Defensive? Do I really need to count the number of posts that declare that I get everything I know from right-wing blogs?

This isn't about believing in AGW or not. It's about the number of things going on in the climate that nobody has any idea how they work or why they're happening, many of which don't fit neatly into the consensus picture.

I have noticed an odd tendency in science articles like this to go over the anomalies in great detail, sometimes theorizing why things are the way they are--like any scientists would.

And at the end of the whole thing, a disclaimer of sorts: "None of this means we don't support the idea that humans are causing the problems."

Just from the two links I referenced:

"Weather is a phenomenon which changes from year to year and right now the atmosphere has changed so we have cold weather. That will certainly mean that melting ice in the North Pole will be less this year, but next year the situation can look completely different," according to Henriksen.

The simulated changes in Antarctic surface temperatures over the second half of the 20th century vary greatly from model to model with no single model reproducing exactly the observed pattern of change. However, when results from all models are averaged, the resulting pattern of change bears some resemblance to that observed, with greatest warming in the Peninsula region and little change elsewhere20. This result suggests that some of the observed change may have an anthropogenic origin, but the lack of a clear and consistent response to changed forcing between models also suggests that much of the observed change in temperatures may be due to natural variability. The IPCC model experiments fail to reproduce some of the observed features, notably the rapid warming of the lower atmosphere. These differences between modelled and observed changes could be used to argue against attributing change to anthropogenic forcing but some caution is called for as the models used may not adequately represent all of the complex processes that determine temperatures in the polar regions.

...Whilst there is not yet a clear consensus on which are the mechanisms that are most important, there is increasing evidence that a significant part of this change is ultimately driven by human activities.

I've seen other examples in my reading.

To be sure, most of this is natural scientific reluctance to eliminate any possibilities or nail themselves down to a position based on limited data, but how much of it is worry about making themselves a target?