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I could not find a link to it, but I was able to find it in the Quaternary International Journal Volume 62 (1999) pages 35 to 47. It required a quick trip to the library but I was glad of the excuse (I never seem to have enough time for good old fashioned digging in the library these days).

Your comment about me "evading" his questions wounds me deeply and thus requires a detailed response from me. In my opinion, WOSG post the questions as rhetorical since he went ahead and answered them with an reference to S&B. However he did not leave it as simply a reference, he refers to it as the "Authority" (something I believe you might have said about me). He had read Mann, M&M and S&B in the last few days and thought that the S&B paper was the best - to quote him "It's solid". Since he had obviously gotten the three questions from the Soon paper I figured the best start was to show that Soon's paper was not all that he claimed it was. Thus I evaded nothing! Although I do notice that you do love to get the little debating jabs in!

However since you asked directly I will be pleased to answer them.

1) There was a period of warming during the time of the Medieval Warming Period. I believe that it was global but that it was more predominant in some areas such as Europe. That could be somewhat due to our culture's Euro-centric history. However I do not believe that the MWP was as warm as current temperatures.

2) There is no question that there is was a Little Ice Age. The best climate reconstruction that I have come across is a look at Europe based on a 1/2 degree grid (published last year but the name escapes me, I can dig it up if anyone is interested). I was amazed that they could get that fine resolution but they used historical records as well as proxies. However it was only for the last 500 years. They were able to show the LIA on both yearly and how it effected the seasons.

3) Yes and No. I believe that the MWP may well be warmer than the early part of the 20th century, roughly on par with the average temperature of the 20th century and slightly cooler than the recent decades (say 1985 onwards).

In regards to looking for papers that show cooling during the MWP, I don't know of any offhand, but quoting from Cioccale "In the first part of the present millennium, between 1100 and 1400 AD, sometimes called the Medieval Warm Period, the global temperatures rose around 0.3C in comparison to the norm of reference, the year 1900 (Riccardi, 1995)." Of course the current temperature is about 0.5 C warmer than it was in 1900 so that puts the MWP cooler than current times.

"In the first part of the present millennium, between 1100 and 1400 AD, sometimes called the Medieval Warm Period, the global temperatures rose around 0.3C in comparison to the norm of reference, the year 1900 (Riccardi, 1995)." Of course the current temperature is about 0.5 C warmer than it was in 1900 so that puts the MWP cooler than current times.

Averaging 3 centuries to produce one number and comparing that to two decades of above-normal surface temperature measurements (with a well known 0.1 to 0.15 degree bias)?

Comparing a reference year in one study to reference years in others which use different measurements and calculate global average differently? Nice bit of 1900ism there.

There were certainly decades in the MWP that exceeded the extremes of the 1980's and 1990's, that's easy to establish from the long term averages being higher and what we observe about short term variations. You have yet to show a single study showing the MWP was cooler than the 1900's which would call that into question. On the other hand, I and the others have presented global temperatures proxies to show that the MWP was not isolated to the north Atlantic. Yet all you do is blame eurocentrism for the overemphasis on MWP and wave around your non-quantifiable (in terms of temperature offsets) ocean current local effects as the other cause.

On the other hand I admit it is easy to get caught up in Viking stories. But I will keep waiting for your evidence that MWP was cooler than the 1900's comparing averages to averages.

I believe that the MWP may well be warmer than the early part of the 20th century, roughly on par with the average temperature of the 20th century and slightly cooler than the recent decades (say 1985 onwards).

Briffa1998 (files labeled 2001) was quoted by Soon as showing the 20th century to be warmer than any of the previous 5. The data is interesting though, it shows NH growing season average temperatures from tree rings as having most of that 20th century warmth in the 1930's and 40's.

So this seems to disprove part of your beliefs above, although you will no doubt cling tightly to them.