Phil Jones, one of the “scientists” implicated the infamous ClimateGate scandal, admits in a new paper (written with six other scientists) that Earth’s current temperature is mumble-mumble-mumble. What’s that, Phil? Did you admit that “unprecedented” may be too strong a word?
CO2Science.com takes the “un” out of unprecedented for us:
In the words of the seven scientists, “temperatures during the warmest intervals of the Medieval Warm Period,” which they defined as occurring “some 900 to 1300 years ago,” “were as warm as or slightly warmer than present day Greenland temperatures.”
What it means
As for what this result implies, the researchers conditionally — and rather amusingly — state that further warming of present day Greenland climate “will result in temperature conditions that are warmer than anything seen in the past 1400 years.” But, of course, their work more directly and unconditionally implies that late 20th-century and early 21st-century weather has not yet been warm enough to confer “unprecedented” status upon Greenland air temperatures. What is more, Vinther et al. readily admit that the independent “GRIP borehole temperature inversion suggests that central Greenland temperatures are still somewhat below the high temperatures that existed during the Medieval Warm Period.”
The envelope please…And the 2010 Chicken Little Award for Creative Panic Mongering goes to … Phil Jones.
Source: CO2science.org
