Denier blogs are going through a hiatus so I wandered a bit and got to reading a conversation, of sorts, at Judith Curry's blog (archived here). A couple of pro-science types decided to join in to help inform lurkers, while deniers were busy flogging their dead horses.
The subject was the slowdown on global mean surface temperature over the past few years, when various influences came together in a particular way. (Eg the PDO in a cool phase, volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere etc).
At one point someone wrote how he didn't think scientists anticipated natural variability in climate. He was questioning Tamsin Edwards who he reported as writing: "That pause in warming of the atmosphere surprised the media and public, even though scientists always expected this kind of thing could happen in the short term".
