In 2004, John Christy and I raised questions on the Santer et al paper

Santer, B. et al 2003: Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes. Science 25 July 2003: 479-483. [DOI:10.1126/science.1084123]

in our Comment

Pielke Sr., R.A., and T.N. Chase, 2004: Technical Comment: “Contributions of anthropogenic and natural forcing to recent tropopause height changes”. Science, 303, 1771b.

Ben replied in

Santer, B.D., M.F. Wehner, T.M.L. Wigley, and R. Sausen, 2004: Technical Comment: “Response to Comment on “Contributions of anthropogenic and natural forcing to recent tropopause height changes.” Science, 303, 1771c.

Science would not publish a further Comment, but we documented our response in

Pielke Sr., R.A., T.N. Chase, with input from J. Christy, and T. Reale, 2004: Scientific Comment on Pielke and Chase 2004 and Santer et al 2004.

Now, it seems Kevin Trenberth had problems with the Santer et al paper (for different reasons), but instead of sharing with the science community, elected to just show to a narrow circle of colleagues who are like-minded on the climate issue. This information has just come to light as a result of the newly (August 2012) released e-mails [h/t Fred Singer] reported on at WUWT [click on the image below twice for a clearer version].

It certainly seems that when there is internal disagreement among the Old Boy’s Club, they want to make sure it stays there. As a result, we all lose an important scientific debate on this subject.

source of image