We've known since Climategate and the emails from the East Anglia climate center that warming advocates have been well aware of the lack of rising temperatures on the earth since at least 2000.

Now, confronted with irrefutable evidence from one of global warming's biggest boosters - NASA - scientists who have based their careers and reputations on climate change are scrambling to explain the lack of warming.

Reuters:

A rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s - when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth's surface - made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame.

The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel's chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.

According to Pachauri, temperature records since 1850 "show there are fluctuations. They are 10, 15 years in duration. But the trend is unmistakable."

The IPCC has consistently said that fluctuations in the weather, perhaps caused by variations in sunspots or a La Nina cooling of the Pacific, can mask any warming trend and the panel has never predicted a year-by-year rise in temperatures.

Experts say short-term climate forecasts are vital to help governments, insurers and energy companies to plan.

Governments will find little point in reinforcing road bridges over rivers, for instance, if a prediction of more floods by 2100 doesn't apply to the 2020s.

A section of a draft IPCC report, looking at short-term trends, says temperatures are likely to be 0.4 to 1.0 degree Celsius (0.7-1.8F) warmer from 2016-35 than in the two decades to 2005. Rain and snow may increase in areas that already have high precipitation and decline in areas with scarcity, it says.

Pachauri said climate change can have counter-intuitive effects, like more snowfall in winter that some people find hard to accept as side-effects of a warming trend. An IPCC report last year said warmer air can absorb more moisture, leading to heavier snowfall in some areas.

A study by Dutch experts this month sought to explain why there is now more sea ice in winter. It concluded melted ice from Antarctica was refreezing on the ocean surface - this fresh water freezes more easily than dense salt water.

Some experts challenged the findings.

"The hypothesis is plausible I just don't believe the study proves it to be true," said Paul Holland, an ice expert at the British Antarctic Survey.

What the climate scientists won't admit that there is now little justification for huge cutbacks in emissions that would cost the industrial world trillions in lost GDP, and cost people their jobs. From the beginning, the impetus for "doing something" about global warming has been a strain of anti-industrialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-human progress from greens and other extremists. They have lost substantial ground in recent years as climate hysterics have gotten nuttier and nuttier in their predictions.

A more rational policy is called for based on solid, unspectacular science and the scientific method. Pushing the alarmists to the sideliness would be a good first step.