NASA Study Finds World Warmth Edging Ancient Levels

A new study by NASA scientists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years.

The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or smaller than at the present time. Recent warming is forcing species of plants and animals to move toward the north and south poles.

The study used temperatures around the world taken during the last century. Scientists concluded that these data showed the Earth has been warming at the remarkably rapid rate of approximately 0.36° Fahrenheit (0.2° Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years.

"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," said Hansen. In recent decades, human-made greenhouse gases have become the largest climate change factor. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and warm the surface. Some greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, occur naturally, while others are due to human activities.

The study notes that the world's warming is greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and it is larger over land than over ocean areas. The enhanced warming at high latitudes is attributed to effects of ice and snow. As the Earth warms, snow and ice melt, uncovering darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, a process called a positive feedback. Warming is less over ocean than over land because of the great heat capacity of the deep-mixing ocean, which causes warming to occur more slowly there.

Hansen and his colleagues in New York collaborated with David Lea and Martin Medina-Elizade of UCSB to obtain comparisons of recent temperatures with the history of the Earth over the past million years. The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments.

One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature change there is indicative of global temperature change. Therefore, by inference, the world as a whole is now as warm as, or warmer than, at any time in the Holocene.

According to Lea, "The Western Pacific is important for another reason, too: it is a major source of heat for the world's oceans and for the global atmosphere."

In contrast to the Western Pacific, the researchers find that the Eastern Pacific Ocean has not shown an equal magnitude of warming. They explain the lesser warming in the East Pacific Ocean, near South America, as being due to the fact this region is kept cool by upwelling, rising of deeper colder water to shallower depths. The deep ocean layers have not yet been affected much by human-made warming.

Hansen and his colleagues suggest that the increased temperature difference between the Western and Eastern Pacific may boost the likelihood of strong El Ninos, such as those of 1983 and 1998. An El Nino is an event that typically occurs every several years when the warm surface waters in the West Pacific slosh eastward toward South America, in the process altering weather patterns around the world.

The most important result found by these researchers is that the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius (1.8°F) of the maximum temperature of the past million years. According to Hansen, "That means that further global warming of 1 degree Celsius defines a critical level. If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable. During the warmest interglacial periods the Earth was reasonably similar to today. But if further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today."

Global warming is already beginning to have noticeable effects in nature. Plants and animals can survive only within certain climatic zones, so with the warming of recent decades many of them are beginning to migrate poleward. A study that appeared in Nature Magazine in 2003 found that 1700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of 6 kilometers (about 4 miles) per decade in the last half of the 20th century.

That migration rate is not fast enough to keep up with the current rate of movement of a given temperature zone, which has reached about 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) per decade in the period 1975 to 2005. "Rapid movement of climatic zones is going to be another stress on wildlife," according to Hansen. "It adds to the stress of habitat loss due to human developments. If we do not slow down the rate of global warming, many species are likely to become extinct. In effect we are pushing them off the planet."

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The difficulty for those of us (and I'm sure, from your posts, that you're among this number) who try to keep our objectivity, with a mind open to persuasion by sound argument, is to know how to extract the wheat from the abundant chaff without personally verifying all the data.
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Yes, exactly.

If the makers of Vioxx had given out millions in grants to researchers to fund studies to prove the safety of that drug, the academic community (along with their friends in the press) would automatically be skeptical if not outright reject the findings. They would smell an agenda that indicates a bias that disqualifies any serious discussion of the results.

What should we suspect about the "religion of peace" when every incidence of violence is only met with silence on the part of co-religionists who we are assured are "moderate"? It must be assumed that the silent ones really agree with the violence.

What should we suspect when the entire scientific community, which holds itself out as "open minded", "dedicated to scientific principles", "peer-reviewed", is likewise silent when California caps and limits CO2 emissions in the name of reducing Global Warming, way before the science is settled, let alone proven.

In both cases, the silence is deafening. In both cases, the mental alarms should be going off in the minds of people who really want to know what the truth of the situation is.

