Scientists Reconstruct Millennium's Coldest Winter

Ponca City, We love you writes "In England they called it the Great Frost, while in France it entered legend as Le Grand Hiver, three months of deadly cold that fell over Europe in 1709 ushering in a year of famine and food riots. Livestock died from cold in their barns, chicken's combs froze and fell off, trees exploded and travelers froze to death on the roads. It was the coldest winter in 500 years with temperatures as much as 7 degrees C below the average for 20th-century Europe. Now as part of the European Union's Millennium Project, Scientists are aiming to reconstruct the past 1000 years of Europe's climate using a combination of direct measurements, proxy indicators of temperature such as tree rings and ice cores, and data gleaned from historical documents."

Comments

Reputable science

[ferd_farkle]

This from the magazine that recently ran with a cover story proclaiming "Darwin Was Wrong".

"...trees exploded... chicken's [sic] combs froze and fell off..."

What next, Elvis sightings?

MOD PARENT UP

[Abcd1234]

Yup, the GW deniers got it wrong again. Big surprise...

Re:And what about proven scientific fraud?

[Abcd1234]

1. It wasn't just MM disputing the "hockey stick" - a independent panel of statistics experts reporting to Congress examined it, Mann's work, and found that MM were the ones in the right.

Uhh, if you're talking about the National Research Council panel, the BBC seems to take the exact opposite stance on the results. Are you saying the BBC is lying? Or are you talking about a different panel?

2. The "hockey stick" was found to be the result of faulty mathematics...by people who specialize in mathematics. That makes them experts in their fields.

If that's true, great. But the validity of those results seems to be in question. Some claim the math is bad. Others don't.

3. If Mann is so right, why doesn't his model stand up to scrutiny?

Way to beg the question. You assume the model doesn't stand up to scrutiny, yet I've already provided an article that claims it does. Are you right, or am I?

Let me put it this way - Mann and company are hiding and misrepresenting data and methodologies

According to you. Citations, please?

MM are pointing out there is a problem, making all of their work publicly available, and have received independent verification that their math is correct from experts in statistics and statistical analysis.

I've already provided at least one citation that indicates otherwise, a citation not produced by Mann, et al. I'm sure I could dig up others.

So, who's right?

Who do you find more trustworthy?

Well, the denialists:

a) make the false assumption that the entire scientific community is a monolithic, closed clique that can't possibly be trusted,
b) are blinded by the romantic notion that the loan maverick is more trustworthy than the community (what I like to call Galileo syndrome)
c) are populated by those with a clear vested interest in finding AGW false (eg, the fossil fuel industry)
d) like to trot out old and dead arguments that have been long refuted, a tendency that's disturbingly mirrored in the Intelligent Design community.

Given this, I tend toward siding with the scientists, flawed as they may be. But, of course, that's a bias in an of itself (and one I will happily admit to).

Re:So what about global warming ?

[spun]

Those are some pretty big accusations. Care to back them up with actual references?