So they call in a communicator to try another line of BS, that no REAL scientist could afford to have appear under his name.

Really getting desperate now, with the total failure of the climate to match any of their forecasts. These AGW people know that the funding is growing wings, & will soon fly the global warming nest.

I hope they can find some honest work, when it's gone. Perhaps they can get jobs digging ditches, replacing backhoes, & so save some of their beloved CO2 emissions.

Julian - here are the temperature results for the last 11 years from the Hadley site. If you are able to spot the wearming trend you should share it with us.
1998 0.526
1999 0.302
2000 0.277
2001 0.406
2002 0.455
2003 0.465
2004 0.444
2005 0.475
2006 0.421
2007 0.399
2008 0.327
2009 0.365
Until there is a noticeable warming trend we should not speak of warming temperatures, or about release of methane ect. We still have this problem that at the moment temperatures are not going up at all.

John D: you may be looking at a low resolution graph of the ice core stuff. Initial research from those cores helped sparked the global warming scare - researchers could see the CO2 and temperatuers rising together - but later results at better resolution (ie more detailed) showed that CO2 lagged temperature, often by centuries. This is well established now, and thought to be due to warmer oceans releasing more CO2 but a lot of arguement about the mechanism..

Interesting features of John D's link http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/temperature-and-co2-concentration-in-the-atmosphere-over-the-past-400-000-years are:

1. The last 10,000 year fluctuations suggest an overall average lower than would be expected by reference to earlier peaks, such that any presently observed increase in temperature is still well within what might be predicted as naturally induced temperature increases based on previous peaks.

2. To my eye at least, higher temperatures seem to slightly precede increased CO2 levels, which is exactly what you would expect if higher temperatures caused increased CO2 levels rather than the other way around.

3. We appear to be only a degree or two short and/or a few parts per million CO2 concentration short of the point at which previously it appears some balancing system has kicked in causing a long but slower cooling trend. This article and others persist in speculating about runaway global warming due to increased CO2 causing increased warming, causing increased CO2, causing increased warming.. etc, as some kind of runaway event, but if our planet did not have some mechanism which causes a correction at some point, then we would not see the consistent up and down pattern visible in these graphs and life would have become extinct on this planet long, long ago the first time C02 levels 'ran away.'

4. The strong upward trend in temperatures and CO2 levels has been going on for 12,000 years or so, long before mans industrialisation or population could conceivably have been a factor and this trend appears typical of previous warming periods as shown on the graph.

Can anyone enlighten us as to why in previous periods, 'runaway global warming' periods, at temperatures and CO2 levels just a little higher than at present, suddenly reversed, and why we should not expect the same to occur this time around?

With this sort of rot it is no wonder young ones are opting out of 'science'.

Curmudgeon, why are all those numbers positive?

Mark Duffett - the reason the temperatures are all positive is that they are measured from a particular baseline which varies between different sites.. If they are above the baseline they are postive. Below the baseline they are negative. It has nothing to do with actual temperature, just the difference from the baseline which is an average temperature over a certain number of years.. As the baselines can vary between sites you can't directly compare the values of differnt sites. Only the trend really matters.. so figures then really seem to be saying that temperatures are still high compared to the baseline but seem to be coming off a paeak - at least that's all you can really say, given the short period.