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So, to answer your question, I 'get my data' from a wide range of sources, but use my own mental library of observations and methods of thesis to discriminate it.
You didn't answer. I mean you maybe try to answer but you don't.
My questions were "what do you consider a reliable source information" and "where do you get your data from"
Your answer is "I spend a fair bit of time (because I have it) reading up on a pretty broad swath of topics (because I enjoy it.) "
So you read things. Great. And where does the data come from?
Because again all the climate change-skeptics I see here tell me that my sources aren't reliable. So where do you find your data??? What institution or media or newspaper or whatever do you consider as reliable?
Basically I don't often need datasets because I don't do original research. People who do think they need datasets are probably wrong and would not have the slightest idea of what they mean or what to do with them.
What I need to have a sense of whether a researcher is basing their work on appropriate datasets. For this, I basically rely on the researcher themselves as much as anything, and I choose to rely on a researcher's means and motives. If, say, Judith Curry publishes something on her blog I'll tend to take it seriously and study it more carefully. Also I tend to spend a good bit of time going through the discussion threads.
https://judithcurry.com/2014/07/07/understanding-adjustments-to-temperature-data/After witnessing such obvious fraud and opacity prevalent in the climate change hoax, it is easy from the 'denier' side to write off all adjustments as scams. This oversimplifies the very legitimate need to do adjustments. As I've often stated here, the biggest sin that the Warmunistas have perpetrated is in making real scientific understanding vastly more complex and difficult than it was already. It is more and more obvious that it serves their political and professional interests to do just this because they are trying to base their higher goals on a scientific fraud.
Dr. Curry, like others, have achieved little but professional grief for their outside the party line positions as best I can tell in my research. On the contrary, researchers who tow the line are academically and financially rewarded. I suspect that ultimately the 'heretics' such as Curry will be remembered as the Galileo of their times, but in the mean time they get a lot of grief.
If you are interested, here is a site which is reputed to be a usable site for obtaining datasets:
http://www.climate4you.com/I've not used the resource much in part because I've not bitten off the task of turning data into a meaningful synthesis (which would benefit by the equiv of a graduate degree and several years of focused study.)