You are absolutely correct. It is complicated. And given a healthy dose of scientific skepticism, there is no good way to know for sure right now. For instance

You are absolutely correct. It is complicated. And given a healthy dose of scientific skepticism, there is no good way to know for sure right now. For instance that NOAA study you linked uses UAH satellite tropospheric data to fill in for missing grounds stations, which is highly controversial (because how does that work), and even more so over the poles, since UAH data their is poor and scattered. Then the .12C difference between ship and buoy sea surface temps seems like is too convenient. I have a feeling that if they were honest with their confidence intervals, they'd be larger than the possible signal. After working through tons of this stuff, reading papers, replicating the math where I can (hard to get source data, and harder to get actual algorithms), I'm left with "who knows?" But the satellite data is clear (and is the only contiguous pole to pole measurement of the atmosphere we have). No warming for over 20 years.