"If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the ongoing noise about global warming, then you’ve heard of the so-called 'pause'. This is the idea that the planet hasn’t actually been warming for the past 15 years or so."
"However, this is baloney. First off, the plot used by people who would deny the Earth is warming up (and that humans are behind it) only shows the temperature of the air over land and ocean. But our atmosphere (pardon the weird metaphor) doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the extra heat retained by our planet is also warming the oceans. In fact, most of that heat is going into deep ocean waters.
Second, if you look at temperatures historically, we see ups and down like this every few decades; you have to look at the overall multi-decade trend, and not focus on some short (and cherry-picked) time frame."
Phil Plait reports for Slate December 16, 2013.
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