mhaze,
>You pick out two years. I pick out 5 years. And I'm cherry-picking?
Yes. The two years I mentioned (out of the five you did) were merely an explanation of why your five years showed a very slight cooling trend. And your five years started after a very big rise in temperature.

>I fear you don't understand the nature of Margin of Error
Then fear not! I have an engineering degree and am familiar with statistics.

Do you understand statistics? You seem to be desperately trying to avoid seeing the very clear warming trend!

You seem to be under the presence of a margin of error makes the data useless. That's far from the case. Even if the confidence level for a particular year being the hottest on record is low, the confidence level for the last 5 years containing the three hottest years on record is very high.

I presume your final claim was a joke?

Dear mhaze,

Your “When I first pointed out your error” really should have read “When I yet again decided to be a pedant rather than address the issue”.

You really are an amusing fellow sometimes.

The thermal energy of NO measured in watts directly dictates the temperature. Less means it is colder and more warmer.

Why are you trying to disassociate them?

Aidan,

"Do you understand statistics? "

I have statistics in my degree and for a good part of my life was involved in a computer software effort to provide statistical information to the international shipping industry. So, yeah, I understand statistics.

"You seem to be desperately trying to avoid seeing the very clear warming trend!"

On the contrary, I've never denied the warming trend from 1975 or thereabouts (depends on your favourite dataset). But that doesn't mean I fail to see potential inflection points in the trend. 2016 is a potential inflection point. I do also place caveats on that given that I don't have overwhelming faith in the precision of the actual data.

"You seem to be under the presence[?] of a margin of error makes the data useless."

No, indeed MoE makes the data more useful. Provided you are aware of the MoE and take it into account when the data is evaluated.

"the confidence level for the last 5 years containing the three hottest years on record is very high."

Case in point. You see, that's just not true and failing to understand the magnitude of the MoE potentially leads one down the garden path.
For example, again taking the HADCrut4 data (not my favourite but alarmists use it so I do likewise since it saves other arguments) the trend for 1/2016 to 1/2021 is -1.039 ±1.321 °C/decade (2sigma - can't do the sigma sign here). That is, the MoE is greater than the actual change in the data. So ignoring or minimising the MoE means you totally fail to understand the data. It also demonstrates that, for that period, the confidence level isn't high at all.

"I presume your final claim was a joke?"

Why? What I said is entirely true or at least supported by large volumes of paleo data. Its just not well known. I wonder why?

With no special instruments I will predict the Southern Hemisphere winter will on the average be colder this winter.

IT'S TOO LATE!

WE'RE ALL DOOMED!

I don't know what garbage the warmists will push for this just finished summer, but let me assure you it has been the coldest in the last 29 years, for which I have kept my local records.

Days were about average, but the nights have been by far, 1.7C colder than any other. If you didn't have a thermometer, the fact that instead of just a pair of shorts, almost every night required a shirt, & most a jacket. Unheard of cold for a Queensland summer.