HotCopper Whopper - Meaningless, dumb ...

HotCopper science deniers are all over the place when it comes to climate discussions.  Honestly you have to wonder if they are as much in denial with their share trading.

Take HC44.  He responded to the UK Met office indicating 2013 is likely to be one of the warmest ten years on record with this comment:

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Meaningless, dumb - errr I guess so.

Yes, the 100th warmest would be one of the 100 warmest, but there's buckley's that 2013 will be the 100th warmest. Even so, if someone had said 'one of the warmest' most people wouldn't have expected them to mean the coldest in 100 years.

Let's look at a chart from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis showing the annual land-surface average temperature.  I've added a line that measures 100 years so you can compare recent temperatures at the right of the chart with those of 100 years or so ago.

The 100th warmest year on record was ... wait for it, about 100 years ago.  It's all because of global warming.  Barring a freak event like a super-volcano, it could well be several thousand years before earth experiences another year that cold. (Click to enlarge.)

Land surface temperature isn't global surface temperature, granted, because it doesn't count the oceans.  So let's look at global surface temperatures as reported by NASA.  The 100th warmest temperature on record was - you guessed it, almost 100 years ago. (Click to enlarge.)

One of the warmest ten years on record

Now let's go back to the UK Met Office.  Did it actually say that 2013 would be 'one of the warmest'?  In fact, the Met Office was much more precise.  Its long term global forecast is that 2013 will not just be 'one of the warmest' it will be one of the ten warmest years in the past 162 years and warmer than this year:

Taking into account the range of uncertainty in the forecast and observations, it is very likely that 2013 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1850, and it is likely to be warmer than 2012.

I suggest to HotCopper-ites if you are going to try to be 'clever', do it with a bit more finesse and try to give the impression you know something about the topic.  Otherwise your comment comes across as "meaningless, dumb..."!