“UAH Global Temperature – still in a holding pattern“. Thanks for the weather observation from Roy Spencer, Anthony. I wonder if Anthony will ever stop pretending not to understand that good old natural climate variation, such as the eastern Pacific Ocean El Niño circulation pattern, will continue while the progressive human impacts express themselves. It’s not either/or.
It’s well understood that natural “cooling” climate variations can suppress the man-made rise, but when they swing back to “warming” they will magnify it. All Anthony is doing is pretending that these pauses are significant. “Expect drops in the months ahead” says Anthony. So what? But it will be interesting to watch him squirm out of his meaningless prediction if it fails to come to pass.
UAH Global Temperature, 1979 - present
Interesting admission from Dr. Spencer:
As of Julian Day 212 (end of July), the race for warmest year in the 32-year satellite period of record is still too close to call with 1998 continuing its lead by only 0.07 C.
Doesn’t sound like cooling to me. Spencer and sundry denialists are still clinging to that crazy 1998 El Niño as the answer to the painfully obvious warming trends.
Wott's Up With That? 
I could be wrong, but it looks to me like this past July was the single warmest month ever on the planet in many thousands of years.
Dr. Spencer’s graph only shows the anomaly for the month, and since July is always the warmest month of the year (globally), the anomaly can and would certainly drop as compared to other months, even as the temperature rises.
But looking at the UAH Java applet graphs shows that July is always the warmest month of the year, and this July beat all others. While the satellite record only goes back to 1979, surface observations and proxy measures make it pretty clear that this hasn’t happened for many, many thousands of years.
And this is what Honest Anthony chooses to label as “still in a holding pattern.”
How about updating the HADCRUT3 graph to the February 2012 data.
Your arguments become pathetic when current observed data is used.
[Hoping to slip a bold-faced lie through, eh? I’ve added the HADCRUT3 chart to illustrate your assertion. – Ben]