Climate change, probabilities, etc

Well, the scientific debate about how to properly think about the effects of climate change continues.

John Nielsen-Gammon makes a point about the extraordinarily warm March in much of the US not being quite as extraordinary as it seems. But in doing so, he seems to play into the hands of skeptics whose inclination has long been to shrug shoulders and say things like "what, so global warming might only add 1 degree to what was already a heatwave? Big deal."

Michael Tobis has a problem with this approach, and has a post with a good analogy, and some important diagrams.

And over at AGW Observer, a whole batch of papers looking at the Russian heat wave of 2010. Even Nielsen-Gammon seems to like this paper in that list, which gives a good explanation of how you can reconcile apparently conflicting statements about climate change and the heatwave.

Update: and as if on cue, a person commenting at John N-G's blog takes exactly the wrong message in the way that I (and others in the thread) thought would happen. It should be obvious which one I mean.