Local and global heat

I've been meaning to comment here that it's been a hot and uncomfortable summer in South East Queensland.   When the temperature hasn't been high (it will likely reach 38 degrees in the Western parts of Brisbane today), it's been very humid*, but with little relief from storms.     (Oh yeah, but when they have come, they have caused damage pushing close to $1 billion.)

So with a hot summer, it will make the message that global warming is real more readily accepted by to many in Australia.

Amusingly enough, I see that when the Wall Street Journal runs a "straight" story reporting on the NOAA, NASA and JAMA findings that last year did set a global record (just), it does not go down well with its readership.   (Have a look at the comments.) 

Of course, the paper will probably run six follow up pieces by the likes of Roy Spencer, John Christy, Pat Michaels or Nigel Lawson all offering comfort to their deluded and gullible right wing readership that the paper hasn't abandoned them.

Anyhow, according to the stupid (or, more accurately, the ideologically motivated to disbelieve science)  this is what "AGW - Ha! What a crock!" looks like:

And this is what it looks according to the Japanese (using a different baseline):

And let's not forget - what does Richard Muller's Berkley Earth temperature independently calculated record say:

(Actually, they say that 2014 was a record, but by such a tiny margin it's hard to be sure it really did beat 2010 or 2005.   Seems they are very clear 1998 is not the king, though.)

We all know what the climate change "do-nothings" will say - look at the satellite records - even though they attempt to measure, via the most indirect and complicated means available, the temperature of the atmosphere above the earth rather than surface temperatures.  The two major satellite records have been increasingly diverging, and were shown to be clearly wrong for a protracted period in the past, but deniers will cling to them anyway, rather than believe thermometers on the ground.

That all said, the temperature rise is still running on the low end of model projections (gee, who would have thought that modelling and measuring heat distribution across an entire planet would be complicated...), but stepping back and looking at the big picture (literally, in the case of graphs), people have to be very determined to convince themselves there is not a big problem....

*  This weekend's high humidity (and temperatures - 38 near my house again, today) - noted here.