In my opinion, any climate scientist or academic who specializes in this field who is silent about the Kali law must have his honesty and commitment to scientific discipline called into question. Any one of these who sits on grant committees must resign simply because they have revealed their incestuous relationship with likeminded grant recipients.

For example, your model must explain how it is that all record high temperatures have not occurred with the last decade or how record lows could be recorded in the same decade, etc. For that matter. how there could there be temperatures even close to record highs in the 1940’s or close to record low’s in the 1990’s?

There is no expectation of linearity in the climate response to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, because climate is a non-linear system. Natural variability coupled with both natural and anthropogenic forcings (the latter including elevated SO2 levels in the mid-century) accounts for the "irregularities" in the record. As for the amount of data and the validity of the data, take it up with the GHCN. There is plenty of documentation online and in peer-reviewed articles.

I have challenged you in a number of different ways on the issue of statistical validity several times, but you have yet to address it. Beyond failing to address the statistical validity challenge you have also ignored a similar challenge to the source of your data (actual measures not estimates or assumptions) and the accuracy and precision of such.

I don't have a responsibility as a layman to evaluate the statistical validity of the climate data. If you want to, start with this:

Quality Control of Monthly Temperature Data: The GHCN Experience

If you have questions, ask the authors.

Logically, if you are concerned about climate changes defined by decades, then your postulated cause and effect correlations must be adjusted. This adjustment must mathematically filter out those influences that are supposedly responsible for the longer-term changes that you cite such as are reflected in the inferred temperature records in ice core drillings. Neither your explanations nor your model appears to accomplish such a mathematical filtering.

The influece of factors that affect climate on time-scales of 10-100,000 years are likely indetectable on shorter time-scales.

As you, yourself, admit with the above statement, the current interglacial period contains no temperatures greater than some inferred from ice core samples in previous interglacial periods thousands of years ago. Consequently, you must establish how much of the current temperature increase (called global warming) is due to the same causes as previous interglacial temperature increases and how much is due to your postulated “anthropogenic” causes.

The primary cause of increasing and warm global temperatures in previous interglacials is indicated to be the same factor implicated in the current warming trend -- atmospheric CO2 concentration. In previous interglacials, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 rose naturally as ocean temperatures increased (and there are other factors that also would contribute CO2 to the atmosphere in a warming Earth). These factors always "stopped" at an approximate CO2 concentration of 280 ppm. Now the concentration is approximately 360 ppm and rising. So the same effect is expected.

As I have pointed out previously, neither you, nor anyone else, can accomplish this task because there is no data (measures as opposed to estimates and assumptions) for solar activity, volcanic activity, or other potentially climate driving phenomena, etc., for the previous interglacial periods.

And you are wrong again! Solar activity can be estimated with beryllium-10 isotope levels. Volcanic activity can be easily seen as ash deposition and increased pH (due to SO2 deposition). And notably, even though large volcanic eruptions are easily detectable, they don't cause a ripple in the CO2 concentrations of trapped bubbles for the same time period.

Very well, I challenge you to tell me what the measured, gaseous contribution to the atmosphere of the Krakatoa eruption (postulated to be the largest volcanic eruption in several centuries) in 1883 was. That year is within your model’s listed time frame.

Krakatoa's climatic effects were primarily due to SO2 and ash added to the atmosphere, causing cooling. Even if the amount of CO2 from Krakatoa added 1 ppm to the global concentration (which is probably much, much more than it actually did), any climate effects of that would be undetectable compared to the cooling effects. BTW, in terms of ash output, Tambora (see below) is estimated to have been about 4x bigger than Krakatoa. In terms of centuries, the Kuwae eruption (1452-1453) is estimated to have been the largest eruption in 700 years. Huaynaputina in 1600 was also a Krakatoa-scale eruption.

Perhaps, you could tell me what the cause of the “Little Ice Age” was and support your conclusion with measurements instead of estimates and assumptions? Alternately, how about revealing the climatic cause of the “year without a summer,” 1816, similarly supported by measured data.

Little Ice Age -- Maunder Minimum in solar activity. "Year with a summer" -- eruption of Tambora. What data do you need when these causes are well-known?

