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Those are them nutjobs thinking that the climate is changing, and that it's our fault. Now they want us to fly "energy efficient" airplanes. That's code for socialist airplanes! And they'll probably be serving vegan food on them as well. Don't fall for it!

There's no debate in the scientific literature. Obviously, there's a debate among laymen.

Which begs the question: why is "the majority of scientists agree" not enough when it comes to climate change. It's enough when it's there's fear of creating black holes at the LHC. It's enough when it's NASA sending satellites into space. These places have just as much motivation for being "grant seeking" and all the other accusations that have been flying around.

But when it's climate change the majority of scientists, the IPCC, and even NASA isn't enough. They're all part of a conspiracy, and there is only a handful of very specific people in the entire world that we can trust.

Well let's look at that;

How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2,500 — that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2,500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.

To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered they were mistaken — those 2,500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently. Lawrence Solomon: 97% cooked stats

oh well if we can't use the 2500 number how about the “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus," number

The number stems from a 2008 master’s thesis by student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at the University of Illinois, under the guidance of Peter Doran, an associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences. The two researchers obtained their results by conducting a survey of 10,257 Earth scientists. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers — in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout. Lawrence Solomon: 97% cooked stats

well that's certainly disappointing

3,146, or 30.7%, answered the two key questions on the survey:

1 When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2 Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? ... Surprisingly, just 90% of the Earth scientists who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen — I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. ...
As for the second question, 82% of the Earth scientists replied that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe human activity has been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a increase of 10% or 15% or 35% to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t. ...
In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus — almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for

You'll have to show me evidence that ice mass is rebounding from a 2007 year low. The latest I've heard is that the area of ice coverage has increased a bit, but the ice is thinning. Overall, there's been less ice mass worldwide every year. Here's data from Greenland, Canada, and the Antarctic.

They don't keep all the accumulated heat. The heat inertia effect is closer to 50%.

Actually...

“The oceans are absorbing more than 80 percent of the heat from global warming,” he says. “If you aren’t measuring heat content in the upper ocean, you aren’t measuring global warming.” [Dr. Josh Willis]

Josh's estimate is plausible because:

• Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface.
• Water's specific heat is over four times greater than that of rock.
• Water stores heat using the heat transfer mechanisms present in rock plus convection.
• Water is more transparent than rock so visible light warms more than just the very top layer.

But I'm not sure why you're saying that oceans aren't warming.

Nice link, but he's probably referring to a (resolved) problem with the Argo data that's discussed in that same article:

“So the new Argo data were too cold, and the older XBT data were too warm, and together, they made it seem like the ocean had cooled,” says Willis.

They don't keep all the accumulated heat. The heat inertia effect is closer to 50%.

Actually...

“The oceans are absorbing more than 80 percent of the heat from global warming,” he says. “If you aren’t measuring heat content in the upper ocean, you aren’t measuring global warming.” [Dr. Josh Willis]

Josh's estimate is plausible because:

• Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface.
• Water's specific heat is over four times greater than that of rock.
• Water stores heat using the heat transfer mechanisms present in rock plus convection.
• Water is more transparent than rock so visible light warms more than just the very top layer.

But I'm not sure why you're saying that oceans aren't warming.

Nice link, but he's probably referring to a (resolved) problem with the Argo data that's discussed in that same article:

“So the new Argo data were too cold, and the older XBT data were too warm, and together, they made it seem like the ocean had cooled,” says Willis.

The only thing I've not really been able to figure out from the entire climate discussion is what is meant by "average temperature" in the first place.

The idea of taking some temperature measurements at various geographic locations and then averaging those values doesn't seem to make much physical sense to me, because there is no meaningful method by which to perform an average. ...

I am much more willing to look at other parameters which do have a better "average" information content. Sea level, snow cover (both max and min amounts, as well as time spent at those amounts) because those are inherently continuous phenomena that are not subject to interpolation errors.

You make a good point. It's never going to be perfect. Scientists try to show the margin of error in the various reconstructions. With enough data points and over a long enough period of time you can get a pretty clear picture of what is happening.

Sea level and snow cover also have problems. Sea level raises and lowers in various regions based on a number of factors including geological and climatological. This is possibly harder to measure than the global average temperature because with temperature we are able to leverage thousands of existing weather stations. I suspect that there are fewer existing data points for sea level.

