Either the data is statistically significant or it isn’t. Making claims based on non-significant “trends” in your data is dangerous - especially in media interviews.

Jones states that the current trend is +0.12 C per decade. You can see in the BBC article that the statistically significant historical warming periods had trends of +0.15 to +0.17 C per decade. How is that the data from the 1800’s is good enough to reveal a +0.16 C per decade change, but that with our infinitely superior modern instruments and much stronger data sets, the current +0.12 C per decade trend is not significant? In my opinion, this makes it likely that the current trend is just random temperature variation.

At first I was flabbergasted that Jones could concede that the data is non-significant and yet claim that global warming is unequivocally occurring. But you’ll notice he actually says that the he is confident the climate “has warmed” not that it *is* warming. Jones is threading some rhetorical needles, but in a way that leaves the public with the impression that there is no doubt the world is warming. Even if his research is good, I don’t like his methods.