Dear Dr. Cotter,
 
In our re-submission of April 8, responding to comments from Prof. Mann about tree ring sites, we added one paragraph with 145 words. Nature policies describe 2-week windows for author responses and reviewer comments. While we recognize the reasonableness of seeking an additional review by a pertinent specialist for this paragraph, it is now over 110 days since our re-submission. Professor Mann and his colleagues, the original referees and the new specialist should all have finished their reviews by now. If you have sent it out for review and not received a reply, may I suggest that you try Rob Wilson of the University of Edinburgh, who is a specialist in dendrochronology, who has co-authored with Esper, Cook and other leading specialists, but is not an associate of ours or the MBH group. I am sure that he would be able to respond very quickly.

Also, we reiterate the concerns expressed in our previous email, that the final sentence of the July 1 Corrigendum by Mann et al. was factually incorrect, went beyond the parameters set out by Dr. Langenberg concerning admissible material and was added after the preparation of the proofs we had been shown and re-iterate our request the sentence be retracted. We also re-iterate our similar request regarding a comment in the SI brought to your attention in the previous email.

Yours truly

 

Stephen McIntyre

Ross McKitrick