Comment on Dot Earth 1/4/12

Andy - At various times over the last year you have appeared to consider climate science more objectively - yet here you go again with the notion of a "fundamental Republican science problem " . The Hadley Sea Surface Temperature data is the best metric for climate change . The 5 year moving SST temperature average shows that the warming trend peaked in 2003 and a simple regression analysis shows a nine year global SST cooling trend since then ..The data shows warming from 1900 – 1940 ,cooling from 1940 to about 1975 and warming from 1975 – 2003. CO2 levels rose monotonically during this entire period.There has been no net warming since 1997 – 14 years with CO2 up 7.9% and no net warming. Anthropogenic CO2 has some effect but our knowledge of the natural drivers is still so poor that we cannot accurately estimate what the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is. Since 2003 CO2 has risen further and yet the global temperature trend is negative. This is obviously a short term on which to base predictions but all statistical analyses of particular time series must be interpreted in conjunction with other ongoing events and in the context of declining solar magnetic field strength and activity – to the extent of a possible Dalton or Maunder minimum and the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal a global 20 – 30 year cooling spell is more likely than a warming trend. Please see http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta_models_comparison_ATP.pdf IPCC models are junk science.