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Like the article says. Most of this data was already publicly available online:

• HadCRUT Data
• NASA Data
• UAH Data
• RSS Data
• NOAA Data

I took this data and plugged it into Cornell’s free data analysis software Eureka and it found a clear warming trend in the data. I'm not statistician, so I was just playing around, but I have yet to see anyone use this data to argue for anything but a warming trend (Note: I have seen skeptics use parts of this data to show short-term cooling trends). My favorite email attacking the results the software gave me was that I had "manipulated" the data by copying-and-pasting it into Excel.

I'm glad more data is being made publicly available, but, like someone else said, that just means it's time for the skeptics to move the goalposts again. Either put up a competing hypothesis that explains the data or shut up.

Which peer reviewed studies of ancient ship logs, naval photography during the 20th century and old newspaper magazines are you referring to? :) I'd be really interested to know how they disagree with me.

Sure -- here's one for starters, sort of a meta-analysis of other papers. That should be a good jumping-off point for you.

I agree with you that one location is not the arctic ice extent. On the other hand, we only have "one location" (in multiples, depending on the observer) before 1979.

False. Here's a nice starter for you.

I also seem to remember the wind patterns of 2007 as being heralded of proof of the arctic climate being in a death spiral - as opposed to being referred to as what it was

Actually, that's a very real thing. A never-before observed phenomenon occurred called the "Arctic Dipole", which encourages melt. We've now seen it repeat on and off for the past several years. It led to the major melt earlier this year. Several papers have since shown that under AGW scenarios, that pattern becomes increasingly likely.

(Nice diagram by Spencer btw, it completely supports my comment with regards to your original statement - but of course not the strawman _you_ constructed from it)

Huh? How does a temperature graph that starts at -0.4 and ends up at +0.4 versus a PDO graph that starts at +0.2 and ends up at about the same place support your argument? There has been dramatic warming over the PDO signal. The PDO signal matches the 1910-1945 warming, but has virtually no affect on the most recent warming.

A nice picture here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/iceland-volcano-plume.html Check also the official UK advisory with 'affected area' maps http://metoffice.com/aviation/vaac/vaacuk_vag.html

"I look in the raw data section and low and behold, there is no raw data linked to for the stratosphere. Damn. Guess I'll have to settle for processed data."

That data set? You think its raw? You think I havent been there?

...and I quote: "HadAT has used a neighbour-based approach to attempt to adjust for these effects and produce a homogeneous product suitable for climate applications."

Follow the link to their audit page where they are at least up-front about the fact that this data IS adjusted, MULTIPLE TIMES. This is a new definition of the word "raw" that I wasn't previously aware of.

"I look in the raw data section and low and behold, there is no raw data linked to for the stratosphere. Damn. Guess I'll have to settle for processed data."

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/hadat2.html - go crazy.

Etc.

Raw data is easily obtainable. But I'm not going to jump through hoops to find you every single dataset. There are so many datasets that it's impossible to put them on a single page.

Several major datasets are cataloged here:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/

Also, learn to read dataset names. 9641C_201003_RAW.MAX contains raw unadjusted monthly data. I.e. they are not adjusted for urbanization effects and broken sensors. Since it's a MONTHLY measurement made of multiple daily measurements, they must be averaged, thus the word 'mean'.

You can ask NOAA for daily datasets for all weather stations, but they are huge and are not necessary for climate projections.

You can grab them directly from here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/

It even has a nice README: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/readme.txt

So stop being an idiot and jumping at everything without even trying to assume that not every climate scientist is an idiot.

Uhh, please check your facts. There are several proxy records available, such as stalactites, bore holes, ice cores and lake sediments. Tree rings are just one part of paleoclimate observational data. Global temperature records are available from 1850 onwards (from 1880 if you only include NOAA and GISS).

Between 1850 and 1960, all proxy reconstructions fully agree with the direct temperature readings. The only problematic one is the tree rings after 1960. Before 1960, all proxy reconstructions agree with each other, within experimental uncertainty. All proxy reconstructions except for tree rings show a dramatic increase in global temperatures.

It's also well-known and well-documented, and well-published, that some tree rings show a fall in temperature after 1960. This is not a new problem, and you are not the first person to suggest there may be a problem. Mind you, even if we had to scrap all tree ring data, or even all proxy reconstructions, it's still only a drop in the ocean of evidence.

Where is the fraud?

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html

We have recently changed the way that the smoothed time series of data were calculated. Data for 2008 were being used in the smoothing process as if they represented an accurate esimate of the year as a whole. This is not the case and owing to the unusually cool global average temperature in January 2008, it looked as though smoothed global average temperatures had dropped markedly in recent years, which is misleading.

The equator is useful for launching. But what goes up must come down. You need to land as well as take off. There are rumors that NASA designated Machrihanish airport as an emergency landing site for the Shuttle. Though never used for that purpose to date. Machrihanish is over 3km long and remote from populations. Lossiemouth would have similar advantages with the addition of up to date modern facilities.

