Seeing the environmental forest

A reader raised a good question about my last post .  One of the confirmed predictions of climate change is that winters will warm faster than summers, yet my analysis showed that December-February warmed the least.  The question was why that would be.  The answer is simple: I used global temperature data.  December-February may be winter in the Northern Hemisphere but it is summer in the Southern.  The seasons largely cancel out.  The reason we see faster warming in the June-August  (Northern Hemisphere summer) versus December-February (Southern Hemisphere summer) is due to the position of land masses.  There's a greater proportion of ocean in the Southern Hemisphere and the ocean doesn't change temperature very readily compared to landmasses whereas the Northern Hemisphere has more landmass and consequently a larger response to seasonal changes in insolation.

It is almost comical how people will grasp at any straw they can come up with to claim that global warming isn't happening.  The most recent bit of hilarity?  A claim that the winter trend since 2002 is cooling, therefore we're in global cooling, not global warming.  Let's check that one out to see just how ridiculous it is.