Tristanc - Who are you trying to kid? One could make up ANY random set of data, draw a straight-line best fit through this data, and then say "See - the trend is a straight line. Pause? I don't see no pause!"
Smoke and mirrors at its worst, with or without the El Nino / La Nina effect!! What we're REALLY seeing is:
(i) a flat trend from 1950 to around the late 70s; followed by
(ii) a steeply rising trend from that point to the very early 21st C; finished off with
(iii) a flat trend extending through to the present (a.k.a. 'The Pause')
Put another way, a line of best fit showing the definite rising trend from 1950 to the early 21st C will be steeper than a line of best fit from 1950 to the present. That reduction in grade is solely due to 'The Pause'.
Now for a REAL laugh: Tristanc reminds us that the trend is still intact. So, let's extend this trend all the way to the end of the 21st C. What we see is a rising trend of 0.8 degrees over a roughly 65 year period, which translates to a warming rate of less than 1.3 degrees per century.
1.3 degrees per century - that's all - yet somehow we're supposed to swallow the alarmist claptrap that it'll be 3 or 4 degrees warmer by 2100.
Is there a psychiatrist on the forum who can explain what it takes for an otherwise normal, rational mind to start believing in outcomes which fall WAY outside the bounds of rational expectation?
