Medieval Warm Period

The Medieval Warm Period is closer to being a Monty Python skit than actual historical fact. It is a fiction embellished by global warming deniers to throw doubt on modern science. Their underlying message is this: don't worry folks, now we're just in a Modern Warm Period.

The notion was first put forward in 1965 by H.H. Lamb, who found evidence of warm, dry summers and mild winters in Western Europe during the 12th century. He called this the Medieval Warm Epoch. A great name, but too bad the data have not withstood the test of time.

Lamb’s studies pre-dated modern quantitative paleoclimatology so the values
of temperature change that he attributed to this period (1-2ºC above “average”) are essentially anecdotal, and based largely on his own estimates and personal
perspective.

From that germ of scholarship, now superceded, the deniers have erected a grand pile of dung sufficient to fertilize an energy-wasting debate. Go to Wikipedia, and you'll see that the Medieval Warm Period has become a phenomenon that lasted 500 years and affected the entire Earth! Wow. Amazing historians missed that until Exxon supplied generous research funds.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a branch of the US federal government, put it more politely. The "idea of a global or hemispheric 'Medieval Warm Period' that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect." That's pretty conclusive.

If you need more, here's what 2000 leading climate scientists from every country on earth had to say in a report they issued in 2001.

"…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".

So if you hear anyone talking about the Medieval Warm Period --
Put on your boots!
Reach for your shovels!
Head for the hills!