Climate Was Warmer 1000 and 2000 Years Ago

This impressive piece of research makes a significant contribution to a growing body of evidence that both the global extent of the Medieval Warm Period, and the temperature was similar, or even greater than the Current Warm Period, even though the atmospheric CO2 concentrations today are some 40% greater than they were during the MWP. --David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 17 October 2012

Now another paper, by Esper et al published in the Journal of Global and Planetary Change, shows that not only was the summers of the  Medieval Warm Period equal or greater than our current warmth, but that the summers of the  Roman Warm Period of 2000 years ago was significantly warmer than today. --Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That, 18 October 2012

We here present a 2000-year summer temperature reconstruction from northern Scandinavia and compare this timeseries with existing proxy records to assess the range of reconstructed temperatures at a regional scale. The new reconstruction is based on 578 maximum latewood density profiles from living and sub-fossil Pinus sylvestris samples from northern Sweden and Finland. The record provides evidence for substantial warmth during Roman and Medieval times, larger in extent and longer in duration than 20th century warmth. --Jan Esper et al, Global and Planetary Change 88–89 (2012) 1–9

Ice sheets retreating due to global warming often suddenly stabilise for “decades to centuries” no matter that the warming is still going on, scientists have found. It would seem that current predictions of sea level rises to be expected on a given timescale with a given amount of global warming will need to be revised - downwards. As the most up-to-date predictions are not very alarming anyway, it could be that sea level rises just aren't that big a worry, over say the next century anyway. --Lewis Page, The Register, 18 October 2012

An eminent scientist has criticised the leader of Cambridgeshire County Council for denying man’s role in global warming. However Cllr Clarke has won support from members of his party – who loudly cheered as he defended his position at the authority’s latest meeting. His blog posting on the subject drew on Met Office figures which showed there had been no discernible rise in global temperatures in the last 16 years. Pinned down at the meeting on whether he believed that man-made climate change existed, Cllr Clarke said he had “no idea”. --Cambridge News, 18 October 2012