Receding glaciers refute the hypothesis that "there is no global warming" - which is what this article is intended to make people believe (successfully so, look at ars' comment). It states no hypothesis of its own, questions the veracity of one set of data, asserts that this data is the only basis for global warming and concludes that all policy concerning global warming is therefore flawed.
Receding glaciers refute the hypothesis that "there is no global warming"
This statement isn't as obvious at you make it seem. A large part of the controversy is what constitutes Global Warming, as opposed to regional. Oddly, by making the statement that receding glaciers are incontrovertible evidence of global warming, you are challenging the current consensus.
Much of the question about Climate Change is whether the current climate change is 'unprecedented', and therefore more likely to be correlated with human activity. The current consensus says that the Medieval Warming Period, a period where all parties agree that there was glacial retreat, was only a regional event.
Differentiating global warming from regional warming is very difficult, and is focus of this piece. Anecdotal evidence about retreating glaciers doesn't help to clear it up --- what's needed are global datasets as referred to in the article. I believe this is actually why McIntyre started researching the datasets in the first place: he was wondering why the graphs of global warming had 'erased' the MWP.
(And while the piece is certainly biased, I wouldn't call it FUD. Etymologically, this makes no sense. If anything, rather than spreading Fear, it's encouraging complacency in the face of what might be a true catastrophe. CUD maybe?)
All in all, a very nice piece of classic FUD.