Mike Mann's "secret" meeting on the Medieval Warm Period

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, ‘1984’

Don’t they just have to revamp that old nature trick (you know the one that is not a trick at all but rather a clever thing to do) that they employed in ‘hide the decline’ ? I think that we can all guess as to what will remain of the MWP once proper homogenisation and other statistical tools have been used to massage whoops I mean to present the data in a meaningful manner easily understood by policy makers.

There will be no straight shooting here. They’ve already shown the nefarious depths to which they will stoop and the pressure to keep this charade going has to be immense.
Expect even more ridiculous conclusions to be published in the fifth assessment.
They will not go quietly into the night.

Where is Keith Briffa?

Well you beat me to it. It had just been posted at Tom Nelson and made my jaw drop. I posted here at once on Tips and Notes but that did not clear for a few minutes, Spam dragon problems I imagine, by which time you had it up on the front page.
Fascinating isn’t it? It raises so many issues it will take time to digest but as far the attendees are concerned the outcome cannot be good. After all there is plenty of time to take the implications apart. And publicise them.
It is what the blogosphere does so well. Cats out of bags really.
Hope all is continuing to go well with the recent medical problem.
Kindest Regards

Sorry to Godwinize this discussion, but it reminds me of Iran’s Holocaust Denial conference a few years ago.

I don’t read many scientific papers, but it’s interesting that Hughes’ intro is written in the style of post-modern poli-sci deconstruction.
There once was a big difference between the language of the hard and soft sciences; maybe not so much any more.

Ready.
Aim.
Shoot foot.

LOL. There are all sorts of Gangs out there. Here we have a Team which I will call The Losers, who cannot admit or maybe, possibly, doubtfully, don’t know how stupid they look. Sorta like “The One.”

Make that Loser. Or Moron.

I hate it when they try to “…..rehabilitate the paleoclimatology so that it plays well in the next IPCC report.”

“Thank you for attending. We, and our media, await your MWP peer-reviews.”

Dr “Mad” Mann will hang around our necks as long as we keep electing and or supporting his benefactors. November 2 should be a harbinger of some sanity to come, but don’t expect this manndness to end any time soon. Watch for the “Biodiversity” bandwagon to roll triumphantly into town any day now, driven by the very same people that brought us acid rain/ozone holes/global warming/climate change/climate disruption/population explosion etc, etc ad nauseated!

What was the original IPCC chart showing the MWP at the same temp level as today based on? WASG?

Seriously? This is the best you could do? “[A]n almost secret meeting”, organized by Mike Mann? You’re getting desperate. The symposium was actually announced in June 2010, and they have a website. Credit where credit is due: yes, Dr. Mann was one of 5 organizers. Ho hum, scientists getting together to talk science – or is that “plan one-world socialist domination!”

I can’t remember where I saw it but back around the Climategate time someone published a diagram that had all the principal actors listed and their connections to each other. I wonder how many of these Lisbon attendees were on that diagram?
The effort to rid the world of the MWP will be a difficult challenge with so many studies contradicting the lame Mannian “science”. More and more bloggers are documenting the skeptical science and making it available for public retrieval/consumption such that it does not bode well for the IPCC and Climategate scientists. Case in point: http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html

