"This temperature update presents the NASA satellite measurements of monthly temperature anomalies-—the difference between the observed values and the 1979–1998 mean values. Global satellite measurements are made from a series of orbiting platforms that sense the average temperature in various atmospheric layers. Here, we present the lowest level, which matches nearly perfectly with the mean temperatures measured by weather balloons in the layer between 5,000 and 28,000 feet. The satellite measurements are considered accurate to within 0.01 deg C and provide more uniform coverage of the entire globe than surface measurements, which tend to concentrate over land.
"February 2002: The average global temperature departure was 0.206 deg C, with a Northern Hemisphere departure of 0.307 deg C and a Southern Hemisphere departure of 0.106 deg C.
"Below: Monthly satellite temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere (top) and Southern Hemisphere (bottom). Trend lines indicate statistically significant changes only."
Not only is the "increase" in the northern hemisphere much less than the rate predicted by the global-warming doomsters, it is (partially) offset by a distinct cooling of the southern hemisphere. In any event, nothing in this report or anywhere else can demonstrate that any warming trend--or cooling trend--is of human origin.
Much more likely to be of natural origin; e.g., changes in the solar "constant."
But these people are pursuing a hidden agenda, which is socialist and Luddite. They want to cause a precipitous rash of bad decisions based on panic--decisions which would never be adopted if cool reason held sway.
In sum, my response: Get back to us when you have a few millennia of solid, corroborrated data...then we might begin to decide if there's a problem.
--Boris