Snow coverage has problems too. The atmosphere has 4% more moisture than it did 70 years ago due to warmer temperature. This leads to increased precipitation. As long as the temperature is below 0C this will fall as snow. You are not necessarily going to see a linear decline of snow coverage as the earth warms. The trick is to tease out the truth from all of the available data. Take all of these together and the picture becomes clearer.

Actually, a question and it may actually convince me to accept the concept of "average temperature": do thermal satellites have the capability to do a true area-continuous temperature measurement?

Unfortunately satellite measurement is not perfect either. See the section "Determination" in the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/satellite_temperature_measurements. To sum up: The satellite series is not fully homogeneous. The sensors deteriorate over time, as do the orbits. These need to be corrected for. The good news is that they are in pretty good agreement with the surface station reconstructions.

I have other questions as well, for instance, is average temperature really the critical parameter or is it median temperature? Actual max vs actual min? Is it something more related to the square of the deviation from the mean ("signal power")?

Good questions. Mean is available here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp. You would need to go the source data available form NOAA to calculate the median. It would be interesting to see the results.

There's no debate in the scientific literature. Obviously, there's a debate among laymen.

Which begs the question: why is "the majority of scientists agree" not enough when it comes to climate change. It's enough when it's there's fear of creating black holes at the LHC. It's enough when it's NASA sending satellites into space. These places have just as much motivation for being "grant seeking" and all the other accusations that have been flying around.

But when it's climate change the majority of scientists, the IPCC, and even NASA isn't enough. They're all part of a conspiracy, and there is only a handful of very specific people in the entire world that we can trust.

But do WE have an impact on this variation. That is the question.

Answered here.

Even before we ask that question: if the earth gets both hotter and cooler, does it matter?
Who cares if we have an impact if it doesn't matter?

Answered here.

Queue knee jerk dismissal of website.

But do WE have an impact on this variation. That is the question.

Answered here.

Even before we ask that question: if the earth gets both hotter and cooler, does it matter?
Who cares if we have an impact if it doesn't matter?

Answered here.

Queue knee jerk dismissal of website.

Regarding the consequences of climate change take a look at this website. You should care. But I guess they're also part of the socialist hippie lobby trying to get more funding or reelected or something.

"Not one of the models can predict the past"

On the contrary, models are routinely benchmarked by their ability to reconstruct the past. There are also other ways to test models, here is a good write up of how large volcanic eruptions can be used to judge the accuracy of models.

This link might be more informative for him:

History of how the averaging method was derived

It was hotter in many locations in the 40's.

Look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040630003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040630003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=3

Some areas are unquestionably warming Tokyo is a straight climb from 1880.

The warming trend in the 40's lasted about half as long. But why?

Wading through the data there, I saw similar data in antarctica, greenland, russia, south america.

These areas appear to be actually heating up: China, Africa, Japan.

Greenland IS losing a lot of ice tho (giga tons).

It was cold in 1880, warmed through the 1940's, then cooled through the 70's and then heated in the 80's, 90's, and 10's. But the 10's were really steep and just had a sharp drop in many locations- there was a sharp drop after the 40's too. Doesn't toss out GW-- but the parent posters point that the 10's are not long enough.

If you take 70 (the bottom) through 2010, then you also need to consider 1880->1945 (warming) and 1945->1970 (cooling) periods as well.

It was hotter in many locations in the 40's.

Look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040630003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040630003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=3

Some areas are unquestionably warming Tokyo is a straight climb from 1880.

The warming trend in the 40's lasted about half as long. But why?

Wading through the data there, I saw similar data in antarctica, greenland, russia, south america.

These areas appear to be actually heating up: China, Africa, Japan.

Greenland IS losing a lot of ice tho (giga tons).

It was cold in 1880, warmed through the 1940's, then cooled through the 70's and then heated in the 80's, 90's, and 10's. But the 10's were really steep and just had a sharp drop in many locations- there was a sharp drop after the 40's too. Doesn't toss out GW-- but the parent posters point that the 10's are not long enough.

