I think what people miss is the fact that many scientists considered a 16 year lull in warming as very unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. It doesn't mean

I think what people miss is the fact that many scientists considered a 16 year lull in warming as very unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. It doesn't mean they have it all wrong or that it's just a hoax, and says nothing about the long term trend, but it does mean that they have to probably evolve their models and predictions to cater for natural short term variability better. I find it very entertaining these accusations of cherry picking data for a cause, and then get countered with a different shape of cherry picking. For example proving a trend by using only land based surface temperatures, or only the past 30 years, or only the Northern Hemisphere, or neglecting the warming periods over the past 2000 years, or excluding the uncertainties of past reconstructions. It's a highly polarised debate so there is a lot of bias on both sides of the argument.