The rate of global warming since 1886 can be seen in this map.
Leonard Druyan and colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, US, analysed past weather patterns to determine how well commonly-used climate models performed when replicating this past weather. Source: New Scientist
Official government measurements show that the world’s temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.
That’s given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.
Proposals to combat global warming are “crazy” and will “destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family’s annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year,” the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. “High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health,” the ads asserted.
I love the way the skeptics balance their argument on 1 million "good" American jobs, when if you consider that this is the first I have heard of a "peak in 1998" rest assured I balance that risk against the inundation of many countries in the Pacific Ocean and quite a bit of South Asia as well. Those "good" old jobs do not seem that vital when compared to the destruction of over a billion lives.