Yes, they are, because every skeptical site out there is latching onto a cool La Nina year as "proof" that global warming has "stopped". And all these articles get posted here.
When the La Nina ends in May/June/July, average global monthly temeperatures will return to normal or above-normal. Write it down. I've got a particularly tasty sauce good for headwear if necessary, but I don't expect to have to use it.
But will that really matter if Solar Cycle 24 stays at minimum levels? A mild summer in the northern hemisphere (much as Australia, for example, is apparently having now) with not much ice melt followed by another cold winter is a real likelihood at this time and not just a matter for skeptics and AGW to take notice of.
I don’t mean that a chart of the coming months temperatures vs the previous year’s will continue to decline as it did in 2007 (it could well flat line for all that’s worth); however, one thing may well be finally true: people may have to come to the realization that climate change here on Earth is governed by the state of “Glowball Warmth” since it is the Sun’s output that is the underlaying fact behind global warmth no matter how it may be trending.
And if this cold-snap isn’t just a cold-snap and goes on to cause problems they may reassess their opinion about how bad “warming” actually is, too. Warm periods (and there have been warmer periods than just recently in human history) have historically been good to human civilization and, by logical extension, to nature as a whole because we have not (even at this time for much of the world) been far from subsistence. Cold, on the other hand, has been bad for everyone each and every time.
Not really, the more respectable ones are pointing out that 1998 was a warming hype year and point out problems with GISS.