Global temperature rise ended sixteen years ago

NewsNM commentary (Spence) - Would it be cynical to try to use the horrific damage on the east coast to trumpet a political position? We saw Bill Clinton trying to blame Hurricane Sandy on global warming in Colorado the day after the storm suggesting Mitt Romney doesn't care about death and destruction. Al Gore piled on. The trouble with these dubious tactics is we have had tropical cyclones for all of recorded history. Despite dire predictions after Katrina that we were facing much more frequent storms the last seven years have been relatively calm. Still, anytime we have a storm that make landfall in a vulnerable spot on the map where there is a concentration of media outlets, the man-made climate change crowd uses the situation as a chance to promote funding more bankrupt green energy ideas. Nobody ever points out the fact if these people get their way it will drive up the price of reliable energy. None of these political hucksters seems to be willing to talk about real data (see below). The mainstream media also gave scant coverage of it. Take a close look at the temperature graph.
Daily Mail - Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it:

The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. This means that the "pause" in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the Internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.  This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.  Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Global temperature rise ended sixteen years ago