Peter Gleick Fools Himself

Peter Gleick, currently posited to be the author of the "fake" Heartland Institute briefing document, has an article on Forbes -"Global Warming Has Stopped"? How to Fool People Using "Cherry-Picked" Climate Data. He attacks one claim in particular, that “The last decade's 'rate of warming' is flat.” by showing this chart

Source: Forbes

He says

What about the last decade, as claimed above? The linear trend (the blue line) over the past decade is relatively flat, but in fact it still exhibited a warming trend, despite the temporary cooling forces that are masking the overall warming. As the British Met Office noted this week, in a reply to a misleading claim that the warming had stopped: “what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850.”

The blue line is "relatively flat", but "still exhibited a warming trend" he insists. That line looks pretty flat to me, but then I'm an evil denier with a Mark One eyeball and an aversion to incontrovertible facts, though with a picture editor in my arsenal of analytical tools. The interval (0.05°C) represented by the vertical ticks on the temperature axis is 18 pixels; the increase in height of the blue trend line is 1 pixel, therefore that line represents an increase of 1/18 * 0.05°C over 10 years, or a staggering 0.27°C in - wait for it - I love this - 1,000 years. Is this statistically significant? I hear you ask. It's a "warming trend" allright, just don't rush out and buy an air conditioner or move poleward just yet.