The "change" could have occurred 100 years ago and the earth may still be heating up as a result of that change. If you put a pot of ice water on a warm element (with a constant temperature) what do you think is causing the water to slowly heat up? Magic?

There is a lot of evidence the earth is warming naturally. Consensus climate science acknowledges this fact. What do you think caused the warming prior to 1950? Magic?

(Anthropogenic CO2 output was too low to have had much of an effect prior to 1950 in case you didn't know.)

I've heard that line about thinner ice often. People are so quick to agree with any explanation that fits their beliefs no matter how weak.Yet these same people will argue against a plain fact (like the lack of significant heating for the last 15 years or so) until they are blue in the face. It is fascinating.

"Climate scientists are so much smarter than me I believe everything they tell me."

It would be fun to game that system.

(Of course your post ignores climate scientists who disagree with the "consensus", but there you go.)

The IPCC says that anthropogenic warming was responsible for at least half of the warming since 1950. How does that translate to "temperatures would be declining" if not for human activity?

Most of the predicted temperature increase is due to climate sensitivity, not CO2 directly.

But most of the predicted warming does not come directly from CO2. It comes from climate sensitivity estimates.

From what I've read the adjustments add to the apparent warming. Not going to disagree with the rationale for the adjustments, just saying that you are wrong on this detail. I would love for you to prove me wrong here but everything I've seen on the issue points to the opposite, and I still find it hard to believe.

Also, the satellite data shows no significant warming for the last 18 years or so. That's just a plain fact.

You say the models haven't failed. Could we have another 15 of no significant warming and still strongly believe in global warming model predictions? 50 more years? At what point can we say that the climate models have effectively failed?

There are skeptics who are far smarter than you as well by the way. By your logic your opinion on the matter is just as worthless. You are the equivalent to a drunk in a bar defending Einstein. You probably know even less about Einstein than the guy who is questioning Him and you are just a dumb drunk too.

Yeah, some skeptics have an interesting take on this colossal screw-up and have pointed out the parallels with the climate debate. (Example: http://judithcurry.com/2014/08... )

Many people seem to think that groups of scientists can not possibly make genuine, colossal, "obvious after the fact" screw-ups. If anyone suggests that they have made big mistakes, they are harangued with insults like "conspiracy theorist" or "denier". Yet these same (supposedly rational) people claim "big oil" is funding skeptics (a conspiracy theory) and "big food" must have been behind this spectacular failure (another conspiracy theory). Apparently they have never heard of systemic bias, group-think, or the madness of crowds.

Or cognitive dissonance.

For some reason they can imagine millions of people being wrong about religion but they can't imagine a small group of elite "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" scientists being wrong about science.

They can imagine their own bosses being complete ignorant ass-holes, but they can't imaging leading scientists being egotistical, arrogant fucktards who have no qualms bullshitting people.

They can imagine a "group-think", ass-kissing, brown-nosing, yes-men corporate culture, but can't imagine the same in academic circles.

They can imagine a CEO who would drive his own billion dollar company into the ground just because his ego is too big to listen to anybody else, but can't imagine a scientist being anything other than a perfect little angel. Apparently scientists don't have egos and are immune to the many psychological issues that normal human beings face.

Government could NEVER bias a scientist, because governments are completely disinterested entities that are only concerned about the long-term health and economic interests of their citizen. (Except when governments take bribes. That's the only time the above is not true.)

Unfortunately a few scientists have been known to take bribes from evil corporations. But that's really, really easy to explain: it's a simple and direct benefit that anybody can understand without thinking too hard. And that's the only thing capable of biasing a scientist: a simple and direct benefit that's really, really easy for people to understand.

But those are not real scientists.

Real scientists are completely immune to human nature. Except for the few bad apples (who are not real scientists), scientists are better human beings than the rest of us.

Either that or many people are romantic idealists whose eyes glaze over in a state of credulity whenever they indulge their childish fantasies about "scientists".

Suddenly statistical significance is important to you? But the much closer statistically insignificant difference between "hottest years" doesn't matter to you at all?? DOUBLE STANDARDS? Do you realize when you are being inconsistent? Does it bother you?

You seem to have missed the part of my post where I AGREED WITH YOU. lol. Could your interpretations be any more self-serving?

The GISS rate of recorded warming since 2000 is almost double that of HadCRUT4. But you argue that since the margins of error overlap that we can't tell for certain? OK, I'm fine with adding a qualification, similar to the one the Met Office supplied when they announced 2014 had the highest numbers but because it was so close to other recent years they couldn't make a meaningful distinction. And that's how it should be: plain honesty; not misleading people like Nasa did. Funny how you can argue both sides when it suits you. Do you even notice?

Either way, you said GISS was in the "middle of the road." That's just flat out wrong. GISS is at the very top of the range.

Regarding Tamino, he makes it clear that the trend since 1970 is the same now as it was 15 years ago. However, he also made a false statement when he said temperatures from 2000-2015 show no signs of slowing down. In fact, GISS shows no significant warming trend since 2000. That's a pretty clear "sign" that warming may have slowed down. Facts are facts.

