Quick Fact: WSJ's Freeman claims “there hasn't been any warming since 1998”; climate experts disagree

Special Programs Climate & Energy

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Wall Street Journal assistant editorial page editor James Freeman claimed that efforts to pass cap and trade legislation will fail because there is “no premise” for such legislation since “there hasn't been any warming since 1998,” later adding that “there's no proof that this is happening as a result of man's activities, in fact, lately, it's not even happening anymore.”

From the November 21 edition of Fox News' The Journal Editorial Report:

FREEMAN: $800 billion is a lot of money. The cost is huge, and that's probably an underestimate. But, you know, there's also that little detail that there hasn't been any warming since 1998, so.

STUART VARNEY (host): But what really killed it here? Was it economics, was it the cost that killed it, or something else?

FREEMAN: Well, what is the argument for it? If you're saying this is a massive cost, even bigger than this crazy stimulus, even bigger than the TARP, and by the way, there's no proof that this is happening as a result of man's activities, in fact, lately, it's not even happening anymore. So it basically has no premise right now.

Fact: Climate scientists reject conservative claim that recent global average temperatures indicate global warming has stopped

Climate experts reject the idea that the relatively cooler global average temperatures in several of the last 10 years are any indication that global warming is slowing or does not exist. Scientists have identified a long-term warming trend spanning several decades that is independent from the normal climate variability -- which includes relatively short-term changes in climate due to events like El Niño and La Niña -- to which they attribute the recent cooler temperatures.

Fact: Climate experts overwhelmingly believe global warming caused by “man's activities”

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 "Synthesis Report" concluded that "[w]arming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level" and that "[m]ost of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [defined in the report as a ">90%" chance] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [human-caused] GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations." According to its website, IPCC is “the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)," and "[t]housands of scientists from all over the world contribute to" its work.