Far from a hair split, my first statement, which you called incorrect, was merely a sound historical citation with a perfectly understandable English sentence. That sentence referred to the fact that there had been no measurements of the “ozone hole” confirming or denying its existence prior to 49 years ago.

Your point is true. There could have been an Antarctic ozone hole prior to the commencement of Dobson unit measurements in 1957. However, the cause of the current phenomenon is well-known and is established to be due to increasing CFC concentrations in the atmosphere, their breakdown products, and proven catalytic pathways of ozone destruction. So if there was an ozone hole prior to the commencement of measurements, it would have been caused by something other than CFCs.

While there can be no argument that a photo-chemical reaction can occur that would change CFC’s into “ozone eaters,” it is a far cry from mere possibility to actuality. CFC’s manufacture began in 1928, as I recall from my reading, and was nearly exclusive for most of the time, and the vast bulk, of its manufacture decades later, to the northern hemisphere. Consequently, it is a rather large leap to cite CFC’s as the cause of an “ozone hole” at the south pole. It is even more curious that there is no comparable “ozone hole” in the artic.

You need to read the entire resource cited below and then get back to me. ALL of your questions are answered therein.

Stratospheric Ozone: An Electronic Textbook

Call me a skeptic, but I refuse to take the “climate science community’s” word when their arguments are mathematically unsupported at the most basic statistical level. If the conclusions are couched in terms of probability, then I want to see the confidence limits, the regression coefficients, the raw data, etc.

Feel free to read the IPCC report, which covers all of these topics.

That's enough for now -- over to you.

Re: our early discussion on the reality, possible lack thereof, of the phenomenon called “global warming” and its postulated causes.

It is helpful, to occasionally refer to the beginning of a discussion, to bring it back to the original track. In that spirit, please allow me to repost a few items from previous posts below (my previous post in italicized red and quoted site excerpts in blue):

From post # 8: Author’s [referring to the original article beginning this thread] implied proposed logic chain:

Premise: The earth’s climate is becoming warmer than it should from natural processes.
Premise: This warming is the result of human activity.
Conclusion: Changing human activity will stop global warming.

This syllogism is invalid as well as unsound from a number of perspectives. First, the major premise contains an unproven assumption that the current postulated warming is not part of a natural statistical variation. Second, the minor premise is unproven and, hence, the conclusion is potentially false. Third, the conclusion is not inevitable as, even if the second premise were true, it may be too late to reverse any trend or, perhaps, a natural mechanism will mitigate the situation such as a increase in plant life (like algae) to absorb and convert CO2 or other green house gases.

In post #39 to DBrow you cited the Vostok ice core drillings as a part of your post. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that the inferences and the graph from this source you provided are accurate and representative of global temperatures for the time frame represented. Temperatures, in previous cycles shown on this graph have been equal to, or greater than, the currently recorded temperatures. Given that the previous cycles were many thousands of years before the industrial age, there is no way that any of them could be due to any anthropogenic influence. Therefore, the only logical conclusion that can be inferred from this information is that the current temperatures may be driven by the same natural mechanisms that drove previous temperatures of equal or greater magnitude.

There are no data (accurate and precise measures in contrast to estimates, extrapolations and assumptions) of phenomena such as solar activity, volcanic activity, inorganic and/or organic sources of atmospheric gases, etc., that can be used to statistically explain previous long term change cycles observed in the ice core drillings. In fact, there are no (detailed, comprehensive and confirmed by multiple scientific sources) data that can be described as accurate and precise in statistical terms for possible “drivers of change” of global climate phenomena prior to the 1940’s. Consequently, the argument put forward that “today’s” temperatures are “global warming” due to anthropogenic influences cannot be statistically substantiated. In fact, a strong statistical case can be established (with acceptable alpha and beta risk) that “today’s” temperatures are well within the (plus or minus) 3-sigma limits of a normally varying, natural process.

No counter-argument you have presented nor source you have referenced (and I have reviewed them all in addition to independent research on my own) has successfully contradicted the above arguments. Therefore, my assertion concerning the author’s lack of indisputable facts and logical support for his thesis stands unrefuted.

