Anyone who is interested should read the latest (it's open to all) from James Hansen in PNAS on global warming. Here's the abstract:

Global surface temperature has increased 0.2 degrees C per decade in the
past 30 years, similar to the warming rate predicted in the 1980s in initial global climate model simulations with transient greenhouse gas changes. Warming is larger in the Western Equatorial Pacific than in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific over the past century, and we suggest that the increased West–East temperature gradient may
have increased the likelihood of strong El Ninos, such as those of 1983 and 1998. Comparison of measured sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific with paleoclimate data suggests that this critical ocean region, and probably the planet as a whole, is approximately as warm now as at the Holocene maximum and
within 1 degree C of the maximum temperature of the past million years. We conclude that global warming of more than 1 degree C, relative to 2000, will constitute "dangerous" climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species.

In particular I liked this figure, because Hansen combined paleoclimate data going back 1.35 million years with data of sea-surface temperature in the Western Equatorial Pacific (Global and WEP temperatures correlate so the comparison is apt).



One of the common complaints from global warming deniers is that since we weren't around for however many millions of years, we can't say anything about the past climate of the planet. Which makes them a lot like creationist deniers because similar to paleobiologists, climate scientists have a way of measuring "fossilized" temperatures, which are referred to as temperature proxies. Using this fossil record of temperature, we can reconstruct climate in terms of temperature over a million years. The picture isn't pretty, we're about as hot now as has ever been recorded using these temperature proxies.

Another stupid denialist argument is that if we can't predict the weather, why should we pretend to predict climate? Well, it's comparing apples and oranges, and a common misunderstanding in the science of climate. Climate is not weather, it is not a prediction of the daily weather in your neighborhood, but it is a good and predictable measure of averages of weather, average rainfall, average temperature etc. To say we can't predict climate is pretty ludicrous, especially for a bunch of people living in a temperate zone. Anyway, here's how predictions have compared lately according to Hansen.



So, in case anyone was wondering what our local denialist and non-Virginia State Climatolgist has to offer to climate science?



Well, his great contribution was to fudge earlier versions of this figure by subtracting the conservative climate predictions B & C and only leaving the most extreme predictions from scenario A. (Check out other fudges of this figure over at Deltoid's Climate Fraudit)

Now that the data is out let the denialism begin!