There's a news article just published at the Guardian reporting the announcement from the Met Office that "climate sceptics have their heads stuck in the sand".

Climate sceptics such as Nigel Lawson who argue that global warming has stopped have their "heads in the sand", according to the UK's Met Office. A recent dip in global temperatures is down to natural changes in weather systems, a new analysis shows, and does not alter the long-term warming trend. The office says average temperatures have continued their rising trend over the last decade, and that humans are to blame.In a statement published on its website, it says: "Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. "The evidence is clear, the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise. Global warming does not mean that each year will be warmer than the last."

This is all illustrated with a rather nice graph which looks like this:

Two things jump out at me here. The first is the caption, "Brohan et al 2006". It's remarkable that a paper published in 2006 can analyse temperatures up to 2007, don't you think? Perhaps this is something to do with the Met Office's much-vaunted forecasting abilities?

A little research shows that Brohan et al 2006 was, in fact, the paper where the HADCRUT3 temperature series was announced to the world. This seems to suggest then that this "new analysis" is not actually a peer-reviewed study, but is just somebody bashing some numbers out.

Actually, I don't have a problem with somebody just bashing some numbers out. If the analysis is good, the analysis is good, and whether it's peer-reviewed or not is irrelevant. It would have been more honest of the Met Office and the Guardian to make this fact plain though. But another question then arises: if they've just taken the data and calculated some trends, why have they only used data up to 2007?

Ah, yes, the 2008 figures have dropped precipitously, haven't they?

So, this looks to me as if the Met Office is indulging in a little propagandising. Plus ca change and all that...

One last mystery though. When I look up the Met Office's media pages, there's no sign of the press release at all. Do you think they pulled it?