Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution
New York Times, The (NY) - Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Author: ANDREW C. REVKIN
The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.
The plateau in temperatures has been seized upon by skeptics as evidence that the threat of global warming is overblown. And some climate experts worry that it could hamper treaty negotiations and slow the progress of legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.
Scientists say the pattern of the last decade — after a precipitous rise in average global temperatures in the 1990s — is a result of cyclical variations in ocean conditions and has no bearing on the long-term warming effects of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere.
But trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public — and to policy makers — can be frustrating, they say.
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Source: Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research
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George F. Will
“Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty
To Task Of Reaching a Solution”
— The New York Times, Sept. 23
IN this headline on a Times story about difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word “plateau.” It dismisses the unpleasant — to some people — fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it.
(snip)