The threat of the MWP at present is not to the IPCC or the models– its a 4D ruling challenge in the courts ( Must polar bears be listed as endangered? And can the endangered species act can be used to set climate policy.) A warmer 10-11th century is powerful evidence the bears survival is not endangered at higher temps. The question is- how much higher? Strategically it may be more important to limit the damage and admit the MWP was as warm as current – allowing them to argue the higher anticipated temps are still a threat.
While it is important to focus on science understand the “environmental” NGOs have been focusing on strategy. The circus that is the IPCC main function now may be to deflect attention from the main thrust in the courts using the “pit bull of environmental regualation” the Endangered Species Act. It has already been ceded by the NGOs attainment of the CO2 regs by direct confrontation is no longer possible– they will now come at this sideways– watch for it.
The science and attention has been framed to look at the proxies of the late Holocene. They have framed the debate and we took the bait. We are focused on but one front in the assault on CO2–they have opened a second and perhaps more powerful one with legal teeth.
The real question we need to focus on is how much warmer was it in the early Holocene (not the MWP) and the question of polar bears. And if they lose on the bears they will turn to increasing aridity endangering some western plant, or increasing acidification endangering some near shore mussel, if they lose on that they will find some other claim in the models that will impact some other creature. The NGOs have vast amounts of cash and a universe of attorneys. We better start talking about this soon–and I would advise all to brush up on the ESA and the current legal interpretations. If you thought the Hockey Stick was bizarre wait til you see the “science” behind a sub-population or an evolutionary significant unit . Its about to get far more complex.

jose says:
October 22, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Ho hum, scientists getting together to talk science
Tricks, rewriting history, it’s all just more shop talk from ClimateGate scientists, nothing to see here. Move along folks.
(sarc off)
Prof. William Happer on the Orwellian rewriting of history in the Mann Hockey Stick graph:

Ross McKitrick, an overview of the Hockey Stick graph that wipes out the Medieval Warm Period.

I was very disappointed by the lack of Australian globetrotting Warmist at this exclusive conference, till I realized the 2 cosy little hotels in Lisbon were neither big or grand enough for our globetrotting climate conference rat pack junkies to bother attending. Shame on them now the world is defiantly doomed!
Story:
The Australian Department of Climate Change flew 93 VIP staff members first class to 64 global climate change meetings in just 12 months at a cost of $4.34 million. The swarm of bureaucrats attended more than one international climate conference every week, in a bid to save the world from Co2 induced Climate disruption.
However the appropriate CO2 carbon credit indulgences were purchased to neutralize the excessive/compulsive nature of the down under climate phobic’s. So no actual CO2 was discharge into the atmosphere. Unfortunately copious amounts of unaccounted CO2 were discharged at the conference gabfests, pushing the earth closer to the final climate disruption cataclysm.
See: VIPs’ global swarming for climate change meetings
THE fight against global warming has globe-trotting bureaucrats attending more than one international climate conference every week.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/vips-global-swarming-for-climate-change-meetings/story-e6frf7l6-1225940376755

I think we are seeing a continuing idealogical drift which has been proceeding for some months now – to both defend the hockey stick by various means [some being rather “low”] as well as to sideline it with the idea that a MWP is irrelevant.
In the light of which this phrase from the abstract is quite interesting:
“It is clear from many recent publications, especially many of the abstracts submitted for this meeting, that high-resolution paleoclimatology has moved firmly from the mode of descriptive climatology to that of physical climatology.”
While not having seen the detail behind this summary, it does suggest once again the clear conviction that Gavin once put in print – that whether or not there was a MWP is irrelevant to him – he is being driven almost entirely by the physics, and historical reconstructions only serve the purpose of emphasising the extremes of sea level and climate that we could generate – this time in a much shorter timeframe. Historical reconstructions do not provide an understanding of what causes the climate to change, just how damaging such changes could be.
Putting that in my own words – they have little or no idea what may have caused a MWP (if it happened), but it is not relevant because they are rock solidly convinced by the physics that the rise in CO2 right now will cause a catastrophic shift in the climate. This is what is suggested to me by the phrase “physical climatology”.
This serves again to point back to the role of models in the debate.
It is not only true of historical reconstructions like the MWP – but it is equally true of todays “missing heat” – that the fact that the planet has not warmed in accord with model predictions is irrelevant. There may be all sorts of natural phenomenon suppressing the rise that should be there – but the clear conviction is that the models are describing the base level physics – which can only be suppressed by natural fluctuations for so long. But once the unknown natural causes reach their limits, the underlying physics as represented by the models will come in like a big wave and we will all be ruined.
This is where there are fundamental disconnects between the debating groups. The sceptics are looking at the data and saying “we don’t know”, while the AGW establishment is looking at the models and saying “who cares what the real world measurements are [“they are a distraction”]- we know we are going to destroy the planet”.
I can only add that personally I see this almost hopeless war of ideas against a backdrop of almost entire commitment to the AGW side by media and government as one fulfillment of that saying “because they did not receive the love of the truth.. God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie.”

