I realized something while I was contemplating actually responding to a blatant falsehood above.
Pseudo-scientists and cranks may actually be doing skeptics a favor by generating and repeating mantras, no matter what arguments are on the table. The discerning observer, especially the skeptical ones, don’t have to use belief to decide what is what, when the data is available. For example:
To cut to the chase, using 2002, 2003 or 2004 as a start year all shows the same thing. (woodfortrees.org)
For good measure here are the trends for 98,99 and 2000 as well. Nobody has to take somebodies opinion on this.
So when somebody says (or more likely just repeats what they read) that"Regarding the 2002 item, that trick also fails when the sources of that use 2003 as the starting point.", the ironic humor is thick and enjoyable.
Why would anyone say something so wrong when anyone can look at the data and see they are simply wrong? And even more mysterious, how can anyone be so blind as to not realize this is happening?
The strawman argument seems to be to try and talk about how “hot” the years were, rather than just admitting the trend is slightly down, which isn’t even important for the long term. It’s just a data point when discussing recent hurricane trends.
But even that small fact is so threatening to the “cause”, which is to generate fear and panic over the horrific future they “know” is coming.
Pathetic.
I brought up the trend because of the lack of increase in hurricane damage, strength, intensity or whatever else is being tossed about as “fact”.
If there is no increase in warming since 98, or 2002, (and there has not been), then it would make sense that there is no trend in hurricanes. In fact, if storms had been trending worse, it wouldn’t make sense, as the temps have not.
“But what about the SSTs? That’s more important that the air+sea data!”
OK so look at the data. 98,99,2000 trend lines
2001,2002,2003 trends
What I find so amusing about this special point in time, is that now the shrill voice of the alarmists wants to challenge the dataset, because it doesn’t show what they want it to.
When that fails, it’s back to how record warm the years have been. But nobody said they weren’t, and since they pretty much all were warm, with a very slight trend down, in regards to storm trends, well.
It’s amusing.