Ask Dr. Science: a look at the data of global warming denialism

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Question: What happens when you look into the data being wielded as evidence against global warming?

Answer: You find discrepancies - between how the information was represented and what's actually there, between what it purports to show and what it actually shows, and between the argument being made from it and the original researchers' actual views.

Russ Steele is Nevada County's premier right wing blogger; a retired engineer, for over a decade he has maintained that global warming is not occurring, or is occurring but isn't due to human influence.

Back in April Russ and I had a global warming dust-up, in which he challenged me to look at data assembled by an organization called "The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change", at a website called "CO2Science" [SourceWatch link] - Russ said they had cited 77 [peer reviewed] papers to show that there was a global Medieval Warm Period* (the IPPC said it wasn't global) whose temperature surpassed temperatures today, which would suggest that today's temperatures aren't out of the ordinary:

"Here is a map tracing the location of 77+ papers attesting to a MWP. ...There are 16 Level 1 [most sophisticated] papers...19 Level 2... 42 Level 3... Click on each of the locations and it takes you to the scientific paper, which you can read and decide for your self."

And on this occasion, I did look into it - and at last have the time to write up what I found.

Of the 77 papers, I looked for info on all of the project's "Level 1" papers.

Russ had said
"...attesting to a MWP..."
Well, not exactly - the "Medieval Warm Periods" they attest to weren't all at the same time - some of the periods don't even overlap - if it's a global period, surely the "period" should be, well, global? Some of the MWP "eras" mentioned are 450-900AD, 950-1200AD, 740-880AD, 800-1100AD, 600-1000AD, 1050-1400AD.
Does CO2Science make note of this variability anywhere? It's pretty fundamental.

Russ had said
"... Click on each of the locations and it takes you to the scientific paper, which you can read and decide for your self."

It turns out that CO2"science" doesn't link to the paper, or even provide its abstract; instead they provide a "Description" of the paper, that they write up themselves.

If you can find your way to the paper's true Abstract ( scholar.google.com will help), in many cases you'll see why CO2"science" wouldn't want to print it, since it wouldn't support their "what global warming?" cause - e.g. for the Chesapeake study they cite, the paper's actual Abstract says,

"...temperature extremes in Chesapeake Bay associated with [North Atlantic current Oscillation] climate variability exceeded those of the prior 2000 years, including the interval 450-1000 AD, by 2-3 degrees C, suggesting anomalous recent behavior of the climate system."

Likewise, a little googling turns up an author of the Greenland studies they're citing, being quoted saying something they wouldn't appreciate, in USA Today:

"'ice cores changed our image of climate,' Johnsen says. 'Before we had thought that climate needed 10,000 years to change. We found it could change in 10 to 20 years; it could switch from very cold to very warm. This shook everyone.'"

I also emailed North American authors of three of the "Level I" studies, to ask their views on whether CO2"science" was citing their work to make a point they agreed with.

One did not reply.

A second - fortunately for CO2"science" - was not able to speak on the record.

The third was Dr. Brian Luckman, Professor of Geography at the University of Western Ontario and first author of Summer temperatures in the Canadian Rockies during the last millennium: a revised record (discussed here on CO2"Science")

He was not impressed:

"these results [in CO2"science"] are ... written in such a way as to imply a long sustained warmth which is not borne out... [Our] paper does not state that temperatures were higher in the past ( millennium?) than they are today.... Until we have many more well replicated temperature reconstructions that cover the period from ca 700-1200 AD, the whole concept of a "Medieval Warm Period" is open to question.

The email exchange is posted here on NCDocuments.

I'm fairly sure that, of the scientists who authored the 77+ papers that CO2"science" is citing, the number who accord that website any credibility will be vanishingly small.*