I’m happy to admit that I don’t fully understand climatic science or the technical arguments behind global warming. I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of science but I’m not qualified in such areas. I’m happy to admit that my scientific knowledge is open to scrutiny. I haven’t brainwashed myself, to the point of intellectual orgasm, that I’m some kind of home-baked expert on the topic. I freely admit that an education in the liberal arts is about as relevant to climatic science as, say, doing Year 12 in Werribee or a drama degree in Queensland.

An engineering degree might have more relevance – or at least it would if you’d actually done any engineering work since graduating in the early-80s, like our unrepresentative in the Senate, Steve Fielding. Lately Steve has risen from his near-sickbed after receiving Tamiflu for a case of almost-swine flu, to take up the cudgels of global warming scepticism. He’s probably just after a dinner date with Bolta, we’ll never know, but whatever the reason the Herald Sun is playing along. Today it bellows “This is why Al Gore’s wrong“ on Steve’s behalf and links to the pseudo-Senator’s own website. The reason? Steve has done found himself a graph – and it’s a purdy one – showing the correlation, or lack thereof, between rising CO2 levels and ’steadying’ global surface temperatures:

Ain’t that sweet? But is it true? According to the Herald Sun “the graph was used by the UN in its reports on the effects of climate change” but I had a quick search and couldn’t find it. OK, no sweat, it cites temperature data from two sources: the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia. Was Fielding’s graph – or at least the temperature component of it – on their websites? Nope. Hmm.

So what do these places have to say about global surface temperatures? Here is the Hadley Centre’s summation of global average, land surface and sea surface temperatures. And here is the University of East Anglia’s. Each spans a longer timeframe than Steve’s 15-year snapshot, but nevertheless looks different to his Al-you’re-wrong graph.

In any event, doesn’t “air temperature anomaly” describe variations from the norm? All of the anomalies on Fielding’s graph are in the positive range, so if we accept this data as valid then all Steve has ‘proven’ is that global temperatures have risen less in some of the last 15 years. In 2008 it almost dipped down to average, but otherwise there’s been a steady increase of +0.3 or higher since 2001. The increase in global temperatures may have flattened out but global temperatures themselves have not returned to normal, in fact they more than a half-degree higher than when Steve Fielding was going through puberty.

I’m hoping Steve can pop around for a cup of rooibos tea and a Marie biscuit to explain to me where in his God’s name he got this graph, whether he thinks its title is deceiptful and if he genuinely believes it disproves a link between CO2 emissions and global warming. Just don’t bother dressing up as an inanimate object, and leave your Bible at home.