I've been watching YouTube videos from Tony Heller for a while. He posts on temperature records and while I'm not sure he's always right I think he's much more accurate than, say Michael "Piltdown" Mann, of the Hockey Stick infame.

Heller uses library records to show how graphs have been changed, and also newspaper reports demonstrating cold and heat in earlier times. This morning's video is a particularly good example of what he does. https://youtu.be/mGe9JO58Uc8.

It's a bit perplexing for me. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and so should have an effect on the temperature. The satellite record, which is the most accurate and least adjusted, shows steady increase in the last 40 years, but we only have that record for the last 40 years.

But it does seem that this is a cyclical uptick and nothing major. Which could mean the sensitivity to CO2 is even lower than the estimates of people like Judith Curry and John Christy, because their figuring effectively excludes natural cycles and any contribution they might make.

Certainly thought provoking.

What would you expect something major to look like?

Graham Y, I could not access the link you gave on temperature, but I tried this link.
http://realclimatescience.com/2019/02/61-of-noaa-ushcn-adjusted-temperature-data-is-now-fake/

However I like Dan Britt on Climate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM&fbclid=IwAR3oANRPj161mGD-EYwM0tbh6sN1BM7THH-Z811HORvJAl2Wp5mMBWFizE8

One thing is for sure. All the elites are wishing that a couple of centuries ago someone had enough foresight to ban all newspapers, so the printed history could not keep coming back to bite them on the bum.

Temperature, rainfall, fires, droughts & floods, it's all there waiting for some enterprising journalist & paper editor to to do a 3 page spread, & shoot the whole scam out of the water.

Do you believe everything you read in the newspapers today? No? So why would you believe everything you read in past newspapers?

Temperature records in past newspapers are only as good as the thermometers, their position (under a tin roof?), the reliability of the people recording the temperature, the accuracy of the telegraphic transmission of the data, the accuracy of the type-setting and proof-reading of the newspaper, and so on. Using old newspaper records for anything requires forensic analysis to assess reliability. As a historian, I've been thinking of setting up a blog to provide some hilarious examples.

On the basic accuracy of the thermometers and recorders, see http://theconversation.com/factcheck-was-the-1896-heatwave-wiped-from-the-record-33742.

As for your questions on CO2, well, if you haven't already found the vast amount of information about the solid science supporting its role as a greenhouse gas, it would be futile (and exceed the word limit) to repeat it here. Why is there so much debate? Partly political of course, but understanding atmospheric physics, what happens today, what happened in the past and trying to estimate what might happen in the future, is probably the most complicated science humans have attempted. It's not rocket science - it's much, much harder. That's why it's so easy to challenge it by cherry-picking. Though the argument: "Look, historic newspapers have higher temperature records! Today's science must be faked!" is hardly credible even by cherry-pickers' standards.

It took me a while to access the Heller video (tip: use http// not https//), so I now realise that the newspaper articles referred to are mainly news reports through the 20th century of weather, ice melting etc and predictions of future global warming or cooling. I think this just reinforces my comment: newspapers report what people say or claim, whether it is specific temperature observations or predictions; that doesn't mean such reports or claims are accurate just because they are in a newspaper.