The Great Model-Proxy Rumble

Climate scientists have spent a lot of effort using proxies to recreate the past climate record. How else do you tell if the planet is warming or cooling unless you know the past temperatures, right? I may have issues with the accuracy of those proxies, but I'm a "denier." What's with the climate modelers challenging that record?

The models say that the historic temperature reconstuctions are off. Say it ain't so!

The new paper concludes, “If the [Holocene temperature] reconstruction is correct, it will imply major biases across the current generation of climate models. To provide a credible benchmark for future climate models, however, the proxy reconstructions will also need to be reexamined critically.”

I can't say I have a dog in the fight when tenuous proxy models are put up against flawed computer models. But you have to like the modelers' confidence in their ability to say what the past 11,000 years should be when they (as a group) haven't gotten the last 15 years right.

Tip to Instapundit.