Has anyone calculated the carbon travelprint of all the participants?
Somebody should tell them about low-carbon teleconferencing…which is technology that is now just about mature enough to be practical.
But I guess if I lhad to work in Swansea, a pre-winter jolly to Lisbon on expenses would be very attractive! And a few glasses of local ginjinha sounds a lot more attractive than a pint of Brains (S Wales joke :-))

Brian Eglinton,
What you summed up could be the case.

Joel Shore says:
October 22, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Boy, scientists doing science (and without alerting the media!)…That does seem nefarious!>>
For someone who, as I recall, claims a Phd in physics from Cornell, you seem quite oblivious to the difference between science and this meeting. This meeting had little to do with science, perhaps nothing at all. It was, as they said, about distracting attention from one matter in order to focus on another and place it in a different context. The only other profession that I know of that adheres to this methodology is the practice of magic. I note that magicians also include the use of “tricks” in their performance, and their skill set includes the ability to “hide” all manner of things. When questioned in regard to their methods, they are as secretive as climate scientists, and notorious for attempting to make their work impossible to replicate by others. None of them to my knowledge however, seriously expect one to believe that anything actually disappears because they waved their wand amidst a puff of smoke and somehow altered reality.
In this they differentiate themselves from climate science. They do not have the egos or daring to claim they are capable of advancing magic to the point that it is indistinguishable from science. I am, on the other hand, prepared to pay money to watch the talented amongst them perform. This is in contrast to the band of climate magi whose performance is designed to make me pay, be they talented or not.

Brian Eglinton,
So they have surrendered because they cannot get rid of the MWP. They lost on that. So they are moving the goal post. It is only a matter of time until they admit defeat there too. They will always lose. Because as Richard Lindzen puts it, (para) “We will win, because we are right, and they are wrong.”
🙂

How will they back cast their models now?
From the World Health Organization
http://tinyurl.com/2dj5e7t
Ruh Roh Rorge.

Climate Change is not your enemy. It is totally natural. It is illogical to fight it. Climate Change is good. It is your friend. It pushes the human race forward.

Why is there little note of the extensive MWP work by the Idso group at co2science? See–
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/description.php
There is no doubt about the basic facts:
“Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 889 individual scientists from 529 separate research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! “

We shouldn’t begrudge the boys a holiday in Portugal, after all if you stay inside playing with your models all the time you become pasty faced and lose all touch with reality. You might even start believing the world is coming to an end. Nothing like a bit of winter sun to melt away the paranoia!

What is interesting is that in the middle of the MWP Europe exeperienced the ‘Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315-1322) resulting from a series of severe weather events. It shows what extremes nature can enforce upon us even though in this case, we still have a warm period. As I write this in Bristol UK, we are already experiencing some unwelcome cold weather. I just hope that we are not on the way to one of these extreme events, and that the sunspots get their act together.
[Wikepedia] was the first of a series of large scale crises that struck North Europe early in the fourteenth century, causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marking a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Starting with bad weather in spring 1315, universal crop failures lasted through 1316 until summer 1317; Europe did not fully recover until 1322.

The Team are up to their ‘old tricks’.

