David S,
Thanks for your courteous response.
This is one of the problems with the global warming hype and claims of scientific consensus; people wrongly assume that every AGW skeptic is totally uninformed.
The abstract posted does little to support claims of an “unprecedented spike in global temperatures” (even if you have confidence in the surface temperature records outside the U.S.). In fact the reason why we are supposed to be alarmed at this rate of warming over the past fifty years is that the AGW crowd continue to believe that it is unprecedented despite the fact that these paleo-climatology studies have been thoroughly refuted for having no actual statistical skill. That’s why I thought it was funny you brought up the notion of unprecedented warming while criticizing the right for misinterpreting statistics.
