The rate of human-driven warming in the last century has exceeded the rate of the underlying natural trend by more than a factor of 10, possibly much more. And warming this century on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions is projected to cause a rate of warming that is another factor of 5 or more greater than that of the last century. We are punching the climate beast — and she ain’t happy about it!
That works out to 0.5ºC warming per decade, starting in the year 2000. So how is he doing so far? I overlaid HadCrut (pink) on his graph at the same scale. The thin red line shows where we are “supposed to be” in 2010. Way off the mark.
Instead of warming 0.5ºC this past decade, temperatures barely warmed at all. Even more damning, half of the 20th century warming occurred with CO2 levels less than 320 ppm – barely above pre-industrial values.
The warming from 1910 to 1940 was just as great as the warming from 1970 to 2000, yet it can hardly be blamed on CO2. And the graph since 2000 is not even remotely following his forecast. Below is a more realistic extrapolation (short blue line.)
A true believer in possession of a pencil and ruler can be a dangerous thing.
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