There was a cabin boy, but his name was Tom.

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You mean they aren’t?

Bugger.

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Yep, bigbluekiwi – you might want to check this out.

Menzies was a wingnutted charletan with no scientific credibilty whatsoever (and he even lied about where he was born in his first book).

This stuff’s been well and truly debunked, but unfortunately has somehow found its way into the folklore. It’s got about the same level of credibility as Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy being characters in Captain Pugwash.

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I wonder how many ‘salt of the earth, call a spade a bloody spade’ people living around the Murray Darling river are citing the Medieval Warming Period as evidence that there’s nuttin’ goin’ on around here?

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And if you quote Gavin Menzies’ “work” as evidence, you’re just making yourself look foolish.

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Wrong interpretation of ‘recorded history’. The Chinese sailed around this route in the 1420′s – according to ‘How the Chinese Discovered the World’.

Was this the Mediaeval Warm Period’ ?

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The image actually comes from the University of Bremen here. We’ll know whether there’s a new record minimum in the next few weeks, but even if there isn’t, it will be fascinating to watch the northern hemisphere weather this winter. As the ocean freezes over it loses a lot of heat to the atmosphere – and that impacts weather and weather patterns.

Can you say “rapid climate change”?

(Much more at HT, of course).

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