[Fraxinus]

Around 1980, temperatures rose again for about 20 years and have been declining since 1998. We are now back to 1980 temperatures.

The 1998 temperatures are by all accounts an outlier and should be heavily discounted, putting the most recent peak in temperatures at about 2004, thus the warming phase we have been in has lasted ~26 years. Temperatures have declined down to the vales of the early 90's but over the next 15+ years should decline to similar temps as the late 70's early 80's.

Much of this has been posted at Climateaudit.org and Wattsupwiththat.com. Sorry I do not have the charts and links handy to demonstrate that you are overstating your case.

[pjd]

The 1998 temperatures are by all accounts an outlier and should be heavily discounted, putting the most recent peak in temperatures at about 2004, thus the warming phase we have been in has lasted ~26 years. Temperatures have declined down to the vales of the early 90's but over the next 15+ years should decline to similar temps as the late 70's early 80's. ...Sorry I do not have the charts and links handy to demonstrate that you are overstating your case.

Here's one. It is no surprise that different people can see different things, especially if you want to start discounting so-called outlying data. For instance, how should we treat those outlying(?) lows in the early 90's? The warming phase of 26 years you refer to has ten-year holes in it! Clearly no 26 years of warming. Yes, we're down to those mid 90 temps. But since there is a lot of up and down variation in temperature, we're not at temperatures that correspond to just one particular set of years. Our temperatures are also clearly in the 1980's range. In fact, one can legitimately argue that we are down to the temperatures of 1910. One thing is unavoidably clear. The short-term warming trend of the past two decades is gone without a trace. I would argue that calling the recent warming a 26 year trend is grossly overstating the case.