“Climatologists baffled by Global Warming Time-Out” declares the headline in Germany’s Spiegel online. “Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.”

Whatever the cause, it remains that there’s been no time out in the production of so-called “greenhouse gases.” More are being pumped out worldwide and the atmospheric concentration is higher than ever. Yet even while “The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s,” it’s gone nowhere since then.

It what may a poor choice of words, Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, told Spiegel, “”It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community.”