Read here and here. Accurate temperature records are absolutely critical. Obviously, the fraud, corruption, collusion and assorted other evils being discovered via the Climategate expose has done immense and irreversible damage to the climate science community, and more significantly, to science overall.
Collateral damage, but equally as important, has been done to the world's temperature record databases. It now appears that the arrogant, self-righteous convictions of the climate alarmist scientists has led to all the major land/ocean temperature databases being significantly corrupted with the 'hockey-stick' type of manipulations. Almost on a daily basis, a new set of temperature records is being found with the hockey-stick signature due to a pattern of similar adjustments.The pattern that keeps showing up is one that has earlier period's warming temperatures adjusted down and later period cooling temperatures adjusted up, and voila, a hockey-stick resemblance emerges - note the red line with black markers on the chart below. That line represents the official global temperatures of the U.S. National Climate Data Center (NCDC).
Like other national climate centers, the NCDC feels compelled by the need for global warming research funding and peer-group pressure to produce temperature records that show "unprecedented," unequivocal," and "accelerating" global warming. And that's how the UN's IPCC gets its "scientific" proof that huge global warming is happening and we only have a few years (months, whatever) to fix it. Unfortunately, now that the temperature data corruption and IPCC political agenda have been fully exposed, it leaves any rational thinking person with a very non-warm feeling.
To counter that, we have taken the liberty to tweak the hockey-stick global temperature adjustments such that the 'hide the decline' and 'hide the rise' techniques are minimized. In order to carry out this minimization, we have adjusted some 80+ years of NCDC data (recall, NCDC adjusted 129 years to get their results). These are relatively minor adjustments designed to be cumulative over time, and designed to shift the slope (trend line) down, yet maintain the overall shape of the 129-year NCDC curve. (click on image to enlarge)
The end result of minimizing the "scientific" hockey-stick methodology is the green curve with the blue markers on the graph. Note how the green trend line (slope) with arrow tip (versus the red with arrow tip) has been significantly reduced when the hockey-stick adjustments have been minimized. Our secret Excel formula has returned the world's climate to its natural state; everyone at Copenhagen can go home as "Hope" (leave the "nagen" there) has been achieved; and, we're expecting to be nominated for the Nobel.
Putting aside the lame humor, the green curve and green trend line actually may better represent the real history of global temperatures since 1880 than the fabricated NCDC hockey-stick curve. Until political leaders decide that trillion dollar climate polices require audited and accurate temperature records, instead of fake hockey-sticks, the C3 global temperature record of modest, long-term global warming is what policymakers should think of considering before trillion dollar decisions are made. (click on image to enlarge)