The next UN scare is already pushed down the pipeline.
Mann and Co run the risk to become obsolete = no funding
Pachauri’s IPCC will give it a new go but the next scare is coming.
http://climatequotes.com/2010/10/23/how-the-un-manipulates-the-media-and-the-public-on-biodiversity-part-1/

What about the Roman Warm Period? Archeological evidence shows that grape vines were grown north of York in England, presumably because the Romans preferred to drink wine to poor quality water and wine did not travel well in those slow days. The same varieties now grow only as far as Dijon in France some 300 nautical miles south. (about 550km)

Long live the Medieval Warm Period! It really bugs the Hockey Team. All of this effort, to prove something didn’t exist
Presumably there will be new papers issued shortly, with authors from the Portugese juncket, but actually written by eager idiots from the same faculties as other Team players, keen to make a name for themselves.
I believe that in “fastest draw” style shooting contests, accuracy is not part of the competition.

Just a thought:
The Hockey Team must have worked out by now that hatching cunning plans by email is a tad risky, what with all the troublesome FOI legislation.
So suppose you wanted to hatch a plot to get Wegman to withdraw his report, so that the Hockey Stick can be rehabilitated, so the MWP can be repudiated…
What better way to organise such a ploy than over drinks in a hotel bar in Portugal?

There are thousands of academic conferences and symposia every year that attract no mainstream press coverage – I don’t think there’s anything remarkable about this one. The paleo community is still a small, incestuous and paranoid band, and it is a great pity that they haven’t been practically ignored but rather propelled to iconic status. But since they have been propelled to such prominence they have been subjected to a degree of scrutiny that they could not have foreseen – and we’ve seen the bad behaviour of The Team and their disgraceful incompetence. Whenever Mann appears he will now be considered a laughingstock, except by this community of course, but even this community (as revealed in Climategate emails) consider he is nasty, petulant and a loose cannon. There are surely many other minor areas of science behaving just as badly and incompetently, but their impact on the world is, thankfully, minimal. Not so this group, alas.
The meeting is listed on the Joint Office for Science Support website as an example of “the diversity and breadth of JOSS”. The meeting was announced in advance, and through the relevant channels, but it’s hardly likely to be well known outside this tightly-knit cabal. This is just business as usual for the paleo community. They’ve had it in for the MWP for years. And, yes, Michael Mann was joint organizer. Something else he can put on his 29 page Curriculum Vitae (his paper at Lisbon is on page 17) http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/cv/cv_pdf.pdf. From here we see also that he has been doing the rounds this month promoting his book ‘Dire Predictions’, citing Climategate as a ‘potent example of the politicization of science’ and making sure he gets the message out that he was wholly exonerated of any wrongdoing.

GaryM [October 22, 2010 at 7:11 pm] says:
“Somebody should tell Tom Fuller that the other side of the debate doesn’t think it’s over yet either. The warmist leviathan is like Michael Meyers in the Halloween movies. It isn’t enough to knock him down or shoot him. Once he’s down, you have to cut his head off to make sure he’s dead.“

ROTFLMAO! now you owe me two keyboards and two monitors! The cat is ok this time as he seems to be avoiding the computer that has WUWT on the screen.

Climate [snip] Hides the Medieval Warm Period.
These extremists are always on taxpayers dime.
Climate extremism equals higher taxpayer payouts and worldwide jollys.
[banned word in that context – blog policy ~jove, mod]

Following the conference, a Team spokesperson declared the MWP and LIA were simply epicyclic events. The MWP is simply an object lesson in the dangers of tampering with the climate. The Modern Warm Period will be far more severe. with plagues, famine, fires, pestilence. Due to shrinking species size and increased storm activity, raining frogs will become a more frequent occurence.
The Team then adjourned to ride Lisbon’s No 18(?) tram, which if I’ve got the number right is one of Europe’s best and cheapest roller coasters. Does a nice loop around Lisbon, up and down it’s hills with ocasional stops for people to jump off and bounce parked cars out of it’s way. Lovely city, take hiking boots and visit the port museum to sample it’s port, ham anc cakes. Don’t plan on anything too strenuous after.

