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.
I didn't see you address the issue of Mann's deducing temperature from ice cores, tree rings, etc for the 1000 to 1900 part of the graph and using measurements for 1900 onwards. I don't think there's anything "complex" about that, just bad science.