As previously discussed, empirical evidence is the strongest for the common person.  When you combine that with the failure of scientific models – not factual data – to show causality, you tend to create skeptics and a general disbelief.

While clearly the climate is changing (hint: that’s what it does), there remains no definitive proof that any sort of global warming is directly attributable to human activity.  Even the IPCC uses qualifiers when describing the relationship such as “significantly” contributes or “highly likely”.

Well, if you are like many of us in the continental 48 states, your summer was relatively mild.  I remember growing up in the DC area where we would count the number of days exceeding 100°F. This year we had none.  In fact, the National Weather Service noted this for a number of areas.  For example, data from the Houston/Galveston NWS shows that Houston averages 1.7 days above 100° over the last 30 years and 66% of the last 50 years, they had at least one day over 100°.  This past summer was none.  It gets more pronounced when you move further inland like College Station.  So, of course, it’s a little odd to read a headline that proclaims 2014 to be the warmest summer ever, right?  Well, The Weather Channel did just that and referenced a NOAA report.  They include the following graphic to illustrate it:

And the include the following text:

Both the U.S. and Russia had weather stations that reported record warm temperatures as well as at least one record cold temperature, the report adds, while the United Kingdom and Austria had their coolest Augusts since 1993 and 2006, respectively.

Now, go look at the graphic.  The U.S. and Russia had reported record warm temperatures – it looks like those areas are mostly white and blue, not much deep red.  And the U.K. and Austria are in the middle of pinkish-red areas not white or blue areas.

How much do you trust the summaries of these kinds of reports when things like this don’t quite appear correct to the layman’s eye?

So, sure, the aggregate global temperature may be higher – so let’s look at the how the IPCC data models are doing in predicting that:

Oops.  When you apply a standard statistical trend line (least-squares linear-regression) to the satellite temperature data, you get no warming over the last 18 years — even considering the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Now look at the 33 IPCC models – no where close to being accurate with the resulting, factual data.  The fastest measured warming trend lasting ten years or more occurred over the 40 years from 1694-1733 in Central England. It was equivalent to 4.3 Cº per century.  The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century and that’s including a period of more rapid warming from 1974 to 2006 which was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.

So when should we seriously question these models and the argument of Anthropogenic Global Warming?  Well, let’s turn to a peer-reviewed article from supporters of the AGW theories in which they state:

Since the late 1970s, it has been recognized that the identification of human effects on climate is inherently a signal‐to‐noise (S/N) problem [Hasselmann, 1979; Madden and Ramanathan, 1980; Wigley and Jones, 1981; Wigley and Raper, 1990; Allen et al., 1994; Santer et al., 1994, 1995].
The warming signal arising from slow, human‐caused changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases is embedded in the background ‘noise’ of natural climate variability.

and

Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global‐mean tropospheric temperature.

Well, we now have 18 years of data showing no warming trend and human activity has not significantly changed.  Isn’t it time?

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.