Hanson on Global Warming

Here is an excerpt from a talk given by the leading advocate of Global Warming:

Altogether the evidence that the earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a chance fluctuation and the similarity of the warming to that expected from the greenhouse effect represent a very strong case. In my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.

I believe that the change in frequency of hot summers is large enough to be noticeable to the average person. So we have already reached a point that the greenhouse effect is important.

Dr. James Hanson, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, June 23, 1988

I find the above odd, given the following recorded temperatures in Seattle this year:

The light shaded green represents the "normal" range of high and low temperatures. The pink represent the high up to the maximum ever recorded. The blue represents the low down to the minimum ever recorded. This graph is from this year, 2008, twenty years after James Hanson's statement. I peer at it and I find it hard to achieve the "I believe that the change in frequency of hot summers is large enough to be noticeable to the average person" that Hanson asserted was true twenty years ago. I guess I just don't have the perceptive capabilities of Hanson asserts and an "average" person has. But to me, living just north of Seattle, I can tell you this has been one of the coldest winter/spring/early summer that I've experienced living here for nearly 40 years. But then again, I guess I'm not "average".