Global Warming: The Last Decade

A report from BBC News quotes scientists as saying, "The global temperature has not increased since 1998." Then follows the usual harumph, harumph as they explain that the temperature over the last ten years is not as important as the "long-term warming trend." The World Meteorological Organization says that the Earth's temperature has risen 0.74 degrees Celsius since the beginnng of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, there is a disagreement as to which year was the warmest. NASA says it was 2005, while the UK's Hadley Centre says it was 1998.

A question comes to mind. If these two scientific agencies can't even agree on what the temperature was in a particular year within the last decade, how can they measure with any confidence the precise temperature of a year more than a century ago, when measuring instruments were crude and inaccurate? Especially when the declared increase is less than one degree?

Doubts, doubts. It's not unreasonable to have doubts about the claims.