The question is, what is the climate driver? After reviewing the data, there are only two things that can be, either solar variation or increasing CO2 or a combination of both. The swings in the ENSO and volcanic activity were clouding the answer to that question.

Because cooling and warming around the globe caused by El Ninos and La Ninas are a product of heat exchange in a small area of the Earth’s surface then the effects of solar, greenhouse gasses or a combination of both should be left over if the signal from the ENSO was eliminated.

If solar were the climate driver, then temperatures should have increased until about 1960 then begun to level out with a slight decrease in 1970, rise a little in 1980 through 1990, and again dip in 2000.

The solar overlay in the graph above is based on Foukal 2006 with the latest  climate sensitivity (.67) By J. Hansen, NASA GISS. Climate sensitivity is how you compare how many degrees of temperature change comes from change in energy, in this case Watts per meter squared. (Wm squared times Climate Sensativity = Temperature change)

If there was warming due to greenhouse gasses, then the temperature should have climbed at a slow constant rate with the rate increasing as time goes along.

The light blue line is an estimation of what temperature would look like after adjusting for ENSO and volcanoes if greenhouse gases  were the climate driver.

If the climate driver was a combination of solar and greenhouse gases, then temperatures should increase until 1960, then show a smaller but steady rate of increase after 1960 as is shown by the light blue line in the graph below.

Using the “ONI” values (the amount of temperature change created by ENSO) from the NOAA home  page, (Appendix B) I was able to “wash out the ENSO and volcanic noise” from the global temperatures. I examined the period of 1945 until present because; 

1)     that is about when the anomalous cooling began, 

2) temperature and ENSO measurments are not very accurate before that time.

The adjusted tempurature is drawn onto the graph below in purple.

For good measure, an estimate of the cooling effects of the nuclear testing (in brown) is also included. The climate effects of the nuclear weapons are very small and for a short amount of time

The results were quite surprising, and rather clear. There was no sign of greenhouse warming at all. Only the clear fingerprint of solar activity was left. For some reason, probably not known to greenhouse theorists and their scientists, greenhouse gases did not play a role in late 20^th century warming. It was simply a matter of solar variation being clouded by El Ninos and La Ninas.