Geoff Chambers has left this typically thoughtful and provocative comment on the Has the BBC’s review of science reporting been cancelled? thread:
Everyone commenting here has formed his opinion on climate change by looking at both sides of the argument. If you or I want to find out about a subject, we borrow a book from the library, or go on the net. Not so the BBC chiefs, newspaper editors, MPs, and other opinion leaders. They are highly intelligent, sure of their judgement, but very busy. On a subject outside their own field, they ask the opinion of people like themselves with the requisite expertise. Are the papers Phil Jones recommends the right ones to look at in order to judge the quality of his work? Ask Sir Martin Rees [President of the Royal Society]. Is the science journalism of the BBC above reproach? Ask a journalist-scientist on the Telegraph.
Look at your letter from their point of view. Just a “boring obsessive rant” (Professor Steve Jones’ characterisation in the Telegraph) from the green ink brigade. One of them wrote a book? All nutters write books. Possibly someone at the BBC will get one of their underlings to read it, or browse through the Harmless Sky and Bishop Hill blogs for half an hour (the time that the officials at UEA spent browsing through Climate Audit, according to Phil Jones).
Are we winning the argument? Well, yes, in some Platonic universe where only ideas have reality. In the real world, the argument hasn’t begun, and the BBC, like the rest of the media, has little interest in seeing it begin. This is not a conspiracy, simply the way society conducts discussion. Without the adversarial context and equality of evidence provided by an election or a court of law, it may never begin.
The crux of Geoff’s argument is in the last paragraph when he says, ‘This is not a conspiracy, simply the way society conducts discussion’, and I would take issue with his conclusion.
The BBC is not ‘society’ but it is, and has been for over half a century, a pillar of the British establishment. It’s role as an opinion former as well as a source of information has long been recognised, and to some extent it has become the barometer of public opinion too. But a barometer that at times measures conditions that it has played a part in creating.
That is why, in theory at least, the way in which it conveys factual output is so strictly controlled by legislation. These controls were put in place because of the obvious risk that the influence of the BBC – and make no mistake, Auntie is still tremendously influential – could be hijacked for political purposes; particularly by an entrenched government.
I have no opinion about the way ‘society conducts discussion’, but over the last few years I have had a very bleak insight into how a beleaguered establishment conducts discussion. One of the main tools in this process has been the supposedly independent and transparent inquiry; or ‘review’ if you are trying not to raise people’s expectations. Perhaps it started with the Franks Inquiry into the Falklands War, which now seems to be generally discredited. It certainly applied to consideration of the disastrous management of the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic, with Tony Blair announcing no less than four inquiries simultaneously, in the certainty that any inconvenient issues would drop through the gaps between their terms of reference.
Most conspicuous in recent years has been the succession of inquiries focused on the Iraq War, which seem to have come to conclusions that are not well supported by the evidence. There is no need to add any comments here about the three UK based inquiries into Climategate other than to say that in each case one side of the argument received a far better hearing than the other, in spite of the inquires having been made necessary by the actions and arguments of the critics who were relegated to a minor role. Andrew Montford and Steve McIntyre, among others, have made the failure of the inquiry panels to establish the true extent of the allegations against the climate community, and the evidence supporting it, figure in their deliberations.
John Mortimer, in his guise as a barrister, and the son of a barrister, once said in an interview that a piece of advice from his father had stood him in very good stead when he was practising law rather than writing novels. ‘Never ask a witness a question”, the old man said, “unless you are quite sure that you know what the answer is”. In the case of the Russell and Oxburgh inquiries, great care seems to have been taken to make sure that those who had made allegations against the CRU and the IPCC process were not asked any questions at all, possibly for the same reason. The BBC seem determined to give Andrew Montford and I the same treatment.
In conducting it’s review of science reporting, the BBC may seek to consult those who will provide palatable responses, and exclude those who may require them to confront problems that they would prefer not to think about. If this is their intention, and even in the face of all the present evidence I very much hope that it is not, then that will not be the end of the story. As we explained in our letter, both Andrew Montford and I have acquired considerable archives on the BBC’s reporting of climate change. Some of this is already in the public domain, but there is a great deal that is not but is likely to become relevant when their report is published.
Geoff’s other point is that the establishment are very much inclined to seek advice from other members of the establishment, and I am sure that he is right about this too. Informing yourself by those means must be tremendously reassuring, but it is no way to conduct an inquiry if your intention is actually to find out what is happening. Membership of the establishment does imply a certain mindset, and a reluctance to rock other people’s boats.
