chapter 8 – they only had access to the GCC’s skewed account of the 

changes made to Chapter 8. Had the Second Assessment Report been readily available in the 

U.S. in May 1996, it would have been easy for interested parties to verify that Chapter 8 

incorporated a fair and balanced discussion of scientific uncertainties.

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Second, the “pre-Madrid” version of Chapter 8 was the only chapter in the IPCC Working 

Group I Second Assessment Report to have both an “Executive Summary” and a

“Concluding Summary”. As discussed in the next section, this anomaly was partly due to the 

fact that the Lead Author team for Chapter 8 was not finalized until April 1994 – months 

after all other chapters had started work. Because of this delay in getting out of the starting 

blocks, the Chapter 8 Lead Author team was more concerned with completing the initial 

drafts of our chapter than with the question of whether all chapters in the Working Group I 

Report had exactly the same structure.

The reply of the Chapter 8 Lead Authors to the Energy Daily story of May 22, 1996 

pointed out this ‘two summary’ redundancy, and noted that:

“After receiving much criticism of this redundancy in October and November 1995, the 

Convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 decided to remove the concluding summary. About 

half of the information in the concluding summary was integrated with material in Section 

8.6. It did not disappear completely, as the Global Climate Coalition has implied. The 

lengthy Executive Summary of Chapter 8 addresses the issue of uncertainties in great detail – 

as does the underlying Chapter itself.”

The removal of the concluding summary made it simple for the Global Climate Coalition to 

advance their unjustified “scientific cleansing” allegations. They could claim ‘This statement 

has been deleted’, without mentioning that the scientific issue addressed in the deleted 

statement was covered elsewhere in the chapter.

This was my first close encounter of the absurd kind.

The 1995 IPCC Report: The “political tampering/corruption of peer-review” allegation

The second allegation is that I was responsible for “political tampering”. I like to call this 

“the tail wags the dog” allegation. The “tail” here is the summary of the Chapter 8 results in 

the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, and the “dog” is the detailed underlying text of 

Chapter 8.

In November 1995, 177 government delegates from 96 countries spent three days in Madrid. 

Their job was to “approve” each word of the four-and-a-half page Summary for 

Policymakers of the IPCC’s Working Group I Report. This was the report that dealt with the 

physical science of climate change. The delegates also had the task of “accepting” the 11 

underlying science chapters on which the Summary for Policymakers was based. 

“Acceptance” of the 11 chapters did not require government approval of each word in each 

chapter.

This was not a meeting of politicians only. A number of the government delegates were 

climate scientists. Twenty-eight of the Lead Authors of the IPCC Working Group I Report – 

myself included – were also prominent participants in Madrid. We were there to ensure that 

the politics did not get ahead of the science, and that the tail did not wag the dog.

Non-governmental organizations – such as the Global Climate Coalition – were also active 

participants in the Madrid meeting. NGOs had no say in the formal process of approving the 

Summary for Policymakers. They were, however, allowed to make comments on the SPM 

and the underlying 11 science chapters during the first day of the Plenary Meeting 

(November 27, 1996). The Global Climate Coalition dominated the initial plenary 

discussions.

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Most of the plenary discussions at Madrid focused on the portrayal of Chapter 8’s findings in 

the Summary for Policymakers. Discussions were often difficult and contentious. We 

wrestled with the exact wording of the “balance of evidence” statement mentioned above. 

The delegations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait argued for a very weak statement, or for no 

statement at all. Delegates from many other countries countered that there was strong 

scientific evidence of pronounced a human effect on climate, and that the bottom-line 

statement from Chapter 8 should reflect this.

Given the intense interest in Chapter 8, Sir John Houghton (one of the two Co-Chairs of 

IPCC Working Group I) established an ad hoc group on November 27, 1996. I was a member 

of this group. Our charge was to review those parts of the draft Summary for Policymakers 

that dealt with climate change detection and attribution issues. The group was placed under 

the Chairmanship of Dr. Martin Manning of New Zealand, and included delegates from the 

U.S., the U.K., Canada, Kenya, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Sir John Houghton also 

invited delegates from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to participate in this ad hoc group. 

