Hard data on Global Warming.

I've been trying to find some hard data on global warming. Graphs of temperature measurements, or inferred but researched data that objectively looks at 'climate change'.

I know there are lots of people out there that insist they know what is happening, and what we must do. Who say 'debate is over'. Who want to advance their view only, by force of law if possible, and shut down any dissenting view(s).

I disagree - strongly - with that viewpoint. That is the same viewpoint which led to the Spanish Inquisition, for example, or of the activites of the secret police in the old communist bloc countries. Truth - if it is indeed truth - can withstand scrutiny. Falsehood cannot. View with scepticism those who embrace an ideology which seeks to silence it's critics. Open debate finds truth. Unquestioning accepance of dogma leads to darkness of one sort or another.

For example, Those who point to human causes, at least as the sole cause of climate change, ignore the Sun's solar cycle changes (eg Milankovitch), and also fail to take account of the longer term changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, which is influenced, albeit slightly and on a long timescale, by the other planets, notably Jupiter

I found this on Wikipedia;

Here we see that there have been changes in temperature, trends up and down, even within the comparatively recent, documented past.

and this;

We see that scientists have been able to plot changes since the last glacial period. (And some studies point to substantial variations!).

And this;

Based on ice coring, the above image shows many times in the past when temperatures have been hotter than now. (More on ice-coring here).
The US NOAA has a good site, worth looking at, but unfortunately it largely just echos the IPCC report.

There are plenty of organisations and people out there telling you what to think on the subject. What is harder to do is to cut through the dogma (and often - hysteria) and then try to inform yourself with objective fact - which is what we should do.

From an (somewhat parochial to be sure) Aussie perspective, what we do will matter little, if 20 million Aussies simply stopped using fuels, if we were to be taken out of the equation completely - nothing would change.

Increasingly, it is what places like China and India do that determines how long the world's oil will last, for example. If 'greenhouse gas' emissions do make a difference, then it is what Europe, China, India, and North America do that are the determinates. Not what we southern hemisphere inhabitants do or don't do.