Don’t know how anyone missed it.
Look how widely publicized it was.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Medieval+warm+period+redux%22+portugal&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7HPND_en&ei=fNbCTND5D4SBlAfk4dnFCg&start=0&sa=N
WUWT right near the top, so those must all be first reads for everyone. 🙂 And Michael Mann was very quick to add it to his CV! Funny he didn’t write an op-ed about it.
Anyway, all joking aside, I’d be careful about drawing conclusions one way or another about Briffa’s attendance. Right around when climategate broke, word was that he was ill.

Hmm! It seems a pretty extensive list of participants.
How come Craig Lowell wasn’t included on the list?

I dislike conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately, every once in a while a conspiracy theory turns out to be true.

These people are complete scoundrels. The real victim of their grubby machinations will be the integrity of science.
Pointman

As a result, there is little utility in picking over definitions of the geographic and temporal extent of putative epochs, especially in the Late Holocene. The pressing questions concern the dynamics of the climate system, and the relative roles of free and forced variations, whether the forcings are anthropogenic or not.

This appears to be a statement that is saying that combing through yet more proxy records and yet more statistical techniques is pointless. The statistical hockey stick is being thrown under the bus. This is an announcement of complete capitulation of McIntyre. The “proxy” record is not adequate to do what these people wanted it to do.

[Snip. You know why. ~dbs, mod.]

Big Gang Theory…….
The choice of hotel. It is no coincidence.
“As Janelas Verdes” ….The windows Greens

Red-Green’s salad: a macedoine salad.
Macedoine salad: something for everyone. Bring your own Medieval Warm Period (MWP) dressing.
The cunning AGW linguists use enjambment:
“Climate change”, “‘travel chaos'”, “serious threats”, “its effects”, “extreme weather events”, “global warming,”, “‘locked in'”, etc.
The ultimate : “”widespread disruption”.
The ultra-ultimate: “”Climate change in the near future is ‘locked in’ — it’s too late to change that,” she said.”
…-
“Science News: Climate change could bring ‘travel chaos’
UPI.com ^ | October 22, 2010
Rail networks in the United Kingdom face serious threats from climate change and its effects, researchers say.
Scientists from the University of Southampton say extreme weather events, projected to become more common over the next 50 years as a result of global warming, could lead to more landslides and floods.
Damage from such events could cause “widespread disruption” to travel, the researchers say.
“This is a really serious issue which needs to be addressed,” lead author Fleur Loveridge-Wanker, a Ph.D. student at the University of Southampton, said.
“Climate change in the near future is ‘locked in’ — it’s too late to change that,” she said.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2613106/posts

Anthony,
thank you for the notice concerning this conference and the link to the conference abstracts. I have just finished reading all of the abstracts. Other than three or so that have a political bent, the rest are the normal record of plodding scientific research endeavour. No News headlines, how refreshing…… just ongoing science at work.
Regards,
Lorne LeClerc, PGeol.

These people are just MWP deniers.
I guess it’s not surprising to see that grant money continues to flow.

“…there is little utility in picking over definitions of the geographic and temporal extent of putative epochs, especially in the Late Holocene. The pressing questions concern the dynamics of the climate system, and the relative roles of free and forced variations, whether the forcings are anthropogenic or not.”
Why “especially” the late holocene?
Does not a better understanding of “geographic and temporal extent” of these geological epochs help determine the extent of anthropogenic forcings?

“Dale Bourne says:
October 22, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I can’t remember where I saw it but back around the Climategate time someone published a diagram that had all the principal actors listed and their connections to each other. I wonder how many of these Lisbon attendees were on that diagram?”
Dale, is this diagram on Jo Nova’s website what you were referring to?
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/finally-the-new-revised-and-edited-climategate-timeline/

Taken from the conference brochure.
‘with the aim of producing a more definitive monograph of the
MCA/MWP vis-à-vis 20th century climate.’
But if we don’t agree with the monograph, what then? Little red button time I guess.

