If you thought that the Sydney Morning Herald offered serious journalism - think again

Last Saturday I happened to read an article in The Sydney Morning Herald which claimed that global warming wasn't really happening and For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there's been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.

Well, the facts may be clear to Michael Duffy of the Herald; but his interpretation is not supported by the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre he cites as supporting his position and, this research body clearly states on its website:

Climate change goes on
There is clear evidence that global temperatures are rising despite counter claims from climate sceptics.

The Centre goes on to observe:

The evidence is clear – the long-term trend is that global temperatures are rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise. Global warming does not mean that each year will be warmer than the last. Natural phenomena will mean that some years will be much warmer and others cooler.

You only need to look at 1998 to see a record-breaking warm year caused by a very strong El Niño. In the last couple of years, the underlying warming is partially masked caused by a strongLa Niña. Despite this, 11 of the last13 years were the warmest ever recorded.

Average global temperatures are now some 0.75 °C warmer than they were 100 years ago. Since the mid-1970s, the increase in temperature has averaged more than 0.15 °C per decade.

This rate of change is very unusual in the context of past changes and much more rapid than the warming at the end of the last ice age.

Sea-surface temperatures have warmed slightly less than the global average while temperatures over land have warmed at a faster rate of almost 0.3 °C per decade.

and

Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.

So exactly why did The Sydney Morning Herald decide to devote inches to Michael Duffy's reworked nonsense and hold itself up to ridicule? I'm still wondering.