In the interest of space on this thread and time, I will not repeat the rest of my posts. Rather, I invite you to present data (accurate and precise measures in contrast to estimates, extrapolations and assumptions) to support your opposition to my statements. Opinions of some in the “climate science community’s” are just that: “opinions.” I might point out in this topic area that the opinions agree on only one thing: there is insufficient information to reach indisputable conclusions.

Below are a series of excerpted, direct quotes with some key phrases emphasized from just few of the sites which you have referenced in previous discussion:

The Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle — and coldest part — of the so-called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America, and perhaps much of the rest of the world, were subjected to bitterly cold winters. Whether there is a causal connection between low sunspot activity and cold winters is the subject of ongoing debate. [emphasis added] Some scientists believe that solar variation drives climate change more than carbon dioxide does.

Recently published research suggests that the Sun's rotation slowed in the deep Maunder minimum (1666–1700).[1] …The mechanism behind the Sun's expansion and contraction is still unclear [emphasis added] …

For much of the underdeveloped world there is a dearth of early historical digital climate data. The well known plots of global temperature trends from the 1850 to the present should really be thought of as basically just representing the U.S. and Europe prior to 1900, perhaps even up to 1930 or 1940, depending on the gridding algorithm used. Therefore, without early data from Africa, South America, and other developing regions, our knowledge of global climate trends is severely limited. [emphasis added]

Even if all these processes were fully understood conceptually, which isn't the case [emphasis added] …

Temperatures, in previous cycles shown on this graph have been equal to, or greater than, the currently recorded temperatures. Given that the previous cycles were many thousands of years before the industrial age, there is no way that any of them could be due to any anthropogenic influence. Therefore, the only logical conclusion that can be inferred from this information is that the current temperatures may be driven by the same natural mechanisms that drove previous temperatures of equal or greater magnitude.

Faulty reasoning. The forcing mechanisms of previous cycles are known -- and one of the primary mechanisms is increased atmospheric CO2. In the context of the current climate system, the increase in CO2 from 280 ppm to 360 ppm would be expected to cause a warming trend. There are currently no other forcings operating sufficiently to cause such an increase. Bottom line: No natural mechanism can be identified that is sufficient to cause the currently observed warming. The only forcing that is sufficient is anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

There are no data (accurate and precise measures in contrast to estimates, extrapolations and assumptions) of phenomena such as solar activity, volcanic activity, inorganic and/or organic sources of atmospheric gases, etc., that can be used to statistically explain previous long term change cycles observed in the ice core drillings.

Paleoclimatologists use the data that is available to determine the forcings operating in past climate states. If you have a problem with how that is done, your argument is not with me, because all I can do is describe how such research is conducted.

In fact, there are no (detailed, comprehensive and confirmed by multiple scientific sources) data that can be described as accurate and precise in statistical terms for possible “drivers of change” of global climate phenomena prior to the 1940’s.

This is incorrect. The GHCN has sufficient quality-controlled data to examine 20th century trends. If you're going to argue about data quality, it's a non-starter, because the analysis of current trends and future changes is not critically connected to the 20th century record.

Consequently, the argument put forward that “today’s” temperatures are “global warming” due to anthropogenic influences cannot be statistically substantiated.

This statement is also probably incorrect. For one thing, the trend of main concern is the warming since the 1970s -- and there is sufficient global data of high quality to determine that trend is happening. Because there are no other apparent forcings of note operating during this period other than greenhouse gas forcing (and that's largely anthropogenic in nature), the attribution of the current warming trend to anthropogenic GHG forcing is well-supported.

In fact, a strong statistical case can be established (with acceptable alpha and beta risk) that “today’s” temperatures are well within the (plus or minus) 3-sigma limits of a normally varying, natural process.

Specious argument. The past range of values is not the primary way in which the current "diagnosic" of anthropogenic GHG forcing is made.

