[Vision2020] NOAA:Temperature Anomalies Jan. 2007

[Don Coombs]

Hi Ted--

Thanks for posting the NOAA graphic. It's pretty 
straightforward, and I understand that the biggest 
circles represent places where the average temp this 
past January was 5 or more degrees C (or 9 or more 
degrees F) different from the average of the previous 
30 Januaries.

Before I say anything critical, you should know that I 
don't see how there can be much doubt that global 
warming exists and that we should try to deal with it.

If you are going to say that temperatures were more 
varied than usual last January, though, it would help 
us to know how much they usually varied. Maybe, for 
example, there was a January in 1980 which would also 
have yielded a graphic with lots of big circles.

It's not your responsibility to offer up a measure of 
variability; I'm just saying that such a measure would 
be useful.

Another thought: There were lots of those big circles 
on the graph, which suggests that there must have been 
some sites which could have been marked (with even 
bigger circles?) as 6 or 7 degees C different, rather 
than just "5 degrees or more." That would have been 
even more impressive and, I guess, even more of "an 
inconvient truth."

Don Coombs

  The graph came from:

> http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/images/jan2007-global-temp-anomalies.jpg