Anthony,
One might note that not only did the various mainstream media folks
miss the occasion of this “secret” symposium, but so did the pro-AGW
blogs like Real Climate, Deep Climate, and Skeptical Science. Writers
like Romm and even BBC’s Black somehow skipped mentioning the
gathering of VIP paleoclimatologists and climatologists for the
September enclave in Lisbon, Portugal.
Of special interest is that some of the meeting attendees are active
commenters on various blogs under a multitude of pseudonyms, and
they considered it unmentionable.
The list of participants and cited papers indicates mainstream
accedited statisticians either weren’t invited, didn’t submit
any papers, or didn’t even leave any calling cards.
WUWT seems to have opened yet another drawer full of AGW
unmentionables.
A tag line for what the Lisbon meeting was trying to accomplish
might be, “Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat… “

“We meant the title of our 1994 review “Was there a Medieval Warm Period, and if so Where and When?” (Hughes and Diaz, 1994) to be read in two ways. Firstly, it was to be read quite literally. Secondly, it was meant to be ironic.”
That sounds like one of those quantum particles that can be in two different places at the same time!
“A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia.”
Am I to take that as literal or ironic, or both, or can I just take my pick? Whatever they may be skilled in, it is certainly not logic.

Phil jones memory must be playing him up again!!
Attend a jolly to try and wipe the MWP out, yet in a ClimateGate Email
He says everyone knows it was warmer in the MWP. See point 2
http://www.climate-gate.org/email.php?eid=178&s=kwMWP

I think this meeting gives an interesting insight into the mind-set of the CAGW set.
Their logic would seem to follow this pattern:-
We’ve lost the battle to hide the evidence of a MWP which had temperatures similar to today. The hockey stick graph has become a liability.
Lets defocus the importance of this to our CAGW conjecture and concentrate on models which cannot be as easily falsified.
The existence of a MWP at a time when CO2 levels were low, and the lack of any statistically significant warming for the last 15y, when CO2 levels were high and growing puts CAGW between a rock and a hard place.
Expect more wriggling and squirming from the ‘team’ as they attempt to find a solution to please their political masters and keep the grant money coming in.

David M Hoffer, well put, the problem with these magi is they do not as yet posess the power those who preceded them in history did, like Stalin and Hitler, they burbt the books that told the truth about their lies. The Viking history is hard to cover up, if they caim an even climate for 2000 years can we ask where the glaciers came from that engulfed their farmlands and only now are starting to recede (or maybe that has stalled too) were they among the scientists that made fun of the claims that the east coast of Canada is the Viking “vineland” because as any idiot can see there are no vines there??
I have qualifications in obselete computer hardware and general engineering but I plainly see their smoke and mirrors are failing to cover their sad lying asses, it is fraud on a grand scale given that it is against (in england at least) queen and country then treason is their crime, sadly the EU insist on no hanging these days, I will settle for dismissal, stripping of all qualifications and arresting all their assets, thats all.

“A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention”
On the conference, I would say:
“A case will be made for the abandonment of all it’s conclusions on the grounds that it was secretive, political, and that it will very probably produce misleading propaganda”

Jimbo,
You might have highlighted this from your second link:

We find evidence of a widespread medieval warming culminating in the 10–11th centuries, followed by a
gradual cooling into the 17th century, succeeded by a warming from the 18th century that accelerated in the 20th
century. Our result also indicate that the warmth in the 10th and 11th centuries was as uniform as in the 20th
century. However, with a resolution of only 100 years it is not possible to assess whether any decade in the past
was as warm as any in the late 20th or early 21st century. Though the onset and duration of regional temperature
fluctuations, at the sub-continental scale, are not always synchronized across the hemisphere, coherent temperature
regime changes across the hemisphere are clear.

