At long last the mainstream media are paying attention to global warming sceptics

The failure of the Earth to warm since the start of the century has been a talking point for global warming sceptics for many years, but it is only in the past few months that the mainstream media have started to pay attention too. In recent weeks the Economist, Channel Four News, and even ultra-green writers like the Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean have sat up and taken notice. And on top of the pause, a series of recent studies of how fast temperature will rise in response to carbon dioxide emissions has produced estimates that are decidedly un-scary.

Together with the plateau in global temperatures these estimates have a profound impact on energy policy: less warming means less damage and lower costs in the future, and of course it is much harder to justify spending to avoid a low cost than a large one. In particular, it is likely that wind farms, which may well fail a cost/benefit analysis on the old, higher estimates of global warming, will become absurdly expensive when those estimates are reduced.