[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I saw that post and I am bothered by it. What are all his data points?

Here's the source.

So... why did he start his graph in 1973? When you look at the annual mean on Wikipedia's graph, 1973 is the end of a three-decade period of no warming, and the beginning of three decades of great warming.

He has cropped the data to fit his narrative, doing exactly what he's accusing the skeptics of doing but on like a century scale rather than a decade scale.

Am I wrong? Tell me where.

I don't see any starting point on Wikipedia's graph that whould have changed the narrative much, should they have cropped it differently. A line would still go up. Maybe a curve would fit better if they'd started it in 1940, but the curve would still go up.

I searched for "global warming 1973" on Google, and one skeptic also picked 1973 to do his analysis. His reasoning was:

Originally Posted by Roy Spencer

I will restrict the analysis to 1973 and later since (1) this is the primary period of warming allegedly due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; (2) the period having the largest number of monitoring sites has been since 1973; and (3) a relatively short 37-year record maximizes the number of continuously operating stations, avoiding the need to handle transitions as older stations stop operating and newer ones are added.

Perhaps similar reasons were chosen for the 1973 cutoff on the original graph as well.

And how far out should the graph go before we understand what's happening?

As far as possible, I suppose, depending on the type of data being included.