If you take 70 (the bottom) through 2010, then you also need to consider 1880->1945 (warming) and 1945->1970 (cooling) periods as well.

Really? Face it?
What would it take for you to consider the mountains of solid scientific results? Seriously.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/jan/HQ_11-014_Warmest_Year.html
I guess NASA is just a bunch of kooks.

But at least it is showmanship with a useful point.

...Or it is a rigged test.

They're predicting lower than average sunspot activity over the next ten years, and there's evidence to suggest that such a downturn would effect global temperatures. Global warming is based on data from a much larger timeframe, and is weighted to account for effects like this. His wager is not.

They don't take an average absolute temperature, but an average temperature anomaly, which makes a lot more sense. At each station, they measure the temperature difference between the current temperature, and a 30-year base period. Research has shown there's a good correlation between anomalies of different measuring stations, even if separated by hundreds of miles, even though the absolute temperatures between those same stations could differ by ten degrees or more.

See here for more info:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1987/Hansen_Lebedeff.html

You really should be linking to NASA as well. They're the other major body that studies climate change. And it's likely one of the reasons why it's always being targeted for budget cuts by the GOP. A lot of what NASA does is keeping tabs on changes going on our planet from space.

That means that comparing the numbers from one year with those from another is exactly like comparing apples and oranges

No, stations within 1000 km distance are actually very closely correlated in their temperature.

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1987/Hansen_Lebedeff.html

If you look at the maps, you'll notice most of the recent warming was not near those areas.

Here you can play with the data:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

For instance, if you choose Jan-Dec 2010, you'll see that Europe was on the cool side, the USA was only slight warmer, and that there are big red areas where nobody lives.

Actually
Both Climate Change and Global Warming are unique terms that have specific meanings.

To put it simply:
Cause: Global Warming
Effect: Climate Change
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html

If anything, we should be talking about Global Warming more.
Because it's amazingly simple when you boil it down to it's bare constuients.

**"Is it the sun?"** Sometimes but definently not for the past half century.
http://greyfalcon.net/solar0.png

**"Are we certain that less and less infrared radiation is exiting out into space, almost entirely in the wavelength we'd expect CO2 and CH4 to block?"**
Yes
http://greyfalcon.net/greenhouse

**Is the rate of warming significant?**
Yeah, I'd say 100x faster than you'd expect from changes in earth's orbit alone is significant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bftcWQiZPPg
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-to-explain-Milankovitch-cycles-to-a-hostile-Congressman-in-30-seconds.html
http://greyfalcon.net/climate2
(^^ I need a better source for this comment)

**"Do we know that the CO2 is from fossil fuels. i.e. "Manmade CO2"**
Yes
http://greyfalcon.net/carbon3
http://greyfalcon.net/c14
http://greyfalcon.net/carbon2

DONE. That's all you need to know.

With absolute certainty "manmade CO2" is the main cause global warming.

Actually
Both Climate Change and Global Warming are unique terms that have specific meanings.

To put it simply:
Cause: Global Warming
Effect: Climate Change
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html

If anything, we should be talking about Global Warming more.
Because it's amazingly simple when you boil it down to it's bare constuients.

**"Is it the sun?"** Sometimes but definently not for the past half century.
http://greyfalcon.net/solar0.png

**"Are we certain that less and less infrared radiation is exiting out into space, almost entirely in the wavelength we'd expect CO2 and CH4 to block?"**
Yes
http://greyfalcon.net/greenhouse

**Is the rate of warming significant?**
Yeah, I'd say 100x faster than you'd expect from changes in earth's orbit alone is significant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bftcWQiZPPg
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-to-explain-Milankovitch-cycles-to-a-hostile-Congressman-in-30-seconds.html
http://greyfalcon.net/climate2
(^^ I need a better source for this comment)

**"Do we know that the CO2 is from fossil fuels. i.e. "Manmade CO2"**
Yes
http://greyfalcon.net/carbon3
http://greyfalcon.net/c14
http://greyfalcon.net/carbon2

DONE. That's all you need to know.

With absolute "manmade CO2" is the main cause global warming.

The actual data this press release is based on is here.

