The "dangerous" climate change and "catastrophic" global warming crowd experienced brutal shell shock this past week...the "warmest-evah" and "hottest-ever" memes went down in hot flames, so to speak...UK's MetOffice published the bad news.....
So, in a nutshell, was 2014 the warmest (the hottest) year?
Very, very not likely, as it turns out.
As the adjacent chart shows, the reported 2014 HadCRUT4 (HC4) global temperature with its estimated error bars (±0.1°C) may have been the warmest, and then again.....there are 15 prior years that may have been warmer when considering all the error bar implications.
To add another consideration to the analysis, why should one blindly accept that the margin of error is only ±0.1°C?
Maybe it's time for both the policymakers and public to recognize that the margin of error should be at least ±0.2°C for global temperatures, as reported by the major climate agencies.
Why?
As a numerous experts are discovering, and clearly documenting, the major climate research agencies have been practicing a wholesale change (i.e. adjusting, manipulating, fabricating, etc.) of the reported empirical measurements. The result? The recent global surface temperature datasets are now much warmer than originally reported.
And it is not difficult for the non-government climate science experts to identify locations across the globe where temperatures have been "adjusted" up well past the supposed margin error upside of +0.1°C.
This means that the commonly used margin of error as currently applied does not take into consideration the plethora of recent questionable manipulations to make the world "warmer." Put another way: the margin of error does not account for the identified 'scientist-caused' global warming.
Case in point.
During early 2014, the MetOffice replaced the world's gold-standard HadCRUT3 (HC3) global temp dataset with their new HC4. When one applies the more probable ±0.2°C error range to the cooler HC3 dataset, the result is that there are actual years during the decade of the 1970's that would have matched the 2014 HC3 reported temp; and multiple years of the 80's that would have exceeded.
Conclusion: From a variety of measurement tools, it is known that the world has warmed overall since the 1970s. It is now indisputable that the MetOffice/NASA/NOAA surface temperature datasets have "mysteriously" and significantly diverged from the satellite temperature measurements that they so well matched in the past. It is also well established that the surface datasets are constantly being adjusted upward on a frequent basis. Because of these questionable adjustments, the commonly used margin of error is most likely too narrow. In order to compensate for these human endeavors to enhance the "global warming" storyline, the margin of error range applied by policymakers should at least be doubled, if not more.
Additional modern and fabricated-fake temperature charts.
Note: Source of HadCRUT4 annual dataset used to plot chart's temperatures and error bars using Excel; source for CO2.