AGW -- "Hiding The Decline"; Deception Or Laziness?

My writer friend Mike Flynn posted this on his blog the other day:

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2010/03/data-that-came-in-from-cold.html

which is also discussed in more detail here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/18/weather-balloon-data-backs-up-missing-decline-found-in-old-magazine/#more-17454

In short, there was a significant cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere from 1958-1978, a trend massaged and adjusted out of the temperature graphs one obtains from the Warmists. People who have followed Climategate know about the infamous "hide the decline" comment revealed in the CRU e-mails. In short, around 1960 or so the tree ring proxy data began to show declining temps, and to hide this in the graphs the tree ring data was systematically replaced with thermometer data.

Now that we've rediscovered the value of perusing old National Geographic magazines for contemporaneous accounts of what the climate was doing a few decades ago, this brings up a few questions about general scientific competence. Did the Warmist climate scientists not know that the decline in temperatures indicated by the proxy data was supported by the measurements from balloons?

I see two possibilities. (1) They did and, rather than use this fact to further validate their use of tree ring proxy data by showing that it accurately reflected the measured temperature decline from 1958-78, decided to replace their proxy data with temperature data more suited to their tastes. (2) They never bothered to look at what had been done before.

So are they more guilty of lying or of laziness? I don't know. I'm fairly sure they at least lied to themselves about their own competence. But then I'm also sure they were too lazy to learn how professional statistical mathematicians go about their craft. Either way, they look bad.

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Here's another good link, this one about glaciers:

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/03/glaciers-science-and-nonsense.html