I OPEN THIS COLUMN WITH A DRAMATIC BREAKING DEVELOPMENT in the debate over climate change, one that has brought joy to Wall Street and every oil, gas and coal conglomerate in the land.

The hyping of a so-called 15-year “pause” in global warming is the biggest story in energy industry circles, carried expansively in all of its glory by most of the media. Most crucially, this 15-year “pause” documents the fallacy of that reprehensible “warming” fear-mongering and its negative impacts on productive energy conglomerates. Clearly a surprising development of this significance increases doubts about the accuracy of gloom-and-doom predictions of rabid environmentalists about everything, much less “warming.”

By now much of the public has been alerted to the existence of this startling development, and the magical phrase “15-year pause,” available to every industry flack in the land, has become a staple of city and county council planning debate. No more the need to consider industry decisions that might lift the temperature to uncomfortable levels. Those old scare stories have lost their bite.

Ah, but now for the rest of the story. Or we could more easily and should more accurately say, now back to the real world.

1998, the first year of this supposedly monumental improvement in our prospects — that is, energy corporation prospects — was clearly an abnormally hot year. It was a year that had an unusually strong El Niño, temporarily amplifying atmospheric temperatures. Analysis of realities in reporting in 1999 and since has been remarkably shallow, which has contributed greatly to the ensuing confusion.

Let’s begin with that term “pause,” which we find explained for us in an October 2013 piece by Chris Mooney titled “Who Created the Global Warming ‘Pause’? How climate skeptics and the media — with a little inadvertent help from scientists themselves — forged a misleading narrative.”

“This, you might think, would be quite a media story. Yet instead, something funny happened on the way from the scientists’ heads to the public’s ears, with many journalists embracing a very different narrative — in many ways, almost the opposite narrative. Global warming, they suggested, had ‘paused’ or was slowing down. And scientists didn’t really understand why.

“How could this disconnect from reality, this huge divergence of narratives, have happened? What follows is the story of a communications failure that is ultimately dangerous for all of us.” (Emphasize all of us to include a few hundred generations!) “And it was brought on by a combination of causes that, unfortunately, we’ve seen work together before to mar the communication of climate science: misinformation from climate skeptics, false balance and just plain bad science reporting from much of the media, and to top it all off, poor communication by scientists themselves.

“… To begin, let’s turn to the tape. On September 26 — just before the IPCC report’s September 27 release — CBS News provided a textbook case of misleading journalism focused on the alleged global warming ‘pause.’ Sadly, in coverage of the new IPCC report, it was far from an exceptional one.

“At the outset of the segment, CBS’s Mark Phillips intoned: ‘Another inconvenient truth has emerged on the way to the apocalypse. The new UN report on climate change is expected to blame man-made greenhouse gases more than ever for global warming. But there’s a problem. The global atmosphere hasn’t been warming lately.’

“Then followed an animation, seeming to show that since the year 1998, rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere haven’t been matched by rising temperatures. Soon, CBS cut to a scientist trying to explain this apparent global warming ‘pause’ by saying that the missing heat has gone into the oceans. Then, presumably for balance, came an interview with a climate skeptic who, when asked whether the ‘pause’ blunts the urgency of doing something about global warming, replied that ‘It has already.’

“We all expect Fox News to sow doubt about global warming. But in coverage of the IPCC report, a storyline like CBS’s seemed to show up regularly, and not just at conservative outlets. ‘What I find really dismaying is how much even the very scientifically informed media has bought into the false story line about a “pause” in overall warming,’ says Peter Frumhoff, a climate scientist and the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. There were good stories as well, but there were quite a lot of ‘pause’ stories. Indeed, in the press conference following the report’s release in Stockholm, this ‘pause’ was the topic most asked about by journalists.

“This has occurred despite the fact that claiming that global warming has ‘paused’ is deeply misleading. The IPCC explained as much in its just-released report, where it noted that although the rate of warming is somewhat smaller over the last 15 years, selectively seizing on this period, from 1998-2012, basically represents a case of bad statistics.

“After all, the year 1998 was a record temperature year, due to a strong El Niño. So by making it the first year of an analysis you’re stacking the deck. ‘If you shift just 2 years earlier, so use 1996-2010 instead of 1998-2012, the trend is 0.14 C per decade, so slightly greater than the long-term trend,’ explains Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA who was heavily involved in producing the IPCC report. This is why climate scientists generally don’t seize on 15-year periods and make a big thing about them.

“The ‘pause’ is thus more about media innumeracy than it is about the atmosphere. But nonetheless, and very sadly indeed, to a large extent the narrative seems to have taken hold.”

Finally, are we warming? Cooling? Flooding or drying up? In a media environment in which the unique normally overwhelms the dull factual, I thought I would include a very unusual factual piece concerning global warming, including its relationship to a very (extremely!) large body of water.

It is a piece authored by Denise Robbins, “Media Ignore Study Finding Ocean Warming 15 Times Faster Than In Past 10,000 Years,” subtitled, “TV Media Neglect To Cover Evidence Explaining The ‘Pause’ They Amplified,” from Nov. 5, 2013.

“A new study found that over the last 60 years the intermediate depths of the Pacific Ocean have warmed 15 times faster than in the past 10,000 years, providing more evidence that the ‘slowdown’ in atmospheric temperature warming over the last 15 years may simply be due to the oceans storing more heat. However, this study was neglected by the same TV outlets who hyped the ‘slowdown’ or ‘pause,’ without including this crucial context.

“The study, published in Science on November 1, shows the enormous potential for oceans to act as a ‘storehouse for heat and energy,’ providing support for the notion that a recent speed bump in atmospheric temperature rise in the past 15 years can be explained by excess heat from global warming being absorbed by the oceans. Study coauthor and Columbia University climate scientist Braddock Linsley explained, ‘We’re experimenting by putting all this heat in the ocean without quite knowing how it’s going to come back out and affect climate.’

“The recent findings were not covered by top U.S. TV outlets, even though many of those same outlets recently focused on the ‘slowdown.’ A Media Matters study found that forty-one percent of media coverage of the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) major report mentioned the ‘slowdown.’

“Focus on the warming ‘pause’ has received criticism as it’s misleading to use a short-term time period to draw conclusions. The IPCC explained, ‘natural variability and short-term factors’ cause uncertainty, and the short time period is ‘very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends.’”

We close with a relevant quote on “balanced reporting,” from “False Balance Often Leads To Quoting Those Without Any Credentials,” Oct. 1, 2013, by biologist Steve Jones, who was tasked with evaluating the quality of the BBC’s science reporting in 2011.

Jones explained why quoting non-experts criticizing climate science is “absurd”:

“This goes to the heart of science reporting — you wouldn’t have a homeopath speaking alongside a brain surgeon for balance, as that would be absurd. It’s just as absurd to have a climate sceptic for balance against the work of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists.”

And so it goes in the land of the freely confused.

Jerome Page is a Benicia resident.