At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/14/pielk-sr-on-the-30-year-random-walk-in-surface-temperature-record/ … this is a guest post by lukewarmer Roger Pielke Senior with an amusing title on a paper by Fraudrich, Kirk, Schubert and Zhu (2011), 'Random Walk lengths of about 30 years in global climate'. They examine the choice of 30 year data sets which goes back to the early 20th century. Of course, now we are in the 2000s and the last 30 years belong to a warming phase in a 60 year cycle. We have now entered the cooling phase of the 60 year cycle and in future 30 year data sets there will an increasing number of cool years – and by 2030 we shall have a 30 year data set which is entirely devoid of a warming trend – a natural one, that is. The new paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, comes to the conclusion that the observed standard deviation in temperature as located over land and ocean, is a substantial fraction of the global warming signature. In other words, global temperatures have increased by less than one degree and even this is an over estimation – AGW is negligible.
Meanwhile, the blosgosphere (see www.bishop-hill.net and http://wattsupwiththat.com February 14th are reporting the Met Office has mysteriously spirited away the Central England Temperature Record – and all kinds of conspiracy theories can be read in the comments. It seems it might all be quite innocent – a revamp of the web site.