"What they're sort of skating around is that the temperatures have remained pretty much flat for about ten years. If they were flat for another twenty years, they'd still be "above average," depending on what "average" is set at."

When you can ice skate on the Thames, then we will have at or below average for last few hundred years. I don't expect that will happen any time soon.
The IPCC doesn't consider this to be possible within the next century and if I thought IPCC were reliable I would take much comfort in such a prediction.
No one should want to return to the temperatures of the Little Ice Age, nor even return 1/2 way towards such average global temperatures.
Presently we are about 1 C above these colder temperatures, and I don't anyone would argue the if they had a choice they lowered global temperatures- an increase of .5 would better than a decrease of .5 C.

Personally, I think an increase of .5 C would better than current temperatures, I also think an increase of CO2 levels would better than current levels- though a sudden increase of decrease in global average temperature could be alarming. So an slow increase of global temperature over say 200 years by say 1 C, should be quite beneficial, though an increase of .5 within two decades without knowing exactly what is causing it and therefore not know whether in the future it will continue or get warmer faster, could something to be concerned about. And because of this, people concerned about global temperature in the late 90's had some basis to be concerned [not any basis for running around screaming that the world was doomed, BUT a justifiable reason to be expect a possible threat].

Today, there isn't the same rationale and today what was thought what may be possible in worst circumstance should already been seen as been disproved. Which is not to be taken to say, that rising CO2 levels will not cause any warming, but rather won't cause much warming. It's been as disproved as cold fusion has been disproved. Some still think cold fusion hasn't been disproved, many more people will hold the idea that "global warming" is the most serious threat we face.

Lefties for some reason seem to hold on to disproved ideas for a very long time- socialism being a obvious example- a flawed idea over a century old. Therefore the fear of "global warming" probably will linger for quite a long time, and even if people were skate on the Thames it could possibly still feverishly believed in.