We won’t know until the December data is in. Even then, given the level of noise in the base data and the wiggle room in the analysis, each of which is about the same magnitude as the Global Warming they are trying to quantify, we may not know for several years. If ever. GISS seems to analyze the data for decades, if necessary, to get the right answer.

A case in point is the still ongoing race between 1934 and 1998 to be the hottest for US annual mean temperature…”

Dr Glickstein then went through the adjustments to 1934/1998 and has a delightful graph showing 1998 on a ski lift and 1934 on a downhill run’

(and after all that exercise by 1934 and 1998 her conclusion)
OOPS, the hot race continued after the FOIA email! I checked the tabular data at GISS Contiguous 48 U.S. Surface Air Temperature Anomaly (C) today and, guess what? Since the Sato FOIA email discussed above, GISS has continued their taxpayer-funded work on both 1998 and 1934. The Annual Mean for 1998 has increased to 1.32ºC, a gain of a bit over an 11th of a degree (+0.094ºC), while poor old 1934 has been beaten down to 1.2ºC., a loss of about a 20th of a degree (-0.049ºC). So, sad to say, 1934 has lost the hot race by about an eighth of a degree (0.12ºC). Tough loss for the old-timer.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/25/do-we-care-if-2010-is-the-warmist-year-in-history/

The other interesting post I’ve read is
2010 – where does it fit in the warmest year list?
Posted on December 28, 2010 by Don J. Easterbrook
(selectively quoting)
Regardless of which year wins the temperature adjustment battle, how significant will that be? To answer that question, we need to look at a much longer time frame‒centuries and millennia….
So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010. Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list.

The climate has been warming slowly since the Little Ice Age (Fig. 5), but it has quite a ways to go yet before reaching the temperature levels that persisted for nearly all of the past 10,500 years.

It’s really much to do about nothing.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/28/2010%e2%80%94where-does-it-fit-in-the-warmest-year-list/#more-30425

CORRECTION

Jim Hansen is wrong stating that 2010 was the hottest, it’s actually 1934.

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058265/us-physics-professor-global-warming-is-the-greatest-and-most-successful-pseudoscientific-fraud-i-have-seen-in-my-long-life/

Ranks alongside

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

Well, in that case I would like to conduct a study into the effect of climate change on UK swan populations. Certainly, how much would you like?

Deserves to be highlighted.

I remember reading that first time around but lost the link. Good that JD could dredge it up.

Sad really ‘it distorts the research’; I suppose you could get a grant and then come out with a conclusion ‘no effect on UK swan populations because no warming at the moment’ or something similar but how many more grants would you then be likely to get with that conclusion if you were that scientist

Funny business, blogging. Sometimes, you put up a post you personally think is genius and no one gives a damn. Other times, you put up a post you imagine is fairly routine – and suddenly the internet goes mental.

US physics professor: “Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life” definitely belonged in the latter category.

I claim no credit for it. All I did was print, verbatim, a resignation letter written by a distinguished US physics professor Hal Lewis to the American Physical Society. Possibly I helped give it legs by singling out the juiciest quote in the letter and putting it in the headline. That’s all. The true hero of the hour is Professor Lewis for having the courage to stick out his neck and say what so many thousands of other scientists around the world would dearly love to say too: that the global warming industry is a scam and sham.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058598/global-warming-fraud-the-tide-begins-to-turn/

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/the-scientific-world-is-fracturing/

So what!

I placed a comment at JD’s Blog that addresses this;

Richard Cumming says:
October 13, 2010 at 9:17 pm

Yes Manuel, our common sense is being insulted.

You say:

“I find it interesting, this notion that those of us who aren’t scientists should trust those who are. Well, up to a point.”

And I say:

“It is not compulsory to be a climate scientist in order to check the weather or the climate.”

The AGW faction of climate science seems to think that their particular branch of science is completely unintelligible to any other field of science, engineering, medicine, law, architecture etc and the trades: electricians, builders, nurses, HVAC technicians and farmers out in the weather/climate all year round and mums taking their kids to school and that the very special nature of AGW climate science must be interpreted to us in Janet and John “trust us” fashion.

But the simple fact is: that climate science is not unintelligible to every-one but them; Stephen Wilde (a Solicitor) has figured it out, and anyone with a rudimentary education can do the same, and even that’s not strictly necessary when simple observation will suffice.

Also, since when does the IPCC have a monopoly on knowledge of the future?

I suggest that there are people who regularly work with heat or sea level or atmosphere such as boiler operators or port operators or airline pilots for example, that are in the same or even better position than “climate change communicators” and climate scientists to assess the merits or otherwise of the CAGW case.

And Climate Action splatter videos do not assist the process of understanding except to provide insight into the barrenness of argument.

http://jamesdelingpole.com/blog/1010-who-are-you-going-to-kill-to-help-save-the-planet-1143/comment-page-1/#comment-5742