Global Warming

George Will noted in a WaPo editorial
according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.



Jonathan Chait of Tne New Republic, Steve Benen of Washington Monthly, and Get Energy Smart whined Will (again) cites the unusually hot year of 1998 to prove that the planet isn't warming. He fails to understand a very basic concept in data that you don't need any particular social science expertise to grasp, which is that trends don't always move in a perfectly straight line. The planet has been getting warmer,

At least until 1998, and since then it has gotten cooler.

and there was an extreme spike in 1998.

And the GW hysteria has been built around such a spike. And now the spike is used against them.

Both these things can be true.

But because something CAN be true, does not mean it is.

Michel Jarraud of WMO said It is a misinterpretation of the data and of scientific knowledge to point to one year as the warmest on record and then to extrapolate that cooler subsequent years invalidate the reality of global warming and its effects.

And it is equally invalid to pretend that the cooling that has happened since 1998 never took place.