Unfortunately, they did not accept this invitation.

The ad hoc group considered more than just the portions of the Summary for Policymakers 

that were relevant to Chapter 8. The Dutch delegation asked for a detailed discussion of 

Chapter 8 itself, and of the full scientific evidence contained in it. This discussion took place 

on November 28, 1996.

On November 29, 1996, I reported back to the Plenary on the deliberations of the ad hoc 

group. The Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti delegations – who had not attended any of the 

discussions of the ad hoc group, and had no first-hand knowledge of what had been discussed 

by the group – continued to express serious reservations about the scientific basis for the 

detection and attribution statements in the Summary for Policymakers.

On the final evening of the Madrid Plenary Meeting, debate focused on finding the right 

word to describe the human effect on global climate. There was broad agreement among the 

government delegates that – based on the scientific evidence presented in Chapter 8 – some 

form of qualifying word was necessary. Was the human influence “measurable”? Could it be 

best described as “appreciable”, “detectable”, or “substantial”? Each of these suggested 

words had proponents and opponents. How would each word translate into different 

languages? Would the meaning be the same as in English?

After hours of often rancorous debate, Bert Bolin (who was then the Chairman of the IPCC) 

finally found the elusive solution. Professor Bolin suggested that the human effect on climate 

should be described as “discernible”.

Mr. Pearce – who was not present at the Madrid Plenary Meeting – argues that the discussion 

of human effects on climate in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers “went beyond what was 

said in the chapter from which the summary was supposedly drawn”. In other words, he 

suggests that the tail wagged the dog. This is not true. The “pre-Madrid” bottom-line 

statement from Chapter 8 was “Taken together, these results point towards a human influence 

on climate”. As I’ve noted above, the final statement agreed upon in Madrid was “The 

balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”.

Is “suggests” stronger than “points towards”? I doubt it. Is “The balance of evidence” a more 

confident phrase than “Taken together”? I don’t think so.

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The primary difference between the pre- and post-Madrid statements is that the latter 

includes the word “discernible”. In my American Heritage College Dictionary, “discernible” 

is defined as “perceptible, as by vision or the intellect”. In Merriam-Webster’s Online 

Dictionary, one of the three meanings of the verb “discern” is “to recognize or identify as 

separate and distinct”. Was the use of “discernible” justified?

The answer is clearly “yes”. Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report relied 

heavily on the evidence from a number of different “fingerprint” studies. This type of 

research uses rigorous statistical methods to compare observed patterns of climate change 

with results from climate model simulations. The basic concept of fingerprinting is that each 

different influence on climate – such as purely natural changes in the Sun’s energy output, or 

human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases – has a unique signature in 

climate records. This uniqueness becomes more apparent if one looks beyond changes 

averaged over the entire globe, and instead exploits the much greater information content 

available in complex, time-varying patterns of climate change.

Fingerprinting has proved to be an invaluable tool for untangling the complex cause-andeffect relationships in the climate system. The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 

was able to draw on fingerprint studies from a half-dozen different research groups. Each of 

these groups had independently shown that they could indeed perceive a fingerprint of 

human influence in observed temperature records. The signal was beginning to rise out of the 

noise, and was (using Merriam-Webster’s definition of “discern”) “separate and distinct” 

from purely natural variations in climate.

Based on these fingerprint results, and based on the other scientific evidence available to us 

in November 1995, use of the word “discernible” was entirely justified. Its use is certainly 

justified based on the scientific information available to us in 2010. The “discernible human 

influence” phrase was approved by all of the 177 delegates from 96 countries present at the 

Plenary Meeting – even by the Saudi and Kuwaiti delegations. None of the 28 IPCC Lead 

Authors in attendance at Madrid balked at this phrase, or questioned our finding that “the 

balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. The latter 

statement was cautious and responsible, and entirely consistent with the state of the science. 

