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If we're going to insist upon answering one another's questions then perhaps you could explain AGW-theory as you understand it. You could also address the satellite data which clearly points to a cooling trend in the past 12 years.
Please, Etheral... I'm not going to write you an essay on Global Warming. :roll:
As for what you posted, the paper by Craig Loehle, is that the corrected version? Funny how it was a web reader that pointed out his mistakes, LOL. Kinda like the hockey stick, ya know. :2razz:
Anyhoo, this is an article that came out not too long ago:
ated 4:47 p.m. ET, Mon., Oct . 26, 2009
WASHINGTON - An analysis of global temperatures by independent statisticians shows the Earth is still warming and not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming.
from the article:
Satellite data tends to be cooler
One prominent skeptic said that to find the cooling trend, the 30 years of satellite temperatures must be used. The satellite data tends to be cooler than the ground data. Key to that is making sure that 1998 is part of the trend, he added.
What happened within the past 10 years or so is what counts, not the overall average, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic.
"I don't argue with you that the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years," said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. "We started the cooling trend after 1998. You're going to get a different line depending on which year you choose.
"Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?" Easterbrook asked. "We can play the numbers games."
That's the problem, some of the statisticians said.
Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive."
Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years.
"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University.
Not all skeptical scientists make the flat-out cooling argument.
"It pretty much depends on when you start," wrote John Christy, the Alabama atmospheric scientist who collects the satellite data that skeptics use. He said in an e-mail that looking back 31 years, temperatures have gone up nearly three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit (four-tenths of a degree Celsius). The last dozen years have been flat, and temperatures over the last eight years have declined a bit, he wrote.
Statisticians reject global cooling - Environment- msnbc.com