Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago

The Earth stopped getting warmer nearly 16 years ago, according to newly released data — from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in global temperatures.

This pause or “plateau” in warming has now persisted for about the same length of time as the previous period when temperatures rose, from 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years, The Daily Mail reported.

The new figures were compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea by Hadcrut 4, a joint effort involving the British weather service’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

They found that since 1880, “when worldwide industrialization began to gather pace and reliable statistics were first collected on a global scale,” according to the Mail, the planet has warmed by only about 1.3 degrees F.

Prof. Jones downplayed the significance of the “plateau,” saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period to provide convincing evidence.

But Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech, told the Mail it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were “deeply flawed.”

The U.K.’s Parliament has committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050 to combat global warming, which some scientists predict will increase global temperatures by a catastrophic five degrees by the end of this century.

But as the new figures were being released, the government said it would proceed with building new power plants to counter the threat of blackouts.

New Energy Minister John Hayes vowed at a Conservative Party conference that “the high-flown theories of bourgeois left-wing scientists will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport.”