Let me respond. Answer: It isn’t.

Now let me respond to Whitehouse’s recent post at WUWT. He asks, “Why is the temperature unchanging?” Answer: It isn’t.



Right at the outset Whitehouse says:

It seems probable that 2010 will be in terms of global annual average temperature statistically identical to the annual temperatures of the past decade.

Here’s the truth that David Whitehouse wants to avoid: it’s possible that 2010 will be the hottest year on record.

Whether it turns out to be so or not, it’ll be close — and the very hot 2010 argues against those who dispute the reality of anthropogenic global warming. So right away Whitehouse shows his mastery of sophistry, by changing the focus from “possible hottest year on record” to “statically identical to the annual temperatures of the past decade.”

His implication — in fact, the theme of his post — is that this means temperature hasn’t changed in at least 10 years. That’s a dismal failure of logic.

He even wants to stretch it to 15 years, so he presses on:

Some eminent climatologists, such as Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, suggest the global annual average temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years.

I call “shenanigans” on Whitehouse.

What Jones said is that the warming (in the HadCRU record) since 1995 isn’t statistically significant. That’s not the same as “temperatures haven’t changed for the past 15 years.” This much is clear: for David Whitehouse, truth is irrelevant. What matters is propaganda.

Let’s take a look at annual average temperature since 1980. Here are the results of the 4 best-known temperature records. The averages for 2010 are incomplete since the year isn’t over yet, but they include data through October, except for the cruT3v data which only go through September:

Let’s focus on the time period under discussion. I’ve changed the baseline to be post-2000, so all four data sets will have the same baseline for computing anomaly. I’ve also added trend lines as well as estimated trends and their (2-sigma) error ranges. The trend estimates are from linear regression, errors are estimated assuming the noise is white noise — which for annual averages is not too bad an approximation.

For those who are interested in truth over propaganda, temperature is not unchanging. The evidence says it’s continuing to increase, just as it has for the last three decades and more.

David Whitehouse’s misrepresentation — now that is unchanging.