We'll have a better idea after this El Nino's over.

I'm assuming you mean the political and economic aspects, Martin?

I suspect it can only ever be a slow death by strangulation as administered by politicians (elected or in business's or institutions). Like many a virus or entrenched political philosophy, it will never fully go away. It will only be contained until a couple of generations have largely forgotten it.

It will take the form of a scientific revolution, at least sociologically. An old Thomas Khun saw is that such revolutions occur "one death at a time" of the Old Guard. It might merely be through retirement though, as the old 'retire' into silence, should the data continue to uphold the standstill into the next decade. A revolution by shame, perhaps?

Or else the Young Turks will want to look at old theories in light of the new data and 'show off' with 'radical' (ie, common sense) interpretations of climate science. We saw this leak out a year ago last winter and spring and summer at the Economist, Der Spiegel, Reuters, AP, and finally in the US, AGW/CAGW bastions like The New Republic and The New York Times did stories on 'the Pause' and entertain natural variability - the uncommon common sense familiar to skeptics. Simultaneously, it seemed - but really because the submission deadlines for AR% had passed - suddenly journals re-discovered a new appreciation for natural variability, too - if only the save the Old Orthodoxy against the argument from reality - "it really isnt' warming!"

From time to time, the same reports about grad students in atmospheric science keep leaking out about how 'we know this is wrong....; but ' you cannot get your degree here' unless you kowtow to CAGW orthodoxy. This too suggests that once tenure-track and research funding source hurdles can be overcome, that Young Guns will lead the coming revolt against their elders Beliefs.

I've been re-reading Matt Ridley's "Science Heresy" lecture at the Royal Society for the Arts in Edinburgh from Oct 31, 2011 again. It will take heresy. Bold disregard for the hacktivist-scientists and their well-funded eco-freak enablers. The institutionalized support for Orthodoxy is too strong and lack of support for Heresy is too weak. It will take a fashion for heterodoxy.

Someone, some group of Rebels within the maw of government funded science will take charge and change things because good sense and self-respect demand that they dos so for themselves and science both.

This is how a scientific revolution happens.

It suits the political agenda of UNEP, the Club of Rome and the enviro-mentalists and "progressives" worldwide. The goals of the first three are to stop, and indeed, roll back economic growth and re-distribute western wealth to the developing world. That's not a conspiracy theory by the way, you can read it in UNEP's Agenda 21, and in the "Limits to Growth" the bible of the Club of Rome and its various off-shoot "clubs". The "progressives"like it because they're finding democracy tiresome and this gives them the opportunity to impose world government in environment, energy and wealth distribution.

For the politicians, overwhelmingly "progressive" it gives them the opportunity to become "leaders" a la M'Bomo who announced that climate change was the world's biggest challenge, and to tax to the hilt in the name of the "cause". It is axiomatic to "progressives" that all money belongs to the state, hence they believe not taxing is a "subsidy".

None of these people are going to go away, and when (because it is a "when") this great global warming scare goes away they'll simply grab the next opportunity as it comes along.

I'm not optimistic it will go away in my life time - the hypothesis has no known state of failure for a start. The science in AR5 looks a little more realistic but the hype didn't go away. I often wonder what's in the heads of the scientists, I've never come across a situation where a scientific proposal so miserably lacking in predictive skills is lauded by the scientific establishment ("progressives to a man and woman).

It's just time, and like the EU, we'll not have a say until we rise up (get off our arses) and start voting the politicians who support raising energy prices out of office. We could be some time getting to that state.