The much more difficult job of trying to quantify the size of human influences on climate 

would be left to subsequent IPCC assessments.

Mr. Pearce’s remarks suggest that there is some substance to the “political tampering” 

allegation – that I was somehow coerced to change Chapter 8 in order to “reflect the wording 

of the political summary”. This is untrue. There was no political distortion of the science. 

If Mr. Pearce had been present at the Madrid Plenary Meeting, he would have seen how 

vigorously (and successfully) scientists resisted efforts on the part of a small number of 

delegates to skew and spin some of the information in the Summary for Policymakers.

The key point here is that the SPM was not a “political summary” – it was an accurate 

reflection of the science. Had it been otherwise, I would not have agreed to put my name on 

the Report.

A reader of Mr. Pearce’s article might also gain the mistaken impression that the changes to 

Chapter 8 were only made in response to comments made by government delegates during 

the Madrid Plenary Meeting. That is not true. As I’ve mentioned above, changes were also 

made to address government comments made during the meeting of the ad hoc group formed 

to discuss Chapter 8.

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Furthermore, when I first arrived in Madrid on November 26, 1995, I was handed a stack of 

government and NGO comments on Chapter 8 that I had not seen previously. I had the 

responsibility of responding to these comments.

One reason for the delay in receiving comments was that the IPCC had encountered 

difficulties in finding a Convening Lead Author (CLA) for Chapter 8. To my knowledge, the 

CLA job had been turned down by at least two other scientists before I received the job offer. 

The unfortunate consequence of this delay was that, at the time of the Madrid Plenary 

Meeting, Chapter 8 was less mature and polished than other chapters of the IPCC Working 

Group I Report. Hence the belated review comments.

The bottom line in this story is that the post-Madrid revisions to Chapter 8 were made for 

scientific, not political reasons. They were made by me, not by IPCC officials. The changes 

were in full accord with IPCC rules and procedures (pdf). Mr. Pearce repeats accusations 

by Fred Seitz that the changes to Chapter 8 were illegal and unauthorized, and that I was 

guilty of “corruption of the peer-review process”. These allegations are false, as the IPCC has 

clearly pointed out.

The 1995 IPCC Report: The “research irregularities” allegation

The third major front in the attack on Chapter 8 focused on my personal research. It was a 

two-pronged attack. First, Professor S. Fred Singer claimed that the IPCC’s “discernible 

human influence” conclusion was entirely based on two of my own (multi-authored) research 

papers. Next, Professor Patrick Michaels argued that one of these two papers was seriously 

flawed, and that irregularities had occurred in the paper’s publication process. Both charges 

were untrue.

On July 25, 1996, I addressed the first of these allegations in an email to the Lead Authors

of the 1995 IPCC Report:

“Chapter 8 references more than 130 scientific papers – not just two. Its bottom-line 

conclusion that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global 

climate” is not solely based on the two Santer et al. papers that Singer alludes to. This 

conclusion derives from many other published studies on the comparison of modelled and 

observed patterns of temperature change – for example, papers by Karoly et al. (1994), 

Mitchell et al. (1995), Hegerl et al. (1995), Karl et al. (1995), Hasselmann et al. (1995), 

Hansen et al. (1995) and Ramaswamy et al. (1996). It is supported by many studies of globalmean temperature changes, by our physical understanding of the climate system, by our 

knowledge of human-induced changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, by 

information from paleoclimatic studies, and by a wide range of supporting information (sealevel rise, retreat of glaciers, etc.). To allege, as Singer does, that “Chapter 8 is mainly based 

on two research papers” is just plain wrong”.

