Technically, this works only in the water very close to the ice cubes, as water is a poor conductor of heat. As a general principle this is correct, although it's far easier to demonstrate at the boiling transition rather than the freezing one, due to the inherent mixing action you get from boiling.

The hockey stick is statistically flat over those two periods. They haven't been "diluted" by averaging with the rest of the planet, they are *gone*. This seems to show that the total global temperature didn't change, it just got redistributed. We can see where it got redistributed *to*, they need to show where it got redistributed *from*.

This is from my local weather station. Just raw datan nothing added or subtracted. Except for 1918, 1919 and 1923 being removed due to incomplete data.

There is an upward trend, make of it what you will.

AGW or not, merry Christmas to everyone.

It was actually stated by NASA a while back that the sudden increases in global temperature measurements were due to the inclusion of the polar regions, since the rest of the planet has been relatively stable, and central Antarctica has yet to warm, I'm guessing the results would be nill warming.  They don't have surface records going back to the last period when ice sheets were in retreat.  Yes, this happened earlier in the century too, look into arctic temperatures in the 30's a 40's.  They weren't quite as high as current temps, just the mid 90's.  As far as I know, the Russians are the only ones that were checking sea ice extent at the time, so actual retreat is a partial record.  There is however a definite 20 year period of substantially warmer than average arctic water temperatures, which would lead to loss and a resulting significant shift in surface temperatures above the affected areas.

Is this the warmest year on record according to analysis of methods for determining historical temperature, warmest year on record going by a static set of monitoring stations spanning back x years of time, or warmest year on record according to all the new places we weren't checking earlier?

If 2010 were actually the warmest year on record, that would be something.  I am, by preponderance of evidence, convinced of no such thing regarding the recent record setting temperatures.  The evidence has been listed previously by multiple posters.

I would like to know two things.  One, is the station properly maintained and not a victim of urban sprawl, and two, was the paint switched from whitewash to latex, if so when.  From what I've read on the paint switch, it can be as much as two degrees depending on the amount of clear weather the place recieves.  If it's in the middle of a parking lot as well, you're in one hell of a deep freeze right now.

If you want to jump in then you should be forced to read the previous 22 pages of the same dozen arguments repeated over and over incessantly. I think I can speak for both sides of this argument when I say that you need to have suffered appropriately so as to be able to fully appreciate this thread.

I am kind of joking, but only kind of.

Yeah I pretty much expected this kind of answer. That’s the problem if you pretty much deny everything. But if that’s the case then there is really nothing that anyone can “prove” to you, so what’s the point of trying.

I leave it up to you. If I’m right then sooner or later even you won’t be able to deny it. But with your obstinance that will obviously take something dramatic to already have occured. And if it does what will you say? “Oh gee, sorry” really won’t cut it but that’s the best you’ll be able to do. But it’s not me you will have to answer to; it will be to anyone that you care about that happens to be significantly younger than you are. So do you now, or ever intend to, have kids?

BTW the heat island and Stevenson screen stuff was debunked 20 pages ago.

I understand smoking is not 100% causal of any specific cancer but this line of discussion is really just semantics and it is this kind of semantics that allowed the tobacco companies to successfully delay anti-smoking legislation for many years and that delay inevitably caused more people to die sooner and more painfully then might have otherwise, particularly in regard to second hand smoke. Is this what you wish to encourage?

There you go again.

My comments had nothing to do with the tobacco lobby, just statements of facts.  And cancer risk ranks about fourth on the list of reasons one would be wise to not smoke.

Since you mentioned it, the risks of second-hand smoke are modest at most.

Sound like a regular John Edwards there.  I enjoy smoke-free restaurants; tobacco smoke is annoying at best.  But to believe that prohibiting smoking in restaurants 'saves lives' is delusional.

Merry Christmas.

CO2 is a life cycle gas though, not a conventional pollutant.  Same deal on methane, which almost entirely comes from live stock.  If AGW is a joke, there is no cause for reducing it.

But if you look at the ways being looked at to reduce our carbon footprint, they almost always (or even always?) go hand-in-hand with reducing air pollution or fighting deforestation.   These have long been good things before GW.

