Anthony Watts reports, “One graph proves that record high year of 2015 and record months of 2016 are not AGW driven.”

The graph? This one, by Ryan Maue of WeatherBell:

Then there’s another, from NOAA/NESDIS:

Watts writes: “For all those people that want to claim 2015/2016 “proves” that human caused global warming is at work (while at the same time ignoring a record El Niño event as seen above), this graph indisputably proves that the El Niño is the driver of record high temperatures, not carbon dioxide.”

There’s more. The gist: February’s record (back to 1979 in the satellite data) high global average temperature doesn’t spell the death of “the pause” in global warming”; indeed, a year or two won’t. There’s a difference between a relatively brief blip caused by one thing and a long-term trend caused by another.

 

 

Featured image: Ferns in the redwoods, photo by E. Calvin Beisner