If you follow that site, then you must know that the data is all publically available and has been for a long time. Here's the link where they summarize data sources.

Here are the links to the various exonerations of Mann (including the editorial in Nature).

• Penn State
• the British Parliamentary inquiry
• the Oxford panel
• Nature.com

It is everybody's job to get involved in politics in a democracy, whether they be scientists or no. And whereas we are all qualified to evaluate the merits of our politicians, there are very few of us who can evaluate the merits of science. In fact, it is often quite difficult to evaluate the merits of science outside of one's discipline.

Patient: Help me! I've overdosed.
Homeopathist: What did you take?
Patient: Nothing.

badum bum...
(Well somebody had to say it.)

Interestingly, the latest research shows that people who use cell phones more are less likely to suffer from Altzheimer's disease. It sounds like this is a non-issue.

So I was flying to Turkey last year for a conference. To do so, I had to fly a 737 Delta from Philly to NYC (about an hour), then catch a 767 to Istanbul, and finally catch a 737 to Antalya (also about an hour). On the Delta flight, we were told that due to the short duration of the flight, no refreshments would be served. On the flight from Istanbul to Antalya on Turkish Air, we were served a jumbo breakfast. The Turkish Air planes (both the 767 and the 737) were in much better condition than any American airplane I've been on in the last decade, regardless of carrier. The staff was more friendly, and the food was better. There was an unlimited selection of movies and the like for no extra charge on the overseas flight. Most American carriers that I have flown overseas were much more limited in the multimedia area either in selection (not so much) or cost (not free). I was shocked to find that Istanbul's airport was in much better condition than JFK's international terminal. My great experience with Turkish Air and poor experience with Delta was repeated on the far side of the trip.

The bottom line is two fold: 1) American carriers are terrible (at least compared to Turkish Air) and 2) All evidence I've seen lately points to the fact that America is falling out of the first world fast and has no idea.

Let me further state that I'm not happy about this at all - I'm just stating one of several examples I can come up with from personal experience. I fly overseas at least once a year, and domestically 3-4 times per year.

My favorite "data-based" proof of AGW skeptics is the "now that I've found the data sources finally I've done a simple graph of temperature vs. CO2 in excel which disproves AGW." The subtext to such comments is essentially that an outside analyst who only knows numbers (and not the field, or how the data were collected, or anything else other than computers and very basic statistics) is doing a correct analysis of the data whereas people who do understand the provenance of such data must be either hiding such findings as a community, or too incompetent to do a basic graph in excel. Furthermore such simple exercises ignore techniques like multiple linear regression (among others) which can account for the influence of multiple variables at the same time.

Knowing the method of data collection is crucial to correct analysis. In my previous life as an astronomer, we would typically image objects by taking four pictures: 1) an on wavelength on target image, 2) an on wavelength off target image, 3) an off wavelength on target image, and 4) an off wavelength off target image. Proper data reduction meant that you first found intensity on band due to the target (diff12): image 1)- image 2, then the blackbody offset for being on target (diff34): image 3) - image 4), and then the true intensity of the object in that wavelength diff12-diff34. It helps if you draw a picture. It also helps if you know what blackbody radiation is, the bandwidth of your filter, and a hundred other small things that you won't see if you are just presented with a cache of images. The point being that there are usually good reasons for collecting the data in a certain manner, and if you don't know what these are, you probably won't be able to reduce it correctly.

Does that mean that if you don't have an advanced degree in physics or climatology you shouldn't be able to come to the table and express your opinion? No. But many of the AGW skeptics seem unwilling to listen to the reasoning and experience of those who have been in the game for a while. It's almost as if I felt that my prior experience with a .22 rifle qualified me to tell General Petraeus how to run operations having not ever been on the ground in the Middle East. I am able to differentiate my opinion about the war from my ability to prosecute it. In the same way AWG critics need to understand that while they may bring some fresh ideas to the table, it is likely that much of their reasoning has already been rigorously examined and discarded by people with far more experience than them.

While personally I agree that in an ideal world journals should archive data used in publications, there are several real world issues:

• Journals have a small circulation. This means that they already charge an arm and a leg per issue.
• Journals have a small staff. In fact most reviews are sent out to unpaid 3rd parties because the journals don't have the in-house staff to do the reviews themselves.
• Journals have very limited resources even when supported by publication giants such as Elsevier. Adding the burden of holding the raw and processed data along with source code for every one of the 20x articles per issue would require an increase in staff to maintain the additional server space, an increase in cost to support the additional IT geeks and servers, and would ultimately result in the journals NOT getting distributed due to cost-related issues.

Bottom line is that the journals would only do this under duress because it would hurt their bottom line and probably make the publication process even more forbidding than it currently is.

