So this here is an interesting data point - but it really is just that.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were places on earth where temperatures have been falling steadily, or have been rising or falling by extreme amounts.
So this here is an interesting data point - but it really is just that.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were places on earth where temperatures have been falling steadily, or have been rising or falling by extreme amounts.
1. It's not clear that CET is a proxy for global temperatures.
2. If CET is a good proxy (and that could be easily checked from the Met Office data) then fast warming in the past needs to be explained to be sure that we are seeing something anomalous now.
3. This Daily Telegraph claims that man-made global warming is refuted by the CET. I don't believe that to be true. It may be questioned by the data, but questioning is within the realms of science.
4. The original blog posting makes the claim "since we've seen 30 years of warming in the past that are faster than the last 30 years of warming there's nothing to worry about". The last part is not correct. If this is correct (modulo #1) then we need to determine what was causing warming in the past compared to today.
And there aren't many places on earth for which long term measurements even exist. So selecting this particular dataset seems plausible enough to me.
On the other hand I would like to hear the counter arguments as well, because if this is such an important dataset, proponents of AGW will have an opinion on it. There may be a good counter argument.
I have nothing against this particular data set. I just doubt that it is all that relevant in the bigger picture. It is just another data point that can be fed into models and whatnot.
I don't know anything about the relevance of the dataset, so maybe you're right, but I suspect that the dataset is important because no other country I know of has reliable records going back that far.
For example, recently there was a post on HN about the current cold wave. Turns out while it was very cold in Europe, at the same time it was very warm in the arctic.
It would be interesting to look at the data from central England and see what kind of results one could get by cherry picking individual weather stations.
Your arctic example makes no sense because climate is not the same as weather.
The only problem with this article is that there is no mention of how the gulfstream could have had a stabilising effect.
The 30 year periods aren't cherry-picked either, they are picked because they were the ones with the greatest increase in temperature.
PS: If you feel some other dataset would be a better proxy feel free to argue the point on its own merits. But be careful when you start to redefine the terms someone else is using, it has little to do with their argument and is not useful.