"RW" wrote in message
...

Dixon is talking nonsense.

Yes, of course. I was just curious to see whether he was capable of
marshalling a coherent argument in defence of his broad position. Instead,
perhaps inevitably, the answer is a retreat into confusion tactics.

But the simple question remains: If you wanted to look back at possible
warming/cooling over eg the past 20 years then what's the difference between
the local trend line of temperature in the mid 90's and now? It doesn't have
to be any more complicated than answering that question.

And to address the other point: In the context of AGW, no-one is primarily
concerned about what might be happening on a geological or even an
archaeological timescale. It's on the scale of a single human lifetime, say
50-100 years, that's the critical concern because that will potentially
impact anyone alive today under the age of eg 20-30. So it's not
unreasonable to look back over eg the past 20 years, 50 years etc and
similar timescales to get the best available answer to that question.