Eli Is a Straightforward Bunny

Those with an eye for farce have been watching the Weasel play with his food (weasels do that you know) and show no sympathy whatsoever for Craig Loehle, who is very sad, and the Watts Up gang over at Watts Up.

CL is sad because Mann has been cwuel to him, or about him, in his book. Though this seems to have been more exciting for CL than Mann, since he doesn't make it in until p 187, and its just about CL's rubbish temperature reconstruction (see-also Tamino on the "vindication" version).

But the centerpiece of CL's recent post, which conclusively demonstrates how Mann is wrong and... well, you get the idea, is the one I've inlined here. Its from co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php which isn't a good source. I wondered what the data sources were for the figure, and what "Current Warm Period" (CWP) might be, exactly. No-one seemed to be able to find an answer; a person calling themselves Richard S Courtney was pretty sure it meant 1998 (actually very un-pretty, but never mind [Update: I gave up too soon; even the mods got bored with him]), but that makes no sense - the ice cores don't go up to 1998, in general (I'm assuming there are some ice cores in there, though with no info as to the sources, its hard to say). Its likely that CWP means something like 20th-century average, but as far as I can tell it isn't possible to be sure; I think they are being deliberately vague. 

and it's true, go read the train wreck over at Tony's and read the comments at the Weasel's.  This from Stoat captures the gist of it

Over at my blog we’ve been looking a bit at some of the studies that the Idsos pic shows large MWPs from. We think we’ve found the 4.75 oC one (http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_durresmaar.php) and predictably enough, when you check it out it doesn’t add up.

First of all, even from the CO2 science link, you can see immeadiately that the peak warmth was only for one brief period – 5 years – which is hardly a “MWP”. But its more interesting to look at the actual paper itself (http://www.clim-past.net/7/1011/2011/cp-7-1011-2011.pdf). If you read the abstract, you’ll find:

“At High Medieval Times, the amplitude in the reconstructed temperature variability is most likely overestimated”

Oddly, CO2science didn’t have space to mention that. For more details, you need to read section 5.2 and the discussion of figure 5, which contains text like:

“During High Medieval Times lasting from the 10th to 13th century, our reconstruction shows evidence for above-average temperatures, whereby the amplitude in the reconstructed temperature variability is most likely overestimated. However, temperatures were not high in general; rather distinct warmer episodes lasting a few decades are demonstrated…” and “Despite the overall relatively high uncertainty in our reconstruction and the certainly overestimated temperature variability particularly at High Medieval Times…”

Finally, although you can read a peak out of that record, there is no clear “current warm period” in their record, and 1998 is certainly not included. So anyone who thought that “current warm period” meant 1998, or that the CO2science figure comparison is MWP-vs-1998, will have to reconsider.

Courtney finally cuts and runs to catch a plane (kind of the Tom Fuller gambit, welcome back Bart), but Eli, Eli is a very straightforward Bunny, so he wrote the Idsos and asked

Greetings,

A number of people are interested in how you define the Current Warm Period
as shown discussed in http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/tabledes.php

Best 

and got a reply he expects will be diced and sliced

For the Level 1 and 2 studies, the point of comparison that we use for the CWP is the period of highest proxy temperature value during which time the IPCC and other climate alarmists claim the planet experienced unprecedented global warmth, i.e., since the 1980s.  Hope this helps.

-Craig Idso

cause frankly see Stoat's comment.