Zorita goes for the jugular

Perhaps sensing blood, Zorita explains Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process.

I know little of Zorita; he appears to be a protege of von S (many of his pubs are with von S; but some with Tett, Moberg, etc., so don’t imagine I’m dismissing him as a nobody). I blogged him, weakly, a while ago. Zorita’s dislike of Mann et al. is nothing new, see his blogging The decay of the hockey stick (notice how, in that blog, he and von S have the pleasant *opportunity* to respond to comments on their papers, whereas the unfortunate Mann *had* to respond to comments. So much for neutrality).

But while Z’s dislike of Mann and Jones has a history, why exactly does he hate Rahmstorf so much? What has poor Stefan done so much to offend, apart from being distinctly more handsome? I may not have been paying close enough attention, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen R’s name coming up in connection with the email hacking. Z is rather coy in his posting. He has read the emails – I think it is not unethical to read them is his rather weaselly way of putting it, as though a double negative can save him – but he doesn’t quote from them. Perhaps he imagines that we all have read every nuance and have attended to his every grudge, and so can know exactly what Rahmstorf’s sins are.

The answer is likely to lie in a 2004 paper by Z/vS, which contained serious errors as detailed in A Mistake with Repercussions. Eduardo “Holier than Thou” Zorita doesn’t come out of this episode too well; it would appear that he has been waiting for a chance to stick the knife in. Perhaps it would be interesting were he to publish his correspondence on the subject? That might be “not uninteresting”, and for someone as interested in transparency as he is, it would be a natural step.

[Update: 1141169545 may enlighten, as may http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/fig-6-13.jpg; I’m assuming GSZ2003 bears a strong resembale to vSZ2004]