This point is well illustrated by the Bloody Sunday inquiry. Taking over a decade to complete, and costing tens of millions, this was conducted within the context of a judicial process and finally dug down to truths that seem to have satisfied everyone. In other circumstances these would probably have been passed over. This was an exercise that took place beyond the reach of the establishment, unlike the Iraq War, foot and mouth disease, and Climategate inquiries. No one seems to be impugning the credibility of the findings.
Going back to the BBC’s review of science reporting, I have little doubt that the mandarins of the BBC Trust see Andrew Montford and the proprietor of this blog in precisely the unflattering way that Geoff suggests. But as he makes clear, there is a commonality with the attitude of Phil Jones and his colleague’s to climate sceptics. I actually posted about the dangers of the BBC not learning from the CRU’s mistakes some time ago here: Is this the BBC’s Climategate?. Dismissing the views of bloggers out of hand may be tempting, but it is not wise unless you first make quite sure that they do not have a valid point of view.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, Sir Muir Russell, and Lord Oxburgh seem to have taken the same line on dealing with climate sceptics as the CRU, and as a result their inquiries have failed in their objectives; to draw a line under the Climategate scandal. But in the case of the Russell Report there is at least one section that rings true.
At the end of Chapter 5 of the Russell Report , the authors acceptthe tge that the blogoshere is here to stay, that it is now influential in forming opinion, and that those for whom this is inconvenient must adjust to living with the new dispensation. Not even Sir Muir Russell can get everything wrong all the time, and a similar message comes from the Royal Society, via the BBC’s very own Roger Harrabin, when reporting on dissent among the Fellows about the Society’s published position on climate change:
… it seems that message has not seeped through to all quarters. And one Fellow of the Royal Society said there’s the whiff of “end of empire” in the air as establishments strive to protect their authority as it ebbs away into the blogosphere
The BBC would seem to have some catching up to do, but in fact they were discussing very much the same problem back in 2007.
At that time the BBC Trust published its blockbuster report on impartiality, From Seasaw to Wagon Wheel. In spite of the extraordinary choice of title, this shows every sign of being a conscientious attempt to address an undoubtedly complex and difficult subject fearlessly, despite the need to rake over some severe criticisms and unpalatable evidence. The following is taken from the penultimate chapter:
GUIDING PRINCIPLE ELEVEN
Impartiality is a process, about which the BBC should be honest and transparent with its audience: this should permit greater boldness in its programming decisions. But impartiality can never be fully achieved to everyone’s satisfaction: the BBC should not be defensive about this but ready to acknowledge and correct significant breaches as and when they occur.
When it was made clear that the impartiality seminar held in London last September was going to be streamed live on the Governors’ website, there was a certain amount of sucking of teeth – and not just from within the BBC. Did we really expect top executives and broadcasters to wrestle with real dilemmas […..] The seminar was criticised afterwards by one or two members of the then Board of Management for, in effect, washing the BBC’s dirty linen in public. One said it had been ‘extremely damaging’ to the BBC.
That is very much ‘old thinking’. It is true that impartiality always used to be discussed behind closed doors at Broadcasting House and Television Centre […..] The reality is that you can’t close the doors any more.
Information has proliferated so fast in our broadband culture that audiences know almost as much about the decision-making process as the broadcasters. […..]
In the past, many editorial decisions could be taken in the comfort of knowing that audiences could judge programmes only by what they had heard or seen on air. […..] So paternalism will no longer wash: broadcasters have to be ready to explain their decisions. And trust works both ways: if the BBC expects to retain the audience’s trust, it must also trust the audience by ‘letting daylight in on magic’.
A lot of this debate is actually about the role of the institution – a fear that maybe the BBC won’t be infallible and that we’ll show our fallibility. I think that if we had more courage about being transparent in the decision-making process, inviting the audience into the debate, a lot of these ills would be cured. David Schlesinger, Reuters
Impartiality itself is a process. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the search never ends. […..] It should always be ready to share its decision-making with the audience: this should be part of its contract with the licence-payer. If it tries to close the doors, the information will leak out sooner or later, and the BBC will end up looking defensive or worse. But if it keeps the doors open, it will help the audience to understand how impartiality works, and trust will grow. […..] The greater prize is the maintenance of the audience’s trust.