Versions of this data released to the media generally don't include error bars, though they should. But the methodology is the same as Hansen's 2006 paper:

"Estimated 2-sigma error (95% confidence) in comparing nearby years of global temperature (Fig. 1A), such as 1998 and 2005, decreases from 0.1C at the beginning of the 20th century to 0.05C in recent decades (4)."

Thus, the data errors are just a little smaller than the year-to-year variations, but are far, far smaller than the century-long trend. Which is why Hansen stresses that it doesn't really matter exactly which year is the hottest on record: what matters is how this decade stacks up to the rest of the 20th century.

The actual data this press release is based on is here.

Versions of this data released to the media generally don't include error bars, though they should. But the methodology is the same as Hansen's 2006 paper:

"Estimated 2-sigma error (95% confidence) in comparing nearby years of global temperature (Fig. 1A), such as 1998 and 2005, decreases from 0.1C at the beginning of the 20th century to 0.05C in recent decades (4)."

Thus, the data errors are just a little smaller than the year-to-year variations, but are far, far smaller than the century-long trend. Which is why Hansen stresses that it doesn't really matter exactly which year is the hottest on record: what matters is how this decade stacks up to the rest of the 20th century.

The data from NASA is located here http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/.

The global average temperature went down from 2005 to 2008. It has gone up from 2008 to 2010. The nature of the data over the last hundred years shows an upward trend.

There are important questions that I wish everyone would consider when reading this. They are,

Is the cause is man made? (Consider volcanoes as a major CO2 source, sun energy output, etc)

Is the change significant?

Is the change preventable? (this is related to environmental factors that we have little control over, such as sun energy output)

What major sources of energy can we make available to replace oil and coal? One way or another, we have to answer this question eventually. Remember that we use close to the energy that the sun delivers to the Earth, so the combination of solar, hydro, bio fuel, and other sun energy sources will not be enough.

These questions are rarely answered, and will lead to a solution better than just using electric cars (which don't solve any problems since most power plants use coal).

NASA also put out a piece comparing different findings by different organizations, explaining the differences and why they aren't a big deal. The articles also states that year-to-year measures aren't particularly useful - not only are 2010 and 2005 very close, but the next six are also very similar to each other - but looking at it decade by decade (i.e. a larger sample size) gives far more meaning:

On that time scale, the three records are unequivocal: the last decade has been the warmest on record. “It’s not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record,” said Hansen. "It is the underlying trend that is important."

1. Viagra. Low blood pressure will cause ED, but patients with ED caused by naturally low BP are helped by it.
2. That's not what NASA says
3. Almost certainly (see previous link).

Can someone explain the disadvantages of SRBs? Is it just that they are more explosive?

They can't be turned off once ignited, can't be throttled, and they have high-pressure & high-temperature along the entire body of the booster instead of just in a relatively small "engine" at the bottom like liquid-fuelled rockets, which means they're a significant safety hazard if placed alongside liquid fuel tanks, like in most rocket designs.

What happened with the Challenger disaster is that a seal near the middle of one of the boosters failed, and the hot pressurised gasses escaped and cut into the main liquid tank like a welding torch. The same (or similar) risk will be present in the Ares V design.

Compare with the Saturn V, which had liquid-fuelled stages only, where a failure of a single engine could still result in a successful launch. This happened more than once during the Apollo missions, and no lives were lost.

Liquid fuelled rockets have their own issues too, like having to run turbo-pumps at enormous speeds and cryogenic temperatures. I found a scanned online version of the Saturn V Flight Manual recently. Here's a great quote:

The only substances used in the engine are the propellants and helium gas. The extremely low operating temperature of the engine prohibits the use of lubricants or other fluids.

Just... wow.

If it's tidelocked, there shouldn't be any significant tidal heating, and with minimal atmosphere, it should just have a really hot side, and a really cold side, with more moderate temps in between, just like Mercury.

Tidal locking doesn't preclude core tides if the core has a fluid component. Here's from a source in CA (they may know better than the guys in Houston - even if the californians aren't quite renowned for their sanity).

Googled.... http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_Astronaut_Requirements.html
Height between 62 and 75 inches.

I do not understand the parent comment, and do not see the relevance of the reference provided there.

