The rhetoric coming from both sides is way way over the top. The arrogance of the left and the smugness of the right and the continued preconceived notions and biases have degraded the quality of the research immensely.
The number of weather stations have dropped more than 50%, most of them in rural areas and so we are left "guessing" temperatures in the vast areas of the world that used to be measured directly... and of course these areas are "warming the fastest".
The discrepancy between satellite readings and surface stations grows wider and wider as the satellite readings show almost no warming over the period of record with a cooling trend in the past 7 years while the surface stations, ever in declining numbers, and ever more concentrated in heavily developed urban areas keep warming.
When NOAA updated their temperature measures a few years ago, they completely removed the urban heat island effect from the equation and then bellowed on and on about how much faster the planet was warming than we had previously thought... of course this is when the satellite measures really started to differ.
I won't call it a conspiracy.. but I think both sides already have their outcome firmly entrenched and they're just looking for the science to prove it.
Yeah, it's starting to sound a lot like the creationism vs evolution debate. Both sides use fairly biased 'proof' and cherry pick facts to support their argument.
