I’m not quite sure which questions (specifically coming from you) you are referring to. I don’t ever see you raising questions here about MM’s methodology or work (of course, maybe that’s b/c MM tend to spell things out in gory detail and make such inquiries unnecessary in the first place). I’ve seen John H make demands of Steve that quickly were responded to. That’s in sharp contrast to other researchers who don’t/won’t answer questions, won’t share their source code, etc, or other websites which censor questions such as, “since when is an interpretation considered science?”

Funny that, give the responses to the only two persistent questioners of this place, myself and John Hunter.

(I sense an ad hom winging it’s way towards me, probably not from you though… You see, I ask the wrong kind of questions…)

Anyone with a shred of confidence in their work would not have any qualms about responding to the “witch hunt.” It should just be a relatively minor inconvenience of time consumption. I can say that I’ve had to give depositions about the accuracy and validity of my work in the past, and while I dreaded the time spend in front of lawyers, looked forward to and very much enjoyed showing up the opposing side.

“Or would you John A, be happy for some lefty politico to behave in a similar way towards Climate Audit?”

I would welcome “some lefty politico” to behave in such a manner as opposed to the status quo of saying, “We’ll assume the peer review process worked with Mann’s reconstructions.”

The danger is not what you consider “political interference” or “intimidation even.” The danger is a lack of questioning.

The political interference, intimidation even, has come primarily from self-serving bureaucracies with a vested interest in keeping methodologies secret while publicizing results which cannot be checked and which fly in the face of lots of other published works.

The Committee has asked questions because it represents the US taxpayer who is paying Mann, Bradley and Hughes’ paychecks, and wants to know why results have not been checked and methodologies kept secret. There is no intimidation implied.

At the end of the day, somebody has to call scientists to account for the money spent. Nobody is suggesting that science should be curtailed for political reasons.

I didn’t say temps would drop dramatically sometime in the future…I simply said the occurance of such a thing would be the only reasonable analogy I could find between climatology and the internet.

I actually expect land-based temperature readings to gradually warm for the next several years to up to two decades. I do think we would see some cooling in the land-based readings with a PDO phase shift. Such a thing should likely not have a significant effect on average global temps, but I think it may significantly and disproportionately affect measuring stations and give an appearance of global cooling (just as I think the last shift may have disproportinately created the impression of global warming that really isn’t). And the urban heat island effect will also continue to both increase in magnitude and spread.

I would certainly be willing to wager that if the average land-based measurements of the earth’s temperature are cooler 5, 10, 15, or 25 years from now, you will find blamesayers claim it is “due to global warming.”

Or would you John A, be happy for some lefty politico to behave in a similar way towards Climate Audit?

Shameful would be the behavior of somebody who has already accused the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce of a "witch hunt" and accused its chairman of bias because a few of his donors are from "fossil fuel" concerns. Is that shameful person worried about something?

Lubos did not accuse “nearly all climate scientists” of dishonesty, unless of course, you impute that “honest climate scientists” are few and far between…

Lubos, stick to you dimensions & strings mate and stop accusing nearly all climate scientists of dishonesty – grrrrr. Shameful.

Then again, maybe your analogy isn’t so bad underneath the surface. I can recall when investor after investor jumped on the internet stock bandwagon and made the Nasdaq look like the hockey-stick. It was going nowhere but up, and faster than ever, they said. They laughed at anyone who doubted them. Then lo-and-behold the bubble burst and the hockey-stickers came crashing to the earth.