Badgers as proxy data

Here's the latest from our good friends at the Climatic 'Research' Unit. In the aftermath of the recent Climategate scandal we are being treated to further 'honest' revelations about the source of the proxy data that were used to create the famous graph. A signifiant proportion of the reconstruction in the early 1300s is based on historical documents. This is no great surprise in itself as sources such as paintings, literature, church records and agricultural calendars have long been used in climate reconstruction. For this we refer you to the work of the late H.H. Lamb, ironically the founder of the Climatic 'Revisionist' Unit.

Further examination of original source material (now admitted by the shamefaced rogues) is from a diary kept by the naturalist and nobleman John Kebbsley. In a wonderfully crafted document discovered in the local museum collection in Kibworth he does less recording of climatic variability and more recording of badger movements in and around the Leicestershire village of Croxley. Badger movements are presumably therefore the original proxy data - and this faithful technique of reconstructing palaeoclimates was originally devised in 1312!!

A far cry from modern rigorous statistical calibration and verification I would say.