mhaze lurches from raising the spectre of the unabomber to posting a link from somewhere titled "greenhousebullcrap".

Yeah, I'm really going to open that one (ho, ho!)

Very impressive!

What do you do for an encore?

Poirot,

I'm afraid you've completely, entirely, utterly, astonishingly misunderstood my unabommber reference. I wasn't in any way proposing to use the green leanings of the unabomber to draw any conclusions about warmists. I was just trying to point out as gently as possible that your and others assertions that sceptics are creationists, truthers, birthers,believers in a vast scientific conspiracy etc etc is as bad and as invalid as linking warmists with the unabomber. Get it?

Also, noticed that you have again declined to address the issue as to what data you'd need to see to convince you that the theory is wrong or even doubtful. As I've said before, such an attitude treats the theory as religion not science. I know you don't like being told that but alas....the facts are the facts.

At least the unabomber understood maths.

Anyway, I'm also pretty much done. Anyone who can immediately dismiss piles of data (I chose that Levitus reference deliberately mhaze, because it's based on lots of actual data) as 'just modelling' is not likely to listen to reason.

BTW, I love the pics everyone.

PS mhaze: anyone can make any sloping graph 'look' flat by adding a much larger value and changing the scale (but it still isn't flat). Go to the original dataset referenced in your picture and plot it yourself in excel and you'll see what I mean. But you won't because you will always believe what you want.

I just had an image flash in my mind of the picture on the old Cherry Ripe wrapper. Those naughty boys.

Poirot,

"Yeah, I'm really going to open that one (ho, ho!)"

Excellent idea. Wouldn't want to be exposed to anything that might upset the carefully crafted belief system, right?

Bugsy,
"Anyone who can immediately dismiss piles of data.."

I didn't 'immediately' dismiss it. I was already well aware of this and all the other Levitus et al papers. I know there is some empirical data in this paper...each new one has more and better data. But it is still a long way from complete. I could walk you through it if you like, but bottom line is that they only have workable data for 5% of the 1 deg grids world-wide and have to use models and extrapolations to reach any conclusions. With Argo they are starting to get better data but its still a long way from having anything that would allow us to draw firm conclusions.

"anyone can make any sloping graph 'look' flat by adding a much larger value and changing the scale"

I'm not sure you understood the graph. It was a graph of actual met office temps using normalised y axis scales. No one 'added' a larger value. They used the actual value. I know its not flat (who said otherwise?) but it puts the very mild warming in perspective.

Speaking of which, Poirot linked to another hockey stick graph earlier today. In the abstract for that paper the authors say "Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history." So for fully one-quarter of the last 12000 yrs, temps have been higher than now. I wonder what caused that? Maybe the Romans burning too many Christians? It must have been caused by man... no other explanation is possible.

mhaze,

Actually I did get the point that you were making. It's just that your example of the Unabomber was so wide of the mark regarding the issue that it was ludicrous.

When I criticise the likes of Monckton as an ambassador for deniers, it's founded on his rhetoric and his position as a revered figure of scientific knowledge in the denialst sphere. He's the guy that links AGW to conspiracy and who intimates that climate scientists are "liars". and his example is dutifully followed by the majority of climate deniers. Just because you personally don't think that, doesn't mean that it's not the basis of most denialist argument. Mentioning Monckton (and others) is not a random critique because of his notoriety on unrelated grounds (as is a Unabomber comparison).

And let's face it. You don't want to know what a climate scientist has to offer. The recent example of you dancing around celebrating your self-perceived superiority in debate is a case in point. I assume that qanda can't be bothered arguing against block-headed denial. All he and Bugsy have mostly received from you are taunts - which, I might add, - are typical denier tactics.

I'm sorry but if you offer me something called "greenhousebullcrap", I'm not going to read it. Have you no shame?

Regarding that hockey-stick link...you seem to have missed the part that goes: ""The rate of warming in the last 150 years is unlike anything that happened in at east 11,000 years....Over the Holocene, temperatures rose and fell less than 1[degree] C, and they did so over thousands of years. "It took 8,000 years to go from warm to cold..."How fast temperatures change is the real issue..."

Natural cycles mean we should be cooling...I wonder why we're not?

Well, mhaze, the dataset at http://www.bom.gov.au/web01/ncc/www/cli_chg/timeseries/global_t/0112/global/latest.txt

which is the reference given on your picture, doesn't go up to 14 degrees. In fact it looks like a dataset of difference from an average, which shows a definite warming of the climate. What value do you think they added to show that graph?
Why didn't they just use degrees Kelvin? That would have looked a lot flatter, but it still would be as invalid as a means of understanding climate change as what they did.

On that graph, what would the average degrees C be for a 'snowball earth'? I bet that graphing the 'actual temp' flattens out those curves puts things 'in perspective'.

Yes, the question is 'what caused that?' is a good one. Care to at least try and answer it? Perhaps someone has a hypothesis from the literature? When you take it to the next stage, "is the same cause happening now, or is it possibly caused by something different?" it becomes a a more scientific research endeavour.

Simply saying that "it's just natural variation, happened before, will happen again" is not a scientific conclusion. What caused it then? What is causing it now? Are the conditions the same now as then? That would be a good start, don't you think?