The pace of global warming hasn’t slowed since 1998, a finding that contradicts a major United Nations study and challenges a key argument of skeptics of manmade climate change. Temperatures since 2000 have risen at a pace that is “virtually indistinguishable” from the rate of the five preceding decades, researchers led by Thomas Karl at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday in the journal Science. That challenges the biggest-ever UN study on warming published in September 2013, which found that the rate of temperature gains had fallen by more than half since 1998. Doubters of man’s influence on the climate have cited the reported slowdown as proof that the scientific understanding of climate change isn’t robust and steps to cut greenhouse gases aren’t worth the cost. “A whole cottage industry has been built by climate skeptics on the false premise that there is currently a hiatus […]