In the second prong of the attack, Professor Michaels claimed that a paper my colleagues and 

I had published in Nature in 1996 had been selective in its use of observational data, and that 

our finding of a human fingerprint in atmospheric temperature data was not valid if a longer 

observational record was used. Further, he argued that Nature had been “toyed 

with” (presumably by me), and coerced into publishing the 1996 Santer et al. Nature paper 

one week prior to a key United Nations meeting in Geneva.

My colleagues and I immediately addressed the scientific criticism of our Nature paper by 

Michaels and his colleague Chip Knappenberger. We demonstrated that this criticism was 

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simply wrong. Use of a longer record of atmospheric temperature change strengthened 

rather than weakened the evidence for a human fingerprint. We published this work in 

Nature in December 1996. Unfortunately, Mr. Pearce does not provide a link to this 

publication.

Since 1996, studies by a number of scientists around the world have substantiated the 

findings of our 1996 Nature paper. Such work has consistently shown clear evidence of a 

human fingerprint in atmospheric temperature records.

Disappointingly, Professor Michaels persists in repeating his criticism of our paper, without 

mentioning our published rebuttal or the large body of subsequently published evidence

refuting his claims. Michaels’ charge that Nature had been “toyed with” was complete 

nonsense. As described below, however, this was not the last time I would be falsely accused 

of having the extraordinary power to force scientific journals to do my bidding.

A Climatology Conspiracy? More “peer-review abuse” accusations

Mr. Pearce also investigates a more recent issue. He implies that I abused the normal peerreview system, and exerted pressure on the editor of the International Journal of Climatology 

to delay publication of the print version of a paper by Professor David Douglass and 

colleagues. This is not true.

The Douglass et al. paper was published in December 2007 in the online edition of the 

International Journal of Climatology. The “et al.” included the same Professor S. Fred Singer 

who had previously accused me of “scientific cleansing”. It also included Professor John 

Christy, the primary developer of a satellite-based temperature record which suggests that 

there has been minimal warming of Earth’s lower atmosphere since 1979. Three alternate 

versions of the satellite temperature record, produced by different teams of researchers using 

the same raw satellite measurements, all indicate substantially more warming of the 

Earth’s atmosphere.

The focus of the Douglass et al. paper was on post-1979 temperature changes in the tropics. 

The authors devised what they called a “robust statistical test” to compare computer model 

results with observations. The test was seriously flawed (see Appendix A in Open Letter to 

the Climate Science Community: Response to A “Climatology Conspiracy?”). When it was 

applied to the model and observational temperature datasets, the test showed (quite 

incorrectly) that the model results were significantly different from observations.

As I have noted elsewhere, the Douglass et al. paper immediately attracted considerable 

media and political attention. One of the paper’s authors claimed that it represented an 

“inconvenient truth”, and proved that “Nature, not humans, rules the climate”. These 

statements were absurd. No single study can overturn the very large body of scientific 

evidence supporting “discernible human influence” findings. Nor does any individual study 

provide the sole underpinning for the conclusion that human activities are influencing global 

climate.

Given the extraordinary claims that were being made on the basis of this incorrect paper, my 

colleagues and I decided that a response was necessary. Although the errors in Douglass et 

al. were easy to identify, it required a substantial amount of new and original work to repeat 

the statistical analysis properly.

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Our work went far beyond what Douglass et al. had done. We looked at the sensitivity of 

model-versus-data comparisons to the choice of statistical test, to the test assumptions, to the 

number of years of record used in the tests, and to errors in the computer model estimates of 

year-to-year temperature variability. We also examined how the statistical test devised by 

Douglass et al. performed under controlled conditions, using random data with known 

statistical properties. From their paper, there is no evidence that Douglass et al. considered 

any of these important issues before making their highly-publicized claims.

Our analysis clearly showed that tropical temperature changes in observations and climate 

model simulations were not fundamentally inconsistent – contrary to the claim of Douglass 

and colleagues. Our research was published on October 10, 2008, in the online edition of 

the International Journal of Climatology. On November 15, 2008, the Douglass et al. and 

Santer et al. papers appeared in the same print version of the International Journal of 

Climatology.

