It is possible that the scientific disagreement could spill over into the skeptic blogosphere. But that is not reason enough to sweep the slowdown under the rug, said Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University and a co-author.

“As scientists, we must go where the evidence takes us, we can’t allow our worries about climate contrarians and how they might seek to misrepresent our work to dictate what we do and do not publish,” he said.

The blowback against the NOAA study has been some time coming. Tom Karl, lead author of the NOAA study and director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, and his colleagues compared warming over the past 15 years with the long-term temperature trend between 1950 and 1998 (a 48-year stretch).

But scientists say Karl’s comparison of a 15-year stretch with a 48-year stretch was somewhat arbitrary. It is meant to answer the question, has global warming stopped in the long run? The answer to that is a resounding “no,” they say.