There's new evidence coming out, methane emissions from the thawing northern tundra are rivalling that of cattle, and the resulting greenhouse effect even rivals that of CO2.  It's not that methane emissions are anywhere near CO2; it's that methane's greenhouse effect is 20X that of CO2.   Although it's still arguably "natural", the point is that there's a positive-feedback loop going on at the poles:   warming causes the poles to thaw, which releases gases and reduces radiant energy leaving our atmosphere...which causes more warming...which thaws the poles further...which....   This is what is meant when people like Al Gore speak of a "point of no return".

What I recall hearing is that we have about 1C of warming built into the "pipeline" and if we were to all die tomorrow as you suggested we'd still end up with that extra degree but as to the "half-life" I'm not sure, I guess I'll have to go look ... (a few hours later)

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1994/93GB03392.shtml suggests the half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 31 years.

From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/co2-is-not-the-only-ghg/ I get a much more complicated answer.

"For CH4 or CO2, the chemistry is more complicated (much more so for CO2) and half-lives less useful a concept. For CH4, 12 years for the perturbative half-life (longer than the ~8 year residence time) is reasonable, while for CO2 the best approximation is a combination of 5 different exponential processes with half lives that range from 3 to 100,000 years. Thus there is a component of CO2 emissions (roughly 15%) that is effectively in the atmosphere forever. - gavin"

The following has even more details and instead of half life they get into what they call GWP (global warming potential) whatever that means.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/

The bottom line seems like there are some very long term components of CO2 life as well as short term components and that the problem is quite complex given multiple sequestration processes that vary with respect to the rate of CO2 injection. I also can't seem to find a source for the "fact" that even if we were to stop today we'd still have 1C built into the pipeline but still that is a useful way to look at it.

The thing is that the predicted effects vary in severity along with the temperature rise. A 1C rise might not be so bad. I think the goal was to limit the total rise to 2C which also imples that 2C might not be so bad. I assume this is simply based on how high water levels rise but then there are other effects that may not be linear like drought.

So your question is why do anything since we're going to get the full effect of "predictions" no matter what. My answer is that I don't believe that to be true, I believe that the higher CO2 goes the worse things will be and so there is always at least some incremental benefit to doing what is possible to keep levels as low as you can even if you think those efforts are "half-assed."

As far as methane it seems that methane decays into CO2 in about 5 years and so although methane is a far more powerful GHG it's net effect is not nearly as great and quickly becomes just another contribution of CO2.

I used to believe in global warming several years ago when it didn't snow much for 3-4 years near my area.

Now I know everything. Global warming was surposed to be the biggest Pazi paramid scheme. World Bank own by billionaires at the top and companies in countries paying carbon tax to the world bank. The reason why Al Gore is such a big supporter of global warming is because he is one of the owners of a small company that makes the software to monitor pollution/waste. His company was going to be the next Microsoft. Al Gore is a politian, not a scientist.

"The bigger the lie, the more the people will believe it" Adolf Hitler

The Copenhagen Treaty was surposed to take priority over our US constitution. The news and media papers did not mention any of the things above, all they do is show you false documents about how the earth is warming up and stuff people want to hear.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/16/obama-poised-to-cede-us-sovereignty-in-copenhagen-claims-british-lord-monckton/

Watch the 4 min 12 sec video near the top by Lord Monckton.

Just search for the following at youtube and watch the videos, Global Warming Hoax, New World Order, Rothchilds, Bildenberg Group, Alex Jones, Obama Deception

All the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together.

Yeah, because that's the way we roll here in the U.S., we'll just put any old treaty above the Supreme Law of the Land.

Oh wait, turns out we don't.

What the hell is it that conservatives equate cooperating with other countries in pursuit of a mutually beneficial goal with some complete loss of sovreignty. Working for my paycheck != being a slave. Cooperation with other countries != UN troops quartering in your house tomorrow.

It's not like we don't have a military that can take everyone on the planet - do we need to dig an alligator moat too?

Jonnan