This does not directly contradict the findings of Mann. et. al. 2009, although the proxy count is low. The cited Mann study showed that some of the northern hemisphere was on a par with the 1961 – 1990 mean and a few areas were warmer, but not as warm as the instrumental record indicates for late 20th century when compared with the same baseline period. Silly me, but this seems to be in line with the findings of MBH 99, although Mann et. al. 2009 attempted to define the spatial extent of the MCA. Another, admitted, problem with this study was the fact that it could not be calibrated with the instrumental period because of the coarse resolution of the proxies used.
In the end I cannot agree with the author of the head post, this is a normal conference which featured people presenting their latest results, others stating the needs for data to make forward progress and others proposing directions for future research. There is nothing weird here, lots more gets accomplished via a face to face communication — anyone who has participated in a teleconference will know this.
As far as the charge that conferences are held in nice places… Well yeah. Most everyone is going to have to travel even if a conference is held in say, Glendive, MT in January. So why not hold it in a place where you can have a decent time with a lot of places to socialize outside of the conference. After all, the socializing and resulting cross fertilization of ideas is the real point of these things. God knows, in the days when I used to have employers who were willing the send me to conferences on Computer Science this seemed to me to be the main point. Yeah, it was fun, but mostly because of the people I was able to talk to rather than the place it was held (although that was a nice benefit, Disneyland, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, DC anyone?).

The recent high-profile resignation from the IPCC’s review body (sorry, folks – can’t remember his name – ‘senior moment’) was sniffily dismissed by the climate mafia because the gentleman was a ‘physicist – not a climateologist’. Now it seems that its all physics after all – so presumably his resignation DOES count…

“John M says:
October 23, 2010 at 8:44 am
“Fleur Loveridge-Wanker”
C’mon man, you’re pulling our leg.”
It’s pronounced ‘Vaanker’ so it’s ok.

Phil’s Dad says:
October 22, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Ready.
Aim.
Shoot foot.
LOL! Witty.

They just don’t learn. They’re going to rethink all their reconstructions and “homogenize” the data from various reconstructions, and yet, they still haven’t employed the skills of the worlds statisticians. Although, if they did use acceptable mathematics and proper statistical analysis, they would only prove themselves wrong and be looking for new jobs. So, in the end, I guess I can’t be too surprised.

Maybe they were visiting the boquilobo bog or researching the ancient oaks of Parque National da Peneda-Geres.

EFS_Junior [October 24, 2010 at 4:38 pm] says:
“In most opinion polls, historically, Congress is lucky to get 20+% approval ratings, it’s usually in the teens.”

Well, Gallup says you are wrong. If you ignore the outlier 84% (2001 attacks) you will see that the number is about 40% that Congress struggles to attain.

“Don’t see that changing any regardless of who controls Congress.”

You are clearly wrong here as well, it shows the absolute improvement in the Jan 1995 Gingrich/Contract era and the following ones. As the Congress shifted Dem, the Approval began to fall. Then Pelosi takes over in Jan 2007 with 37% and drove it down to 18%.
That graph ends in May 2008 with approval at 18%, this one covers 2009 to July 2010, where 19% approval takes a mild jump during Barry Hussein Obama’s coronation and then continues the Pelosi death spiral back to 18% again. And some polls even place it into single digits. Also note that there are some 20% ratings in that history and it looks like it only happens when your Dems are in charge.
Reference: Here are the Gallup pages I looked at (the 1st referenced graph is found at the first link, the other is found at the 4th link): 2008-05-14, 2008-07-16, 2010-07-22, 2010-09-20, 2010-10-15. I should point out that Gallup does as well as hiding the raw data as Mann does. I can’t find it anywhere.

“Ijhofe and Burton witch hunts to insue if they regain control of one/both houses of Congress?”

