…are “looking less likely.” The climbdown begins, at least at the BBC.

But remember, we’re still doomed:

Is there any succour in these findings for climate sceptics who say the slowdown over the past 14 years means the global warming is not real?

“None. No comfort whatsoever,” he said.

Well. All right then.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Guardian says we can’t let our guard down:

Otto said that this most recent pattern could not be taken as evidence that climate change has stopped. “Given the noise in the climate and temperature system, you would need to see a much longer period of any pause in order to draw the conclusion that global warming was not occurring,” he said. Such a period could be as long as 40 years of the climate record, he said.

Got that? Only warming trends are important. Cooling is irrelevant.

And their unjustified self confidence never flags:

Richard Allan, reader in climate at the University of Reading, said: “This work has used observations to estimate Earth’s current heating rate and demonstrate that simulations of climate change far in the future seem to be pretty accurate. However, the research also indicates that a minority of simulations may be responding more rapidly towards this overall warming than the observations indicate.”

He said the effect of pollutants in the atmosphere, which reflect the sun’s heat back into space, was particularly hard to measure.

He noted the inferred sensitivity of climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations based on this new study, suggesting a rise of 1.2C to 3.9C, was consistent with the range from climate simulations of 2.2C to 4.7C. He said: “With work like this our predictions become ever better.”

Onward, comrades!