mhaze,

On the contrary, the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time - gives rise to the greatest example of mass denial and the purveyance of junk science of anytime....

Ocean heat content:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/global-warming-and-ocean-heat-content/

mhaze, if you think that any one of those points you think have a degree of 'certainty', then you have not been doing the required reading.

Each point has been addressed time and time again in different fora and shown to be false.

>>* despite continued increases in CO2 levels temp rises are either negative or not significantly different to zero for period of 15 to 20 years.<<

Actually they are not 'negative', if anything the regressions show plateauing for at most about 12 years. If you back 20 years, then temps have significantly (that is statistically significantly) increased. The lats summer was one of the warmest just about everywhere.

>>* no model predicted this and no theory can account for it.<<
Actually no, there are models and analyses that account for it by removing the effect of el ninos and volcanic aerosols and other factors. No model predicted it because it caused by a short-term non-predictable variability. If you can find models that can predict these weather patterns and volcanic activity on the scale of 5-10 years and are able to predict their effect on long term climate variation, then I think a lot of people would like to know that, and not just for climate.

>>* it falls way outside the predictions of the IPCC and its fellow travellers.<<

Actually it doesn't, it falls outside of most, but I guess it also depends on your definition of 'way'.

>>* it proves one of two things - either CO2 is much less effective as a GHG as the sceptics have been saying since 1989 OR natural cooling factors are much more effective than the alarmists have assumed.<<

Actually it 'proves' nothing of the sort. Nice shot at dismissing the ocean heat data by the way, yeah real objective there.

Anyway, none of the things that you list can be said with *any* degree of 'certainty', and in fact the opposite case could be stated with greater degree of 'certainty' about some of them.

mhaze,
There are many indicators when taken as a whole tell us that the warming hasn't stopped. You are focusing on the recent surface temps, because they tell you what you want to believe. What will happen to that belief if the surface temps start not telling you what you want to believe? I suspect you will find something else to hold on to.

You may think that is what I am doing, but I have a LOT more data on my side. The data is dictating what I think is true.

The best you have is a measure of 'non-significance' (of surface temp data only), which isn't actually a measure of anything at all. You cannot say anything definitive or with any degree of certainty about a non-significance. Do you have any positive data for your assertions? Where is your data that shows that the current 15-year trend is significantly different in the previous 15 years trend? That would be more believable wouldn't it?

Big jump in CO2 last year.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-scientists-report-big-jump-heat-trapping-co2

Bugsy wrote:"There are many indicators when taken as a whole tell us that the warming hasn't stopped. You are focusing on the recent surface temps"

Actually I'm not focusing on recent temps but focusing on warmair's and other's refusal to accept that the temps aren't rising even though many (most?) of the warmist scientists have accepted that fact. But surface temps are important. This whole saga was kicked off by the rapid rise in temps between 1975 and 1995 and while that rise continued the alarmists were happy to talk only about that.

But once temps refused to play nice, the alarmists suddenly wanted to talk about other things. That's why we went from global warming to climate change to climate disruption. First they wanted to talk about sea surface temps. but then Argo showed they weren't warming either.
Now they want to talk about deep ocean temps even though there isn't any real data to show they are warming.

In the meantime we had the polar bear scare - until we found their numbers were increasing, not decreasing. and we had the rising ocean scare until we found the rate of rise was decelerating and was consistent with the rise over the past few millenia. We had the Himalayan glacier scare until we found that was just an IPCC stuff-up.
The corals were going to die off until we found they weren't. The Maldives were going to sink until we found out they were growing. And so on and so on.

The theory is in its death-throes. It'll be fascinating to see how it plays out.

" What will happen to that belief if the surface temps start not telling you what you want to believe?".

I've already listed elsewhere in OLO the things I'd need to see to convince me I was wrong. A return to rapid rising temps after 2020 on a par with the 1975-95 rise is one of those things.

I've invited others to list the things that would convince them that their alarmism was misplaced. No one has taken up that invitation.

Mhaze
Quote
This whole sub-thread on recent trends grew out of warmair's assertion that temps hadn't stopped rising. Since it is spectacularly obvious that they have, as you say, plateaued, I was just making that point. I'll leave you to convince warmair of the nose on his face.
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First of all I will give you some credit for linking to an interesting site. I am not into statistics, but I do appreciate their importance. I have spent some time looking at the information, and the data at the link. The two main problems are the use of raw data as against adjusted data and cherry picking the data to find the desired result.
The calculator below is more appropriate if you really want to know what is going on.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend-fr.php.

By the way I suspect the problem with many a climate skeptic is the increasing length of their nose. The latest data shows a trend well in excess of 2 sigma.

Foster and Rahmstorf 2011.
Re the ajusted data from thier abstract.

Quote:-
We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K per year. When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. Lower-troposphere temperature responds more strongly to El Niño/southern oscillation and to volcanic forcing than surface temperature data. The adjusted data show warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.
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I therefore conclude that global warming is continuing even without considering the vast body of evidence from other sources.