It is too early to tell

...as the famous sage replied. He wasn't talking about the Thompson et al. stuff, but he could have been. RP Jr appears determined to prove me right and is in danger of saltating the carcharhiniforme (ho ho).

Meanwhile, in an abrupt U-turn, James "maverick" Annan is toeing the party line, describing RC's post as "pretty reasonable as ever" :-).

But enough snarking. I should say something.

It now seems fairly clear that "everyone" is accepting the correction as necessary, and in my brief perusal of the T et al. paper I thought it seemed fair enough. Whats up for grabs is how much, and where, the temperature record is likely to change; and how the conclusions the IPCC drew from it would change. If the graph in the Indie is vaguely correct (and though its in a newspaper, its sourced to CRU, which some have leapt over) the answer is: not a lot. The change from a dip to a slow trough won't affect modern trends at all, nor would they substantially affect the sulphate-aerosol cooling interpretation. Which is just as well, because removing it would be embarassing, as JA noted at first.

However, it isn't clear how much the record will change by. Although its likely satellites, buoys, and extra ships will limit the change to the early 1960's, it could be longer. Hopefully all the nice T record people will be even now beavering away at their revised series.

[While I'm here, let me point you to http://sonic.net/~nbs/webturtle/ -W]