The lull in global warming from 1998 to 2008 was mainly caused by a sharp rise in China’s coal use, a study suggests.
The absence of a temperature rise over that decade is often used by “climate sceptics” as grounds for denying the existence of man-made global warming.
But the new study, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming…
Lead researcher Robert Kaufmann from Boston University, whose research interests span climate change and world oil markets, said the study was inspired by “sceptical” questioning.
“Two years ago, I gave a talk to a general audience in New Jersey about climate change,” he told BBC News.
“And an older gentleman asked me ‘why should I believe in this climate change – I was watching Fox News and they said the Earth’s temperature hasn’t changed in 10 years and has actually gone down’.
“At that stage I wasn’t paying much attention to climate change – I’d returned to working on oil markets – so I went back and checked the data and found that was just about right.”
The Knight Science Journalism Tracker offers links to more reporting.
(As KSJT notes, not the “hockey stick” theory guy — the bamboo bike guy.