I had to grab that; a number of people discussing this issue with me have claimed that the MWP was warmer than present. What I've read indicated that about 1998 or so the globe exceeded the maximum estimated MWP temperatures, as best as can be determined within the error ranges.
Where did you get the last quote? It's not from the URL immediately above. Here's a reference to the Linsley paper:
Decadal Sea Surface Temperature Variability in the Sub-Tropical South Pacific from 1726 to 1997 A.D.
I took a quick look at the CO2science comments on this paper and that of Hendy et al. They are trying to make a case that SST from some studies can be combined with other terrestrial temperature proxies to come up with a picture of global temperatures. It's worth trying but it's probably very difficult. One problem is that corals are in the tropics, and SSTs in the tropics are pretty uniform -- the variability induced by El Nino makes it very hard to extract a temperature trend. When you look at the tree ring proxies, you can see the range envelope is very big, too. So the climate research community is stuck with regional datasets that have to be combined -- somehow -- to get a "global" representation.
If I'm lucky, I can quickly find a paper by Mann that gives some sense of this variability.
Yep, here it is (it's a PDF):
Look at Figure 2, and note that different kinds of data are represented here. Central England and eastern China certainly have a different temperature pattern -- which emphasizes the difficulty of obtaining a global temperature record.
In fact, the Esper et al. record makes it abundantly clear that the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was fully equivalent to the warmth of the present.
I had to grab that; a number of people discussing this issue with me have claimed that the MWP was warmer than present. What I've read indicated that about 1998 or so the globe exceeded the maximum estimated MWP temperatures, as best as can be determined within the error ranges.
Where did you get the last quote? It's not from the URL immediately above.
Sorry miscopied the URL reference here is the correct URL:
The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age: Their Untimely Demise and Welcome Resurrection
Volume 5, Number 13: 27 March 2002
-- which emphasizes the difficulty of obtaining a global temperature record.
Especially when all records are over land and very local to the specific data sets used. To suggest that we even approximately know where we are at or are going from computer modeling that does not reflect real world variability and atmosperic temperatures over the oceans which make up over 70% of the globe, is totally assinine. Certainly not a reasonable basis for making substantial changes in national and world political and economic policies.