Sigh......yes. I know. Just as developing lung cancer is completely aligned with broader data suggesting that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. It's also entirely possible that a lifetime smoker could develop lung cancer for reasons completely unrelated to smoking (genetic predisposition, environmental chemical exposures, etc.....) so you can never really be sure that the cancer has been caused by tobacco. But the bigger data nonetheless indicate a causal connection between tobacco use and cancer, so it shouldn't be surprising when you find a smoker who develops cancer. Does that analogy help you understand?

Look, in our discussion there have been two possible ways that one could come to a conclusion that global mean temperatures are rising and relate that conclusion to the weather they experience:

1) They notice that it is hotter in their area than before and assume that their local weather must indicate that the broader climate is warming. They move from the particular to the general.

2) They find from large-scale studies that the global climate is warming, and they also notice that their local weather is warming. It is possible that this local weather could be evidence of the broader climate changes we know are occurring, and it's also possible that it's not. It fits in with the bigger pattern, but we can't say for certain that it is directly caused by this broader pattern. They are moving from the general to the particular.

You are arguing against 1, and I agree that 1 is stupid. Jim Inhofe holding a snowball in the Senate or someone saying that global warming must be true because DC had a warm December last year are both examples of 1. But I am saying that 2 is the case, as are many others who relate local weather to climate. And 2 is not stupid.

Would you also say that an oncologist who tells a 50 year smoker that she probably developed lung cancer due to smoking cigarettes is wrong? Because the logic is very similar.