That trust is the BBC’s most precious resource. While it remains publicly owned and funded, it is essential. Whatever slings and arrows of outrageous fortune have winged their way to the BBC, the basic level of trust has endured. That should give the BBC courage not to be defensive about every hostile headline in the press – but also to be ready to acknowledge and correct breaches of impartiality whenever they arise, as they undoubtedly will. [……]
Impartiality in today’s world must be a transparent process. […..]
I have edited these extracts heavily to save space, and I strongly recommend reading the original in full. The message is inescapable: if the BBC is to keep its reputation in the digital age, then the old, tried, and tested ways of the establishment must be abandoned. There are no doors to close on private assessments of matters that are of public interest.
It is also worth glancing at the Forward on page 2, in which Professor RIchard Tait endorses the report on behalf of the BBC Trustees. I wonder if he remembers what it says now?
tempterrain
I don’t understand your insistence that we must believe something when we clearly don’t. Plots and conspiracies, like hoaxes, frauds and scams, may take many different forms. Whether they exist or not is interesting, but irrelevant to our scepticism. We were suspicious before Jones asked his colleagues to destroy emails, because of the science, and the politics based on the science. Climategate simply confirmed our suspicions.
The conspiracy theory (that is, your insistence that we sceptics must believe in a conspiracy) is seen most clearly here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists
Monbiot starts his article with a devastating personal statement, redeeming his reputation as an investigative journalist:
He then spoils the effect by stating that the emails simply “… damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence”.
And spends the rest of his article on a pathetically unfunny parody of a Dan Brownish conspiracy, of the sort he (and apparently you) think we sceptics must believe in.
Clearly, Climategate didn’t affect simply the credibility of three or four scientists and one or two lines of evidence. If we can’t trust Jones and his intimates (and Monbiot says we can’t) then we can’t trust the IPCC reports or the Stern report and the political decisions based on them. Hence the whitewashes and the media attempts to whitewash the whitewashes.
When Monbiot published his pathetic accusation that we were all paranoid conspiracy theorists, I assumed it was the last throw of a desperate man. But he, like you, shows a remarkable ability to bounce back.
PeterM
No wriggling on my part.
(See my post 1179 on the NS thread)
No need to cover this topic on two separate threads.
I think geoffchambers has put it quite succinctly in his 26 with:
Max
“Whether they exist or not is interesting?” Come off it! Of course climate plots, conspiracies, frauds, hoaxes, and scams exist. Have I missed out any of your lexicon? Boondongle maybe? I’m not sure what that is!
They do exist, but only in your imagination. Or maybe I should say only as part of your paranoia.
Irrelevant to your scepticsm? I don’t think so!
If you think I’m wrong, tell me they aren’t there. Tell me you know the opinions of, who you refer to as, all these “so-called experts” are in fact genuine even if you feel they may be incorrect.
PeterM
You are becoming repetitious “ad nauseam” on the “conspiracy” side-track.
Did the Climategate offenders (admittedly just an influential few of those involved in promoting and selling the “dangeous AGW” story) engage in “conspiratorial” behavior?
I would say so, but read the leaked e-mails and make up your own mind.
Is there a “collusion of interests” regarding AGW among “mainstream” climate scientists, “pro-cap’n tax” politicians, the “sensationalist” media, “green industry” corporate executives, environmental “lobby groups”, carbon trading “money shufflers” and “hedge fund operators”?
Yep. There sure is. They all stand to benefit directly from the “dangerous AGW” craze.
Is this a formal “conspiracy”?
I don’t really believe so. (Just as many different individuals and groups may have wanted to see JFK removed from office at the time, but it is unlikely that these formed a formal “conspiracy” to assassinate him.)
Can we lay this silly topic to rest now? It is truly becoming boring and really beside the point, as geoffchambers has pointed out.
The key is that there are no empirical data derived from actual physical observations which support the postulation that AGW is a serious potential threat. Yet there are empirical data which tend to falsify this hypothesis.
That, Peter, is the key issue here – not whether or not there is a pro-AGW “conspiracy” or simply a powerful “collusion of interests”.
Got it?
Max
PeterM
You stated (28) that you were not sure what a “boondoggle” is.
Let me help you with an on-line dictionary definition:
Some synonyms listed:
Get the picture (as it relates to the AGW hysteria)? I’m sure it’s not that complicated to figure out.
Max
Please see some long videos at my website, which I have collected from disparate sources, and they are an eclectic mix of the well known and obscure.
I wish that those politicians, and these so called “news” producers would actually watch some of these videos. Is there any hope of that ?
I make some political comment also.
! The Fraudulent Climate of Hokum Science !
