Is it Still Global Warming if the Planet isn’t Warming?

Not only has the planet not warmed over the last decade, but new peer-reviewed research suggests that it might not warm over the coming decade.  Reports the Daily Telegraph:

Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.

This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.

However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.

Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: “The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that.”

This creates an exquisite philosophical dilemma:  can the planet be warming if it isn’t warming?  I’m sure the Goracle will be able to enlighten us.

Of course, the computer models tell us that warming will eventually restart.  But didn’t those same models tells us that we would be warming now?  Hmm …