The forcing mechanisms of previous cycles are known…

Apparently, you failed to read the sampling of the quotes I posted in the previous message. Let reiterate the relevant snippets for you:

the subject of ongoing debate

still unclear

our knowledge of global climate trends is severely limited

Even if all these processes were fully understood conceptually, which isn't the case [emphasis added] …

Quite obviously, as these are direct quotes from the sources you referenced, it should be exceptionally evident that the forcing mechanisms are not known, but merely speculated. Regardless of how soundly such speculation seems to be arrived at, it remains speculation. As speculation, even scientific speculation, it is properly in the realm of scholarly debate, careful experimentation and meticulous observation. However, it is not properly in the realm of policy making that could induce severely adverse economic and humanitarian consequences.

Bottom line: No natural mechanism can be identified that is sufficient to cause the currently observed warming. The only forcing that is sufficient is anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Bottom line: No natural mechanism has been identified for the origin of global warming. The only “forcing” that is sufficient is a deity (using analogous reasoning to yours).

Continuing to use similar reasoning to yours that we “must take action” on the “forcing” mechanisms:

All agnostics and atheists should be forced to convert or die as they create a real risk of angering the “forcing” deity and bringing destruction upon all of us.

Paleoclimatologists use the data that is available to determine the forcings operating in past climate states. If you have a problem with how that is done, your argument is not with me, because all I can do is describe how such research is conducted.

I have no argument with paleo-climatologists (nor you, personally) and their postulated sets of conditions for speculations on how paleo climates varied. Where I have a huge difference is when these paleo-climatologists try to foist their speculations on others as fact. Fortunately, few, if any of these individuals, do so.

Unfortunately, there are those who try in their stead to “force” acceptance of these speculations as fact. Worse, yet, these purveyors of innuendo, through disingenuous tactics, and even outright lies, try to create a false sense of imminently impending disaster to force the public and their elected representatives to accept, or perpetrate, potentially unwise and possibly calamitous actions.

The GHCN has sufficient quality-controlled data to examine 20th century trends. If you're going to argue about data quality, it's a non-starter, because the analysis of current trends and future changes is not critically connected to the 20th century record.

Perhaps, you did not see the quote from your own reference. Please allow me to restate it for you:

The well known plots of global temperature trends from the 1850 to the present should really be thought of as basically just representing the U.S. and Europe prior to 1900, perhaps even up to 1930 or 1940

Even if all these processes were fully understood conceptually, which isn't the case …

Sorry, missing 30 to 40 percent of the data is not sufficiently quality controlled.

For one thing, the trend of main concern is the warming since the 1970s -- and there is sufficient global data of high quality to determine that trend is happening.

Do you, or your paleo-climatologists have sufficient data to show that such a rapid rise has not occurred in one or more of the past cycles? As one of your referenced articles points out, the best “resolution” prior to the last half-century is in 300-year increments. Consequently, the answer to my posed question is a resounding no. Therefore, your rationale is akin to finding a warm meteorite fragment and concluding that the earth is imminent danger of a cataclysmic meteor strike of the variety postulated to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

Because there are no other apparent forcings of note operating during this period other than greenhouse gas forcing (and that's largely anthropogenic in nature), the attribution of the current warming trend to anthropogenic GHG forcing is well-supported.

Again, allow me to again quote from a source to which you referred earlier on this thread:

our knowledge of global climate trends is severely limited

Perhaps, you did not see the quote from your own reference. Please allow me to restate it for you:

The well known plots of global temperature trends from the 1850 to the present should really be thought of as basically just representing the U.S. and Europe prior to 1900, perhaps even up to 1930 or 1940

Even if all these processes were fully understood conceptually, which isn't the case [emphasis added] …

Specious argument. [referring to standard statistical analysis] The past range of values is not the primary way in which the current "diagnosic" of anthropogenic GHG forcing is made.

Your assertion of speciousness, notwithstanding, it would seem that you, or those upon whom you rely, are mathematically uninformed. The statistical criticism of anthropogenic forcing as the primary source global warming is valid.

After my short comment indicating that further discussion is pointless, I then checked on one quote from my references, specifically the GHCN reference. Turns out that the reference you quoted is from this:

The Colonial Era Archive Data Project

which contains the quote you provided. It was not from the link I provided, so you must have searched for it. Did you even read the whole thing, or only chuckle triumphantly when you read the introduction? Because you should have read further (and I will note that my reference was from 1997; they've done a lot more since then).

