With nothing of any great import on the newswires today, I'm going to return to the subject of the Met Office's 2010 briefing to central government. The next statement I want address is this one:
Over the last 100 years the Earth has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius and that warming is accelerating.
This is supported by a figure (click for full size):
;)
The original caption reads:
Past, current and future changes in northern hemisphere temperatures relative to 2000.
I think the first part of the statement is supportable (although perhaps with caveats), but is there any evidence to support the second part? Surely the words above grossly misrepresent the temperature history of the last half century? Surely the graph lends no support to the statement made at all? I don't think my saying so is even controversial - some readers may have seen James Annan's recent observation that 'there is little sign of the acceleration in warming that most models had predicted'.
We've all let off steam about the quality of this briefing on the earlier threads, so I'd be grateful if readers could refrain here, and stick to considering how recent temperature history should be described?