“NASA just released their new report on global warming or, as President Bush, calls it — Spring.” –Jay Leno

The recent Science has an editorial by Richard Kerr, Mother Nature Cools the Greenhouse, But Hotter Times Still Lie Ahead. He reports on the results of short-term model runs at the Hadley Center in England showing masking of warming due to natural changes in ocean currents. This is why temperatures have not been increasing as noted here and here.

So it is natural to ask, if natural cycles are masking global warming, why hasn’t the same natural cycle also been enhancing the appearance of warming, so that global warming appears greater than it is? A natural question, but one that doesn’t occur to Kerr to address in his article. More warming bias I suppose.

Kerr also acknowledges the climate stability:

As climate-change skeptics like to point
out, worldwide temperatures haven’t risen
much in the past decade. If global warming
is such hot stuff, they ask, why hasn’t it
soared beyond the El Niño–driven global
warmth of 1998?

Actually, pointing out recent cooling, branded as ‘devilish’ by Jim Hansen on NASA in
his newsletter, is simply being objective about the numbers.

However, while Kerr claims putting numbers on the cycle is supposed to be a rebuttal,
the numbers only have force if the counter-argument is contained,
that past warming could have been due to the other phase of the cycle.
Otherwise this is a case of numbers being misused to provide false authority.

Mainstream climate
researchers reply that greenhouse warming
isn’t the only factor at work. And in a new
paper, they put some numbers on that rebuttal.

Here are a couple of link to very informative, up-to-date information on the issue of ocean cycles and climate.

Is the Earth getting warmer or cooler?

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The Relationship of the PDO to El Nino and La Nina Frequency