When Climate Change deniers repeat an oft-regurgitated statistic – that earth’s surface temperatures have not warmed over the past 17 years – they are wrong.  And now, they are demonstrably wrong, thanks to the new research led by James Risbey, a senior CSIRO researcher.

In a study published on Monday in Nature Climate Change, a team led by Dr. Risbey examined the data and found that climate models predicting warming surface temperatures were pretty accurate, as long as they took into account natural variability, such as the key El Nino-La Nina phases in the Pacific Ocean. 

Risbey says that skeptics tend to rely on the naturally cool “La Nina” phase of the global cycle to debunk the climate change theory but the fact is different.  But even during the cooler phases, overall temperature records were being set.

“We will always set more heat records during an El Nino (phase).. than we will during the opposite.  But we’re still setting records even during the cold phase because we're still warming,” said Risbey.