R.Burlow
owner of website –> Billiard Table Dimensions

In the unsmoothed data, relatively high concordance is apparent again in medieval times, but the highest values in 2000 years are recorded for windows spanning the most recent century or so. In figure 8b, concordance is calculated for different length windows using the raw RCS indices, but the results for each window length are smoothed (using the negative exponential least-squares method; Mclain 1974), which is roughly equivalent to using a 200-year spline. In the unsmoothed concordance series, except for the shortest (51 years) window results which clearly show high concordance approximately 900, there is evidence of rising and unprecedented similarity in tree growth across northwest Eurasia in the most recent century. This is accentuated in the smoothed series for 101- and 201-year window lengths.

The statement is made despite the fact that 51-year window has diverged from the other two windows, and is about to drop below the “significance level” (dashed line) … This “result” is given already in the abstract as follows (my bold)

Using Kendall’s concordance, we quantify the time-dependent relationship between growth trends of the long chronologies as a group. This provides strong evidence that the extent of recent widespread warming across northwest Eurasia, with respect to 100- to 200-year trends, is unprecedented in the last 2000 years.

Somehow, I’m reminded about Mann’s “robust” “evolving multivariate correlations”

At the risk of hijacking my own thread, I think my misspelling “Taymir” is a curious sort of Freudian slip. One of our friends is a Scottish immigrant to Toronto (as opposed to long-term Scottish diaspora like me) and is fond of bad poetry (and good) poetry. McGonagall, recognized in some quarters as the author of the “worst poem” in the English language is one of his favorites. And the highlights of the McGonagall opus are the Silvery Bridge over the River Tay and The Tay Bridge Disaster, the latter generally conceded to hold a more special place.

An excerpt from the first poem:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe,
The famous engineers of the present day,
Who have succeeded in erecting the Railway
Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
Which stands unequalled to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

and of the second:

I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,

However, I think that McGonagall’s undoubted triumphs are easily surpassed by a poet of the Scottish Diaspora in Ontario, one whose name conjures up lyric images (I mean, of course,….. James McIntyre), whose most famous poem commences:

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

McGonagall’s corpus is said to include the following:

His unparalleled awkward rhythms and dud rhymes were perfectly matched by his subject matter: spectacular train wrecks and the mountains of Greenland.

I have not examined McGonagall’s corpus in detail. Both topics – the Arctic mountains of Greenland and train wrecks – are highly topical in paleoclimate.