The current, and very disturbing long term trend is clear. As noted above by Composer, since 2004 the 1998 (& 2002)record has fallen. It should be noted that that record was also exceeded in 2007 and 2009, although those were not record years because lower than the 2005 (and 2010) record. (Data) None of those records are certain because they all lie within error of each other, but all clearly exceed any record prior to 1998.
Note: the admitted uncertainty of historical data, if "they lie within error of each other" means that the Medieval Warm Period could be around current temperatures. More accurate readings are needed.
A graph of modern temperatures from 1880 -- 2012 is shown below. (The black lines are mine.)
Besides the obvious warming trend, other interesting features stand here, which my lines attempt to demonstrate more clearly. Notice the warming follows a step pattern, and a highly repetitive one, with periods of longer warming back to back with shorter cooling. The line is of course rough, but I think the pattern comes out pretty clear.
Perhaps better than straight lines is a sine wave fit (sorry for the difficulty reading this). I prefer this because it is a more natural model of temperature change, the fit is still good, and the last ~decade of temperature stabilizing (or even decreasing) is explained in a straightforward way.
For reasons that aren't reasonably clear to me, the warming-catastrophe clique objects to these lines and curves, regarding them as statistical chicanery. For example, I happened on the chart below:
This, it claims, is how believers think skeptics view the data. In this case, I agree; it's too short a time period with too much random noise. You can also fit noise to some pattern, if you're determined to.
Having said this, however, believers then produce this graph:
The lower chart, which has been adopted by the catastrophist community without a quibble, uses decades (of course we all know that nature follows human conventions) to create decade by decade average bars. Why? Because, quite suddenly the stabilization or even slight cooling 2005 - 2013 instantly disappears. No other logic than to blind us to what any open-eyed/mind can see is plainly obvious. Hypocrisy knows no shame.
Well, enough for a while. What have we found? Some time back I reposted an article showing that much of published, even peer-reviewed, science is simply wrong. I recently found a similar post showing the same is true of medical science. Combine that with our ideological, political, cultural, religious, and other biases, not to mention group-think, it is no wonder there is so much confusion and contradiction on this subject.
