The problem with your graph (http://bit.ly/zQMoq7) is that your smoothed curve is off from the 1940s peak by more than half of the 1970-2000 warming,
You raise an excellent point there, Girma. The discrepancy you refer to is a result of my graph filtering out the solar and ENSO cycles and all other phenomena cycling faster than that, namely all periodicities from 21 years on down. My apologies for not including what was removed in my analysis.
Let’s take a look at the most relevant omitted phenomena now.
The solar cycle has two components, the Hale or magnetic component, with a periodicity of 21 years, and the Total Solar Insolation component, whose periodicity is 11 years. You can see these two components here. They match up remarkably accurately with the “butterfly diagram” a few paragraphs down in this article.
Using the standard numbering system for solar cycles, cycle 17 peaked in 1940, and is moreover the strongest TSI peak in the last century and a half, just barely beating out peak 13 in 1900. Notice that the odd TSI peaks coincide more or less with the Hale peaks, most accurately for strong TSI peaks.
If you add the Hale and TSI peaks for solar cycle 17 you get an additional 0.12 C. This completely accounts for the discrepancy that’s bothering you.
and it does not show the recent plateau
Girma, please refer to the above graph again. Notice that cycle 23, another odd cycle like 17, is perfectly synchronized with its corresponding Hale peak in 2000. The Hale and TSI cycles in combination plummeted as strongly as they did between 1940 and 1950, another strong downturn that was not merely flat in HADCRUT3VGL but decreased substantially!
Had CO2 not entered the picture between 1940 and 2000 to offset the solar cycles, what you’re calling a “recent plateau” would have been a dramatic decline as strong as that from 1940 to 1950!
It contradicts with the observed data so it does not have any predictive capability.
Again my apologies for omitting the Hale and TSI cycles, without which your objection is very insightful.
Regarding your two concluding paragraphs, I’m having great difficulty following their logic. If you could express them simply as a sum of the relevant phenomena I’m sure I’d find them easier to understand.