Sage, the one true statement about climate was found within the body of the text.
"It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years."
You can certainly find reports in the popular media, people on SI, etc. that go something like this "We set a record low temperature here in podunk, north dakota yesterday, therefore refuting global warming." This is an illustration of several things; a material fallacy for one, but two a failure to understand basic math.
Just as one or two years of record setting high temperatures doesn't imply climate change, neither does a few years of avg or cooler temperatures refute it. Why? Because variation in temperature is expected. The amount of variation can be calculated using various methods, and trends can be established by data that consistently falls outside of expected variation.
Only by consistently measuring temperatures below the expected range of variability can one conclude that a new cooling trend is in place.
Also, the author goes into the whole sunspot theory, which has been debunked fairly rigorously as a major cause of global warming.
solar-center.stanford.edu
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