In December 2009, shortly after the public release of the stolen emails from the University of 

East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Professors David Douglass and John Christy accused 

me of leading a conspiracy to delay publication of the print version of the Douglass et al. 

paper. This accusation was based on a selective analysis of the stolen emails. It is false.

In Mr. Pearce’s account of this issue, he states that “There is no doubt the (sic) Santer and his 

colleagues sought to use the power they held to the utmost...” So what are the facts of this 

matter? What is the “power” Fred Pearce is referring to?

Fact 1: The only “power” that I had was the power to choose which scientific journal to 

submit our paper to. I chose the International Journal of Climatology. I did this because the 

International Journal of Climatology had published (in their online edition) the seriously 

flawed Douglass et al. paper. I wanted to give the journal the opportunity to set the scientific 

record straight.

•

Fact 2: I had never previously submitted a paper to the International Journal of Climatology. 

I had never met the editor of the journal (Professor Glenn McGregor). I did not have any 

correspondence or professional interaction with the editor prior to 2008.

•

Fact 3: Prior to submitting our paper, I wrote an email to Dr. Tim Osborn on January 10, 

2008. Tim Osborn was on the editorial board of the International Journal of Climatology. I 

told Dr. Osborn that, before deciding whether we would submit our paper to the International 

Journal of Climatology, I wanted to have some assurance that our paper would “be regarded 

as an independent contribution, not as a comment on Douglass et al.” This request was 

entirely reasonable in view of the substantial amount of new work that we had done. I have 

described this new work above.

•

Fact 4: I did not want to submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology if there 

was a possibility that our submission would be regarded as a mere “comment” on Douglass 

et al. Under this scenario, Douglass et al. would have received the last word. Given the 

extraordinary claims they had made, I thought it unlikely that their “last word” would have 

acknowledged the serious statistical error in their original paper. As subsequent events 

showed, I was right to be concerned – they have not admitted any error in their work.

•

Fact 5: As I clearly stated in my email of January 10 to Dr. Tim Osborn, if the International 

Journal of Climatology agreed to classify our paper as an independent contribution, 

“Douglass et al. should have the opportunity to respond to our contribution, and we should be 

given the chance to reply. Any response and reply should be published side-by-side...”

•

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Fact 6: The decision to hold back the print version of the Douglass et al. paper was not mine. 

It was the editor’s decision. I had no “power” over the publishing decisions of the 

International Journal of Climatology.

•

This whole episode should be filed under the category “No good deed goes unpunished”. My 

colleagues and I were simply trying to set the scientific record straight. There was no 

conspiracy to subvert the peer-review process. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are easy to 

disseminate. Many are willing to accept these theories at face value. The distribution of facts 

on complex scientific issues is a slower, more difficult process.

Climate Auditing – Close Encounters with Mr. Steven McIntyre 

Ten days after the online publication of our International Journal of Climatology paper, Mr. 

Steven McIntyre, who runs the “ClimateAudit” blog, requested all of the climate model data 

we had used in our research. I replied that Mr. McIntyre was welcome to “audit” our 

calculations, and that all of the primary model data we had employed were archived at 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and freely available to any researcher. Over 3,400 

scientists around the world currently analyze climate model output from this open database.

My response was insufficient for Mr. McIntyre. He submitted two Freedom of Information 

Act (FOIA) requests for climate model data – not for the freely available raw data, but for the 

results from intermediate calculations I had performed with the raw data. One FOIA request 

also asked for two years of my email correspondence related to these climate model data sets.

I had performed these intermediate calculations in order derive weighted-average 

temperature changes for different layers of the atmosphere. This is standard practice. It is 

necessary since model temperature data are available at specific heights in the atmosphere, 

whereas satellite temperature measurements represent an average over a deep layer of the 

atmosphere. The weighted averages calculated from the climate model data can be directly 

compared with actual satellite data. The method used for making such intermediate 

calculations is not a secret. It is published in several different scientific journals.

