When we last wrote about the World Meteorological Organization it was in reference to Washington Post columnist George Will’s egregious misrepresentation of WMO data to justify his quixotic global cooling thesis. The WMO rebutted this error in a letter to the editor. Undeterred, Will kept on keeping on playing loose with the facts.
Now, we turn our attention once again to the Geneva-based UN agency as it is celebrating its 60th birthday. To mark the day, the WMO released a new report on global climate in 2009. Lo and behold: it found that 2009 was the fifth warmest year on record “since the beginning of of instrumental climate records around 1850.” Deeper still: “On the decadal scale, the analysis shows that the 2000s decade (2000–2009) was warmer than the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn were warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989) and earlier decades.” Take a look:
