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Wikipedia and climategate

Posted on 12/19/2009 8:54:11 AM PST by mimi from mi

William Connolley is apparently a Wikipedia administrator. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley

All told, (William) Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy.


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1 posted on 12/19/2009 8:54:12 AM PST by mimi from mi
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To: mimi from mi; SteamShovel; SolitaryMan; grey_whiskers; IrishCatholic; Darnright; Entrepreneur; ...
 




Beam me to Planet Gore !

2 posted on 12/19/2009 8:56:19 AM PST by steelyourfaith (This space for rent.)
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To: mimi from mi

It’s there now, but it immediately gets poo-pooed as some kind of false argument against global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period


3 posted on 12/19/2009 8:57:18 AM PST by Bon mots
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To: mimi from mi

Medieval Warm Period
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Northern hemisphere temperature reconstructions for the past 2,000 years

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Medieval Climate Optimum was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region, lasting from about AD 800–1300. It was followed by a cooler period in the North Atlantic termed the Little Ice Age. The MWP is often invoked in discussions of global warming. Some refer to the event as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly as this term emphasizes that effects other than temperature were important.[1]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Initial research
* 2 By world region
o 2.1 Globally
o 2.2 North Atlantic
o 2.3 North America
o 2.4 Other regions
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
* 6 External links

[edit] Initial research

The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm weather between about AD 800–1300, during the European Medieval period. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented. It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global.[2] However, this view has been questioned; the IPCC Third Assessment Report from 2001 summarises this research, saying “…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of ‘Little Ice Age’ and ‘Medieval Warm Period’ appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries”.[3] Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ than in the early- and mid-20th century.[4] Crowley and Lowery (2000) [5] note that “there is insufficient documentation as to its existence in the Southern hemisphere.”

Palaeoclimatologists developing region-specific climate reconstructions of past centuries conventionally label their coldest interval as “LIA” and their warmest interval as the “MWP”.[4][6] Others follow the convention and when a significant climate event is found in the “LIA” or “MWP” time frames, associate their events to the period. Some “MWP” events are thus wet events or cold events rather than strictly warm events, particularly in central Antarctica where climate patterns opposite to the North Atlantic area have been noticed.
[edit] By world region
[edit] Globally

Studies by Michael Mann et al. find that the MWP shows “warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally”.[7] Their reconstruction of MWP pattern is characterised by warmth over large part of North Atlantic, Southern Greenland, the Eurasian Arctic, and parts of North America which appears to substantially exceed that of modern late 20th century (1961-1990) baseline and is comparable or exceeds that of the past one-to-two decades of in some regions. Certain regions such as central Eurasia, northwestern North America, and (with less confidence) parts of South Atlantic, exhibit anomalous coolness.
[edit] North Atlantic
The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are from a 1408 marriage in the church of Hvalsey — today the best-preserved of the Norse ruins.

A radiocarbon-dated box core in the Sargasso Sea shows that the sea surface temperature was approximately 1 °C (1.8 °F) cooler than today approximately 400 years ago (the Little Ice Age) and 1700 years ago, and approximately 1 °C warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period).[8]
[edit] North America
The 16th-century Skálholt map of Norse America

The Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north.[9] Around 1000AD the climate was sufficiently warm for the north of Newfoundland to support a Viking colony and lead to the descriptor “Vinland”. The MWP was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that lasted until the 19th century, and the Viking settlements eventually died out. In the Chesapeake Bay, researchers found large temperature excursions during the Medieval Warm Period (about 800–1300) and the Little Ice Age (about 1400–1850), possibly related to changes in the strength of North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.[10] Sediments in Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley show a dry Medieval Warm period from AD 800–1300.[11]

Prolonged droughts affected many parts of the western United States and especially eastern California and the western Great Basin.[4][12] Alaska experienced three time intervals of comparable warmth: A.D. 1–300, 850–1200, and post-1800.[13] Knowledge of the North American Medieval Warm Period has been useful in dating occupancy periods of certain Native American habitation sites, especially in arid parts of the western U.S.[14] Review of more recent archaeological research shows that as the search for signs of unusual cultural changes during the MCA has broadened, some of these early patterns (e.g. violence and health problems) have been found to be more complicated and regionally varied than previously thought while others (e.g., settlement disruption, deterioration of long distance trade, and population movements) have been further corroborated.[15]
[edit] Other regions

The climate in equatorial east Africa has alternated between drier than today, and relatively wet. The drier climate took place during the Medieval Warm Period (~AD 1000–1270).[16]

An ice core from the eastern Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula, identifies events of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period.[17] The core shows a distinctly cold period about AD 1000–1100, illustrating that “MWP” is a moveable term, and that during the “warm” period there were, regionally, periods of both warmth and cold.

