My comments in a web debate after Booker's article on the Daily Telegraph's web site responding to a reasonable question from another commenter named Vaughn.

You ask me: "You quote: '...the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.' Do you take this to mean that there is no global warming?"

Let me be clear. I say
1. It is obvious that there is no global warming while the globe is cooling.
2. The globe has cooled over the last decade.

Slioch's (a cooling denialist commenter) linear trends and 5-year averages do not change these simple and obvious truths.

It is an empirical fact that the Earth has now been experiencing global cooling for such a long time that the cooling is even admitted by RealClimate. And, as I state above, to admit the existence of global cooling is to deny the existence of global warming.

But they say at RealClimate: Excerpt:
"We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Nino. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020."
So, even RealClimate (i.e. the Alamo of discredited so-called climate scientists) now admits the fact that the Earth is experiencing global cooling - at very least, RealClimate admits that global warming has stopped - and suggests that global warming will not resume "until roughly 2020." And they are trying to provide excuses for the cooling.

In other words, these global warming propagandists have recognized that their climate change denial of the last decade is not sustainable anymore. So, they have abandoned any pretence that global warming exists at the moment, and they are presenting their excuses for why the globe is cooling together with their assertions of when global warming will resume (presumably they will claim with a vengeance).

This raises three issues (two scientific and one political). Firstly, the claimed "overshoot" being responsible for the present lack of global warming is denied by the data. The easiest way to see this is to view Monckton's Figure showing recent global temperature as a composite index of global mean surface temperature anomalies, taking the mean of two surface and two satellite datasets posted here.
temperature graph
© unknown

The graph is a composite but each of the averaged data sets shows the same (as anybody can check for themselves).
Hadley CRUT3v monthly and the UAH MSU lower tropospheric vs the NOAA ESRL Mauna Loa CO2
© unknownHadley CRUT3v monthly and the UAH MSU lower tropospheric vs the NOAA ESRL Mauna Loa CO2

It is apparent that the data shows the global temperature did "overshoot" the pre-1998 trend but had returned to the trend by 2001. The global temperature has fallen since. Hence, there is no "process of radiatively dissipating" and if there were such a "process" then it had ended by 2001. Secondly, there is no reason to suppose that warming will resume in "roughly 2020". However, as I have repeatedly explained, it may - or may not - resume around 2030.

Anybody who looks at the records of recent global temperature (i.e. the most recent millennia) can see a series of cycles that are overlaid on each other. For example: There seems to be an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). And there seems to be an apparent ~60 year oscillation that caused cooling to ~1910, then warming to ~1940, then cooling to ~1970, then warming to ~2000, then cooling since.

So, has the warming from the LIA stopped or not? That cannot be known because the pattern of past global temperature fluctuations suggest that the existing cooling phase of the ~60 year cycle is opposing any such warming. And that cooling phase can be anticipated to end around 2030 when it can be anticipated that then either (a) warming from the LIA will continue until we reach temperatures similar to those of the MWP or (b) cooling will set in until we reach temperatures similar to those of the LIA.

This brings us to the political point that derives from the above scientific facts. It is a scientific conclusion that the above data does not indicate whether future warming or cooling will occur. And it is a political decision to ignore that unarguable scientific conclusion. But deniers of natural climate change do ignore it and they proclaim that human activities alone cause global warming: their climate change denial is pure superstition.

Importantly, there is no clear evidence in the data for the existence of anthropogenic (that is, man-made) global warming (AGW) induced by increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations or anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. The emissions and the concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased (the atmospheric concentration has increased by ~5%) over the last decade while the global temperature has fallen. Indeed, the Southern Hemisphere started to cool about 20 years ago and this cooling spread to include the Northern Hemisphere about 10 years ago.

However, advocates of AGW use the Precautionary Principle saying we should stop greenhouse gas emissions - notably carbon dioxide emissions - in case the AGW hypothesis is right. But that turns the Principle on its head. Stopping the emissions would reduce fossil fuel usage with resulting economic damage. This would be worse than the - oil crisis - of the 1970s because the reduction would be greater (the European Union suggests 80% reduction!), would be permanent, and energy use has increased since then. The economic disruption would be world-wide. Major effects would be in the developed world because it has the largest economies. Worst effects would be on the world's poorest peoples: people near starvation are starved by it.