Axel, did you get here by your own means, or did your site pick up this conversation automatically via the frequent repetition of the words “fraud” and “climate”?
Anyway, congratulations. I haven’t watched the videos yet, but this is the kind of fun presentation which will make thousands of converts to scepticism while we are still plodding away trying to convince PeterM.
Alex
Great stuff!
Thanks.
Max
Correction: Axel instead of Alex.
Max
Tony asks “Can the BBC learn from its own impartiality report?”
No.
Reports like this are not a trigger for action. They are a substitute for action.
Axel,
Thank you for the link to Hubert Lamb. I have heard of him before in connection with the MWP. But wasn’t his view on the MWP that it was largely just a European phenomenon?
Jack Hughes, re your #35, I wish I could say otherwise, but am inclined to agree. Once the report is concluded, the box will have been ticked, and that will be the main thing.
Now here’s a rather egregious, up-to-the-minute example of BBC science reporting. The actual scientific meat in this article is a BMJ study about extra heart attacks following a 1-degree drop in average daily temperature.
You’d think that the article would have a title like “Cold weather increases heart deaths”, yes? Because that was what the study was about.
But no. The title, of course, is “Climate change ‘will increase heart deaths'”. Because people’s hearts give out in heat waves too, e.g. France in 2003, even though “[m]any of these were sudden cardiac deaths related to heart conditions other than heart attack.”
And of course, lest we forget, the future will be catastrophic. “And experts predict that by the 2080s events similar to these will happen every year.”
So, an article basically about the dangers of cold weather is turned into an article about global warming (because the meme is that global warming can cause extremes of cold too, of course.)
Balance – BBC-style.
Alex
the BBC article you link to is pretty bad, suggesting as it does that global warming means more temperature extremes, i.e. more warming and more cooling. Here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/09/climate-change-flooding
is an article by Peter Stott which goes one better, suggesting that global warming will cause weather which is sometimes more extreme, and sometimes less extreme.
He also says:
Any thoughts from the mathematically trained here on the probability of a past event having happened doubling? How does one express that in layman’s terms? “It’s very hot, and the probability of it being very hot is twice what it was”.
One result of Climategate seems to be that we are seeing more extreme swings in alarmism, from the pseudo-reassuring (“learn from our mistakes, avoid counter-productive alarmism, be open to criticism…”) to the more customary “we’ve learned from our mistakes, listened to our critics, and it’s worse than we thought” mode.
PeterM
Don’t try to confuse Axel. To imply about Hubert Lamb that “his view on the MWP that it was largely just a European phenomenon” is basically misleading.
Lamb wrote about a MWP in places other than Europe. The Arctic, Greenland and North America are specific examples.
Other historical data, such as crop records, show that China and locations in the Middle East were also warmer than today, although Lamb did not report these, as they were outside his source of data.
And then, of course, there are many independent studies from all over the world since Lamb’s time, using different scientific methods, which confirm a global MWP that was slightly warmer than today (I have cited over 20 of these earlier on this thread).
Max
Max
Hi Peter #36
you said;
“Thank you for the link to Hubert Lamb. I have heard of him before in connection with the MWP. But wasn’t his view on the MWP that it was largely just a European phenomenon?”
He held no such views. For example on Page 171 of ‘Climate history and the Modern World’ he wrote;
“By the late tenth to twelfth centuries most of the world for which we have evidence (he cites this extensively and it covers the majority of the world) seems to have been enoying a renewal of warmth which at times during those centuries may have approached the level of the warmest millenia of post glacial times.”
Most historians-if not acolytes of post modern scientists- believe in the greater warmth of the MWP, the Roman optimum and other epochs.
Tonyb
TonyB,
I notice that you don’t give a link to Hubert Lambs book in case it gives away the full extent of what he in fact said. Like that
1)there was no evidence of a MWP in China and Japan.
2)If so, part of the explanation for the medieval warmth in Europe and North America, extending into the Arctic in the Atlantic sector and in at least a good deal of the continental sectors on either side, must be that there was a persistent tilt of the circumpolar vortex (and the climatic zones which it defines) away from the Atlantic and towards the Pacific sector, which was rather frequently affected by outbreaks of polar air. (Page 171)
If this Hubert Lambs theory is true it would mean that any extra warm in the North Atlantic was offset by equal extra coldness in the North Pacific and so globally there was no MWP and Lamb in fact is in agreement with Mann.
