Readers may recall that when Matt Ridley mentioned the IPCC's recognition of the hiatus in surface temperature rises, Lord Deben responded by issuing a rebuttal on the website of the Committee on Climate Change in which he disputed that there was a pause. It was only a slowdown, he said:
IPCC has always showed and discussed charts of up-to-date global annual average temperature records. In 2007, at the time of the IPCC’s last assessment, discussion of a pause since 1998 would have been irrelevant as this is much too short a period to measure any meaningful climate trend. In the latest assessment, it notes that the trend since 1998 has been lower, but still cautions against interpreting this as being significant in terms of climate.
Now it seems, the noble Lord has finally had to back down, sneaking what I believe is his first public recognition of the pause into a column (£) he has written for the Times.
The hiatus in surface temperature rise is real, but misleading. Warming and acidification of the ocean continues; so does the rise in sea levels and the melting of mountain glaciers.
A slow learner, it seems.