Strawman:

It’s not that to grasp, sunshine.

CO2 is expected to increase temps by about 0.02 degC/year, so over seven years, we should see a 0.14degC increase.

With me so far?

Now, just looking at the dip from Jan 2007 to Jan 2008, we see a global temp range of 0.5 deg C. (Note that if CO2 were TWICE as powerful as the IPCC says, this would have been a 0.48 deg C drop).

If we assume that 0.5 is the entire range of weather (internal) variability then we are looking a signal that is hidden in yearly variation that is about 4 times greater.

Or you could calculate a linear trend on data since 2001. IF you use GISS, you get a trend of 0.013(+/- 0.02) deg C/year. So the trend itself is actually positive. But as you can also see, the uncertainty is so wide that we can’t rule out a trend that is double the worst case predictions. That is the nature of short term trend analysis. That is why people who say things like “Warming has flat-lined since 2001″ don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

No need to thank me.