I saw that press release and was not surprised. It did trouble me that the report was not sourced, in other words where did this report orignate? Who compiled the data?

From the Daily Mail article:

The regular data collected on global temperature is called Hadcrut 4, as it is jointly issued by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and Prof Jones’s Climatic Research Unit.

Warrington, the source is "The Met Office", Great Britain's national weather and climatology service.

As I understand, their temperature records are (is?) one of the official go-to databases for tracking global temperatures.

Waiting for Russ to challenge Monique on her global warming qualifications again.

I think that you can relate this to the end of the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Since then the greenhouose gases emitted in the nations capital have been significantly reduced and gridlock has set in. Nobody talking, nobody doing anything, the world is saved!

Oh, and that slight warming trend? That was the hot air mass finally reaching the upper atmosphere after the Obamacare debate ended.

This also in. This week was warmer than last week. Ergo, no winter. "Science" is fun!

The British Met Office had this to say about this kind of "misleading" coverage...
mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/15/fox-falls-for-tabloid-science/190630

As we've stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous - so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

I think I picked up this news tidbit on Drudge. What causes me to wonder is why this is not front page news.

Q: What causes me to wonder is why this is not front page news.

A: Journalistic integrity

It's also a ruse that is not new. Here's the AP in 2009...
www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-5423035.html

Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

But I suppose those statisticians were worried about their research grants. But I'm sure we'll see it again next year and the year after that (wonder why that is?).

Refuted:

www.livescience.com/24006-did-global-warming-stop-1997.html

"Refuted:

www.livescience.com/24006-did-global-warming-stop-1997.html"

Hardly. It's just claiming cherry picking of data. Kind of like the warming alarmists have done.

"Hardly. It's just claiming cherry picking of data. Kind of like the warming alarmists have done."

That's not true of the scientific research, but I know there's no convincing some who've already decided there's nothing to learn from the scientific community.

The Met Office included the following graph illustrating their point by "cherry-picking" temperature data back to the 1850s...
mediamatters.org/static/images/countyfair/metoffice-hottestyrs1.jpg

As long as we are in the subject of "studies", from today's news:

"The National Science Foundation spent $30,000 to fund a study done by the University of Washington and Cornell University's to measure "gaydar" - the ability of people to identify sexual orientation merely by appearance. The researchers confirmed that "gaydar" exists, writing that participants were about 60% accurate when attempting to identify sexual orientation by appearance."

If asked, I would have thought slightly higher, perhaps 70%.