The overall trend is up - but the upward trend has stalled - thus the need to use a “trick” to “hide the decline”.
30 years ago these same guys were predicting a coming Ice Age.
That was also supposedly all our fault.
Because they had the knowledge, and the working/slave class did not. And because they didn't have the internet.
The alarmist claims of the AGW crowd are based on the same concept. They know it all, and everyone else is just ignorant and needs to be saved. All they require is a sacrifice of....
About l987 there was a big article in National Geographic about the coming ice age. Don’t know why I kept it, but am glad I did. Then in l989 National Geographic came out with an article about global warming.