still don't understand what you're saying

the real point tho - is that we are seeing historical high temperature records exceeded by new highs at a great rate; lows not so much

joebob - the British survey (Royal Navy?) goes back further

to go back even further, you look at things like tree ring growth widths, ice cores & etc.

glib generalities - the issue we are concerned about is the trend -- the things you mention are "noise" imposed on a trend

here is some education for you guys on ice cores:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/science/earth/lonnie-thompson-climate-scientist-battles-time.html?hpw

If you lost your home is a fire, your arms in an accident, your loved one to an illness, you would adapt. What's that proof of?

completely bogus - it is very clear that we can alter climate

we can also alter smallpox incidence, polio...

I'm not adding anything up. I'm just stating that if there is an ever increasing number of data points, you will always have more record setting highs and lows. Therefore, they are insignificant except as a news story.

And what is the precision on those methods? ...I mean c'mon...

Around here an ElNino vs LaNina trend will drastically change the rain thru the summer, or warmth thru the winter. ...which will help (or hurt) tree ring size. . ..and yet, there was no global temp change driving tree ring growth.

I know it sounds smart to say "well, we can extract the temperature trends by____" But really, without stating the precision they may as well tell fish stories... "it was THIS BIG..." ...and they would have better understood precision.

You are flat out wrong.

Go back to my refrigerator example. Are there more record highs and lows as the months go by? The number of data points is increasing.

Do you want more example to show your error? Suppose you kept track of how much beer you drink each day of your life. The high record would probably be set sometime in your twenties. Why aren't you setting new high records every decade, bigger and bigger beer binges into your eighties and nineties? The number of data points is increasing.

Just because you continue gathering data points does not mean you will necessarily keep recording progressively higher highs or lower lows.

You'll notice that you are the only one who seems to believe this, on this thread.

I think you are missing the point. Yes, if you have an ever increasing number of data points over time records will fall. However, the pace these records are being set at is much faster pace than we did 50 years ago. I read that roughly 25 states had their warmest spring ever. These records are being set because the earth is getting warmer and not just because we have more data points. Maybe you realize that but it doesn't seem that way.

JYL - perhaps you are correct, and if so I will admit it. But I think even Luke above fails the same way the media does in his "warmest springs ever" quote. How do you know - we have not had accurate measurement device like we do now for much more than the last century. And we are talking about a degree F or two here.

I think the point he was trying to make was if you go to an extreme, say 10,000 years, you can see that at some point the highs and lows of average climate were much different; ice ages and such.

You honestly don't think we realize that when they say "warmest spring ever" they are saying warmest spring since they kept official records? We all realize they don't know what the temp was on this date 20,000 years ago.

Do you doubt temps have been going up these past 100 years and it's because it's getting warmer and not because of more data points? That is a fact and I'm not sure how you could say otherwise.