Replies

So... based on a whole 7 years worth of "data", you actually feel comfortable in suggesting that this represents a significant "warming trend", and even further, that human activity is somehow responsible?

No, that's certainly not all. The warming trend that climate scientists are most concerned about, the one that is seen as the salient indicator of human effects on climate, is the one that started in the mid-1980s. Because of a slight cooling mid-century, the full global warming increase in the 20th century was 0.6 C. Since the mid-1980s, the global temperature has increased about 0.4 C. I believe that six of the 10 warmest years in the 20th century were in the 1990s. All of this (and more) is seen as the human effect "signal" emerging from the climate variability "noise".

Perhaps when every little thing stops being hyped as evidence of global warming, the cause will become more believable.

Case in point: two summers ago we were informed of the number of consecutive days that the temp in Dallas was 95 or more. Each day's report had the not so subtle hint about global warming. When the consecutive day streak finally broke at about 28 days, we learned that the record number of consecutive days of 95 or over was some number in the 40s, and had been set 20-30 years earlier.

OK, but you're still talking about data covering a few decades, or perhaps the last century. This is still an absurdly small sample, in comparison to the whole of climatic history spanning millions or billions of years.

It also makes the huge assumption that human activity is the cause, when there are many, many other possible causes. As someone else mentioned, volcanic activity and changes in solar activity/radiation, just to name two. CO2 levels are dependent on many things besides just how many cars we're driving around, or how many lumps of coal we're burning. That's the point I am trying to make: that no one can say that human activity is responsible, and to start trying to change our behavior to change CO2 levels is absurd.

I maintain that it is instrument influence; nowhere are the true temperature shelters statistically separated from the more common popular digital sensors displayed and arrayed willy-nilly on rooftops, power poles, towers and the like.

If we want to spend some bucks, let's set up an array of sheltered instruments and calibrate them on schedule; take readings on a continuous basis and smooth the results over a five year period.

No, that's certainly not all. The warming trend that climate scientists are most concerned about, the one that is seen as the salient indicator of human effects on climate, is the one that started in the mid-1980s. Because of a slight cooling mid-century, the full global warming increase in the 20th century was 0.6 C. Since the mid-1980s, the global temperature has increased about 0.4 C. I believe that six of the 10 warmest years in the 20th century were in the 1990s. All of this (and more) is seen as the human effect "signal" emerging from the climate variability "noise".

It could just as well be that obscurants from burning rain forests, (and cities in WW-II) as well as general "soot", put a blip in what would otherwise be a general warming trend, as shown in the historical record that you posted above.