There may, in fact, be an opportunity here. As you know, we suspect that there
has been an abuse of the scientific review process at the journal editor level.
The method is to choose reviewers who are sympathetic to the anti-greenhouse
view. Recent papers in GRL (including the M&M paper) have clearly not been
reviewed by appropriate people. We have a strong suspicion that this is the case,
but, of course, no proof because we do not know *who* the reviewers of these
papers have been. Perhaps now is the time to make this a direct accusation and
request (or demand) that this information be made available. In order to properly
defend the good science it is essential that the reasons for bad science appearing
in the literature be investigated.

The reference is

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=538&filename=1119957715.txt

In the view of the reviewer, there are three steps:
1. It proposes a new method.
2. It claims the new method is better.
3. It claims that the existing method is bogus and much existing work obsolete.

In the email, the reviewer objected mainly that the paper didn’t have sufficient support for step 3.

In retrospect, this needs some clarification: I was talking about Briffa being asked by Ed Cook, in which case Briffa was the author, but neither the editor nor the reviewer. (That is what I was discussing previously, when Mike addressed me, and in which case there was similar criticism.)