Sure, if that were a stock market chart, we'd be hearing “highly overvalued,” “headed for a calamitous crash.”

The problem is that both questions–”has it been getting hotter?” and “is it our fault?” aren't the right ones to be asking, because they're both about the past.

The question that matters is “what will happen if we adopt policy X?” Since this is about the future and depends on speculative climate and economic models, the answer is harder to determine and less fun to write about than how the other guys are a bunch of big doo-doo heads.

Do not use politically motivated sources for your research. Contact the National Science Foundation(NSF), University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Scripps Institute for Oceanography, California Institute of Technology, to name a few American sources. There are many other sources from outside the United States also. I suggest concentrating on at least the top 20 climate modelers current models with variables, and their data sources.

You will be getting the best information and not political opinion. You will find interesting information regarding climate change historically over thousands of years from ice core samples taken from Antarctica. The deeper you dig, you will find ongoing models created from constant and periodic atmospheric particle sampling and light measurements.

Should you study with intellectual honesty, I’M CERTAIN, that you will come to the conclusion that there is much legitimate and troubling concern regarding climate change and global warming. Believe me, these world wide research scientists confront each other over data, verifications, measurements, models etc., constantly and ferociously. No bunk science is going to get by I assure you.

Next up, if this graph was anything but average global temps, would anyone deny the obvious trend upwards? I mean, if this was a graph of PRC military expenditures or annual deficit as percent of the GDP, would the same (usually politically conservative) organizations not be sure if there was an upwards trend or not? It's obviously going up.

And then the “cooling” idea is exclusively based upon picking that 1998 year as the baseline. The cherry picking is disguised with neat rhetorical tricks: “if you are 29″ or “if you are graduating high school then since first grade”, which all just means since 1998. Because, if you are 30, well, things have been warming since you became an adult (12 years ago falls on 1997, not 1998), and if you are 31, and if you are 32, and if you are 28, 27, 26…. all warming. Every year in the 2000s has been warmer than every single other year in the entire graph (literally) for a century except for 1998. Moreover, we know some of the reasons for 1998's abnormality (mostly a particularly intense el nino event). Finally, while I don't have the numbers, since every single year in the 00s is higher than every year in the 90s, except one, then the average for the 00s is certainly higher than it is for the previous decade. Looks like you have to move back to a 60s and 70s comparison before that may not be the case.

Dr. Roy Spencer in spite of what looks like a fairly respectable scientific background just isn't a reliable source for objective information. Like many of the deniers, he has wonderful credentials when it comes to politically conservative organizations. He also denies that evolution is real and frankly that doesn't do a whole lot for his scientific credentials. His and Christy's satellite research that they claimed provided evidence against global warming was proven incorrect in 2005. He and Watts tend to show that there is no one less interested in real climate science that ideologically driven older meteorologists.

There is still so much that is unknown about the interactions that influence our climate, and no firm model that has shown consistent predictive capabilities.

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/temperate-fac…

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-tempe…

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/03/uah-globa…

You can even make completely unrelated phenomenon appear to track global warming.

http://joannenova.com.au/2009/05/03/shock-globa…