Here's what we read further down:

"As of July 1995, we have digitized data from approximately 200 stations in Africa. The average period of record is 40 years. The data start in the late 1800s and end with independence from the European colonial power. We have located almost all relevant publications in the major meteorological libraries of the world, and we have commenced digitizing of data from Asia and South America."

So they have been adding data to cover the period of record from other continents for almost a decade.

Now let's read this from the link I provided:

"Despite the problems we encountered with various source data sets and individual time series, we repeatedly see evidence, in both the digital archive and in old documents such as the 1894 Deutsche Ueberseeische Meteorologische Beobachtungen in Deutsch-Ost-Afrika (Peterson and Griffiths, 1996), that weather observations were generally made very meticulously. There are 4.7 million station months of temperature data in GHCN starting in 1701 and continuing to the present."

So I don't see that your argument against statistical validity is well-supported - and plus, you didn't argue fairly, as I had to find the Web page with the quote you provided. Most of your other points don't have anything to do with science, and I'm not interested in diatribes about politicians or the media hyping global warming. That adds too much noise to the discussion. Furthermore, scientists never state anything with absolute certainty, and skeptics always make a great deal about the expressions of uncertainty, when most of the time the scientists are a lot more certain than the way they sound. What you term "speculation" is usually much, much, much more an expression of well-defined knowledge with only some ambiguity remaining to be investigated.

Do you, or your paleo-climatologists have sufficient data to show that such a rapid rise has not occurred in one or more of the past cycles?

From the Eemian to the present, yes. As an example, the end of the Younger Dryas, which was a very rapid warming when the normal mode of oceanic circulation was reestablished, is known to have occurred in a period of decades or less.

The Younger Dryas

The deeper the layers are recovered from an ice core, the more the layers are compressed, but since here the actual data is subannually resolved for an event occurring about 11,000 years ago, it is possible to resolve decadal-scale events going back significantly further than that. Surprised?

Further info:

High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period

The caption indicates 50 or 10 year resolution, 10 years for the oxygen isotopes which are the standard temperature proxy.

My Dear Cogitator, I do hope that you have not slipped beyond the “debate” stage wherein the facts and logic of the issue is that which is the sole topic of our discussion. (I bring this issue up as I seem to detect a note of “frustration” in your posts lately.) Let me reassure you that I am interested in informative and persuasive debate driven by facts and logic. Turns out that the reference you quoted is from this: … (…you didn't argue fairly, as I had to find the Web page with the quote you provided…)

If I inadvertently quoted from a link of a link that you cited, please forgive the oversight. I assure you that there was no intent to mislabel. Nonetheless, the quote is valid and the point remains and you have steadfastly ignored it. Address it straightforwardly.

Did you even read the whole thing, or only chuckle triumphantly when you read the introduction?

Actually, I did read the whole thing. However, nothing in the remainder of the article refuted the statement in the introduction, which was the point.

There are no comprehensive, continuous, global temperature data that can be contemporaneously linked comprehensively, precisely and accurately with potential cause factors that are older than the 1930’s or 1940’s, at the earliest. To drive home the point, I invite you to provide any accurate and precise global measurements (not estimates, extrapolations, assumptions or inferences, etc.) of stratospheric ozone, carbon dioxide, atmospheric sulfide compounds, ex-atmospheric versus tropospheric, terrestrial insolation, upper-atmospheric water vapor, atmospheric suspended particulates, etc., made prior to that time. Let me emphasize that this challenge is to provide “measurements” not proxies or inference based extrapolations.

You cannot point to any comprehensive, global, accurate and precise measures prior to the middle of the last century of those items cited above, for there are none. In reality, a great many data related to potential cause factors for global temperature change can go no further into the past than the 1960’s, at the earliest, because no prior attempts had been made to measure them at all on a global basis prior to that time. All you can do is point to “proxies” that allow possible inferences.

”…There are 4.7 million station months of temperature data in GHCN starting in 1701 and continuing to the present."