LINK TO LAMBS BOOK
Many thanks to PeterM for providing the link to extracts from Herbert Lamb’s book. Unfortunately, the section on mediaeval temperatures in the Far East is not available, but on p217 we find this:
The point made throughout the book, as far as one can judge, is that there are significant temperature variations on the scale of centuries wherever historical data exists, sometimes common to different regions, sometimes not.
It is not true, as PeterM suggests, that Lamb was in agreement with Mann. Lamb’s study is a massive compilation of historical data; Mann’s study is a graph measuring some treerings at the upper limit of their geographical survival range. That the latter replaced the former in the third IPCC report as the “official” version of historical truth, endorsed by unanimous vote of world governments, is possibly the biggest scientific travesty of all time, worse than Lysenkoism or National Socialist genetic theory in its scale and possible effects.
(Of coure, in saying that, one sails perilously close to the position of the American far right – that the UN is a conspiracy to impose world government, that environmentalism is ecofascism, etc. It’s important, in arguing with PeterM, to distinguish judgements on the scale of the errors of the IPCC consensus from moral judgements on the turpitude of the perpetrators).
Peter
I am very glad to see you paying proper attention to Lambs work at last, as I have linked to him before and you have ignored it.
Instead of searching online for single lines of information to support your argument I suggest you actually read some of Lambs excellent books, where you can see his views in proper context.
In my post I took the introduction to his section of the MWP as it succinctly summarises his views.
He said exactly what I wrote in #40 and he couldn’t be clearer. He said ‘most of the world’ and I wrote ‘most of the world’. China is thought to have been in a warm phase already from the Roman optimum to the MWP but came out of it and into the LIA earlier than Europe and some other parts of the world. There was an overlap of a couple of hundred years.
An adaptation of Lambs famous graph was carried in the first IPCC assessment and can be found in the book.
It bears no relationshp whatsoever to Manns work. Lamb believed in an extended and extensive MWP and LIA.
To understand Lambs view on the man made aspect of climate change I suggest you read practically the last thing he ever wrote-the final paragraph of the preface to the second edition of the book you have linked to.
Now you have found Lamb at last, we can perhaps have more productive discussions on climate history than in the past
tonyb
TonyN
I’ve just got round to reading the BBC’s 2007 Impartiality report which you link to above (though you label your link “Russell report starting p74”)
Three points:
1) under “GUIDING PRINCIPLE FOUR :Impartiality involves breadth of view, and can be breached by omission. It is not necessarily to be found on the centre ground” we read this (page 7):
And this(page 37):
But in the case of climate change, we see, not the pursuit of newness, challenge, and controversy, but the precise opposite.
2) Under “GUIDING PRINCIPLE SEVEN. Impartiality is most obviously at risk in areas of sharp public controversy. But there is a less visible risk, demanding particular vigilance, when programmes purport to reflect a consensus for ‘the common good’, or become involved with campaigns”.
There is a long analysis (page 54) of the BBC’s treatment of Live Aid and the “Make Poverty History “ Campaign in which the report makes it clear thet the BBC must hold to its principles of neutrality, even when reporting the most “worthy” causes, even where there is all-party support and no public complaint of bias. The commentary ends:
3) Throughout the report, the authors insist on the importance of the new interactive media, making particular mention of blogs. It would therefore be unthinkable that Steve Jones should ignore your existence in his report. But how to decide what criteria to use in evaluating which blogs should be covered? The BBC’s report offers no clues.
Any criterion based on popularity (number of hits, etc) would likely favour the blogs linked to established media (Monbiot, Delingpole …) or worse, some green-minded pop group. Any serious analysis should match the arguments found at climate activist blogs like Campaign against Climate Change against those found at Harmless Sky, Bishop Hill, Climate Resistance, and Omniclimate (to mention only British blogs).
The difficulty you have had making representations to Professor Tate does not bode well.
TonyB,
Hubert Lamb published his book 30 years ago and so it won’t have been influenced by late 20th century warming.
On the MWP he certainly was of the opinion that any warming was asymmetric. He even used the word in a Chapter Title
see this:
LINK TO BOOK
PeterM
TonyB and geoffchambers have both since responded to your 41, but let me also comment on your statement:
This is totally absurd, as I am sure you really know.
Lamb made an exhaustive study of past climate, including the graph cited by TonyB showing a distinct MWP of several centuries that covered the civilized world at that time, and which was significantly warmer that the current warm “blip” of the late 20th century.
This covered the geographical regions for which he had data (Greenland, North America, Europe, parts of the Middle East), with some references to other locations in Asia (as mentioned by both geoff and Tony). Independent studies made for China and Japan show that the MWP was also warmer than today in these locations.