You are worried about Jim Inhofe and Dan Burton? LOL. You should actually be losing sleep over Darrell Issa (currently Ranking Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform). This gent is a Pit Bull. Once that title Ranking Member gets switched to Chairman then you may begin worrying (and begin drinking, just don’t drive ;-).
It is strange that you mentioned witch hunts don’t ya think? I mean we literally had Dems engage in one in Delaware. In case our foreign friends have not heard, the Democratic Socialist party has been busy asking the (R) Senate Candidate if she practiced witchcraft or was in a coven when she was in college! Yep. Right here, right now in the fall of 2010 they have resurrected a practice from 400 years ago! Ironic that this commenter, EFS_Junior, brings up witch hunts even though the Socialist party he is no doubt a member of, actually HAS been engaging in a real-life actual witch hunt. Ironic. Yes? Surprising. No.
Of course he is trying to allude to McCarthy era hearings that were not witch hunts at all since Communist spies are not witches. There actually were and are Communist spies, which is what the entire point was in the first place..

Rattus Norvegicus:
“After all, the socializing and resulting cross fertilization of ideas is the real point of these things.”
And who’s paying for all this?
I assume that the exciting prospect of cross fertlilizing ideas is why Alarmists tend to invite so many sceptics to their jollies.

Dave H says:
October 24, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Blah blah blah . . .
Well a very small number of people will always try and insist that the Emperor really ‘is’ wearing clothes, and it’s the unusually fine nature of the fibres in the garments, that when the light strikes them ‘just so’ imparts this tremendous glowing transparency to the whole ‘ensemble’.
Usually it’s because it has suddently dawned on them that it isn’t just tomorrow’s lunch that’s on the line – it’s their necks on the line too . . . .

I noticed that Kieth Briffa wasn’t there. Wonder if he has let his club membership expire. He’s often struck me as a reluctant hockey player.

“Medieval Climate Anomaly” : Anomaly from Gk. anomalia, noun of quality from anomalos “uneven, irregular. Behind which lies the idea that there is “normal” … the climate as it is supposed to be, and “irregular, anomalous”, the abnormal climate when it isn’t what it is supposed to be.
This is still the outdated ridiculous notion that the climate is in a steady state except when it is pushed to do something else. As far as I can tell looking at the statistics, the truth is the opposite: the normal state of the climate is to be in flux. It is constantly changing, and even the rate of that change is constantly changing. It is anomalous to be static, and it would be more sensible to talk about the 21st century anomaly (the pause in warming/cooling since 2001) because such a period of stasis is trully anomalous, whilst a period of cooler or warmer weather is not. (statistical joke!)

Slight off topic but a great headline – “Michael Mann might get Mediaeval with Agincourt or get Criminal with Big Tuna”.
See http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2010/10/26/michael-mann-might-get-mediaeval-with-agincourt-or-get-criminal-with-big-tuna/

Well said, Mike Haseler, Oct 26 @1.19 am. The last sentence quoted there- “However, with a resolution of only 100 years, it is not possible to assess whether any decade in the past was as warm as any in the late 20th or early 21st centuries”- so mindful of our lack of knowledge about these earlier times- is particularly apt as reminder to those who like to assert that the MWP was warmer than any decade of the 20th century.

I do not think anyone doubts that there was with a large probability a warm period in the North Atlantic area in the period 950 – 1250 AD.
However, there is no evidence (historical or archaeological) that it was warmer than the present. 40 English vineyards in the Doomsday Book is inconclusive evidence – there are wineries in England, Ireland and Wales today – and have been for many years. Even Scotland may be in on the act.
The Norse Greenland colony, for which so much is claimed, did not do much beyond pastoral farming and hunting for bear & walrus. There were not expansive fields of wheat and barley as claimed – only small vegetable gardens. Try reading Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” for a good summary of what is known about the colony. And those graves at Hvalsey Church that Chris Monckton claimed are now embedded in permafrost – afraid not. Hvalsley Church is sinking into the clay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Hvalsey

Conspiracy theories are the last straw for people who don’t have any real arguments.