Read here. The violence-prone and globally discredited Ben Santer has Climategate friends (Kevin Trenberth and Andy Dessler) who recently claimed that the Spencer and Braswell 2011 study is invalid because it did not include prior research to their liking.
Now we have Ben Santer, Carl A. Mears, C. Doutriaux, Peter Martin Caldwell, Peter J. Gleckler, Tom M.L. Wigley, Susan Solomon, Nathan Gillett, Detelina P. Ivanova, Thomas R. Karl, John R. Lanzante, Gerald A. Meehl, Peter A. Stott, Karl E Taylor, Peter Thorne, Michael F. Wehner, Frank J. Wentz publishing a study that totally ignores the challenge of previous, pivotal research by Christy, J.R., B. Herman, R. Pielke, Sr., P. Klotzbach, R.T. McNider, J.J. Hnilo, R.W. Spencer, T. Chase and D. Douglass, 2010.
Hmmmm.....pot meet kettle, eh?
"Santer et al ignored an important paper...Trends are computed for different time periods (e.g. see figure 2 in Christy et al 2010), and should have been compared with the model predictions...The failure of Santer et al to include a very relevant paper with respect to their analysis is one of the justifications for Wolfgang Wagner to resign from Remote Sensing in response to claims that Spencer and Braswell (S&B) ignored relevant papers that disagreed with S&B."
Fair is fair.....Santer et al. is simply discredited due to this lack of respect for the new era of Climategate-style research. Santer needs to apologize to the previous research authors for this gross lack of scientific research rigor, and he could also finally apologize for threatening another climate scientist with violent harm while off his meds. ;-)