And let me explain it to you. Trenberth wants to better know where the energy is being stored in the climate system during the natural cycles. Is that terribly hard to comprehend? See - just one sentence can sum it up. A bit rich for a denialist to suggest that further research is not needed when your war cry is "the science is not settled". Sheer hypocrisy.
Yes, I'm perfectly aware the graphs weren't constructed solely on tree ring data. That wasn't the issue. The issue was he simply omitted 50 years of tree ring data that didn't fit his theory, and if Dr. Mann would do it with tree rings, what else did he do it with? I'm sure he used tree ring data from as far back as he could get them, if they supported the popular hypothesis. Don't just omit 50, omit it all and tell us why you did it. The data simply did not jive with what the thermometer was telling you and it's probably not the first time it's happened. And come on. I'm not narrowly focusing on one little detail searching for a conspiracy (Granted we will always be blessed with nut jobs who see conspiracies around every corner, but you seem to be labeling anyone with an opposing opinion a denialist, conspirasist and I'm sure several other names) I like many others are looking at the whole picture. As far as the CRU is concerned, it was the body of work that drew criticism, not a single message and certainly not a single sentence.
So lets have a little hypothetical. Supposing we are scientists with multiple data sets. One data set is well out of line with the others. Furthermore, the dataset that is out of line is obtained with observational methods that are known to be less precise and reliable than the others. Our objective is to get as close to the truth as we can, what do we do? In any case all of this is utterly irrelevant - all the accepted temperature records - proxy, satellite and surface measurement - show global warming. They have been produced by independent research groups. Global warming is real. If you want to spend your life arguing about what will be at most a rather uninteresting historical footnote, go ahead. If your interest is getting to the truth look at all the evidence.
My interest is getting to the truth and I'm not denying the earth's climate is changing. My issue is with who's collecting data and how they're collecting data and most importantly, how much are humans and C02 really impacting the climate. Did you read any of the CRU emails, not just a snippet here or there? The attitudes were obnoxious and observer bias was rampant. The science has been replaced with a political ideology. There's no truth in that.
By the way, many of these scientists couldn't figure out how a biodome works and had to abandon the projects due to out of control C02. If they don't fully understand how gasses work in a small, controlled atmosphere, do they really know if a 70 ppm increase in carbon dioxide over the last 50 years is going to destroy the planet? It's a serious question, one I've never seen answered in print. We just all assume a .007% change in the atmosphere is going to doom us all. Well, not all of us.
It does not matter anyway. The Earth's climate has always changed and it will continue to change. There is no one who is claiming that the Earth's climate is static. With that being said the Earth has a roughly 50% chance of being in a state of warming at any given time. Factor in the fact that the Earth has had a warming bias it really would be no surprise for the Earth to get warmer at all. In trader talk, the global warming people are considered trend followers. Changes in climate do not mean that humans were responsible. The Earth's climate has changed for billions of years. Now for some reason any changes that occured over the last 130 years are attributed to humans. That argument makes no sense and there is no precedence for it.
It's shaping up to be another rough winter for the global warming guru's. Record cold nation wide, England getting pounded with snow, and so on. Add to that four straight hurricane seasons with no storm of substance. What happened? 2005 they were saying we were going to be hit with bigger and stronger storms on a more frequent basis. The weather just won't co-operate. But, but, but, the climate is changing is the war cry. They have stat's saying 97% agree it's so. Really? Well no shit, the climate changes. The only question is who are the 3% that don't believe it? But, but but, 97% also agree that man has something to do with it. Really? Well no shit, we probably have had an impact. Again, who are the 3%. The real questions are, is this change of any real consequence, long term, and just how much of a role do we humans play in it? The obvious answer is not much. The alarmists just can't swallow that inconvenient truth, so on they go, against all evidence. Evidence that sun spots are the probable culprut, but that's a problem. We really can't send a strongly worded complaint to the Sun people, now can we? Rest assured, that when the next hurricane hits, whether it's next year, or ten years from now, they'll act as if Katrina happened the week before. It's just how the game is played. We can put these folks in two groups. The profiteers like big Al, and useful idiots who will fall for anything that is anti-America. Pathetic!