If this BBC interview with Phil Jones is on the up-and-up — in it, he admits that there has been no warming since 1995 and that the Medieval Warming Period actually existed (and is not a conspiracy by Exxon-funded deniers) — there aren’t many legs left on the warmist stool.

As with the the IPCC effort to “hide the decline” in the proxy record of mid-20th century temperatures, denying the Medieval Warming Period was crucial to the claim that the planet’s late-20th century warming was “UNPRECEDENTED!” (and perforce, manmade). In other words, this is how they kept the shaft of the hockey stick straight. Denying the downward temperature trend since the nineties was crucial to the claim that such warming was “ACCELERATING!!” (and so required massive expenditures and radical correctives).

Troubling developments for the warmist cause, to be sure. But as long as they have so many players still in the field, and in key positions, they will still be able to make claims about what the temperature is now.

As if on cue, the Times of London published this story on the problems in the global thermometer record, in which Anthony Watts’s surface-station project is prominently featured. (Note also that John Christy and Ross McKitrick are “scientists” to the Times. Not skeptics. Just scientists.)

Needless to say, neither Watts, Christy, nor McKitrick get the last word from the Times:

Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought.”