The experts are befuddled and recognize that they are without a rational reason for the global warming pause, other than the obvious: natural climate change.
If the current 17-year trend continues, the oceans would warm by an almost unmeasurable one-tenth of a degree Celsius by year 2100. (The 17-year period is 204 months, starting with January 1, 1997 - that is before the super El Nino phenomenon of 1997-1998)
The adjacent charts (courtesy of ocean expert Bob Tisdale) plot the temperature changes for each major ocean basin since late 1981.
The red vertical line on each chart denotes the date of January 1997. The trend data in the corner of each chart assumes the trend from 1997 will continue to year 2100 (warming: trends are not predictions).
From these individual charts, we learn that the northern hemisphere is warming while the southern isn't; it's warming for all the Atlantic basins yet cooling for all the Pacific basins.
Clearly, the CO2-centric AGW hypothesis, and its associated climate models, provide no explanation for this mishmash. It's hard enough for the "experts" to even explain why the Arctic basin warming took off in recent years, while the Southern Ocean basin did the exact opposite, let alone trying to make sense of this global 'mishmash' using the rather lame construct of CO2 greenhouse gas causation.
Summary: The expert consensus was wrong about global warming; the AGW hypothesis is without empirical evidence merit; climate science is not settled, nor will it be in near future; and climate change will continue regardless of CO2 emissions.
Additional temperature and climate charts.
Note: Bob Tisdale used NOAA's Nomad web site to create the charts. The Nomad ocean dataset is the highest resolution climate record available but it only goes back to 1981. Bob Tisdale article the charts pulled from.