Reporting on President Barack Obama’s September 22nd address to the United Nations Climate Summit, USA Today’s Traci Watson writes:

The Earth isn’t waiting, scientists say.

If emissions keep increasing as they have, the planet’s average temperature will rise 3 to 7 degrees by 2100, according to the U.N. climate panel’s 2007 report.

But what Watson completely fails to tell her readers, is that the “3 to 7 degrees by 2100″ temperature increase is nothing but a estimate based on computer modeling. It does not reflect an actual observed rise in temperatures. Science is based on the collection observable evidence. And the observable evidence is cutting against climate alarmist claims.

As the New York Times reports “global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.” If anything, the scientific consensus may be heading the other way. From the Times:

A clearer view of whether the recent temperature plateau undermines arguments for dangerous climate change in the long run should come in a few years, as the predictions made by the British climate researchers are tested. Their paper appeared in a supplement to an August issue of The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

While the authors concluded that there was a 1 in 8 chance of having a decade-long pause in warming like the current plateau, even with rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, the odds of a 15-year pause, they wrote, are only 5 in 100. As a result, the next few years of observations could tip the balance toward further concern or greater optimism.

So the Earth is not waiting … but possibly in the exact opposite direction Watson claims.