Whether he believes global warming is anthropogenic or not is irrelevant. He believes in global warming itself, which makes him an idiot...or, more likely, afraid to go against the popular mythology.
I know, as well as you, there has been a plateau.
Even the serious climate protagonists can see there was a mild warming trend on the macro scale through the 1900s. There are constant normal trends throughout history.. it’s a cycle.. sign waves up and down.
Sometimes you are on an up slope... a warming trend, and sometimes you are on a down slope ... a cooling trend.
It is in fact possible to agree that raw data from the 30s through the 90s showed a warming trend and still believe it to be completely normal and not based on CO2 or other gas emissions. In fact, there is some highly credible science indicating that the correlation between ghg and warming exists, but that the causation is backwards. Warming, normal, predictable warming, causes ghg as opposed to the Al Gore climate pumps who see the correlation and refuse to investigate causation that doesn’t fit the it political narrative.
The point is ... Warming happens. So does cooling. To say that someone is an idiot for admitting that reality is reality is somewhat absurd.