Earth at Warmest Levels in 1200 Years?

Researchers of a study being summarized in the journal, Science, say so and believe it's related to global warming. This is certain to be cited by the backers of the recently-announced Evangelical Climate Initiative. According to a report from The Globe and Mail:

The warmth in which the Northern Hemisphere has basked since the middle of the 20th century has been the most widespread and longest period of unusual climate experienced at any time during at least the past 1,200 years, according to a research paper in the journal Science.

The finding, by a pair of climate researchers from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K., was based on comparisons of the current warm period to other hot and cold intervals since the year 800...

In 2003, a team led by researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that it believed the 20th century wasn't the warmest, nor the one with the most extreme weather of the past 1,000 years.

But this research has been criticized for its selection of the indicators used to estimate historic temperatures, among other problems.

The new paper tried to overcome some of these shortcomings by carefully selecting items, such as tree rings, that are directly connected to temperature changes.

Although the new paper looked at data up to only 1995, recent years have continued with even more pronounced warmth.

The World Meteorological Organization said late last year that the decade from 1996-2005 contained nine of the 10 warmest years on record.

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