First of all, an extravagant sweep of a hat-tip towards my pal, A. K. Haart, who featured this story on Tuesday. In turn, and I am sure I speak for him as well, we both doff our caps in respect and admiration towards Steve McIntyre, a man as deserving of a Nobel Science prize as anyone. I confess that I have rather lost touch with the 'Warmer/Denier' war of words and stats because it is now obvious beyond doubt that the 'Warmers' were completely wrong in the vast majority of their theories. Game over, really, despite the 'TROOOO BELIEEEEEVERS' continuing their melancholy chant.
McIntyre, however, is relentless in his search for scientifc truth and he finds the exact opposite buried in the detail of an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. In it, the IPCC offer up a reconstruction of historical temperatures in the SOUTHERN hemisphere over the last two millennia using different proxies because instruments were only available very recently. Fair enough, you might think, until that is, you find that 'good ol' eagle-eyes' McIntyre discovered that they had used Californian bristlecones, Finnish lake sediments and finally, er, European instrument temperature records! And all these for an analysis of SOUTHERN hemisphere temperature records. The one thing they excluded was Antarctic isotope data which indicated a very different picture from the one they wanted.
A. K. Haart ended his post with the words "You really couldn't make it up". no, indeed you couldn't - but they could!
