[FBD]

-first of all I’d say the temperatures followed solar activity pretty closely.

Secondly, the collective stats showing a whopping 4/10ths of one degree earth temperature rise (6/10ths?) are mostly coming from temperatures taken in or near urban heat islands, and secondly, many of the temperature collection sources are contaminated by surrounding heat sources, as the following pictures show:

this one’s in Forest Grove Or, near where I live:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/forestgrove.jpg

This temp collection station is just laughable:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/Tahoe_city3.JPG

There are so many of these USHCN temp collection stations near AC units, not to mention that they are in/near urban heat islands:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/Marysville_issues2.JPG

So...I'm not buying the "hockey stick" temp rise, and I'd say the solar activity over the last century paralells pretty close to surface temps, especially when you throw out all the contaminated data from the above sites.

regards

[cogitator]

You need some perspective away from the skeptical sites, FBD.

No man is an urban heat island

Posts about the thermometer record

The power of large numbers (a useful and surprising article about a LOT of things)

Surface stations

The following is excerpted from the comments (510 in all) following the article at the first link:

"Abstract: Using rural/urban land surface classifications derived from maps and satellite observed nighttime surface lights, global mean land surface air temperature time series were created using data from all weather observing stations in a global temperature data base and from rural stations only. The global rural temperature time series and trends are very similar to those derived from the full data set. Therefore, the well-known global temperature time series from in situ stations is not significantly impacted by urban warming."

Global rural temperature trends
T Peterson, K Gallo, J Lawrimore, T Owen, A Huang, D McKittrick
Geophysical Res. Ltrs, Vol. 26 , No. 3 , p. 329 (1999)