What a coincidence, your baseline coincides with the advent of weather satellites.
As for atmospheric observations, presumably you mean satellite measurements since 1979? I suggest getting updated on the subject: several reanalyses of this data are showing increasingly large warming trends.
Again, within a monumentally small data set.
You should peruse this Web page:
The role of the Sun in 20th century climate change
From your "Global Warming" page:
"Before 1979, there are no direct measures of solar irradiance."
"The figure shows that sunspot numbers rose in the first half of the 20th century, along with temperatures. The rise in solar activity in the early part of the century is though to be connected with an 80 year cycle of solar activity known as the Gleissman cycle. The temperature increase in the second half of the twentieth century does not seem to linked with sunspot numbers." Etc.
Hardly compelling.
Let's also note that all of the baselines on that page start at 1860. It's remarkable how the baselines you cite coincide with technological and methodological developments, yet only offer a small fraction of the Earth's climatological history.
That's correct, but water vapor fluxes are dependent on climate. The most significant variable that affects Earth's radiative balance is atmospheric CO2 concentrations, followed by the lesser greenhouse gases.
Interdependent, not dependent. Funny how the inadvertent dropping of a prefix can get a major variable tossed out.
Because I have a scientific background, it's hard for me to challenge a viewpoint that has little regard for the value of scientific knowledge. Scientists know a lot about this subject, but they'd always like to know more and be more certain. Even so, they know enough to be reasonably certain about most of the major aspects of current climate change.
I see your appeal to authority, and raise you an appeal to healthy skepticism:
Ambitious politicians have an affinity for crises, real or imagined, because getting on the advantageous side of a real or imagined crisis confers great leverage to a a crafty politician. Politicians who control pursestrings, therefore, are not necessarily disinclined to fund scientists who can deliver ready made crises to them.
It's not my baseline, and I have no idea what weather satellites would have to do with the choice of it.
Again, within a monumentally small data set.
So what's the problem with that?
Hardly compelling.
The best analyses of the Sun-climate connection cannot discern an appreciable solar influence on the warming occurring in and since the 1980s. I can't really worry about whether you assess that as compelling or not -- that's just the way it is.
Let's also note that all of the baselines on that page start at 1860. It's remarkable how the baselines you cite coincide with technological and methodological developments, yet only offer a small fraction of the Earth's climatological history.
And you probably realize that the Earth has been CHANGING over its climatological history? Which is why it's specious to compare, for example, Oligocene climate to Holocene climate because the Earth wasn't the same back then?
I said this recently to somebody else but it bears repeating: the factors which affect Earth's climate on timescales of millions and 100s of thousands of years are different from the factors which affect the climate on timescales of 10,000 and 1,000 years, and other factors significantly affect Earth's climate on timescales of centuries and decades. (For more on this you might look at the links I provided to "Always Right" in a post above this.)
I see your appeal to healthy skepticism. Healthy skepticism should be distinguishable from obstinate adherence to invalid arguments.