The closest I got was in Chapter 5 of the reference where Apollo 17 found a temperature close to 256 K at a depth of 2 meters (scan down the page to the second chart insert). This is less than 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and at that shallow depth is probably around the average annual temperature of the surface, as in Earth caves. There is no reason not to expect the temperature to continue to decrease for many more meters before it begins to increase from core effects.

Even if it did represent a measure of the coldest layer of the Moon, it is still quite a bit below freezing, for all but the saltiest ocean water. So I don't see how it challenges the assumption that there may be a zone of liquid water between the Moon's surface and its core.

So I just don't see any relevance. Am I missing something?

Like any human endeavor, the "web of trust" will not be unanimous. You'll get your clubs and gangs there also. The internet is just as lumpy as everything else.. On the outside, you're on your own.

Check out the temperature at 2 metres depth. I reckon your temperate zone is close enough to the surface that the regolith at that depth will be as dry as it is at the surface (except in cold polar craters).

Conclusion: other than at the pole the moon may be too hot and dry for life as we know it.

This is a non story really - okay - so it's searchable, but the OP makes it sound as though this is the first time these docs are available when that isn't accurate. This project does not seem to have any official relation to NASA (I didn't dox the site or creators so take that with a grain of salt). Anyway - you can find almost all of the transcripts already through NASA.

I've had Apollo 8 and 13 on my Kindle for months now and requested Apollo 13 in 1999 via FOIA. Received it in a two huge binders.

NASA Transcripts Home

I would have to do the math to make sure, but at some latitude a human being could quite easily outwalk the sunrise... Heck on the equator I think a person could outwalk the sunrise, if you assume it rotates a hundred times slower and the circumference is quite smaller.

Mercury's equatorial circumference is 9529.1 mi and it's day is 1,407.5 hrs. (Source)

Divide and you get that Mercury's terminator moves at 2.08 mph at the equator. So sure, you could pretty easily outwalk that for some time.

Just an FYI: reading through the transcript I kept seeing things like "NOUN 37" and "VERB 12" - I thought these might be redactions for national security or censorship of Very Bad Words (ala the Nixon White House tapes and "expletive deleted" - but I'm dating myself to know about that). But they actually seem to be the way the internal shipboard guidance computer was controlled, with two part commands, one being an action (not surprisingly, "VERB yy") and one being an object to be acted upon ("NOUN xx"). Details here:

http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

Interestingly, this is not at all unlike how the original Fortran code for ADVENT (the seminal "Collossal Cave Adventure") was architected, even down to the terminology used.

The transcripts of the Apollo missions have been available online for a long time.

And in a much more useful format (with illustrations, technical notes, etc...) at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. This 'new' version is nothing but the transcripts run through a bot that adds pretty pictures and stupid 'tweet this' links.

I suspect you mean the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and the Apollo Flight Journal, and they are semi-official NASA projects. (To tell the truth, I didn't know about the latter until after we built Spacelog.)

Although some of the commentary and analysis interspersed into them is awesome, we're not a huge fan of the ALSJ and the AFJ because:

• The weird split between Flight and Lunar Surface is a bit arbitrary
• They're a bit ugly (ugh, frames), whereas Spacelog is pretty (photos are inline, for example)
• It's difficult to link directly to a quote
• The commentary is on the technical side, while we want Spacelog to be fairly accessible
• Their transcripts only cover certain Apollo missions (notably not 13). We want to cover Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and more (NASA just released some Shuttle transcripts)
• They claim copyright on their corrected version of the transcript. All of Spacelog (both the corrected transcript and the code) is public domain like the original transcripts

I suspect you mean the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and the Apollo Flight Journal, and they are semi-official NASA projects. (To tell the truth, I didn't know about the latter until after we built Spacelog.)

Although some of the commentary and analysis interspersed into them is awesome, we're not a huge fan of the ALSJ and the AFJ because:

• The weird split between Flight and Lunar Surface is a bit arbitrary
• They're a bit ugly (ugh, frames), whereas Spacelog is pretty (photos are inline, for example)
• It's difficult to link directly to a quote
• The commentary is on the technical side, while we want Spacelog to be fairly accessible
• Their transcripts only cover certain Apollo missions (notably not 13). We want to cover Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and more (NASA just released some Shuttle transcripts)
• They claim copyright on their corrected version of the transcript. All of Spacelog (both the corrected transcript and the code) is public domain like the original transcripts

Transcripts and audio files have been available forever at http://history.nasa.gov/afj/ (even if they actually miss Apollo 13).

