A British newspaper ignites a new fight over climate change with
its interpretation of new temperature data released by the U.K.
government The British government's meteorological service
recently released new figures on global temperatures that
prompted the Daily Mail, a conservative British tabloid, to
declare: "Global warming stopped 16 years ago." The bold
headline rekindled the often bitter debate over climate change,
and what world leaders should do about it. Have climate
scientists changed their minds about what's happening to Earth's
temperatures, and how pollution affects those temperatures?
Here, a brief guide: What is the big news here? According to the
Daily Mail, The U.K.'s Met Office released new data showing that
there was no rise in aggregate global temperatures from the
beginning of 1997 until August 2012. That, the Daily Mail
reported, means that the gradual rise in the world's
temperatures has hit a "plateau" or "pause" that's lasted 16
years — roughly as long as the upward climb that ran f