Thanks for the references - I will certainly read them. On the quote about global temps over the last 10 years, I was looking at the UK metoffice data on global temperatures - see below. I agree 1998 was a high year (for whatever reason) but the trend since then is flat - even maybe declining a little. Why is this ? Or is the data wrong ?

http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=23476#Post23476