My estimate is over that 80 year span YVR has seen around 0.4 degree warming. That means over the past 40 years (what we might feel the difference is from our childhood) it's a rise of 0.2 degrees. In the swings of temperature we have 0.2 degrees isn't something you will notice.
Thanks for the levelheaded discussion and for doing the legwork for me! I am going to play around with the data later myself. Curious where you got the data from? I was snooping around EnvCan website for a while last night but kept going in circles trying to find the monthly historical data which is allegedly there.
I think that's very interesting that you could measure the slope yourself. A lot of the data collection and analysis can be done by laypeople without PhDs. The hard part is getting the temperature data for a significantly large sample size distributed over the globe. My next investigation would be to look at the standard deviation of max/min temperatures to see if there are more extreme temperature events. A +0.4C change is important I think, due to various feedback systems that can result, ie, snowpack or glacier melting (reduced coverage of snow enhances melting--here that could affect our water resevoir, though by a different token we may get more precipitation over the year due to higher temperatures. A very complex problem). And like you mentioned, Vancouver is not going to be reflective of the global average, some places will be higher and some lower, so too much focus on a single location will soon lose its value in the global climate discussion.
Also embedded in climate projections is the greater disparity in temperatures, ie higher highs and lower lows. I 100% agree that we should be wary of linking individual weather events to climate change as the data really comes from averages over longer time scales and geographical areas. I used to be an alarmist myself (the world is going to end in the next 100 years). But I think we are going to adapt to a significant and while some particularly susceptible regions will be adversely affected (Bangladesh, India, Maldives off the top of my head) the average person in a developed nation might not notice the slow creep of change, both in climate and economically,in a highly complex and nuanced world.