Just FYI, I linked to your article from mine: The Mechanics Behind the Global Warming Hoax

“Ron and Guy, temperaturejump since 1988 in Holland cannot be explained by a population jump – the latter does not exist.”

I don’t see very much of a temperature jump since 1988 in the graph you advised : http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/15102009295052.png

Even if there is no “jump” in population since 1988 there is definitely an increase and it is not totally trivial; actually 15% (16,50 MI/14,35 MI).

What is absolutely not trivial is the increase of economic activity since 1988. The GDP has tripled (from 197 BI EUR to 596 BI EUR).

I can’t find any figures of number of vehicles 1988 but maybe enough is said by the increase from 2000 to 2008: + 33% !

I think it is to be on the very safe side to conclude that the general economic activity (which of course proportionally will involve larger use of energy) has more than doubled since 1988.

RR Kampen again:

“Many weather stations are in rural area’s and urbanisation has been a feature of Dutch demographics for many decades. Meanwhile the largest temperature increase is in the north and northeast of Holland – where population density is relatively low ànd hasn’t increased much.”

Well, are airports rural areas?
Of the 35 stations listed at the KNMI site (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) 13 (37%) are located at an airport. A special feature can be found here: http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/metadata/schiphol.html . Click the photo. Priceless!

14 of the stations (40%) seems – just from a hasty look – to be of good and even excellent quality.

8 (23%) of the stations need further investigation in order to determine the quality.

Furthermore: 8 (23%) of the stations are located in the North and Northeast. 4 of them seems to be good or excellent, 2 needs to be further examined and 2 are located at airports.
It is certainly not a majority of Dutch weather stations and the quality of these Northern and Northeastern as a whole is debatable.

I cannot find tables of temperature anomalies for different regions ( maybe because I am Swedish rather than Dutch; my knowledge in German helps but not entirely) but it would be nice if someone can advise me. In the meantime I cannot evaluate RR Kampens statement about largest temperature increase.

Taken into account all the above I can repeat what I previously wrote:
I would be extremely cautious in drawing any conclusions from the Netherlands temperature record until somebody had given a satisfactory explanation how the temperature recording authoriries has dealt with the UHI problem.

No need to panic certainly…

OT question – What happened to Erl Happ’s post ? I was hoping to try and digest it a little at a time , and was looking forward to comments .”

It’s still in the sidebar, as a one-liner named “The Climate Engine.” It’s hard to see, in part because the items above and below it are three-liners. In general, all the menu items in the sidebar blur into each other, mostly because there are no end-point markers (like periods) or start-point markers (like indentations). I’ve suggested both two or three times in recent months, but now I’ve given up.

Many weather stations are in rural area’s and urbanisation has been a feature of Dutch demographics for many decades. Meanwhile the largest temperature increase is in the north and northeast of Holland – where population density is relatively low ànd hasn’t increased much.

Really? I see down in 1912, up in 1930, down in 1965-1975, up in 1998. Then down again. If you plot a linear trend line, yes, it looks like it would be going up slightly. But that is not the signature of AGW.

Likewise, the choice of the ‘mean’ as the average (for ‘normal’) would have seemed a reasonable thing to do. However, the mean has the unfortunate tendency to be sensitive to outliers. Thus, if you have a cold spell the mean (average) gets pulled down and a following warming seems all the more so when compared by the numbers but not necessarily to people who are internally less arithmetic.

Now consider what will happen when a new 30-year normal is set in 2011, using the thirty years ending in 2010. The temperature either warmed some following the late-1970s or it didn’t, but some folks numbers say it did. Then we have the “string of warm years, 1998-2007” [Bob’s Figure 2] and the last couple of years “near-normal.” Because of the bias of a mean toward its most wayward data, the about to be “re-set” normal will have a greater average than the last one (the one ending in the year 2000 and including the 1980s). The new period should be 1981 through 2010 – dropping out what seems to be a cooler 10 years for a warmer 10 years. (Note the “should be” in the previous sentence.)

Unless there really is significant warming, it will be more unlikely that any experienced temperature will be much above average. There should be a lack of unprecedented warm temperatures compared to the calculated normal=average=mean. A ways off, but still …

Hurray for our side!

I’d take anything (going forward that is) at 55.25F or lower on the third “January-October” graph above as an example that the “old bottom” is still roughly in place. Sure there were lots of years colder than that, but lots of “cold years” pre-1998 look to my eye like roughly 54.75-55.25 from the late 30s to the late 90s.

I find interesting the argument for the Svensmark hypothesis, because I do note here in Wichita we’ve had a number of days in the last month or so where the clouds are more stubborn than predicted when they predict a bit of cloudiness for that day, but also predict the sunshine to peek through as well.

Heck it’s flat-out cloudy outside my window despite that same site’s hourly forecast saying we should be seeing some sunshine peeking through by now, though we do get sunny days on some days they predict will be sunny and when it’s obvious the cloud cover is moving out.

A neutral observer would surely readily conclude that the oceans, comprising 70% of the Earth’s surface, must have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and temperature.

In that regard an earlier poster said something to the effect that temperature over the last two years in the US is not representative of the whole Earth. As the US represents about 2% of the Earth’s area this is probably true. But it has always puzzled me how proxy temperatures derived from a few Bristlecone Cone Pines contained in a really, really, really small part of that 2% can have somehow been considered to teleconnect with the whole world and produce a hockey stick representation of temperatures over the last 1000 years!

Could you make this up? Well, yes, apparently.