Graham:"The bottom line is that Muller's work gives no reason to anyone to change their view as to whether global warming is manmade, or likely to be cataclysmic"

Absolutely. I wouldn't expect any less. What it DOES is, as you say, confirm the temperature trends and the instrumental data. It removes the argument that 'heat-island effects' on the temperature record have been messing with the trend. It also removes the accusation that the data were massaged and corrected and tortured to produce the warming trend, so much so that the scientists who first worked on it are often accused of fraud. Hopefully we won't see to much more hoopla on this score. I won't hold my breath on that though.

Hasbeen: selective quote mining copypasta is very easy. See:
"claims that global warming has harmed the Earth so far are not scientific"
"A quote came out of the emails, these leaked emails, that said "let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline". That's the words, "let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline". Mike is Michael Mann, said "hey, trick just means mathematical trick. That's all." My response is I'm not worried about the word trick. I'm worried about the decline."
"Not a single polar bear has died because of receding ice."
"80 percent or 90 percent of what's in Inconvenient Truth is wrong or exaggerated or cherry picked."

Guess who said those?
Oh yeah, this guys a true believer! (NOT)
What he appears to be be is an actual skeptic, not a full on denier nor believer. Holy crap, can scientists actually BE skeptics?!!

Graham,

You are correct, it is folly to suggest this new release of data on its own proves Human activity is causing global warming. It does however verify that the earth has been warming and that the much maligned hockey stick and other previously presented data is valid, despite the claims of shoddy science from the denialists an skeptics.

It should also be noted that the BEST data is only land temperatures, so does not represent all of the earth's surface, and in fact is biased by northern hemispheric climatic variables (hence the dip in the graph in the northern winter of 2010, which you indicate being particularly cold).

When all of the earth's surface temperature is taken into account (land + water) we do see continued warming, which is the data used behind the claims that 2010 was hottest or equal hottest on record (see the NASA website). The oceans represent a much larger portion of the earth's surface than land, so to only use the land data to claim the warming has stalled is, again, misleading.

Belly, my interest in this issue resurfaced around 11 years ago when Rachendra Pachaudri abused David Henderson and Ian Castles in an official IPCC media release for correctly pointing out that the IPCC should have been using PPP not EMR in their projections.

This alerted me to the fact that there must be serious problems with the IPCC case. The more I delved into the area, the worse it got for the IPCC.

Bugsy, you're running a straw argument. Who are the skeptics who have accused anyone running the official temperature databases of fraud in their conduct of those databases? It has generally been accepted that the temperature trends are about right, although I prefer the satellite data because they avoid the selection problems that the land-based data involve.

Michael Mann and his hockey stick are another matter. It is literally the Piltdown Mann (sic) of climate science where he spliced one set of data onto another in violation of all the rules of statistics. There's plenty more of that sort of "trick" going on.

If anyone wants a good over-view of the issues have a look at this brilliant speech by Matt Ridley on Scientific Heresy http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/1/scientific-heresy.html

It's not a straw argument Graham. That's an easy accusation to make. By inference, you deny that there are skeptics who believe that the temperature record has been fraudulently 'adjusted' to show the warming.

Who are these non-existent skeptics?

Well ,Marc Sheppard for one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/22/american-thinker-on-cru-giss-and-climategate/

There are a number of lesser known and anonymous bloggers of course, a few of whom frequent these pages that have directly out and out accused the temperature record keepers of fraudulently adjusting data. But let's not name names,eh

They exist Graham.

The wording of the original post does mention global warming GrahamY, you are correct.

With regard mans effect on the environment, the facts that we need to know are; How much are we effecting the planet ?. How fast is that occurring ?.

If we are to bristle over the concept of global warming and which scientist interprets data correctly, without considering the actual question which is , what is the effect of manmade carbon pollution on the planet.

I have contributed a link that I'm wondering if anyone has watched about the effects of carbon pollution, with references to the temperature variations over the millennia.

Here it is again http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_dunbar.html

Global warming is a touchy one GrahamY, so I'm hoping a more relevant discussion regarding the effects of carbon pollution evolves from this one.

Bugsy I don't know how you can suggest that a clear statement from 2003 “carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history.” could ever be attributed to a skeptic.

Please explain how this claim to be a skeptic is not lying, at least by someone. If you can't you have no legitimacy, & certainly no right to claim the high ground.

I must stop trying to talk to warmers. They will still be yelling "warming" as the last bit of breath is frozen from their rigid body.

Fellow travelers, or fools, it doesn't matter much, they have too much belief, or ego invested now to ever admit their mistake. All we can do is hope our tax payer funds stop being wasted some time soon.