Unlike Mr. McIntyre, David Douglass and his colleagues (in their International Journal of 

Climatology paper) had used the freely available raw model data. With these raw datasets, 

Douglass et al. made intermediate calculations similar to the calculations we had performed. 

The results of their intermediate calculations were similar to our own intermediate results. 

The differences between what Douglass and colleagues had done and what my colleagues 

and I had done was not in the intermediate calculations – it was in the statistical tests each 

group had used to compare climate models with observations.

The punch-line of this story is that Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests 

were completely unnecessary. In my opinion, they were frivolous. Mr. McIntyre already had 

access to all of the information necessary to check our calculations and our findings.

When I invited Mr. McIntyre to “audit” our entire study, including the intermediate 

calculations, and told him that all the data necessary to perform such an “audit” were freely 

available, he expressed moral outrage on his blog. I began to receive threatening emails. 

Complaints about my “stonewalling” behavior were sent to my superiors at Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory and at the U.S. Department of Energy.

A little over a month after receiving Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests, I 

decided to release all of the intermediate calculations I had performed for our International 

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Journal of Climatology paper. I made these datasets available to the entire scientific 

community. I did this because I wanted to continue with my scientific research. I did not 

want to spend all of my available time and energy responding to harassment incited by Mr. 

McIntyre’s blog.

Mr. Pearce does not mention that Mr. McIntyre had no need to file Freedom of Information 

Act requests, since Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the raw climate model data we 

had used in our study (and to the methods we had used for performing intermediate 

calculations). Nor does Mr. Pearce mention the curious asymmetry in Mr. McIntyre’s 

“auditing”. To my knowledge, Mr. McIntyre – who purports to have considerable statistical 

expertise – has failed to “audit” the Douglass et al. paper, which contained serious statistical 

errors.

As the “Climategate” emails clearly show, there is a pattern of behavior here. My encounter 

with Mr. McIntyre’s use of FOIA requests for “audit” purposes is not an isolated event. In 

my opinion, Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA requests serve the purpose of initiating fishing 

expeditions, and are not being used for true scientific discovery.

Mr. McIntyre’s own words do not present a picture of a man engaged in purely dispassionate 

and objective scientific inquiry:

“But if Santer wants to try this kind of stunt, as I’ve said above, I’ve submitted FOI requests 

and we’ll see what they turn up. We’ll see what the journal policies require. I’ll also see what 

DOE and PCDMI administrators have to say. We’ll see if any of Santer’s buddies are 

obligated to produce the data. We’ll see if Santer ever sent any of the data to his buddies”

(Steven McIntyre; posting on his ClimateAudit blog; Nov. 21, 2008).

My research is subject to rigorous scrutiny. Mr. McIntyre’s blogging is not. He can issue 

FOIA requests at will. He is the master of his domain – the supreme, unchallenged ruler of 

the “ClimateAudit” universe. He is not a climate scientist, but he has the power to singlehandedly destroy the reputations of exceptional men and women who have devoted their 

entire careers to the pursuit of climate science. Mr. McIntyre’s unchecked, extraordinary 

power is the real story of “Climategate”. I hope that someone has the courage to tell this 

story.

Benjamin D. Santer

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow 

San Ramon, California 

February 22, 2010*

*These remarks reflect the personal opinions of Benjamin D. Santer. They do not reflect the official views of 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the U.S. Department of Energy. In preparing this document, I

would like to acknowledge the assistance of Tom Wigley, Myles Allen, Kristin Aydt, Graham Cogley, Peter 

Gleckler, Leo Haimberger, Gabi Hegerl, John Lanzante, Mike MacCracken, Gavin Schmidt, Steve Sherwood, 

Susan Solomon, Karl Taylor, Simon Tett, and Peter Thorne.

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