Climate Change Does Not Ratify Obama Administration Energy Rationing Policies in State of the Union

In his State of the Union message, President Obama asserts

And no challenge – no challenge – poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.

2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does – 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.

Just a data quibble. The president is citing the temperature trend data from NOAA released last week, but other research groups find that while 2014 is warmer than the 20th century average, it is not the warmest year. For example, the Berkeley Earth group reported:

The global'surface temperature average (land andsea) for 2014 was nominally the warmest since the global instrumental record began in 1850; however, within the margin of error, it is tied with 2005 and 2010 and so we can’t be certain it set a new record.

It is also well that the president noted that a single year doesn't make trend. Tthe trend for global average temperatures for the past 18 years has been considerably slower than predicted by the vast majority of computer climate models .... http://reason.com