So now we're talking solely about the long term trend? But I thought Tamino was talking about the recent 15 year trend. What else could he possibly mean when he says: "since the turn of the millennium... global warming has continued and shows no sign of slowing down"?

Global warming clearly has slowed down since the turn of the millennium! The recent trend is nearly half the 1970 trend! There's been so little warming in recent years that we can't even rule out a cooling trend! Clearly Tamino mis-spoke, or perhaps he is in "activist" mode and trying to spin the facts. Either way, the facts are clear and I have no idea how you manage to deny them with a straight face. http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

To remind you, I spoke of GISS showing the greatest warming in the context of the last 15 years: "As far as a simple linear trend is concerned, it is unlikely that there has been no warming since the beginning of the century, based on GISS data. But it is not at all unlikely if you use any of the other data sets."

And your response is to pick a single trend to back up your false assertion that GISS is "in the middle of the road"? Wouldn't it be smarter to look at the whole data-set???

Do you even care that you are factually incorrect so often? Doesn't it bother you?

Wrong again.

"GISS dTs is not a land-only dataset but a land-ocean one extrapolated from land stations."

HadCRUT4 is warmer than GISS? Wrong again. Yes, the long term trends look similar from the late 60's to the early 80's, but then they diverge again. In fact nearly every other start-date shows GISS as warmer. GISS shows a trend from 2000 that is almost double that of HadCRUT4.

That's two glaring factual mistakes in one small post. Maybe check your facts next time. It's pretty clear you don't really know what you're talking about.

I did think we had cleared this up. There's a big 45 year trend line right there on his graph, and he shows how recent data (NOT the recent trend) fits in with the extrapolated 45 year trend. We can check this by comparing the ACTUAL trend from 1970-2015 with his extrapolated trend, and yes we see they are almost identical. But if we look at the recent 15 year trend we see that cooling has slowed down in recent years. His whole point is that this "slow-down" or "pause" has not effected the long-term trend.

Clear now?

Yes, and Tamino's method also shows cooling since 1950. http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl... That's because his extrapolation trick is bogus: it tells you very little about short term trends. If you want to make statements about short term trends, then you need to look at the short term trends. You said so yourself not so long ago, so I thought we agreed on this one. ("If you wanted to compare pre-1950 with post-1950 you would do this...") I'm not sure why you are being inconsistent on this.

It is correct to say there is no significant warming trend since 2000. And it is also correct to say that the recent "pause" does not effect the long-term trend since 1970. But it is incorrect to say that the warming since 2000 has continued and shows no signs of slowing down. For whatever reason "Hansen's Bulldog" decided to "spin" things. Perhaps he misspoke. I asked him but he hasn't published my comment. (Likely due to the spam filter.)

Up until now we were talking about global surface temperatures. But when you said GISS wasn't the hottest data-set you were talking about land-only temperatures? I admire your flexibility.

Do tell: how much hotter is BEST compared to GISS? Does GISS even have a "land-only" data-set??

What data-set shows more warming that GISS? (BEST is land-only.)

Cowtan & Way says the hottest data-set that's already been adjusted upwards to the tune of 2C in some cases has a "cooling bias"? You'll forgive me if I don't accept the conclusions from a single study. (Their paper has been torn to shreds by critics.)

Skeptics did not create these graphs, but here's another one which shows that global sea ice extent is not unusually low :
http://www.climate4you.com/ima...

As you can see from the above, global sea ice has recovered in recent years and is fairly close to what it was in the 80's. Maybe you should look before you leap.

Antarctic sea ice was at all time record highs for much of 2014, while Arctic sea ice hit a record low in 2012. Overall they pretty much cancel each other out.

(And shouldn't your graph look more like this?? http://woodfortrees.org/plot/n... )

As far as a simple linear trend is concerned, it is unlikely that there has been no warming since the beginning of the century, based on GISS data. But it is not at all unlikely if you use any of the other data sets. (GISS is an outlier. Maybe it has to do with the +2degC of warming they are known to add via adjustments.)

As for sea ice, it's about average. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/c...

Antarctic sea ice was at record highs until just recently: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_i...

And finally, the properties of CO2 do not change, but only a small portion of the predicted warming is due to CO2 directly. MOST of the predicted warming is due to "climate sensitivity" estimates, which are all over the map. Climate scientists claim that the climate reacts to the heating caused by CO2 by amplifying it 3 times. (The range is much wider. I've seen climate sensitivity estimates as low as 0.9C and as high as 7 or 8C.) However, there is little evidence to support high climate sensitivity estimates and the uncertainty in this area is vast. If the climate is not as sensitive to CO2 heating as scientists have assumed, then global warming is not a serious threat.

Regardless, like many other skeptics I actively support innovative nuclear designs and fusion projects, since fossil fuels are expensive, dirty and finite. If AGW proponents weren't allergic to the word "nuclear" then the AGW scare might serve a useful purpose. Unfortunately the pro-AGW crowd will likely continue to impede the only viable solution to their non-existent problem: nuclear.