Gee, I know.

I have, after all, lived here for most of my life. So yeah. I know we get hot and I also can durn well recognise a trend and unusual conditions for my location when I feel them on my skin and experience them more often and worse than I ever have before thankyou.

When we have our longest heatwave on record one year and the hottest the next and now the earliest now all in very quick succession; how stupid do you have to be to think that’s just purely coincidence especially given all of, well, the science?

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/angry-summer

Four days in a row over forty degrees Celsius.

Port Augusta, a town not too far to my north was the hottest town on the planet just last week with temperatures hitting 47.2 Celsius

http://www.pressreader.com/australia/sunday-mail/20151220/281479275371792/TextView

Or 117 degrees Fahrenheit whilst on that day my home city reached 43.2 or 109.76 F.

Oh and there’s this to look forward to over the next few days :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-23/sa-in-for-worst-christmas-day-fire-conditions-in-30-years/7050764

After I start work early tomorrow because I’m working outside in 39 degree Celsius (102 F) heat.

After struggling to keep my garden of native plants alive after a poor nights sleep by spending hours soaking the ground in water as rainfall is well below average.

Damn right I take Denialist bullshit personally.

That is that all the warming we have measured from 1950 to today is caused by our human emissions.

Zero caused by el nino.

Or am I misunderstanding you and Gavin?

What you apparently haven’t understood is that el nino (actually, all quasi-periodic oceanic oscillations) only moves heat around in the global system. The accumulation of heat, whether in the atmosphere, the land or the ocean, is due to external radiative forcing. Since solar output has been effectively constant during the period of interest, that means more heat is being retained in the global system. That’s due to the increasing amount of Tyndall gasses in the atmosphere, and the only source of those is anthropogenic. By the same token, anthropogenic aerosols have reduced radiative forcing to varying extents by increasing albedo, causing more incoming solar radiation to be reflected.

BTW, I’ve also noticed that RickA seems to be making a genuine effort to overcome his initially apparent cognitive bias. He should be encouraged as long as he continues to show the effort.

Brainstorms: “Ergo, per RickA, it is overwhelmingly probable that nearly all the warming before 1950 is caused by human activity.”

By gods, “RickA” deserves a hearty “Well done, Lass!” (or Lad, as the case may be).

Let’s give RickA the benefit of the doubt for the moment, and assume that he’s correct. Now let’s see where that leads us:

Ninety-nine percent (99%) is truly “more than half”, so we have no contradiction…

Then, to continue RickA’s logic in #72, “… it is not very likely that more than 99% of the warming before 1950 is anthropogenic.”

Hence, if RickA is correct, he is pointing out that only 1% of the warming before 1950 is likely to be other than human-caused…

Ergo, per RickA, it is overwhelmingly probable that nearly all the warming before 1950 is caused by human activity.

Good job, RickA. You seem to be making progress. Finally.

If you look at surface temperature estimates from proxies from the last several centuries, the temperature wiggles up and down. That wiggling started to include an unnatural upward trend some time in the recent past. Before around 1900 it is probably very hard to see that, but it is very likely there. During the first half of the 20th century, you can see it. During the last half of the 20th century it is the dominant signal. Etc.

Moving from an up and down squiggle in a certain area to a squiggle sitting on an upward trend is a 100% human effect.

So why do you then write, “It is when people start to sloppily say 110% of the observed warming is Anthro that I have trouble.” This is a blog with a comment thread, not a peer-reviewed paper. There are people commenting here who are scientifically well-founded, and there may be some, like me, who aren’t. In any case, some inaccuracies and instances of sloppiness can be expected, but instead of focusing on the essential, you make an effort not to understand by insisting on inaccuracies, even after the proper explanation has been presented. You show no interest in learning.

BBD – that chart shows Anthro and non-Anthro.

Yes, so it shows how anthropogenic forcing has increased relative to natural forcing.

I have no problem with the IPCC version because more than half can be 51%, which still allows for netting with the sun or whatever other non-human forcings there are.

The pretty picture from AR5 shows the relative contributions from all major forcings. Only anthropogenic forcings have increased sufficiently to account for observed modern warming.

It is when people start to sloppily say 110% of the observed warming is Anthro that I have trouble – because it doesn’t read as netting out the non-Anthro.

Look at the figure from AR5. Burning fossil fuels produces a cooling haze of aerosols as well as a warming infusion of CO2. Gavin and others are correct to suggest that we might be warmer still right now if not for those aerosols.

So yes, “Zero caused by el nino.” El Niño, as you suggested, redistributes heat from the ocean to the surface. In La Niña years the redistribution goes the other way, but La Niña years still show a warming trend.
http://rabett.blogspot.dk/2014/12/plenty-of-trend-at-bottom.html
https://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=67

The modern warming trend is caused by human activity. It’s primarily the result of cumulative CO2 emissions, so you won’t find jumps much bigger than the jump from 2014 to 2015. Other causes have been looked into, and they’ve been found wanting.