By Paul Homewood
We already have plenty of evidence from Greenland ice cores that the LIA was the coldest point since the ice age ended, for instance here.
Now scientists in Norway have found exactly the same there.
From the NIPCC:-
Reference
Bakke, J., Trachsel, M., Kvisvik, B.C., Nesje, A. and Lysa, A. 2013. Numerical analyses of a multi-proxy data set from a distal glacier-fed lake, Sorsendalsvatn, western Norway. Quaternary Science Reviews 73: 182-195.
Working with what they describe as a lacustrine sediment record derived from three c. 3.5-m-long sediment cores recovered from the distal glacier-fed lake Nedre Sorsendalsvatn located 35 km inland from the coast downstream of Blabreen in Nordfjord, western Norway, Bakke et al. (2013) developed a Holocene record of glacier variability based on a multi-proxy data set consisting of sedimentological, physical and geochemical data.
Bakke et al. report that their reconstruction accords with "glacier variability reconstructed from other sites in western Norway, including the termination of the deglaciation at approximately 10,000 cal yr BP, the 8.2 ka BP (Finse) event, the Holocene thermal optimum between ~8000 and 5500 cal yr BP, and the onset of the Neoglacial at 5500 cal yr BP," while further noting that "the largest glacial extent during the Neoglacial time period took place during the ‘Little Ice Age’." They additionally indicate that these several findings are "in accordance with all glacier reconstructions available for western Norway (e.g., Nesje et al., 2001; Nesje, 2009; Vasskog et al., 2012), northern Norway (e.g., Bakke et al., 2010) and … with glacier fluctuations in Iceland (Geirsdottir et al., 2009) and in the European Alps (e.g. Holzhauser, 2007)."
These facts clearly demonstrate that the most recent warming of the globe – which brought the Earth to its current state of warmth (which is still far less than levels that were reached at earlier times in the Holocene) – began at the very coldest point of the current interglacial. Thus, there is no reason to think it out of the ordinary that the planet would subsequently experience a strong warming, or that the latter portion of that warming would be in any way unusual, unnatural or unprecedented (especially since it actually ceased over a decade and a half ago). In fact, it was no more unnatural than the cooling that had brought the planet’s temperature down to that earlier and truly unique cold point in time.
http://nipccreport.org/articles/2013/oct/29oct2013a1.html