Corals in the tropical Pacific Ocean suggest that relatively cool, dry conditions may have persisted early in the millennium, consistent with a La Niña-like configuration of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation patterns.[18] Although there is an extreme scarcity of data from Australia (for both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age) evidence from wave-built shingle terraces for a permanently full Lake Eyre[19] during the ninth and tenth centuries is consistent with this La Niña-like configuration, though of itself inadequate to show how lake levels varied from year to year or what climatic conditions elsewhere in Australia were like.

Adhikari and Kumon (2001), whilst investigating sediments in Lake Nakatsuna in central Japan, verified the existence there of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.[20]

“Temperatures derived from an 18O/16O profile through a stalagmite found in a New Zealand cave (40.67°S, 172.43°E) suggested the Medieval Warm Period to have occurred between AD 1050 and 1400 and to have been 0.75°C warmer than the Current Warm Period.”[21] The MWP has also been evidenced in New Zealand by an 1100-year tree-ring record.[22]
[edit] See also

* Holocene climatic optimum
* Little Ice Age
* MWP and LIA in IPCC reports
* Historical climatology
* Paleoclimatology
* Temperature record

[edit] References

1. ^ Bradley, Raymond S. Climate System Research Center. “Climate of the Last Millennium.” 2003. February 23, 2007. [1]; E.L. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: a History of Climate Since the Year 1000 (0(Barbara Bray, tr.) (New York: Doubleday)1971.
2. ^ “Paleoclimatology Global Warming - The Data”. NOAA. November 10, 2006. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html. Retrieved 2007-07-11.
3. ^ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis 2.3.3 Was there a “Little Ice Age” and a “Medieval Warm Period”?”. http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm. Retrieved 2006-05-04.
4. ^ a b c Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Henry F. Diaz (2003). “Climate in Medieval Time” (PDF). Science 302 (5644): 404–405. doi:10.1126/science.1090372. PMID 14563996. http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/bradley2003d.pdf. (links to pdf file)
5. ^ How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period? Thomas J. Crowley and Thomas S. Lowery Ambio, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 51-54
6. ^ Jones, P. D., and M. E. Mann (2004). “Climate over past millennia”. Rev. Geophys. 42 (RG2002): 404–405. doi:10.1029/2003RG000143.
7. ^ Mann, Micheal E.; Zhihua Zhang, Scott Rutherford, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Drew Shindell, Caspar Ammann, Greg Faluvegi, and Fenbiao Ni (27 November 2009). “Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly”. Science 326 (5957): 1256–1260. doi:10.1126/science.1177303. http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MannetalScience09.pdf. Retrieved 2009-12-05.
8. ^ Keigwin, Lloyd D. (29 November 1996). “The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea”. Science 274 (5292): 1503–1508. doi:10.1126/science.274.5292.1503.
9. ^ Diamond, Jared (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0143036556.
10. ^ “Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 20th Century Temperature Variability from Chesapeake Bay”. USGS. http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eespteam/Atlantic/GPCabs.htm. Retrieved 2006-05-04.
11. ^ “Marshes Tell Story Of Medieval Drought, Little Ice Age, And European Settlers Near New York City”. Earth Observatory News. May 19, 2005. http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/2005/2005051918986.html. Retrieved 2006-05-04.
12. ^ Stine, Scott (1994). “Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during mediaeval time”. Nature 369 (6481): 546–549. doi:10.1038/369546a0.
13. ^ Hu FS, Ito E, Brown TA, Curry BB, Engstrom DR (2001). “Pronounced climatic variations in Alaska during the last two millennia”. PNAS 98 (19): 10552–10556. doi:10.1073/pnas.181333798. PMID 11517320.
14. ^ C. Michael Hogan (2008) Los Osos Back Bay, Megalithic Portal, editor A. Burnham.
15. ^ Jones, Terry L.; Schwitalla, Al (2008). “Archaeological perspectives on the effects of medieval drought in prehistoric California”. Quaternary International 188 (1): 41–58. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.07.007.
16. ^ “Drought In West Linked To Warmer Temperatures”. Earth Observatory News. 2004-10-07. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2004/2004100717709.html. Retrieved 2006-05-04.
17. ^ Khim, B-K; Yoon H.; Kang C.Y.; Bahk J.J. (November 2002). “Unstable Climate Oscillations during the Late Holocene in the Eastern Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula”. Quaternary Research 58 (3): 234–245(12). doi:10.1006/qres.2002.2371. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/qr/2002/00000058/00000003/art02371. Retrieved 2006-05-04.
18. ^ Cobb, Kim M.; Chris Charles, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards (July 8, 2003). “The Medieval Cool Period And The Little Warm Age In The Central Tropical Pacific? Fossil Coral Climate Records Of The Last Millennium”. The Climate of the Holocene (ICCI) 2003. http://www.pac.ne.jp/IUGG2003/EN/program.asp?session_id=MC12&program_id=022025-1. Retrieved 2006-05-04.
19. ^ Allen, Robert J.; The Australasian Summer Monsoon, Teleconnections, and Flooding in the Lake Eyre Basin; published 1985 by Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, S.A. Branch; ISBN 0909112096
20. ^ Adhikari DP, Kumon, F. (2001). “Climatic changes during the past 1300 years as deduced from the sediments of Lake Nakatsuna, central Japan.”. Limnology 2 (3): 157–168. doi:10.1007/s10201-001-8031-7.
21. ^ Wilson, A.T., Hendy, C.H. and Reynolds, C.P. 1979. Short-term climate change and New Zealand temperatures during the last millennium. Nature 279: 315-317.
22. ^ Cook E.R., Palmer J.G., D’Arrigo R.D. (2002), “Evidence for a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in a 1,100 year tree-ring reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand”, Geophysical Research Letters, 29, doi:10.1029/2001GL014580.


