Wayne says: <Which does nothin to support the concept of GLOBALLY warmer temperatures. The key is the extent of the supposed warming. There is also nothing to support the credibility of the site you choose to quote.>
Wayne,
Alarmists and skeptics alike know the importance of the MWP to their argument. On the one hand, if the MWP can be shown to be as warm or warmer than present, then a case can be made that 20th century warming is not unprecedented and thus not unnatural. With a strong MWP, the alarmists case is weakened maybe even emasculated. It makes sense for activist scientists like Mann to do whatever he can to minimize the MWP. And that, he did, for a short while anyway, until the many flaws in his reconstructions were revealed. The science is now all over the map and it now so often comes down to impugning, by either side, the reputations and motives of the scientists or the people interpreting the science. Which is precisely what you do in the above quote. CO2 Science blog may have a particular bias, I grant you that, but they are a clearing house for scientific literature on the subject. It is a great resource. That they interpret said science in one way or another is no different from the oft quoted Skeptical Science blog or RealClimate which I know to be quite unreliable even if you ignore their censorship policies.
There is a second line of defense - it is to minimize the effect of a strong MWP, by making the claim (unsupported by evidence) that it was regional. By doing so, one can cast doubt as to the extent of the warming during that period. By minimizing the extent one can proclaim that the MWP warming wasn't global. Since the Southern hemisphere is mostly ocean and with very little proxy data compared to the Northern hemisphere, it stands to reason that it will take time to find answers. It begs the question as whether the Null hypothesis should be that the MWP was regional until proven otherwise or whether we assume it was global until proven otherwise. Whatever the case, with time, more and better evidence will emerge like this paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 1X12000659 pointing to a global extent of the MWP right down to Antarctica. There is a plethora of historical and archeological evidence establishing a strong MWP. The climate science is coming around. I am thankful that there are true skeptical scientists out there pointing out the malpractice in papers like Gergis et al. so that we can get at the truth faster.
Wayne, I don't plan on sticking around here, since I don't find the information particularly revealing or the arguments very compelling. I invite you to join skeptic sites like WattsupWithThat. Even though it is, by nature, a skeptic site and therefore biased as such, they don't censor (or even edit user comments like SkS does). You can reasonably be assured to make your case, as many alarmists have.
Despite our disagreement on this issue, best regards,
Ock