Instability is the first thing that one will notice if presented with climate data, on almost any scale. That is why the flat-line in global surface air temperature that began in 1998 is so unexpected. The debate over climate change is largely partisan, unscientific, acrimonious, and unyielding to moderation. But both sides in this political trench warfare seem to quietly admit that this stability cannot last, and that they’d better be prepared with spin pre-packaged when it comes undone.

From the perspective of alarmists, the longer we go without managing even 0.01 °C of warming, the further off their “drop dead limit” of 2° C gets. So predictably, a comment recently appeared in Nature written by David Victor and Charles Kennel (PDF) urging everyone to just forget about that 2° C thing. Like hurricanes that fail to appear and sea levels that don’t rise, surface air temperature is losing favor as a motivational factor. Climate alarmists are now searching for a “thing” to keep fighting, even if their main thing, which is warming, drops out on them.

In the other camp, climate realists are also taken somewhat aback by the duration of this stability, and readily admit that surface air temperature can’t be predicted in advance and may go in any direction, up or down. The problem for them comes if it starts back up. Does that mean that all of the failed climate models that blundered so badly for the last 20 years will be rehabilitated? Again, to get in ahead of the data, a recent post on the blog Climate etc. throws a preemptive strike at the possibility that the next flip of the global climate coin comes up heads – for Hotter:

The coincidence of the current plateau in global surface temperatures with the continuing rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has raised many questions about the climate models and their forecasts of serious anthropogenic global warming.

Or as Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”