In Oct 2009 the general public were made aware of the disingenuous nature of certain aspects of CACC science with the release of the first batch of “Climategate” E-mails. John O’Sullivan may have seen Climategate as providing another career opportunity. His 20-year teaching career had come to an abrupt end in Feb. 2003 (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-148855) and he appears to have tried several different career paths since then (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-132934 Para. 4), the latest being CEO and Legal Consultant to the PSI blog (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-o-sullivan/19/6b4/84a) .
It seems that John only started assembling his team of “Slayers” in early 2010, pulling together a group of sceptical climate change bloggers and persuading them to join him and contribute to that cobbled-together hodge-podge of blog articles “Slaying the Sky Dragon”. The names of members of the original group started appearing in E-mails that I had from John in Spring 2010. There were Hans, Alan Siddons and me in April, Kent Clizbe (now dissociated) later that month, Joe Olson, Martin Hertzberg and Tim Ball in May, Charles Anderson, Piers Corbyn (now dissociated?) and Will Pratt (now dissociated) in June (Dr Spencer was Ccd on many of those E-mails so perhaps John was trying to get him involved too).
Then came John’s invitation on 3rd July 2010 “ .. Friends, Co-author with me on my new book project .. John .. ” and the outcome, the “Slayers” claiming to be “Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory” (http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/slaying-the-sky-dragon-muddled-confusing/). The comments on Lucia’s thread say it all, especially the final one by Steve Mennie “ .. this tome was definitely not to be taken seriously .. ”.
In his latest offering (April 9 at 12:57 am) dear old Dougy says of the PSI blog membership numbers “ .. about 36 of us now .. ”. On 19th March it was “ .. a growing membership of PSI (now over 40 I understand).. ” then on April 4th it was “ .. nearly 40 of us now .. ”. So from over 40 to about 36 in less that a month. When I dared to suggest on 26th Sept. to John O’Sullivan about “ .. what appears to be a dwindling group of “Slayers” he retorted “ .. your unsubstantiated claim ( in effect, a lie) about the Slayers being in decline is laughable .. ”. Come on Dougy, lets all have a good laugh. Since “transparency” is claimed to be so important to the PSI blog what’s the real number of members. I speculate 10 at the most.
As usual, if anything that I have said here is considered to be unfair or a misrepresentation of the facts then please let me know and I will consider whether or not a retraction or apology is warranted. The last thing that I wish to do is misinterpret the evidence that has been made available to me and present a misleading picture to others.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