Now that said, there is an attempt to create open-access journals which I am all for, but this is still a bit of an experiment. Many faculty are evaluated for tenure based on the reputations of the journals which have accepted their articles. If I publish all my research to an unknown journal which is experimental and hasn't established either readership or gravitas, I'm not likely to be taken seriously by the community nor my peers when I am up for tenure. It's sad, but true.

Here's a small portion of the data which is opensource: (see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw)

• GHCN v.2 (Global Historical Climate Network: weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation)
• USHCN US. Historical Climate Network (v.1 and v.2)
• Antarctic weather stations
• European weather stations (ECA)
• Satellite feeds (AMSU, SORCE (Solar irradiance), NASA A-train)
• Tide Gauges (Proudman Oceanographic Lab)
• World Glacier Monitoring Service
• Argo float data
• International Comprehensive Ocean/Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) (Oceanic in situ observations)
• AERONET Aerosol information

You can follow the original link to realclimate.org to find many other links to data sources. I have posted the data sources above only because many critics of AGW won't even bother with realclimate.org as they are thought to be part of the conspiracy. The data exists and is public as is the source code.

The researchers did not use certain tree ring data post 1960 because it was not properly calibrated to instrumental data. There has been much hoo-hah about this "throwing out" of data when really it is the instrumental data that matters, not the proxy data. If temperature is what you are after, thermometers are the gold standard. Therefore the post 1960 results really aren't in question. Furthermore, many critics of Mann et al. have ignored the fact that this was a single line of data turning a blind eye to the numerous other data sets and proxies that support the same conclusions. I find it disingenuous to claim that all climatology is now in question due to this "trick". I will, however, admit that the researchers should have noted the issues with the tree-ring data in question.

If one completely ignores any of the above data sets (whether they be direct measurements or proxies), there exist many disparate observations of global warming ranging from the rise in sea level which threatens various nations' lands to the melting of the arctic tundra to the loss of glaciation document global warming independently of these scientists' data. All the data seem to indicate is that the warming is happening on a scale that it has not before. By itself, this should indicate that the hockey stick curve is real. But is this warming due to humans?

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) critics seem to espouse ideas such as the solar cycle hypothesis or Milankovich hypothesis rather than admit that humans can change the atmosphere. On the BBC this morning I even heard a listener letter that explained how volcanoes were the cause of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. This ignores some of the more obvious ways in which humans can change the atmosphere. This year, the Chinese government limited fossil fuel burning before the Olympics with apparently stunning results. When I was in Beijing for nearly a month 10 years ago, smog was a daily occurance. Even miles outside the city at Badaling (the Great Wall), it was hard to see for more than a mile. Smog is considered to be the third most important greenhouse gas by the IPCC. Evidence that we are changing our own atmosphere by fossil fuel emission is obvious just by looking.

Are you confusing me with the parent poster? I just said that people who take notes do better. If it was not clear:

• Copying is better than watching
• Deriving (that is thinking as you go) is better than copying

Seriously, I was disagreeing with the parent. I think you just focused on the word "copying" and stopped reading.

Furthermore, I do NOT ban people from taking notes in class, nor do I force them to take notes. I do provide copies of my lectures regardless of their learning style.

While I have heard this theory, there is also the act of deriving in real time. My mother-in-law, the educational psychologist, says:

• Doing is better than watching. Students are more likely to catch errors as they go (this is good!) and are more likely to be engaged. Class becomes more of an activity and less like just watching a movie.
• With languages and maths, copying stimulates kinesthetic memory and makes it more likely that students recall what was said. (note that deriving is even better).

Although I do provide all of my notes to my students, my experience is that students who take notes in class do better. (I too have tracked this - it would be interesting to see what we are doing differently in each of our cases.)

My physics class turns in their labs digitally. Some of them have really struggled trying to insert equations. Some of them had scanned their notes and then cropped various equations out. Some had tried building equations via manual formatting supplemented via underlining and super/subscripting. To a person, they seem to hate MS Office's equation editor as it takes too long to point and click your way through (and if there's another way with their editor, enlighten me).

Yesterday, I popped up OpenOffice's equation editor (ALT-I-O-F -> for ALT-Insert-Object-Formula) and started typing. As we were doing parallel and series circuits, I took an equation from the recent lab: R_net = 1 over { 1 over R_1 + 1 over R_2} + R_3. Almost to a person, they were agog that I could type it as fast as I could write it on the board. I did suggest alternates such as MathType, MathML, and LaTeX, but I don't think they heard me after that.

While I am able to quickly produce copious amounts of equations using OO.org's editor, the usual disclaimer applies: use what works for you.