New NOAA Research Puts Global Warming 'Hiatus' in Doubt

[Torie]

You do realize that it takes many years for the carbon we produce to get up into the atmosphere far enough to act as a greenhouse gas (being so far up in the atmosphere)? What we're going to see is a huge global spike in temperature in the next couple of decades.

Why a spike, if the increase in the past decades in CO2 has been rather steady?  You're just positing a lag factor.

[Torie]

Interestingly...warming in California is positively correlated to county population size!

In California, small population counties are in the north and large population counties tend to be mainly in the south, the fact that small population California counties are cooler is hardly surprising. This is a clear case where multivariate statistical analysis is needed, or at the very least, analysis needs to be made of a state where population size is not as heavily correlated with latitude as California is. Otherwise, it appears climate deniers are cherry-picking data to serve their purposes, but of course only climate scarers would want to do that.

It's the slope of the lines that matter, not the absolute temperature readings.