[gmcquillan]

I think that if the uncertainty of the models were under threat, then this would be a bigger issue. We'd be reading about this in Nature, not The Economist.

This premise, I think, has flaws:

I didn't see any citation for the "past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat" number, but I do notice that the NASA number quoted is a five year running average (over only 10 years), which would naturally flatten any trends over that time frame.

It seems like this notion that "warming is over" is pretty cyclical. Check out: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-...

This image in particular is interesting: http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_500....