[WOSG]

The US Assessment says: “studies indicate that temperatures in recent decades are higher than at any time in at least the past 1,000 years."

What he calls a myth is that some claim his work calls the 20th century the warmest, but that is clearly not so. Only the recent decades are. Wrong - we do not know this... the does NOT show up on Mann's chart with the error bars, and IS EXACTLY THE POINT. Mann says his studies did NOT indicate this. "Anomalous" means anomalous, not 'higher than ever', and you cant say our temperatures are higher than previous when the error bars of previous readings exceed the change in avg. Others took his work and extrapolated past what his study could support. The infamous 'hockey stick' with 10-year smoothing pasted on top of 50-year smoothing is part of the problem.

It is wrong to say there is consensus that today's (recent decades) temperatures are highest in 1000 years. Not so, plenty of studies going in the other direction, e.g., Broecker, PALEOCLIMATE: Was the Medieval Warm Period Global?, Science 2001 291: 1497-1499. Here's an online page on climate studies/evidence of the period ... " Other data document vast glacial retreats during the Medieval Warm Period in parts of South America, Scandinavia, New Zealand and Alaska (Grove and Switsur, 1994; Villalba, 1994); and ocean-bed cores suggest global sea surface temperatures were warmer then as well (Keigwin, 1996a, 1996b)." ... 950-1150 " In North America, tree-ring chronologies from the southern Canadian Rockies have provided evidence for higher treelines and wider ring-widths suggesting warmer temperatures and more favorable growing conditions (Luckman, 1994)" http://sharpgary.org/400-1294AD.html

... those studies that say the evidence for Medeival Warming Period is 'inconclusive' could be cut-n-pasted as skeptic articles to 'disprove' global warming. Just a different set of biases in which large sets of sometimes conflicting data you are willing to accept. ... Vikings growing grain on Greenland *and* Siberian cores warmed, and North American data showed warming, Chinese and South African data sets confirming, and African data alings, and it's not global?

see also ... "Researchers examined ancient tree rings at 14 sites on three continents. According to Edward Cook of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, We don't use this as a refutation of greenhouse warming, but it does show that there are processes within the Earth's natural climate system that produce large changes that might be viewed as comparable to what we have seen in the 20th century."

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see a 'hockey stick' in real data rather than reconstructions via PCA ... tells me the Medeival Warming Period has more data to support it than the so-called 'hockey stick'...

[Yelling]

You said "What he calls a myth is that some claim his work calls the 20th century the warmest, but that is clearly not so. Only the recent decades are. Wrong - we do not know this... the does NOT show up on Mann's chart with the error bars, and IS EXACTLY THE POINT. Mann says his studies did NOT indicate this. "Anomalous" means anomalous, not 'higher than ever', "

Well, I would call that splitting hairs but if you want to take that approach, then the US Assessment says “studies indicate that temperatures in recent decades are higher than at any time in at least the past 1,000 years." Indicate means indicate, not say for certain.

However a better way to go would be to see what Mann himself says about the warming. This is a quote from his paper.

"The 20th century (1900-1998) (anomaly of T=0.07C relative to the 1902-1980 calibration period mean) is nominally the warmest of the millennium (11-12th: -0.04; 13th -0.09, 14th:-0.07; 15th: -0.19; 16th: -0.14; 17th: -0.18; 18th: -0.14; 19th: -0.21). …… For the NH series, both the past year (1998) and the past decade (1989-1998) are well documented as the warmest in the 20th century instrumental record. Furthmore, the past decade (T=0.45C) is nearly two (decadal) standard errors warmer than the next warmest decade prior to the 20th century (1166-1175: T=0.11) and 1998 (T=0.78C) more than two standard errors warmer than the next warmest year, (1249 with an anomaly T = 0.27C; 1253 and 1366 with T=0.25C are the only other two years approaching typical modern warmth), supporting the conclusion that both the past decade and past year are likely the warmest for the Northern Hemisphere this millennium. "

He seems pretty sure (but not 100% certain) that the past decade is the warmest. In regards to the graph, even if you include the error bars, it still looks pretty conclusive to me. Current warming is still above the error bars.

I don’t follow the next part of your argument. You refer to an online page, but the only one I see is the sharpgary one and he has the Little Ice Age starting in 1185!!!! Oh, and I see Keigwin referenced again (from the Sargasso records). I will address this better tomorrow when I have my papers available.