NASA notes sea level is falling in press release – but calls it a “Pothole on Road to Higher Seas” (2011-08-24). Anthony Watts reminds his readers that if an increase doesn’t happen every single year then it’s not happening. And a NASA press release admits that sea-level didn’t rise in 2010! You’d think after all the denialist accusations them gubmint scientists would be better at falsifying observations to prove whatever they wanted.
So the slight reversal of sea-level increase (which was not happening anyway) means that sea-level rise has stopped (even though it wasn’t happening anyway). Therefore humanity’s CO2 emissions, which don’t cause warming, are not causing climate change (which isn’t happening anyway). Got it?
So we have years of Anthony and his pals claiming that rising temperatures and sea-level are all down to various vague and supposedly cyclic natural causes and definitely not man-made causes. Of course actual scientists have always factored in natural influences and have studied them in great depth to determine their contributions. But here the natural causes are suddenly discounted by the denialist arm-chair critics.
Willis Eschenbach adds a deep scientific insight by noting that Greenland received more precipitation than usual in 2010, so it’s glaciers are apparently not in danger after-all, thus disproving global warming once and for all. Willis somehow didn’t notice that the satellite precipitation data is considered incorrect for that region… And his analysis of NASA’s discussion of the causes of the dip in sea-level dispenses with even a cocktail napkin this time around. Sounds like he’s talking about himself when he pontificates:
When people make claims like that, with no numbers attached, my Urban Legend Detector™ goes off like crazy … and in this case, it was right.
Wott's Up With That? 
You are bang on with this one. Nobody can expect a trend with noise to move in the direction of the trend during every time period.
It would be helpful to show the probability of observing a year of “no trend” using the estimates of the signal/noise ratio from AWG theory. I’m pretty sure that one year is not a useful time period.
EXACTLY! It is annoying not knowing where they stand from day to day.
Here is a change of heart, though. It seems Anthony thinks that man-made soot reductions will help the Arctic ice. “Soot easier to control than CO2 – may help Arctic ice” was posted on 8/31/11. The article he posts from the American Chemical Society states that soot is second only to CO2 in causing global warming.
So, he takes the article’s word that controlling soot would be helpful, but I wonder what he thinks about the CO2 remark? There are a few comments that mention they stopped reading the article after reading the CO2 remark.
[Maybe it’s the start of “we can geo-engineer our way out of this mess”? – Ben]
They go on to explain that it’s because of the powerful El Niño and El Niña that water has been moved up to the continents.