I don't have time to read through this whole thread to see if this has been noted, but the temperature discrepancy issue is old news, and has since been addressed. Stratospheric cooling (a predicted consequence of the amplified greenhouse effect) was found to bias the satellite temperature record. With correction for it, the data shows a warming trend just as the other records, and other lines of observational evidence, do.
There's a link and some commentary on this and other common arguments at
GlobalWarmingTuth.org and
illconsidered.blogspot.com .
And dehammer: 1. I don't know where you get your interpretation of the IPCC's mission or aggregate findings, but where exactly does it state that "most of the increase in temperature was due to natural causes and natural cycles"? If anything, the 2001 assessment affirms a significant human influence. Where does the IPCC report highlight natural processes that account for "most" of the trend? Link please. And 2. The current interglacial period is apparently one of the longer ones, expected to last
thousands of years more .
Regardless of all this argument, or the ten+ year old articles used to support it, there's still no peer-reviewed study that successfully indicates there are natural forcings that can account for most of the current (and ongoing) warming trend. Period. Meanwhile, the science supporting the human-amplified greenhouse effect as the primary cause, and suggesting that we're just seeing the beginning of this process (subject to the delay of thermal inertia and the amplification of feedback effects) has only gained strength.
John: The Antarctic ice cores do go back further than 450,000 years. To date, they've been analyzed to 650,000, and may yield data back to 800,000.
