From Benny Peiser: Global Warming Policy Foundation

 
U.S. and European Union envoys are seeking more clarity from the United Nations on a slowdown in global warming that climate skeptics have cited as a reason not to “panic” about environmental changes, leaked documents show. They’re requesting that more details on the so-called “hiatus” be included in a key document set to be debated at a UN conference next month that will summarize the latest scientific conclusions on climate change. “The recent slowing of the temperature trend is currently a key issue, yet it has not been adequately addressed in the SPM,” the EU said, according to an official paper that includes all governmental comments on the draft report. The U.S. comment suggested “adding information on recent hiatus in global mean air temperature trend.” --Alex Morales, Bloomberg, 30 August 2013

Addressing the hiatus is important because skeptics of man’s influence on warming the planet have seized on the slowing pace temperature increase as evidence that scientists have exaggerated the impact of manmade greenhouse gases. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a U.K.-based research group that describes itself as “deeply concerned about the costs” of climate change policies, said in a report in March that “we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change.” --Alex Morales, Bloomberg, 30 August 2013

An unreleased draft of the U.N.’s next major climate report reportedly states that scientists are more certain than ever that man’s actions are warming the planet — even as the report struggles to explain a slow-down in warming that climate skeptics have seized upon. “The absence of any significant change in the global annual average temperature over the past 16 years has become one of the most discussed topics in climate science,” wrote David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in June. “It has certainly focused the debate about the relative importance of greenhouse gas forcing of the climate versus natural variability.” --Fox News, 20 August 2013

Kosaka and Xie blame the warming stoppage on the recent domination of La Niña events. Anyone with a little common sense who’s reading the abstract and the hype around the blogosphere and the Meehl et al papers will logically now be asking: if La Niña events can stop global warming, then how much do El Niño events contribute? And what about the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)? What happens to global surface temperatures when the AMO also peaks and no longer contributes to the warming? The climate science community skirts the common-sense questions, so no one takes them seriously. --Bob Tisdale, Climate Observations, 28 August 2013