A chief defect with believing some theory is that a switch is flipped in the brain that predisposes most people to seek confirmation. A saner response is to be horrified when you realize that you have come to believe something, anything, since it will cost you several IQ points at minimum, and perhaps more.

The goal of the GRL paper is to show that the current period of no rise in temperature is, in Revkin’s words, “utterly normal,” and in the words of Easterling and Wehner, “entirely possible” and “likely.” Revkin was duped by the paper, and I suspect many people will be. What the paper is arguing is not that the current period of no-warming is “utterly normal” or “likely” but that such periods of no warming are “likely.” The difference is subtle but critical to understand.

I added the bold on current to contrast it with the original emphasis on such.

Easterling and Wehner have (purposely?) confused/conflated two questions, both of which are fair to ask. But they are not the same question.

One is, what are the odds of seeing a decadal cooling trend in a long period of warming?

They answer this by saying that:

. . . it is reasonable to expect that the natural variability of the real climate system can and likely will produce multi-year periods of sustained “cooling” or at least periods with no real trend even in the presence of long-term anthropogenic forced warming.

They support this argument by pointing to historical periods where a decadal lack of warming occurred and also to model runs that show similar decadal periods. This is interesting but unremarkable, and certainly not a novel claim (e.g., you can find similar claims on any number of blogs). This observation certainly wouldn’t justify publication of this paper.

The second question is, how unusual is it to see the current period of lack of warming?

Easterling and Wehner focus our attention on the current period of warming by introducing the paper as follows:

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most contentious scientific issues of our time. Not surprisingly the issue has generated numerous blogs and websites with a wide range of views on the subject. According to a number of these sources the climate is no longer warming, in fact, some claim the planet has been “cooling” since 1998.

Although Easterling and Wehner never answer the question explicitly about how rare the current period of observed warming is, they imply throughout that this is the question that they are addressing. The answer to this question is that the current period with a lack of warming is a pretty rare event.

My emphasis.

a negative decadal trend (though not statistically significant, so perhaps better called a period with a lack of warming) is according to the distribution from these models is a 1 in 10 event. In other words, if Easterling and Wehner were asked ten years ago what the odds of seeing a decade of no warming, they would have answered 10%. They further report that a statistically significant (>95%) negative decadal trend is, according to their analysis, a 1 in 100 event based on 20th century observations, and an impossibility in the 21st century, since it is not found in the realizations (Table 1 of their paper).

What we are experiencing is fairly strange, and casts doubt on the climate change industry. Yes, if you roll the dice or flip the coin enough times you can get any combination, but the chances for each remain small. It doesn't prove that the models are wrong and that it is all a hoax, but it isn't yet something that can be dismissed as a fluke and that the inexorable heating will at some point resume.

I behave as if I believe that the climate is warming, and that does horrify me. I have no business believing things, it just sort of crept up on me. I lack the expertise to make an informed judgement, and generally detest the opportunists braying about climate and using it to stampede societies into adopting stupid policies. Even though I consciously seek to remain sceptical of any and all theories on offer, matching my level of sales resistance to the level of sales pressure applied by opportunists, it is difficult to remain sensible.

That's part of what so irks me about folks like Revkin. Instead of offering insightful analysis of science news, he is part of the sales team. It may be that his career requires such behavior, but that just points out a defect in his career choice.