When the report trumpeted by Davies in his extraordinary article came out the sceptics all cried whitewash and having read it I'd have to agree. Admittedly the deliberate fraud and misrepresentation part was going to far, but the CRU most emphatically have not lived up to the high traditions of science. However, considering the amount of funding flowing into global warming science it is not surprising, they cut corners. Perhaps they were behaving more like the public service than politicians.
Basically all the committe did was talk to the CRU members and accept their explanations. The chairman, Lord Oxburgh is, incidentally, chairman of a wind energy company. Can you imagine the screaming that would have gone on, had he been, say, chairman of a coal mining company?
I could say a great deal about Davies' article but his insistance in the teeth of all evidence that temperatures have not been cooling for a good chunk of the past decade is extraordinary. Certainly March was warm because of El Nino, but all but the die hard global warmers have now agreed that the trend over the past few years has been down, and that trend is expected to continue (or at least be steady state). The story now is that the real warming will kick in, in a few years. Davies could at least have been better informed about what his own side is saying.

1. The University of East Anglia’s Professor Jones has stated in an interview with the London Daily Mail that there has been no significant warming in the fifteen years to 2009. http://www.dailymail.co.uk:80/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html
Dr Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts research shows that raw data has been tampered with across the world. Ignoring colder climate and higher altitude measuring stations, while relocating measuring stations to warmer climates has effectively shown a warming effect. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html
Fears of sea level rise have been of concern to many Australians. Prof. R.M. (Bob) Carter. James Cook University advises that there is no dangerous trend.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/RMC%20-%20aspects%20of%20sea-level%20rise%20in%20southern%20Australia%20Z.pdf
Dr Long has researched USA raw data and found that, in the case of rural temperatures they have been increased by about five times their actual temperatures. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Rate_of_Temp_Change_Raw_and_Adjusted_NCDC_Data.pdf
2. Canadian Researcher Donna Laframboise headed a team of forty International researchers who have examined the IPCC AR4 Report and have found that 30% of the papers are not peer reviewed. http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/
3. ClimateGate emails, when examined found a number of instances where publishers had been subjected to pressure to refuse to publish works critical of accepted UAE papers. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc2602.htm
It was shown that peer review was not undertaken by impartial, anonymous peer review but to a member of that group of scientists who were well aware of the desired outcome. It was proven that, in a number of cases, access to raw data was refused due to a fear of an adverse finding. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/climategate_analysis.html

Ozandy, I think they call yours a 'tu quoque' ['you, too'] fallacy - in order to divert discussion about the sins of one's gods, you point out the worse sins of other people's gods.

A pox on all gods. Zap ! Jesus, that was close ....

I wouldn't be surprised if there's some criticism of how FOI's got handled but no surprise that this independent assessment showed no doctoring of data or any reason to alter the conclusion that AGW is real and serious.
Multiple independent lines of research. Every leading institution that studies climate. Every peak scientific body. And still the denialists want us to pretend the impending impacts of climate change have no basis and we should continue to expand the activities that will ensure what we get is the worst case scenarios. And they think 'warmists' live in a bubble of unreality!

This issue isn't going to go away in the lifetimes of anyone now living. Given the devastation in SE Australia from record heatwave conditions in recent years, adding another 5 degrees C on top doesn't sound like something we should blithely accept as natural and normal. Not when every institution that studies climate tells us it's not natural and it is avoidable.
It could be that 'climategate' is the last big gasp of climate science denialism; sure, the commenters here will continue their quasi-religious disbelief but ultimately policy will come from the well informed and by governments that take the scientific advice they commission and recieve seriously.

Curmudgeon -

OK, my wording was loose, though I have made the point on OLO many times and it is clear in the link provided.

So try "the nonsense that the global warming trend ceased in 1998". The point is that there are many short-term influences on global temperature, such as el nino and volcanic eruptions. So the temperature fluctuates around a longer-term trend, revealed in 5-year or 10-year running averages. The fact that temperature was above trend in 2005 and below the trend in 2008 (in the NASA compilation) does not mean the trend has gone away. There are several precedents since 1980. After the below-trend years, the temperature shot up to new highs.

I don't know where you get the idea that "all but the die hard global warmers" think the trend will be down or steady from here on. There is no evidence for this, and the reasons for the recent pause are not a great mystery: the el nino - la nina cycle is an obvious enough influence that climatologists cautioned the world in 2007-8 that the la nina condition would cool the world temporarily but this should not be taken to indicate that the underlying trend had changed. Of course "sceptics" ignored the caution and have been doing exactly that ever since.

Perhaps we should all climb down from our ergonomic chairs, our ivory towers, our caves and our high horses and, regardless of whether or not there is global warming or cooling, and mindful of both the precautionary principle and the continuing degradation of our environment, propose what to do about it. For a start,

* stop deforestation for MacDonalds (Brazil), oil-palm production (Indonesia) and biofuel production (here), and start re-foresting parts of the north where rainfall is supposed to be increasing, use the unemployed labour up there for the next hundred years;

* tap all the renewable energy that's fit to tap, at a reasonable cost, plug it into the grid, and switch to hybrid and electric cars;

* re-cycle storm-water wherever possible, perhaps into a household grey-water system;

* strengthen piloting standards in Australian waters;

* get down on water and air pollution - tax the polluters, that shouldn't be a problem.

Now on to world peace.