His subject is the Misuse Warm Period - the idea of a little anti-ice age warming Northern seas from the turn of the 1st Millennium through the High Misuse Ages, allowing Misuseval mariners to voyage at will.
The trick Watts uses to hide the decline of commonsense in this matter is to insist that words mean whatever he wants them to mean, neither more, nor less:
The truth about ‘We have to get rid of the medieval warm period’ December 8, 2013
In the thread Intelligence and the hockey stick commenter “Robert” challenged a well known quote about the MWP from 2006 by Dr. David Deming in his statement before the Senate EPW committee which is the title of this post. I thought it was worth spending some time setting the record straight on what the original quote actually was and point out that it has been paraphrased, but the meaning remains the same.Robert says: December 8, 2013 at 9:50 am
The quote is a fabrication.
Jonathan Overpeck’s exact words are:
“I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature.”
Christopher Monckton, like Andrew Montford before him, alters the text to instead read:
“We have to abolish the medieval warm period.”
My reply:
I checked for a citation, and the quote you state is correct: http://di2.nu/foia/1105670738.txt
As to this being a fabrication (as Robert claims), no, it’s a summation or a paraphrase of a long quote, something that happens a lot in history.
Monckton and Montford aren’t specifically at fault in this, as the summed up quote has been around for a long, long....The conversion to a paraphrase maintains the meaning.
“Mortal blow” certainly equates to “get rid of” (as it is often said) or “abolish” as you (and Monckton / Montford ) state it, and “we” equates to “I’m not the only one”.
The most important point is that Overpeck thinks the MWP (misuse) should be gotten rid of so that people that don’t agree with his view can’t use it (as citations).
And that, is the real travesty.