4 posted on 12/19/2009 8:57:31 AM PST by AnalogReigns
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To: mimi from mi
And yet the “Science” speaks for itself, eh?

The really sad thing is you will never convince a True Believers - those that have seen the light seem, well, so disappointed.

5 posted on 12/19/2009 8:57:35 AM PST by ASOC (Always act in accordance with the dictates of your conscience, my boy, and chance the consequences)
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To: mimi from mi

See this excellent article from today on this same topic.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/19/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx


6 posted on 12/19/2009 9:01:09 AM PST by spyone (ridiculum)
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To: mimi from mi

Sometimes I wish Al Gore had not invented the internet.

parsy, the wry


7 posted on 12/19/2009 9:30:18 AM PST by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: mimi from mi
Note the "Reconstructed Temperature" graft to the right.

If I'm not mistaken, that is Michael Mann's fixed "hockey stick" graft, which he was forced to change after he was caught red-handed ignoring the MWP.

But notice the right hand side of it still shows the phoney 20th century warming...

8 posted on 12/19/2009 9:57:59 AM PST by THX 1138 ("Harry, I have a gift.")
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To: Bon mots

Sorry, you should click on Bon mots link to MWP article on Wikipedia to see what I mean...


9 posted on 12/19/2009 10:00:58 AM PST by THX 1138 ("Harry, I have a gift.")
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To: steelyourfaith; SunkenCiv
Wikipedia is gigantically useful for any sort of topic for which no controversy could possibly exist. For anything involving any sort of controversy no matter how slight, wiki is utterly worthless.


10 posted on 12/19/2009 10:32:59 AM PST by wendy1946
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To: wendy1946

Yep. Well said.


11 posted on 12/19/2009 10:37:23 AM PST by steelyourfaith (This space for rent.)
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To: mimi from mi

Do you have a link for this article?


12 posted on 12/19/2009 10:51:50 AM PST by Fractal Trader
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I once came across a website that was a collection of deleted wikipedia articles. Kinda interesting.


13 posted on 12/19/2009 11:06:21 AM PST by isom35
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To: Fractal Trader

Her quote came from the Lawrence Solomon article linked up this page a few posts. The entire article is well worth reading.

And if you read the Wikipedia article on the Medieval Warming Period, you’ll see that it didn’t “disappear” as Solomon claimed. Instead, they re-wrote the information lending more credence to researchers who claim it was an event localized to Europe and not world-wide in scope, and less credence to researchers who felt it was world-wide.

In that sense, it “disappeared” as a concern to those who wanted the “hockey stick” to represent world-wide reality.

We have ringside seats to the biggest con game going today, and it’s fun to watch it fall apart.

Incidentally, Solomon’s article was the first I’ve seen describing exactly how Wikipedia was involved in the game. I know it’s been under liberal control, but that was good reporting on Solomon’s part.

P.S. Just changed my tagline from “12 years is enough” to “8 years”. And that might still be too high.


14 posted on 12/19/2009 11:09:14 AM PST by Norseman (Term Limits: 8 years is enough!)
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To: wendy1946
Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement. The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy.
This may explain a couple of very weird things I've seen when editing Wiki-pages (I've only done a few of those). In the edit window there is comment code that doesn't show up in the browser, and some of the comments I've seen have been really angry and stupid.
15 posted on 12/19/2009 3:38:08 PM PST by SunkenCiv (My Sunday Feeling is that Nothing is easy. Goes for the rest of the week too.)
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To: Mamzelle

a worksaver link, due to what you said:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2411290/posts?page=3#3


16 posted on 12/19/2009 4:06:36 PM PST by SunkenCiv (My Sunday Feeling is that Nothing is easy. Goes for the rest of the week too.)
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To: SunkenCiv

You get what they call “edit wars” on wiki and ultimately the place is ruled by leftists i.e. don’t get any ideas about fixing any sort of thing with any sort of a political context.


17 posted on 12/19/2009 5:59:16 PM PST by wendy1946
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