Hi Cohenite, this is Ms bister and bluster PC.

Would you mind giving me references to all the other paleo papers that provide a global temperature reconstruction covering the past 11,300 years in the same detail? (Not ice core reconstructions, they and more are already covered by Marcott.)

It's just that no-one I've talked with knows about them (including one of the world's leading paleoclimatologists) and I'd like to refer to them on my blog.

I expect Science didn't know about them either, or they'd have been less likely to publish the Marcott paper. (Science tends to favour leading edge research.) (Links to abstracts will suffice.)

"only nine contained data that extend to 1950"

Did you know there are very good records that go back even beyond 1950, right back to the late C19 in sufficient spread and numbers to give a global trend. Marcott et al were more interested in the previous 11,000 years. No need to collect a few dozen proxy series when there are thermometers located in thousands of sites all around the world.

It's a cute example of compartmentalised thinking when people can accept the lie that a proxy temperature series from a *single* site in the arctic equates to a *global* reconstruction (leaving aside the issue of polar amplification); and at the same time complain that 'only' 73 proxies from sites all around the world aren't sufficient. Or worry that 'only' nine records are post-1950. (Not that you'd think that - but some people do.) It almost makes one wonder if they've even read the paper they are criticising, where it describes how they compared their reconstruction with modern climatology. (Hint: it did not rely on those 'nine' records post-1950).

You'd be surprised that such people must also think the global average temperature fluctuated by 3 degrees or more during the Holocene (coz they think temp on an ice sheet in the arctic is the same as temperature everywhere around the world). Nonsense of course. The temperature only had to drop 0.6 degrees C or so and the world had the Little Ice Age.

Back to the original topic, in case there are any lurkers interested in one of the main reasons for breaking the heat record last summer, I've got a gif animation of the continental heat wave - as well as a screenshot of Sentinel, showing the fires raging all across the continent as well. There were a number of other heat records broken by the way. Not just the summer record for the entire continent.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/01/a-whopper-of-heat-wave.html

I've also got a video about the angry summer from Channel 10 (yes, really):

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/03/australias-angry-summer.html

Cohenite, you can add this to your debunking thesis:

Trees and shrubs are taking hold in what was once frozen tundra. A new study of 30 years of satellite data shows vegetation moving northward as climatic conditions shift.

A study, conducted by an international team of 21 researchers from 17 institutions in 7 countries and funded by NASA, appeared in the journal Nature Climate Change on March 10.

Professor Bruce Forbes from the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland, one of the authors, says "we are seeing more frequent and longer-lasting high pressure systems. In winter, the snow cover comes later, is deeper on average than in the 1960s, but is melting out earlier in spring."

"Arctic plant growth during the early 1980s reference period equaled that of lands north of 64 degrees north. Today, just 30 years later, it equals that of lands above 57 degrees north — a reduction in vegetation seasonality of about seven degrees south in latitude," says co-author Prof. Terry Chapin, Professor Emeritus, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The change equates to a distance of approximately 480 miles.

“In a few decades, if the current trends continue, much more of the existing low shrub tundra will start to resemble woodlands as the shrubs become tree-sized”, says Forbes.

Northern Boreal forest species are adapted to cold. “Some areas of boreal forest will be negatively impacted by warming temperatures, from increased drought stress as well as insect and fire disturbance”, says Scott Goetz of Woods Hole Research Center in the US, another of the co-authors.

Although many climate studies can be argued, increasing deciduous growth creeping further north shows temperatures are staying warm enough to support vegetation in what was once frozen tundra.

I'll see what other real 'science' supports my side of the fence

And some more Cohenite:

Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, chief of US Pacific Command, believes there will be terrible security threats on a warming planet.

Locklear said that societal upheaval due to climate change “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen which will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

He added, describing the reaction to his assessment. “You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level, certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

Locklear isn’t alone in his climate fears. A recent article by Julia Whitty takes an in-depth look at what the military is doing to deal with climate change. A 2008 report by U.S. intelligence agencies warned about national security challenges posed by global warming, as have later reports from the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. New Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel understands the threat, too.

Locklear’s words help to further mainstream the idea that climate change is a serious after he made the comments during an interview. Despite the real challenges including the North and South Korea tension Locklear focused on climate change as an even more important threat.

Nothing of importance to see here or consider?, move along eh Cohenite!

Art of the Anthropocene: The Scythe (Tom Yulsman, Discover)

More on Marcott et al. Some people will react against this, if they are allergic to scientific methods and cannot cope with uncertainty (which, by the way, contrary to what people like J Curry will have you believe, is not at all the same as "we know nuffin").

Others (like me, who can still recall a smattering of stats/biometry from years ago) will find it informative.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2013/03/13/art-of-the-anthropocene-the-scythe/#.UUAUOBxHK_Q

Verballed by Sou; I never said the last 11,300 years, I said "Much of the Paleoclimatic science uses a variety of proxies";

Stomata: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/26/co2-ice-cores-vs-plant-stomata/

Dendro and others, just in Australia: http://www.pages-igbp.org/workinggroups/aus2k/metadatabase

Sediment/ oxygen isotopes: http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/N30/C3.php

Ice-cores, yadda, yadda.

All proxies, specifically for MWP: http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

Watts Paleo page:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/global-weather-climate/paleoclimate/

1950 = present, radiocarbon dating calibration; noting that high-precision dates with a standard error <50 yr can and should be rounded to the nearest yr.

None of which excuses the fact that if the predominant paleoclimatic proxy, tree-rings, don't respond to late 20th century warmth, how would one know that they didn’t do the same thing in response to possible medieval warmth – a question that remains unaddressed years after Mann's Hockeystick.

Marcott uses a variety of proxies, speleothems, cosmogenic isotopes, as well as tree rings and ice cores; but all are filtered with such wide time parameters as to filter out the ostensibly studied warm periods.

Marcott says, "Our global temperature reconstruction for the
past 1500 years is indistinguishable within uncertainty from the Mann et al. (2) reconstruction; both reconstructions document a cooling trend"; Mann, of course is 'influential' at Science and McShane and Wyner have deconstructed his Hockeystick.

Anyway, well trolled sou and bugs; the topic of this thread is the astounding mistakes of the CC and BOM where, as Ken has shown, they cannot even read their own records and still haven't indicated the method by which they deducted a National temperature record. Which justifies Ken's supposition that they may have extrapolated from a sub-regional maximum temperature to a National mean temperature.

Comment on that boys.