Everything old is new again. But just because we have 1970s gas prices shouldn’t mean we have to embrace 1970s climate science.

Global warming contrarians, goaded by the puckish jockeys of the media slapping the sweaty flanks of Rush Limbaugh, are on cloud nine reading the recent study in Nature that suggests that global warming is going to “take a break” for a couple of decades. But these people also think global warming stopped in 1998 and that an insignificant adjustment of US temperature data means 1934 is the warmest year on record and that, thus, global warming is hooey. Which is to say contrarians are not very good at reading past their own biases.

But a study in Nature could be the real deal. The guys at RealClimate (nor William Connolley at Stoat) don’t think the forecast holds water and are actually putting money on it — thousands of pounds sterling. That’s a lot of money in 1970s dollars — and today’s.

Regardless, nothing here suggests that long-term anthropogenic global warming is not occurring or will not occur. A brief respite might be statistically expected, but as with brief amplifications like 1998’s ENSO, it will come, if it comes, and go, leaving us with a slow ramp up to the top, and from what I can tell, the view’s not going to be something to write home about.

To commemorate, I’ve posted an article I wrote last year and never published. You can find it over on the left under “Articles.”