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It has been suggested at this blog that it is too risky for mainstream politicians, for example the leader of the Coalition, Tony Abbott, to admit to being sceptical of anthropogenic global warming. It has been suggested journalists at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) would simply poke fun at him.

I disagree.

Indeed using Bob Carter’s new book Taxing Air as a reference, he could start educating ABC journalists on some of the basics. A good starting point is the longest established ground temperature record, termed the Central England Temperature Index (CETI).

This record starts in 1659, which was soon after the invention of the thermoscope but before the Fahrenheit scale came into use.

It is a 353 year-long data set, archived by the British Meteorological Office, and it shows that the average summer temperature in Central England in the eighteenth century was 15.46ºC while that for the twentieth century was 15.35ºC.

Yes.

Far from being warmer due to assumed global warming, comparison of actual temperature data shows that UK summers in the twentieth century were cooler than those of two centuries previously.

This is the sort of very useful information that Mr Abbott could share with ABC journalists.

He could then conclude, as Professor Carter does, that our longest available thermometer records, like our shorter and more accurate modern measures of temperature, offer little by way of evidence for the occurrence of dangerous human-caused global warming.

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To order your copy of Taxing Air and an extra copy to send to Mr Abbott, visit http://www.taxingair.com. The book has great charts like the one embedded into this post of the CETI.

Bob Carter is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers in professional scientific journals. The great majority of these concern interpretations of ancient environments, including paleo-climatic studies. Link to full of list of publications here http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_4.htm