Mike,

I'm interested in knowing why it shot up then too! It seems the interglacial warming is steppy, and it would be nice to know what those steps were, what causes them to start and stop, etc.

All just curiosity, though, nothing to get alarmed about.

I did see someone had modelled it as a rising linear trend with a sine wave on top. This would give steep sections and flat sections. See http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/image1.png Unfortunately, though it models 20th centurey trend, it did't doesn't track the last 15 years.

So, it's still a mystery.

RKS, I have 3 science degrees, and worked at a research labs for 7 years. If you're determined to be an asshole, let's see the length of yours on that table. Put up or shut up.

It's a real shame. In the last few months, you've progressed from informed observer into the epitome of the foaming-at-the-mouth denier. You are who Mann points to when he derides us to the popular press. You are our enemy.

I wish you'd go away. That's the last thing I'm going to say to you before I add you to my spam filter.

I'm spartacus. no wait, I meant to say I'm a 'lukewarmer'

Angry is unedifying

I genuinely don't know what a lukewarmer is, and asked Steve Mosher, who passed through lukewarm to red hot alarmist, so might know the difference. There are multiple overlaps in my own case, the biggest difference is that I, along with the IPCC, don't believe scientists, or anyone else, can foretell the future with the remotest accuracy.

RKS: You and I differ in our understanding of the Null Hypothesis. At the end of the 20th century the temperature rose with rising CO2, the Null Hypothesis demands proof that the CO2 caused the rise in temperature. The first step in proving this would be to look to see if there had been higher temperatures before at levels of CO2 lower than today's. If there had it still doesn't prove the theory is wrong, but it puts a hole in it under the waterline. And there had, the MWP being the most recent. Hence the need for the Hockeystick. The next stage is the Feynmann "compute" stage, where you apply mathematics to the theory and make observations to collect empirical evidence. Hence if CO2 causes warming then rises in CO2 should cause predictable warming. They haven't, CO2 has increased by 8% over the last 15 years or so with no concomitant rise in temperatures. That still doesn't disprove the AGW theory, but again a puts a gaping hole in the hull.

To me, now, the most likely scenario is that CO2 does cause warming, but at very small levels, so AGW is correct, but the numbers touted by the activists are wildy exaggerated. What is clear is that they have no definitive empirical proof that CO2 will give rise to temperatures sufficient to cause catastrophic climat change.

The alarmist movement is, like some great glacier, inching backwards in the face of a barrage of scientific papers showing there is no empirical evidence for their assertions.

Agree with almost everything you say here geronimo. I think what is happening is that as the mainstream reigns back, it is becoming more aligned with what Lukewarmers have been saying all along, by accident of Lukewarmers being halfway between alarmists and deniers.

What this means is we're being caught in friendly fire now as the big guns turn on the enemy within our ranks, with accusations of smugness, hubris, fence-sitting, agnosticism, etc. Lukewarmism is becoming the new establishment, and as such it is now becoming the target of the extreme end of the skeptic camp.

I've been a Lukewamer for a long time on here, and I'm sure you remember that it has not been an easy position for me to carry here. Hated by both sides is never easy. Yes, I'm a happy that science is moving my way, and if it comes across as smugness or hubris, then allow me a little bit of fingernail polishing, it's been a long hard road to get here.

But the landscape is changing. CAGW used to be so extreme that anyone who didn't believe 6-10 degrees was a denier. This forced Lukewarmers into the skeptic camp along with the slayers, deniers, big oil etc, and we have always been curious bedfellows, but united against a common enemy who hated us all.

Now the C in CAGW is diminishing, Lukewarmerism is overlapping with a large part of the science now. Perhaps it's time for Lukewamers to part company with the slayers and big oilers etc. I hope not, because I always believed that 'skepticism' as a movement was about poking holes in their crap activist arguments. As time goes on, I'm not so sure that a lot of us on "this side" aren't just the brainless deniers they always claimed we were.

If the Lukies go, so do all your figureheads though, the McIntyres, the Lawsons, the Moncktons.

Heh. I don't want to go, the diversity of views is fascinating here, even if there is the odd spat.

But there is a serious point. What do we all do when we've won? We were united against the CAGWers, now our own little silos of belief are pulling at the seams.

One suggestion would be to keep the topics on the common ground, avoid the specifics of lukewarmerism, slayerism, etc. But that would be no fun at all :)

Give it a rest RKS.

I'm too lazy to open the file, add your nick, save it and close it down. But I'll get around to it.

I think you're projecting the bully-boy thing, you were the one who crashed this thread (and many others) shouting the odds. Long before you pushed your neb into this thread, I already said natural variation was the null hypothesis, yet you continue to repeat it as if I don't realise it. This makes you wilfully lazy or stupid. Like the null hypothesis, the evidence supports either explanation.

I'm done arguing with someone who is, quite frankly, mentally unstable.