An interesting exchange about David Viner's claim that children will not know what snow is in future. In the wake of his statement ITV did a show, and tried to get a dissenting view from UEA (of all places). There are hints of the CMEP agenda being pushed by Jones.
The first email is from the press office at UEA to CRU scientists:
Hello All,
Next Monday night the "Tonight with Trevor Macdonald" show will be about climate change. Dr David Viner is going to be featured on the show, presenting his view that recent extreme weather is due to global warming. I have received a call from David Reddings who is part of the show's team, asking if we have a climate expert who has a different view to Dr Viner - perhaps believing that recent weather has not been caused by global warming but is merely part of the 'natural variability' of the weather. Do we have someone at UEA?
Regards,
Melissa.
Melissa Murphy
Communications Assistant
Press & PR Office
Communications Division
University of East Anglia
The reply from Jones is interesting:
date: Mon Aug 23 15:52:14 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: Tonight with Trevor Macdonald
to: "Murphy Melissa
Melissa,There shouldn't be someone else at UEA with different views - at least not a climatologist. It would also look odd if the two people interviewed with opposite views were from UEA. Maybe you should reply and say we can't find one, saying that most climate experts would take the same view as Dave. The programme could easily dredge someone up, but they wouldn't be an expert on the climate. This is the whole point of the debate recently. The people the media find to put the contrary view are not climate experts.
Phil
I'm also sure that in the wake of Climategate 1 lots of people were saying that Viner was a wildcard and nobody agreed with him. Perhaps readers could check this out.