Here is a good example of how to 'interpret' scientific data. I can't
 help thinking that the public has been fed the most outrageous spin -
 not by politicians but by scientists who should know better, but hey,
 this is global warming and the UK's Met Office is seeing what it wants
 to see.

It's just released the 2007 global temperature figures and its forecast
 for 2008. 2007 it says was a top ten year but it's what it doesn't say
 in the main part of the press release (usually the only part that is
 read by journalists) that is misleading. Look further down the press
 release and you will see, tucked away in a list of notes to editors
 the admission that 2007 was, temperature wise, the same as 2006 and every
 year since 2001 - it admits there has been no global warming for 7 years!

But how does that square with the comment by Prof Phil Jones, Director
 of the Climatic Research Institute of the University of East Anglia,
 who produced the figures, "The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler
 than any of the last 7 years (and that 2007 did not break the record
 that
 was set in 1998) doesn't mean that global warming has gone away. What
 matters is the underlying rate of warming."

That is misleading. The data obviously suggests that for the past 7
 years at least global warming has gone away. Of course the past decade
 has
 been warmer than previous decades but the recent decade's underlying
 rate of warming, the parameter by which Prof Jones sets so much store,
 is ZERO. No global warming. Anyone can see that if they look at the
 figures.
 
The press release put out by the Met Office, and swallowed by many
 media outlets, including the BBC, misrepresents the data of global
 warming.
 The public are not being given the whole truth.

--------

Met Office, 3 January 2008
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html