MacCracken: "I have for quite a number of years asked people to put their finger over the WWII period and then look at the global record...Basically, now, it will seem much more evident that human activities started earlier"

Email 322

What has struck me is how different an impression one gets of the 20th century change if one puts one's finger over the war year results--just seems very suspicious, and my recollection is that you are already making some pretty large adjustments over that period to things like nighttime marine air temperature (due to more measurements being near the wheelhouse instead of at the bow of the ship, etc.). [Mike MacCracken]

Email 34

I think there was also an important and unfortunate psychological result of the 1940s high pointnamely it hid the early human influences and so let the argument be made that natural variability (internal and external) was larger than it has been, so the problem was not as bad as it really is. I have for quite a number of years asked people to put their finger over the WWII period and then look at the global record, and one gets a quite different impression of hat has been happening and its relation to human activities, etc. Basically, now, it will seem much more evident that human activities started earlier. [Mike MacCracken]