In response to our post about the serious errors found in his paper, John McLean said:

What’s the problem with your comprehension, Ove? As our response said, the derivative method was only used to determine the period of the time-lag, a period that was very similar that determined by Phil Jones, one of our critics. Once we’d established the time lag, the Discussion and Conclusions are based only on applying that time lag to the raw data.

It’s quite true that our response didn’t spend a lot directly rebutting Foster et al. That was because those criticisms were misdirected and on some issues downright mendacious.

I wrote the following response but have not received an answer.  The questions are very serious so I feel I should reiterate them:

Nothing wrong with my comprehension, John. I’ve read your paper and the Foster et al paper, and am quite shocked by either your poor understanding of how to analyse climate data or your complicity in deliberately hiding what you didn’t want to find.

John, seeing that you have not been able to counter the fatal flaws found in your paper by Foster and colleagues (Foster et al 2010), can you answer the following questions:

1) Will you and Bob Carter retract the paper and admit the errors publicly?

2) Given that Bob Carter has actively spread these errors and misinformation far and wide, will Bob Carter now apologise to Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Nick Minchin and the many other politicians that he has misled.

(I note that Bob Carter was featured talking about his study as part of  the recent Four Corners episode)

3) Given that Bob Carter wants to “Kill the IPCC” because it made a couple of relatively minor errors (out of 3000 pages), do you think that Bob Carter should be made to resign from James Cook University? Afterall, this is not the first time that adjunct Professor of Bob Carter has been caught out perpetrating a misinformation campaign on the issue of climate change.

4) Do you support a full investigation of you, Bob Carter, Ian Pimer and other sceptics/denialist scientists that have been found to be in such serious error? Or should different standards be applied to these individuals as opposed to the IPCC?