It is rather interesting that the source you cited stated that temperature data started in 1701 when Farhenheit did not develop his scale until 23 years later. In fact, he didn’t invent the alcohol thermometer until 1709, and the mercury thermometer not till 1714. Given this time frame and the manufacturing technology available, these instruments would not have been wide spread for probably 40 or 50 years, if then. Consequently, there arise some obvious questions: How accurate and precise were these temperature measurements allegedly made in 1701 with a “Santorio” or “Galileo” type thermometer? Exactly how much credence should be accorded a source that uses readings from a device as notoriously accurate as a “water thermometer?”

(…you didn't argue fairly, as I had to find the Web page with the quote you provided…) I’ll not make the same mistake… see the following:

(http://www.met.fsu.edu/explores/methist.html)
(http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blthermometer.htm)
(http://www.astragalpress.com/history_thermometer.htm)
1724. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferhenheit)
1731. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9aumur)
1732 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delisle_scale)
1742. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius)
1848. (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blthermometer.htm)
1859. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine)

So I don't see that your argument against statistical validity is well-supported

Did you look up alpha and beta risk? How about Type I and Type II errors? If you did, you should have run across something else related to sample size errors and choosing representative samples, etc. (BTW, I make my living using statistics.) If you read these carefully, you would see that the “inferred” statistical records, e.g., Vostok ice core inferences, etc., do not statistically support the conclusions concerning the currently postulated sources of potentially catastrophic global warming being anthropogenic. Furthermore, you would also see that even a 50-year record of very accurate and precise data cannot be statistically valid for drawing conclusion about functions that have 100,000 thousand year cycles, combined with 26,000-year cycles, combined with… etc.

Most of your other points don't have anything to do with science

In deed, all of my other points had to do with nothing, but science. Science is about making observations, forming hypotheses, creating experiments to test those hypotheses and confirming them or denying them. Science is not about abusing mathematics to create a questionable forecast of doom in order attempt to force the public and the government into ill-considered actions.

… skeptics always make a great deal about the expressions of uncertainty…

Your assertion is not true if those expressions of uncertainty are expressed in terms of mathematically acceptable confidence intervals. Furthermore, if the theory under discussion is not being used as a political lever to push some agenda for potentially disastrous changes foisted off on an unwilling populace, you would find that skeptics would be far less demanding of those proffering the theory.

Do you, or your paleo-climatologists have sufficient data to show that such a rapid rise has not occurred in one or more of the past cycles?

From the Eemian to the present, yes.

Perhaps, you missed the word in bold print, data.

The Eemian interglacial era (known as the Sangamon interglacial in North America, the Ipswichian interglacial in the UK, and the Riss-Würm interglacial in the Alps) is the second-to-latest interglacial era of the Ice Age. It began about 131,000 years ago. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian)

Exactly what data in contrast to proxies, extraoplations, assumptions or estimates on global temperatures can you refer me to for periods 131,000 years ago? How about data in contrast to proxies, extraoplations, assumptions or estimates on stratospheric ozone, carbon dioxide, atmospheric sulfide compounds, ex-atmospheric versus tropospheric, terrestrial insolation, upper-atmospheric water vapor, atmospheric suspended particulates, etc., for periods 131,000 years ago? Herein lies the crux of the skeptics’ objections to the entire global warming issue.

There are some very clever (dare I say, even “good,” if not, well founded) theories on climate change. Unfortunately, these theories are based upon information that is derived from proxies for, not direct measurements of, the phenomena on which the theories are based. Beyond a basis on proxies, there are also too many discontinuties and disjunctions with different sets of proxies. Consequently, there are distinct problems with demanding action on the bases of such theories. Far too many times in the past, proxies have been discovered to be misleading or even false indicators. Therefore, unless, and until, independent conformation can be obtained using data (not extrapolation, assumptions, etc.) these “clever” theories are not a dound basis for action.

If you can present a logically valid argument soundly based upon data, I remain willing to be convinced.

Sorry, I have another business trip for the next three days. I do not know if I’ll be able to access the internet from my hotel room or not. Therefore, a delay in response may be unavoidable.

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