Also, probably not everyone knows that in that speech Houston is not the city in Texas hosting the JSC, but the CAPCOM (no, not the company) callsign.

The conversation has been decisively determine ever since NASA launched the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.) There are now super clear images of the lunar surface including the Lunar Landing Modules, human foot prints, rovers and rover tracks, and other equipment left behind. The entire history of human presence on the moon is clearly visible for anyone willing to look at the photographs of the lunar surface. Just as the flat earthers, at some point when the evidence becomes overwhelming, you just have to shake your head and say, "So sad, too bad."

The picture is now Astronomy Picture of the Day

This part of your comment reminded me of this article; NASA actually had to post a rather lengthy FAQ about 2012 because of the sheer volume of grief that movie was causing them.

That's nothing. Pluto Nash was causing so much trouble that astronomers downgraded it to a dwarf planet.

Think if a majority of the people in this country were convinced by "2012" that the world would really end at that year. Their priorities for government spending would be dramatically different.

This part of your comment reminded me of this article; NASA actually had to post a rather lengthy FAQ about 2012 because of the sheer volume of grief that movie was causing them.

Personally, I agree that NASA should take the proactive approach on this one. It shouldn't be part of their job to educate the public like this but it has proven necessary.

Please, if the title of the submission includes the word 'names best & worst' in it, please provide the list of the best and worst.

I got distracted and started checking out the live webcam from the ISS.

I wasn't making any claims.

You wrote that "the whole United States and Russia are also having exceptionally cold winters". That could reasonably be construed as a "claim".

It's just the grandparent was disingenuous to claim that Britain was the only place in the world experiencing a cold winter...

I did not claim that. The summary cherry-picked this year's British winter as evidence of global cooling, which I criticized. Nowhere did I say that Britain is the "only place in the world experiencing a cold winter", since that would have been a falsehood.

... when it is the whole of Europe, Russia, and most of the United States at least.

Well, the map that I linked to in my original post contradicts that claim. It appears that November was cold in Britain, Scandinavia, and the north-western contiguous United States, and warm pretty much everywhere else (especially Russia).

Unfortunately I can't respond more specifically to your assertion since you haven't provided any data or citations to back it up.

Here's MY claim: global warming stopped in 2000.

I wish that you were correct; unfortunately the data does not support your claim.

I wasn't making any claims.

You wrote that "the whole United States and Russia are also having exceptionally cold winters". That could reasonably be construed as a "claim".

It's just the grandparent was disingenuous to claim that Britain was the only place in the world experiencing a cold winter...

I did not claim that. The summary cherry-picked this year's British winter as evidence of global cooling, which I criticized. Nowhere did I say that Britain is the "only place in the world experiencing a cold winter", since that would have been a falsehood.

... when it is the whole of Europe, Russia, and most of the United States at least.

Well, the map that I linked to in my original post contradicts that claim. It appears that November was cold in Britain, Scandinavia, and the north-western contiguous United States, and warm pretty much everywhere else (especially Russia).

Unfortunately I can't respond more specifically to your assertion since you haven't provided any data or citations to back it up.

Here's MY claim: global warming stopped in 2000.

I wish that you were correct; unfortunately the data does not support your claim.

Indeed, it is very unlikely that 2010 won't be the warmest year on record. This sunspot thing is very weak compared to greenhouse gas driven warming. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/

Both would help a lot by averaging together a fixed set of years around the current one to smooth the data. As these graphs are presented the noise makes it possible for anybody to make all kinds of wild arguments both for and against global warming since there are exceptional hot and cold spots.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but the second map I linked to is indeed a multi-year (2000-2010) average, for exactly the reason you state. A 1990-2010 average shows a similar warming pattern.

Both would help a lot by averaging together a fixed set of years around the current one to smooth the data. As these graphs are presented the noise makes it possible for anybody to make all kinds of wild arguments both for and against global warming since there are exceptional hot and cold spots.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but the second map I linked to is indeed a multi-year (2000-2010) average, for exactly the reason you state. A 1990-2010 average shows a similar warming pattern.