Drop in world temperatures fuels global warming debate
By Robert S. Boyd | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?

Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.

Proposals to combat global warming are "crazy" and will "destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family's annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year," the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. "High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health," the ads asserted.

Of course, they have to throw in the typical talking points...

Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.