Fair and balanced reporting on climate change in the mainstream media? I know such sightings are about as rare as those of hormone-free unicorn steaks, but every now and then it’s nice to be surprised — as I was by this McClatchey Newspapers piece on the decline in average global temperatures since 1998.

The reporter did justice to both sides of the dispute about the relevance of the recent temperature decline to the debate about climate models. He even quoted the brilliant John Christy on the larger issue:

John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who often sides with the skeptics, agreed that the cooling won’t last.

“The atmosphere is just now feeling the bump in tropical Pacific temperatures related to El Niño,” Christy said in an e-mail. July experienced “the largest one-month jump in our 31-year record of global satellite temperatures. We should see a warmer 2009-2010 due to El Niño.”

Christy added, however: “Our ignorance of the climate system is still enormous, and our policy makers need to know that. . . . We really don’t know much about what causes multi-year changes like this.”