I gather that you are referring to what is commonly known as the Medieval Warm Period, this period was not “free of arctic ice”, neither was it as warm as it is today and most importantly it was not a global or hemitropic event.

See the following : MYTH #2: Regional proxy evidence of warm or anomalous (wet or dry) conditions in past centuries contradicts the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric mean warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context

[Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004]

In 20 years it will be far too late to prevent our extinction.

Sophia,

Agreed on all points. The law is quite often an Ass.

Stef,

I like to keep my spam database “topical”.

This is a superb post. Sorry I did not read it earlier. I will include a link to this post in my post on climate change.

I just want to make three points:

-Scientific disputes over the accuracy of data cannot be resolved in a court of law. It is ridiculous and anti-scientific to bring this to a court of law. Scientific disputes are resolved by science itself. I have read on so many controversies, including the David Baltimore controversy, in which the FBi was sent to check if the notes in the notebook recording experiments were authentic or taken at different times, the whole thing amounted to a farce and the accused scientist, a colleague from whom Baltimore dissociated himslef in order to save his reputation was proven right but after 10 years, the 10 years it took to destroy her career. Scientifc truth is never static, it can always be tested and refuted and this is a matter that just should be left to science.

-There is nothing in the alleged ‘errors’ that can actually qualifies as an error. Actually a scientific error, as it is defined in science has more to do with intentional or non intentional misconduct in the method than within a contested result generated according to correct rules.

Ecology invented the term of the ‘precautionary principle’ (principe de précaution’ which is widely used now in Ethics. Because data on climate change concern us and the fate of our planet and our humanity, and because predictions for a complexe system can never be 100% accurate, we have to choose the worse between two suggested predictions. It is the same in syllogisms. If you have two premises in your syllogism, one correct and one false, you have to draw your conclusion on the false premise. This is no exageration, this is prediction adapted to complexe systems facing something threatening or catastrophic.

The artic has been free of ice in the middle ages and there was still an england above sea level.

I am no global warming sceptic but big chunks of hte science has holes in and alot more is just conjecture. I can’t believe any of the stuff about feedback mechanisms as some of the ones investigated in the past for extreme weather in the Caribbean for example have tunred out to be the complete opposite of what sceintists predicted.

As I said, Global Warming is something we need to urgently do something about. But it ain’t going to happen within 20 years and scaring people more is jst going to make them put their heads in the sand.

There’s a lot of it about these days -

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ioZjKsBrKOw

PS the anti spam word for this comment is ‘terror’, cool…

I’ll go halves with you on the fridge Mutters, we can save the world and nab a Nobel in one swift manoeuvre.