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Good points. I think the Oscillations basically are the following. After Solar activity has been strong for 4 to 5 years, the Earths Oceans absorb all that extra energy. This then manifests itself as the El Nino (Warming Equatorial Pacific). The El Nino typically shows up as the Solar activity level is dropping due to ocean current lags (the Pacific is immense). After solar activity has been weak for a few years, the heat will have radiated out of the Ocean. The cool Equatorial Pacific then manifests itself as a La Nina. These typically occur during the rising solar activity part of the cycle. My guess would be it takes longer to heat the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, while it is able to radiate the heat quicker. Actually, the El Nino could be considered the radiating phase, not the warming phase. By the time El Nino radiates, the heat radiated will have been absorbed a few years prior. So basically, the La Nina phase needs increasing solar activity to start the warming cycle. So it should not stop until the sun increases its activity.

La Nina is a convenient “weather god” used by the climate hoaxers to account for their missing warming.

Not exactly. La Nina is a real phenomenon, which is really happening and which really cools the equatorial Pacific Ocean enough to impact global average temperatures significantly.

But there is a cooling event happening broader than the La Nina. Last year, there was a moderately strong El Nino (a warming event) which should have shattered 1998's record for warmest year yet... and didn't. Now, we're getting a moderate La Nina, which is plunging multi-year trend lines way, way down.

The upshot is that La Nina is cooling us off, but doesn't explain why it's *also* cool in a belt circling the Earth at about the Antartic circle, why it's been cool in the North Pacific, why the temperatures in the Indian Ocean have suddenly plunged, etc.

Overall, this El-Nino/La-Nina cycle is producing temperatures very similar to the 1998-2000 cycle, which means that after two decades (mid 1970s to late 1990s) of significant warming, we've had a decade of temperature stability. (Probably, if you remove the El-Nino/La-Nina cycles, you'd get a peak in 2005.)

This decade of temperature stability doesn't negate global warming. But global warming as we saw in the 20th century was pretty damned harmless. Ooh, whoopee! 2/3rds of a degree! But the pace in the 1990s would be warming us up maybe two degrees in the 21st century... still pretty damned harmless.

The hysteria was that global warming had accelerated, and would continue to do so. Some were making predictions of up to ten degrees Celsius. While this would hardly mean planetary extinction and it's only about 1/10th of what it would take to melt Antarctica in 10,000 years, it'd make life miserable.

The notion of an acceleration of global warming is thoroughly debunked. It's true we haven't yet established a new era of global cooling, which seems to be the straw man Cogitator is arguing against. But its absurd to cling to predictions made based on 2005 data:

Note to Cogitator:
What's irritating isn't that you attempt to rebut my assertions: I'm glad for that, since it *does* point me towards more information, more arguments, etc. What's irritating is that you don't try to arrive at a rational middle-ground. It's like you are asserting, "One of us is full of ****. Let the reader decide which one." Frankly, given our audience, I think that gives me an upper hand. (You'd win hands-down at DU or DailyKOS... and that's meant as a comment about our audiences, not an ad hominem) It's like there's no sense you're trying to reason with me, but rather you're trying to shout me down with the party line. Can you see how the fact that there is a La Nino (which I have persistently acknowledged) doesn't alter the larger argument I'm making?