Early version of temperature history

Just a little post to hold a factoid.

Some of the stupider class of septics try to assert that the IPCC airbrushed the LIA and the MWP out of its temperature record. wiki discusses this a bit (OK, I admit it, I wrote that page). The relevance of the MWP claims is the (bogus) assertion that "there used to be a consensus that that the MWP was much warmer than now, until the IPCC arbitrarily adopted a new record".

But: I've only just realised that some of the earliest work on long temperature records - as reported in the 1975 NAS/NRC report - contradicts this. They show (their figure A.2(b)) the last 1000 years and they clearly show "the present" (then: ie, 1900 onwards; or perhaps 1940's: the graph is not too clear and the label contradicts the axis legend) to be warmer than any other time in 1000 years. Now admittedly that graph appears to be based on "Eastern Europe" data ("winter severity index, and from *Lamb*, the very person so often quoted in favour of the MWP...), but it does destroy the myth. Isn't that cute? (Whats even cuter is that you are very unlikely to have access to that picture, so can't check. But trust me, I'm telling the truth).