Replies

Re: identical places, granted, I was just trying to illustrate the point.

Re: Mann, I have never understood Mann to say that.

In his 98 paper he says " ... the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century which corresponds to an especially cold period."

In his 99 paper he says "Our reconstruction thus supports the notion of relatively warm hemispheric conditions earlier in the millennium, while cooling following the 14th century could be viewed as the initial onset of the Little Ice Age"

Also if you look at Mann's reconstruction you see that he shows a cooling of about 0.8C where as the papers that Soon cites seem to call for a cooling of between 1 and 2C. This is well within the error bars on Mann's work (I couldn't find any error bars associated with Soon's work). So, no I don't think Mann just pulled it out of a hat.

Re: Polar Vortex, hey, I wasn't the one that wrote it! If there is any researching/explaining I would expect it to come from Dr. Soon. Also, I don't see how he can make the link from Global temperature anomaly to climate anomaly.

You also say "You admit his hypothesis of precip extremes (dry/wet) and local temperature anomalies,". I said that this is what he says. I don't accept it as a general rule. It may mean warming, it may mean cooling or it may mean no temperature change.

Re: His other temperature information, I don't know. Some I think is correct (i.e. Mann but I note that he even botched the reference to Mann), some I will try to read up more on (i.e. there appears to be an interesting one on China I haven't read). I think that if he had left his research at dealing with these he would have had a much stronger paper.

Re: anomalies this century, I don't agree with you on this. I think the anomaly's are there but are reported different. Anyway, I would need to see more than Soon's list to confirm this in my mind.

Finally, you call me skeptical and that is true as I suspect it is of you. I also think that skeptic is a complement. A skeptic who thinks about things is an interesting person who can be trusted to make up their own mind and I hate sheep (give me a skeptic who's wrong over a sheep who's right any-day).

Also, I don't see how he can make the link from Global temperature anomaly to climate anomaly.

They are essentially the same thing. A global temperature anomaly manifests as a much larger-than-normal number of local climate anomalies. Global cooling manifests as a large number of local coolings and locally above or below normal precip. Likewise warming to warming and abnormal precip. The other scientists' explanations that he reviews are from local weather pattern changes (e.g. the polar vortex). The hypothesis I allude to in 138 is that global temperature anomalies are more likely to create climate anomalies than when global temperatures are normal. I think that is well supported both empirically and in theory.

I think that if he had left his research at dealing with these he would have had a much stronger paper.

Perhaps so, the precip changes are clearly pretty strong for both periods but the explanations are rather piecemeal and some are non-existant. Part of that is the complexity of local climate changes and partly he is just ignoring the issue.

Re: anomalies this century, I don't agree with you on this. I think the anomaly's are there but are reported different.

That is the crux of the issue. Do the proxy measurements from the 1900's indicate greater warmth than the MWP? Soon points out over and over that the answer is no. There is no conceivable way that so many proxy measurements could all be distorted by precipitation. Some are more likely (glaciers) and some less likely (tree line). Some have better explanations (ocean temperatures from changes in ocean currents). But the overwhelming evidence from Soon's paper is for warming in the MWP well beyond any in the 20th century (and most of that was early 20th in any case).