Is global warming over?

As the deniers are fond of saying, "the earth goes through natural cycles". Of course, they tend to forget this every time they want to pretend that a single year nullifies an obvious long term trend.

No, anthropogenic climate change continues as it has for decades, with most of the warmth going into the oceans.

Single year trends are almost worthless. Generally, trends are longer than ten years, and often best seen over twenty or thirty years. If you only look at very short trends, you never pass a 95% confidence level that noise isn't overwhelming signal.

Let me say, as I have consistently, that single year trends are meaningless, or at a minimum require deconvolution from things like ocean current fluctuations.

However, it will be interesting to see how many of the people who pointed to a few cold months this (N hemisphere) winter as evidence against warming, are now saying that this summer doesn't count because one season doesn't make a trend.

First allow me to relieve you of the notion that all 1+ yr temperature trends are positive. You can still cherry pick and get negative trends. http://climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT3%20GlobalMon...

It is more difficult to do that if you use satellite data. http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#...

So yes, such short term trends are statistically insignificant, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm

and no, they are not worthless. They have great political significance. http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blo...

As for longer term trends, there are plenty of ups and downs. http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553

We seem to have cooled since 1000 years ago.

Graph: http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N5/Loehle20...

Article: http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/dxk28g4...

Edit @BGS:

"best seen over twenty or thirty years"

I would say at least 2 or 3 thousand years. http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/545.html

Edit @MTR:

"1+ year trends to TODAY are now all positive (in HadCRUT3 ..." My first link was a graph that used cherry picking to come up with what you say does not exist for HadCRUT3. Nothing to read, just look at the graph, and you will see you were wrong.

"Your link explains that 20 year trends are statistically significant, not one year ones."

Significant only to the extent that one can say with some confidence whether or not Earth has warmed, not whether or not there is a valid trend rather than a random walk. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aiwig...

"Loehle's paper has since been corrected, and uses the common "trick" of terminating in 1935"

You are correct that the paper has been corrected. The link to his paper is the corrected version, and the graph is based on the corrected data. As for the regrettable trick, the graphs come from http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N5/C1.php

Much of the data Loehle used was Bore Hole data. That data has no relevance for determining recent temperatures. The "trick" of climategate lore was the use of modern instrument temperature data attached to tree ring data for the period when the tree ring data did not at all match the instrument data. The complaint was that it made it appear that the tree ring data was more reliable than it is. Going past 1935 for Loehle's data would be disingenuous without explanation. What Loehle said in his corrected abstract was:

"The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites."

That is not statistically significant for the kinds of measurements Loehle used, but it certainly does not support that the MWP was cooler than now. The warmup since 2008, when Loehle published his data, has been about the same as the 0.3 kelvins he estimated.

The significance of the Loehle study is that he used no tree ring series which tend to dominate other studies, and have inherent problems.

<<Let me say, as I have consistently, that single year trends are meaningless,>>

And you have been consistently mathematically wrong.