Q&A, you're right, I do have an ideological reason for publishing this site. I believe that not only has everyone the right to an opinion, but the responsibility to engage with others of different opinions. Out of the exchange I believe that even if the truth doesn't arise, at least there will be a better understanding of other people's positions.

You obviously don't accept that position, as your two flaming posts above show. Instead of engaging with the issue of, say, ice melt in Greenland, you sledge anyone who questions you as a "denier". If the facts don't support your argument, then that is a tactic open to you if you're interested in argument rather than discussion. It might divert others from the fact that you don't know, and won't admit that you don't.

So might the two links to Dessler.

They have absolutely nothing to do with anything you and I are discussing which are specific claims that you made. I certainly don't deny that CO2 has a role in climate change. The issue is what to do about it. For that you need to accurately assess the risks and the benefits. That is hard to do when people make claims for measurements that can't be substantiated to support a predetermined position leading to absurd campaigns in, and by, the press.

People like you who claim to be scientists, but who fail to abide by scientific methods, are doing a lot of damage to the discipline, and ultimately to our faith in science.

Just listen to the radio debate Graham, the one in the Dessler link.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sciguy

He talks of the issues you want to engage with (precipitation, satellites, ice melt, etc.). What he has to say might help you, I have no will to argue or debate with you, I am sorry.

As I’ve said before – if you are so entrenched in sceptic land, nothing, absolutely nothing I say will sway you, particularly with the constraints this site imposes.

Therefore, you would be better off talking to someone like Andy Dessler – my guess is you won’t because it will be out of your comfort zone of OLO.

Go on, email him, he really is a nice guy (unlike me) – I am sure he would listen to your hypotheses and concerns.

Two bits of advice though

• Listen to what he had to say in the radio talkback (no debate, Ball was a no-show).
• Email him after the Xmas season.

Best wishes

Wizofaus, I am surprised that it is news to you that there has been no warming in the southern hemisphere since the satellite measurements began in 1979. I have seen numerous references. One is Bob Carter, Sunday Telegraph 11/04/2007:

“Our most accurate depiction of atmospheric temperature over the past 25 years comes from satellite measurements (see graph below) rather than from the ground thermometer record. Once the effects of non-greenhouse warming (the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific, for instance) and cooling (volcanic eruptions) events are discounted, these measurements indicate an absence of significant global warming since 1979 - that is, over the very period that human carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing rapidly.”

You are on shaky ground talking about predictions by models. I thought you would know very well, that models are of no use for predictions

Q&A thanks for your advice, but it is not my aim to gain any proficiency in statistics. I simply wished to convey that taken over a reasonable time frame the temperature trend is down, but if a recent short period is taken for the basis, then the trend is up, which gives the appearance that misleading remarks about the existence of global warming, by the likes of Gore and the IPCC, have some validity.

If you were not so busy laughing, and absorbed with how cluey you are, you might have followed what I meant. If, as you appear to believe, you are not stupid, then you are able to understand English, with very little effort. I have no intention of expressing myself in scientific terms, to accommodate you.

What I have put is clear enough. You have put up no proposition to the contrary.

So you concede that you can't explain why you are right Q&A? Well you must be, or you'd paraphrase what you're reading elsewhere.

I'm certainly not going to spend my time listening to Dresslers' radio program, not because he might not have something valuable to say, but because everytime I follow one of your links they don't actually lead to what you say they do.

If you want more than 350 words, write an essay for OLO. I'd be happy to respond, or find someone else to, as long as Susan deems your article worth publishing. But don't hide behind the word limit. It's there to stop people monopolising debate and boring others.

Sigh …

Nick: “Claiming an upward trend is meaningless. There has been no hotter year since 1998. If anything the years have been cooler since then.”

This is wrong.

If you look at NASA’s GISSTEMP and HadCRU data for average global temperature and do linear regression over say the last 40 years, the trend is most definitely up.

Nick, if we analyse the data just since 1998: it turns out that the trend is still warming. This is true for both GISTEMP and HadCRU data, and both results are statistically significant.

If we look at a very short time span, say from 2000 – there is still a statistically significant warming trend in both the GISTEMP AND HadCRU data sets.

So, what time span do you want?

• Last 30 yrs? When both surface and tropospheric readings have been available. We have experienced warming of approximately 0.2 C/decade during this time. It would take a couple of decades trending down before we could say the warming ended in 1998 (or 2005).

• Since 1880 in the NASA record or 1855 in the CRU record? Both show 0.8 C warming.

• How about the last 500 years (from bore-hole records)? Where today is about 1 C above the first three centuries of that record. In that linear regression, today's record will be hidden from view for decades.

• Last 1,000 years? 10,000 years?

Although each of the temperature reconstructions is slightly different, they all show similar trends of temperature change over the last several centuries. Most evident … each record shows that the 20th century is the warmest of the entire record, and that warming is most dramatic since 1920.

Go back millions of years when there were no polar ice caps and sea levels were 70m higher than today.

Global average temperatures were much higher than today and Nick would be right; the trend line would show cooling – but you have to extrapolate 1000’s of years ahead – we don’t have the time Nick and besides, it would be pointless.

Bob Carter is a known contrarian, a geologist, and his writings to that world-renowned peer-reviewed scientific journal "The Sunday Telegraph" have about as much relevance to modern climatological understanding as do a Papua New Guinean tribeman's opinion on poly-dimensional string theory. Which is more than can be said for your personal thoughts on GCMs, which have anticipated the observed temperature rise of the last 20 years with striking accuracy.

If that's the best you can do, you're not just on shaky ground - your just about to swallowed up by a freak seismic rift.