He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.
But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar
warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over
whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.
What a darling - makes you want to give him a hug, doesn't it? What a nice cuddling, understanding global warming scientist.
He strongly defended references in his emails to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures.
These phrases had been deliberately taken out of context and "spun" by
sceptics keen to derail the Copenhagen climate conference, he said.
Well maybe, but if anything the context (as far as we understand it) makes these emails worse than they first appear. You can read about the context at Cilmate Audit:
Returning to the original issue: climate scientists say that the
“trick” is now being taken out of context. The Climategate Letters show
clearly that the relevant context is the IPCC Lead Authors’ meeting in
Tanzania in September 1999 at which the decline in the Briffa
reconstruction was perceived by IPCC as “diluting the message”, as a
“problem”, as a “potential distraction/detraction”. A stone in their shoe.
And what of the flat-earther / climate-change-denier claim that things are actually getting colder?
He said many people had been made sceptical about climate
change by the snow in the northern hemisphere - but they didn't realise
that the satellite record from the University of Alabama in Huntsville
showed it had been the warmest January since records began in 1979.
If only we had been told this a few months ago I'm sure everyone would have been convinced that global warming is true and the data don't matter. Huntville can be no more than 7000km from the north pole -for it to be warm is truly remarkable. I stand corrected and will take down this blog immediately.
Sadly the BBC did not ask Mr Jones about the claim that the sun might have more to do with the climate than CO2. Perhaps we can hope for that question next week? Still, given Mr Jones' fragile state, it might be better to leave the poor guy alone until he has recovered. There will be plenty of time to look back on the global warming scam and figure out what went wrong.