“Spencer: Direct Evidence that Most U.S. Warming Since 1973 Could Be Spurious“. Dr. Roy Spencer is like the Energizer Bunny on his sudden area of expertise, Urban Heat Islands. He just keeps going and going and going, and Anthony Watts just keeps printing it and printing it and printing it. A perfect symbiosis.
Dr. Spencer does finally admit that his analysis “is meant more for stimulating thought and discussion, and does not equal a peer-reviewed paper.” Let’s just say that the “could” in his report title leaves a lot of wiggle room, especially in light of his final words: “Caveat emptor.”
I particularly enjoyed this bit of ‘hard science’:
There is a clear need for new, independent analyses of the global temperature data…the raw data, that is. As I have mentioned before, we need independent groups doing new and independent global temperature analyses — not international committees of Nobel laureates passing down opinions on tablets of stone.
He manages to call for delaying action, imply that the data has been tampered with, and cast wild accusations against science in just two sentences! Someone’s wound a bit tight.
Wott's Up With That? 
He’s done better. Roy Spencer once authored a long WUWT piece of mathematical and climatalogical theorizing, that included the acknowledgement that he didn’t believe it himself. As explained, he just thought that WUWT’s readers might be interested.
Their side does have the bigger tent: all ideas are welcome.
“Their side does have the bigger tent: all ideas are welcome.”
I beg to differ. If the ideas come from the IPCC report or Michael Mann (among other sources), you’ll get hammered with comments from the WUWT mob that have nothing to do with science and everything to do with anti-science conspiracy theories.
So you have two teams analyzing the satellite data, two teams analyzing the ground stations, and all their data available to the numerous amateurs who want to have a go. All four professional jobs demonstrate a high level of agreement in all the areas they cover, despite using four different methods and two entirely different data sets.
That seems like a lot of independent analysis to me. Dr. Spencer, I suspect, will not be satisfied an analysis is sufficiently “independent” unless it produces the result he wants. [Precisely. – Ben]
Giant Sequoias Yield Longest Fire History from Tree Rings
The paper itself is available without a paywall.
The Medieval Period discussion consists of:
This location, if its warm enough, would still be a somewhat redundant listing in skeptic-site co2science/org’s list of global Medieval Warm sites. There are seven other listings, in the various categories, that cover nearby areas.
[You’re getting ahead of us! This is slightly new post on WUWT; I’ll be dealing with it shortly. – Ben]