Mann (on the other hand) used some “cherry-picked” tree ring data (primarily from North America) in a clumsy attempt to refute Lamb’s conclusion of a MWP.
Contrary to Lamb’s work, the studies by Mann were subsequently found to include errors in the both the data selection and statistical approach.
The statistical analysis of Mann’s study conducted and published by McIntyre and McKitrick, as later confirmed by Wegman plus North and Bloomfield of NAS before a US congressional committee, comprehensively discredited Mann’s study and falsified the postulated conclusion that the last decade of the 20th century was the warmest in 1,300 years (as unfortunately parroted by IPCC, both in the TAR and the AR4, even after Mann’s study had been discredited!).
To say “Lamb in fact is in agreement with Mann” is a blatant falsehood, Peter, made either out of ignorance or conscious denial of the facts.
I’ll assume it’s the first, in your case.
Max
PS Interestingly IPCC included a graph in its Second Assessment Report, which clearly showed a global MWP warmer than today (red curve in Wiki attachment, compared to blue curve = Mann’s “hockey stick”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipcc7.1-mann-moberg.png
Although not specifically stated by IPCC at the time, this graph was apparently an adaptation of the graph by Lamb cited by TonyB.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3072
It is easy to see (from the Wiki attachment) that Lamb and Mann are NOT IN AGREEMENT.
PeterM
I don’t know what point you are trying to make with your 45.
Sure, Lamb’s work was published 30 years ago, i.e. prior to many more recent independent peer-reviewed studies from all over the world, using various different methodologies, showing a MWP that was warmer than the most recent warm period (which I have cited here previously).
The recent study by Craig Loehle (which I have also cited here previously) also gives a good summary of some of the later peer-reviewed work across the world. It also confirms a MWP warmer than today.
Back to Lamb: Lamb’s study showed that CET July-Aug temperatures averaged over a 150-year period during the late MWP (1150-1300) were 16.3C. This is around 0.5C higher than the average CET July-Aug temperatures over the 150-year period ending in 2009 (15.8C).
The evidence (paleoclimate as well as historical) all points in the same direction, Peter, as unpleasant as that may be for you to have to admit.
The MWP was global and was a bit warmer than the most recent temperature.
This is “no big deal”, but it just happens to be the fact, thereby falsifying the IPCC claim
It just ain’t so, Peter.
Max
Max,
By “asymmetric” Lamb was saying that heat was shifted from the Pacific to the Atlantic and that a “tilt in the circumpolar vortex” was the mechanism to explain this.
Look, it’s not me saying this. It was Lamb. He may not have been correct, but it’s possible he was. If he was correct, then there is no need to postulate a general global warming, just a regional warming in the North Atlantic and a regional cooling in the North Pacific.
PeterM
Yes. We have progressed a lot since Lamb came up with his postulations for the “assymetric” warming with “polar shifts” during the MWP.
Lamb did not do an exhaustive study of the locations outside North America, Greenland, Europe and some selected Middle Eastern locations. TonyB mentions one reference to China, but it is clear that Lamb’s study essentially covered the scope I just outlined.
His most exhaustive study was of CET, where he showed that average July-August temperatures over the period 1150-1300 were 16.3C. The same CET average for the most recent 150 years is 15.8C, demonstrating that in CE the MWP was 0.5C warmer in summer than today.
Other studies at the time (plus many later ones) have covered all those regions not specifically covered by Lamb. These show that the MWP was a global event, with temperatures slightly warmer than the current ones. The many studies I have seen on this cover all continents except Australia and show MWP temperatures between 0.3C and 2.5C warmer than today. The crop records and other data cited by Lamb also confirm this.
That is the whole point here, Peter.
Just because Lamb did not spend much time looking at areas outside his study range does not in any way show that these areas did not also have a MWP (as the other studies covering these regions after Lamb have shown).
I hope you can follow the logic here. It is quite basic.
Max
Max,
If what you mean by “today” is 1935 then perhaps you are right about Loehl.
I notice it’s only me who is posting supportative links, both you and Tony B are just making unsubstantiated assertions. Repetition doesn’t make them any more likely to be true either.
For example this is an interesting comparison between what Loehl ended up saying , after his 2007 correction, and what Mann and others have said too.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kung-fu-Climate.html
As you can see from fig 3, the difference isn’t that much at all and hardly justifies the vilification that Michael Mann has received over the past ten years.