When the five year global temperature trend begins heading south...?

Question

...will the zealots switch to a ten year trend? a 15? 20? How long will they try to milk this rat before they admit it's colder now than it was in 1998?

Answer 1

The five year average (not the five year trend, that is a different curve entirely) has shown drops in the past and probably will again.  These are generally short term and have little meaning when compared to the larger warming trend.

There is, however, a larger cycle of about sixty years that consists of about 30 years of warming, followed by about 30 years of cooling.  The cooling periods are less than the warming, but are clearly there.  If this cycle holds, we are due for a switch from warming to cooling in the next few years.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Answer 2

Milking rats on a rat ship is an interesting way to keep warm on a planet that's cooling

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

Answer 3

Maybe you should wait until the 5 year average starts to decrease before asking this question.  Because it hasn't and it won't.

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

I'll happily admit that the average global temperature in 2007 was cooler than the average global temperature in 1998.  So I guess we won't "try to milk this rat" at all.  Nice strawman argument though.

How long will you try and suck this horse before you admit that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas?

Answer 4

How the 1,000,000 year average ?  If the planet is, what 6 billion years old, what's a million, give or take ?

1 out of 6,000 is a good control group.

Answer 5

I suspect that in a couple more years of record cold and snow, the believers will tire themselves out and move on to the next crisis the "scientist" say is going to kill us all.