I'm surprised you keep posting the graph of the thirty year satellite record. It's true, it's probably the most reliable one we have, but it's not that scary. Usually when they want to freak people out they go to the 1850 -> Had-CRU, or if you really want to go Alice in Wonderland go with the distorted illusion of NASA/GISS - now that one's good for a scary, hysterical image.

As to this...

it's all in how you frame the argument. You could also say...

* This only covers the geologically short period of the instrumental temperature period.

* It covers a time we were coming out of a cold period called the little ice age, and expected to warm naturally.

* 1998 could be seen as a peak, and we currently look to be in a plateau of no statistically significant warming.

* PDO has recently flipped negative, and historically that signals a 30 year cooling period. What will your graph look like then, if what has always happened previously happens again?

As to the MWP, you could argue about that all week. There's data to come to all sorts of different conclusions. Basically it's inclusive. As such a statement like temperature rise of the last hundred years is unprecedented is nothing more than a debatable possibility. Even when you finish with the argument on how warm, or how rapid the rise was within the MWP, you have to go to previous, warm periods within human history which look like they were even hotter, such as the Holocene Maximum.

You could say that. There was a global cooling period of about three decades between the 1940's and 1970's that were cooler than the decades preceding and much cooler than recent decades.

But, it's important to consider what was occuring during that period that caused the cooling:

• decrease in sun spots (which increase solar ouput)
• several volcanic eruptions that released sulfur dioxide (which reflects solar energy back into space)
• few pollution controls on aerosols which act like sulfur dioxide in the atomsphere by reflecting back solar radiation. Between the 1930's to early 70's (when the dangers of aerosols were begining to be recognized) aerosols were developed and mass marketed widely.

Currently - temperatures are warmer than the period preceeding the cooling so the idea that it is just the "natural warming" following a cool cycle doesn't seem so plausable.

That's debatable.

Well....2005 was the hottest year on record globally. 2009 was the second hottest. But the other factor is what we measure - air temperature is not necessarily the most reliable guage, it is more apt to fluxuate. Measuring the ocean's temperatures are generally more accurate of trends and they show statistically significant warming: Did global warming stop in 1998?

There's also a tendency for some people just to concentrate on air temperatures when there are other, more useful, indicators that can perhaps give us a better idea how rapidly the world is warming. Oceans for instance -- due to their immense size and heat storing capability (called 'thermal mass') -- tend to give a much more 'steady' indication of the warming that is happening. Here records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate before and since 1998 and there's no signs of it slowing any time soon.

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Are you sure understand what the 'little ice age' was, and when it was? It was a cold period between about the 13th century, and the 19th century. As we started to warm, and pull out of it the Industrial Revolution began.

What I said was...

You then began talking about the cooling between the 40s, and the 70s, and the warming that followed. Huh? I'm lost.

When you say 2005 was the warmest year, you are, I hope aware you're repeating a contrarian claim made only by James Hansen of NASA GISS. Nobody other than Hansen and his followers believe that. Personally, I've listened to the arguments, and I think Hansen's claims of 2005 as warmest years, and such are based on nonsense.

If you don't believe me when I say other collectors of temperature data do not agree with Hansen on this look at your own graph of the satellite record on the previous page.

Ah, I misread the post. When you didn't specify the period, I automatically thought of this century because there had been talk of a cooling period. My apologies.

You are right, 2005 is the third hottest year on record. 2010 is the first, 1998 is the second.

In this chart, the top 20 hottest years since 1961 are listed - they are all from 1983 on and the top 10, with the excpetion of '98 are between 2000-2010. The data is derived from multiple datasets - not Hansen.

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Actually NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies is NASA/GISS. That's Hansen. I wouldn't get too impressed by the title - NASA, and Space, and such. They're land based temps. Why the home of satellites wants land based temps you tell me. It's not because they're more accurate. They're not.

The other 2 are NOAA which is Thomas Karl who is this warmist who knows how to get sweet jobs as top bureaucrat in climate. He's famous for having a non-existent PHD. Actually what he has is an honorary PHD, much like Dolly Parton.

CRU is Phil Jones, who's the Climategate guy. The Met is the organization in trouble in England right now for making bad predictions, and lying to the public.

They're all Warmist slanted organizations. Hansen's not the only one, he's just the worst.

The most accurate temp sets right now are probably the satellites.

If you check out the UAH graph below...

Dec. 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.18 deg. C Roy Spencer, Ph. D.

and the RSS graph here...

RSS data: 2010 not the warmest year in satellite record, but a close second | Watts Up With That?

you'll see the plateau after 1998 I was talking about. Actually I can even show it to you on hadcrut.



So you see we start to come out of the little ice age about 1850ish. Temps start to rise in a slow, uneven long term trend, which is what you'd expect coming out of a 400 year cold period. After 1998 there's a peak, and a plateau. Yes, measurements along any trend are highest at it's peak. If there's a plateau after the peak they'll all be among the measurements most high. Was that supposed to be a surprise, or something?

The human body is 98.6 degrees, anything less than that is cold.

Hey, as long as I have that graph up there, can I show you something?

Remember how somebody was mentioning earlier the temperature spike was unprecedented, and could only be explained by CO2?

The bulk of the CO2 rise happened after 1950. That might explain the 78 to 98 spike, but where's the explanation for the one from 1910 to 1940? The 78 to 98 spike would not be unprecedented.

Also you can now see the cooling trend from 40 to 78 you were talking about earlier. Yes, there are multiple excuses for that. A couple you didn't even mention. None of them are fully understood. They are hypotheses to explain away a problem with the human caused global warming hypothesis. You'll see that over and over again. There's a problem with the global warming hypothesis. They'll create another hypothesis to explain it away. The theory cannot be falsified, and that's why it's hard to call it science.

I must get back to work and need to do a bit of research, but I'll try to answer it later

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ohhh....must not say it .....



must not



no

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Try both sides this time, I think you're going to be surprised to discover there's always a supported argument to either side of the minutia of this argument.

I think there's a third side. That would be my side. I think all these rock solid claims of absolute fact from either side are bogus. When you watch the 2 sides argue it starts to look like we really don't know that much about climate yet. These climate arguments become more like literary arguments of your favorite book.

However, because we really don't know as much as we think we do, policy proposals become twitchy.

For example, check out this one.

IPCC Green Doctor Prescribes End to Democracy to Solve Global Warming | hauntingthelibrary

Are you prepared to follow the Professor there, based on something we really don't know that much about?

Now me, I lean towards this guy...

Why Climate Change Reminds Me of a T.S. Eliot Poem The Enterprise Blog