The hot air seems to be going out of yet another bubble.

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07. . .

In March, a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate.

It seems much like the last climate trance period.

Then came the trance, acknowledged by former President Bill Clinton in a video interview. Low energy prices, the distraction of the first Persian Gulf war, and a temporary cool spell following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines all helped tamp down global warming as an issue through much of the 1990’s. . .

It's harder to shill for climate hysterics when the news runs against them.

I recently asked whether the world is poised to enter an Obama-style “trance” on climate policy given the focus on economic turmoil and plunge in oil prices, which have in the past seemed synchronized with concerns about transforming energy policy. (Keep in mind that the chief executive officer of Gulf Oil said Wednesday that oil could drop to $20 a barrel and gasoline $1 a gallon).

Now Maxwell Boykoff, who studies the media and climate change at Oxford University, has come up with an initial snapshot looking at climate stories over the last four years in 50 newspapers in 20 countries and (along with a colleague, Maria Mansfield) finds that the media may be entering a climate trance (or ending a bubble, depending on your view). . .

In an e-mail, Dr. Boykoff said: “Apart from that Oceania blip in mid-2008, it does seem like stagnation or decreasing coverage.

What we need is some good (bad) news to make it easier for journalists to help politicians ram bad policies down society's throat in an atmosphere of panic and doom.