Contrary to popular conceptions, the North East of Scotland actually enjoys quite good weather most of the year round. It's only the west of Scotland that gets really heavy rain. Ref: Met Office map of UK average rainfall

Met Office do use NAO in predictions
http://www.metoffice.com/research/seasonal/regiona l/nao/

Met Office did give press releases based on NAO predictions that suggested approx 2/3 chance of it being a cold winter.
Some sections of the media rather over hyped it, and rather gave the impression it was * defdinitely* going to be a very cold winter, rather than just that a certain model gave a more than 50% cahnce of a cold winter.

Additionally, this was a very long term projection, well in advance of winter, more provided (IMHO) as a "there *might* be a cold winter problem" alert so that local authorities, householders etc could ensure they were prepared in advance for cold weather e.g. grit / salt supplies.

As it was, the UK winter has had a few cold spells and is not over yet, subjectively it seems to have been a bit colder than in recent years but that could well be skewed by my boiler acting up and not having the cash to get it repaired and so "in house" temperature strongly affected by outside temp and so I have been monitoring the temperature forecasts more avidly than usual.

I think this suggestion has been made before, and it may a good idea. However the initial response mentioned that the code wasn't owned by the project or the university, but is on-loan from the UK's Met Office. The CPDN-distributed models are even named "Hadley", the Met's climate research center that has developed these models over the course of decades.

You seem prepared to make a well-reasoned argument for open sourcing the models, so you may want to start at the discussion board. Perhaps project members can offer insight on dealing with the Met Office.

Who needs hurricanes ?

http://www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/stude nts/flood.html

In the south-west of the Netherlands on 18 November 1421, water from the North Sea swept through 72 villages and 10,000 people died. Again in 1570, 1825, 1894, 1916 and 1953, disastrous breaches of Dutch coastal defences occurred.

or from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Flood_of_19 53

In the southern provinces of Zeeland, Zuid-Holland, and Noord-Brabant, flooding of islands and polders killed 1,835 people and forced the evacuation of 70,000 more. Ten thousand animals drowned, and 4,500 buildings were destroyed. Floods covered 9% of Dutch agricultural land, and sea water inundated 2,000 km of polders. Damage was estimated at 895 million Dutch Guilders, an enormous amount of money at the time.
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CNN has an article which talks about the same phenomenon.

This link has not only a discussion of microclimates but pictures and graphs to to illustrate the effect.

If you really want to numb your mind you could read this research paper which goes into a whole bunch of details relating to microclimates.

The above should get you started. I didn't provide the proverbial link to a Wiki article since there are enough of other sources to provide the same information.

This is not some Paris Hilton story that you can blow off that easily. These are serious people who are worried about serious threats.

Listen to Peter Cox, a researcher at the UK's Hadley Center, who's suddenly facing a situation where his models may have to be recalibrated:

"We've got two competing effects really. ... If it turns out that the cooling is stronger than we thought then the warming also is a lot stronger than we thought, and that means the climate's more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we originally thought, and it means our models may be under sensitive to carbon dioxide."

What might this mean?

"If we don't do anything by about twenty thirty we could have a global warming of exceeding two degrees, and at that point it's believed the Greenland ice sheet would start to melt in a way that you wouldn't be able to stop it once it started it, it would melt. Take a long time to melt but ultimately it would lead to a sea level rise of seven or eight metres."

That's 25 years away. Maybe these people are a bunch of wackos who just happen to also be well-published climatologists, but are you willing to bet the next generation's well-being on that?

With the tsunami in the Indian Ocean we've gotten a little taste in what can happen when you don't keep up with what going on with the planet. This story sounds much much bigger than that - and unlike undersea earthquakes, humans are in the drivers seat on this one.

MSU - 1970s era air temperature

• http://ghrc.msfc.nasa.gov:5721/sensor_documents/ms u_instrument.html

• http://amsu.cira.colostate.edu/
• http://aqua.nasa.gov/AMSU3.html

• http://www.ipo.noaa.gov/Technology/atms_summary.ht ml

• http://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/uso/readme/ssmt1.html (about the only decent information that's left about it)

• http://xenon.aerojet.com/Weapon_Systems/Earth_Sens ing/SSMIS/
• http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/IMAGES/ssmisdoc.htm
• http://www.metoffice.com/research/interproj/nwpsaf /ssmi/ssmis_ug_moud001_v2.pdf (PDF gets pretty technical but lots of good info)

• http://www.ipo.noaa.gov/Technology/cmis_summary.ht ml

All of the above are what are known as microwave sounders or radiometers. They look at radiation in specific bands in the microwave region of the spectrum (based on oxygen absorption lines) to infer air temperatures.

It looks like the study in the article was using MODIS and TOVS data. TOVS consists of some of the above instruments - MSU and AMSU in particular for this application. MODIS is another sensor that doesn't look at the microwave region of the spectrum, so it's out of my area of expertise. Look at the website for more info on that if you're interested. :)

it's terrible about 911 but there have been worse death counts in history with no enemy to fight...the "Death Fog" in London (1952?) comes to mind.