Climate alarmists play a number of tricks to try to make their catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory seem plausible. One of the most important is that they focus on a ridiculously short period of time, beginning either in the late 19th century or at the beginning of the 20th. This is, of course, not even the blink of an eye in geologic time. Given that the Earth began emerging from the Little Ice Age in the mid to late 19th Century, it is hardly surprising–and a very good thing–that from then until now, temperatures have tended to rise.

Alarmists shriek that 2014 was the warmest year ever! But that claim is absurd if put in the context of the Earth’s recent history. As Dr. Tim Ball writes:

In fact, 2014 was among the coldest 3 percent of years of the last 10,000, but that doesn’t suit the political agenda.

This chart shows Northern Hemisphere temperature changes over the last 10,000 years, based on ice core data. Dr. Ball explains: “The red line, added to the original diagram, imposes the approximate 20th century temperatures (right side) against those of the last 10,000 years.”

If the Earth continues to be warm, temperatures will be more nearly aligned with what they have generally been over the last 10,000 years.

There are many other problems with global warming alarmism, of course, and Dr. Ball touches on several of them. For one, the quality of the surface temperature record is terrible, nowhere near good enough to support the alarmists’ claims of precision. For another, the surface temperature record has been corrupted. The records are maintained by alarmist organizations, which have repeatedly “adjusted” historical data to make the past look cooler and the present warmer. This is one of many examples; it relates to New Zealand, where historical temperature records have been “adjusted” by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research:

Typically these adjustments are carried out surreptitiously, and only come to light when someone comes across contemporaneous temperature records from, say, the 1930s, and finds that the temperatures reported at the time are different from the ones now claimed by the same agencies. If you are willing to spend many billions of dollars, as the world’s governments are, you can buy a lot of rewriting of history.

So next time one of your liberal friends tells you that 2014 was the hottest year on record, and therefore we must turn what is left of our economy over to the Obama administration, you can tell him that actually, 2014 was one of the 3% coldest years of the last 10,000.