Interesting, don't have any definitive answers one way or the other, and I agree that figures can usually be made to say what you want them to say. There's another old phrase, "...there's lies, damn lies and statistics".
However;
The newsminer article is just about the summer in Anchorage and shows it was clearly colder than recent years. It says it will be a new record for the fewest number of 65+ degree days. While Alaska has recently been subject to a global focus, I'm not sure that Anchorage weather alone gives much indication as to global climate one way or another.
The BBC article says that the first half of 2008 was 0.1 degree celcius cooler than any since 2000, but it also says that 2008 will be the 10th warmest since 1850. Not sure what that tells us. Further on it refers to long term trends still being an increase, but there was some interesting info re: Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation which I hadn't heard of before.
The NOAA page talks about some elements being cooler and others being warmer, this is one paragraph from it.
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the 16th warmest on record for the December 2007-February 2008 period (0.58°F/0.32°C above the 20th century mean of 53.8°F/12.1°C). The presence of a moderate-to-strong La Niña contributed to an average temperature that was the coolest since the La Niña episode of 2000-2001.
The page I got the earlier info from was on the NOAA web site. It shows global temperatures for land, ocean and overall on a month by month basis.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/...obal.html#temp
Obviously none of this info determines the cause of any climate change, it just shows what those changes appear to be. People much smarter than me can figure out the rest.
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