According to NASA, 2009 was the 2d warmest year on record, tied with a few other years, including 1998.

2005 was the warmest year on record

All of the top eleven warmest years on record have occurred since the beginning of 1998.

Not according to long time Washington Post syndicated columnist George Will, who makes up his own facts,  and comes up with some fairly twisted logic — perhaps for these reasons expressed here — and the Post calls it “debate.”  But then, to the Post, this is “debate” also. But not this.

The NY Times notes that:

A separate preliminary analysis from the National Climatic Data Center, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that 2009 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record, based on measurements taken on land and at sea.

The Times elects to also add:

The new temperature figures provide evidence in the scientific discussion of global warming but are not likely to be the last word on whether the planet’s temperature is on a consistent upward path.

The interesting thing is this use of the word “consistent.”   What does that mean? Climate change means expected increases in temperatures, and increasing variability. More importantly, the relevance of several years in terms of climate shifts are about as meaningful as measuring the weather shifts between a Monday and a Thursday during any random week, in ascertaining whether we are heading toward winter, or summer.

The Times goes much further to show how “balanced” it is, however. To it’s article on 2009 temperatures, it adds:

The question of whether the planet is heating and how quickly was at the heart of the so-called “climategate” controversy that arose last fall when hundreds of e-mail messages from the climate study unit at the University of East Anglia in England were released without authorization.

Critics seized on the messages as evidence that, in their view, climate scientists were manipulating data and colluding to keep contrary opinion out of scientific journals. But climate scientists and political leaders affirmed what they called a broad-based consensus that the planet was growing warmer, and on a consistent basis, although with measurable year-to-year variations.

Does one see anywhere in this article how there is a several decade lag between an atmospheric heat re radiation forcing (what increased greenhouse gas concentrations, by trapping more heat, result in) and actual effects?  Does one see anywhere in the article how effects that result from any increased concentrations are not likely to be linear, but accelerating, or, more importantly,the reasons why?  [See endnote [i] to this, or middle section, here.] Does one see that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are significantly above any level that we have been able to measure — through ice core sampling — over the past three quarters of a million years (while levels of methane, the next most significant greenhouse gas, have skyrocketed above even the highest levels of the past three quarters of a million years)? Or that the atmospheric concentrations of these gases is rising at what, from a geologic perpsective, is almost instantaneous speed?

No.  But one does see how this is “not likely to be the last word” on whether the climate is in fact warming, even though, what one does not see, is that the reasons for this broad based scientific consensus, are pretty basic. [See here.] Or the actual ideological rather than scientific reasons behind why this is not likely to be the “last word” on climate change itself,  rather than the more sensible question,as to what to do about it.

And one of course sees what a big deal “climate gate” was.  One does not see this NASA chart, which has now gone up even more. Nor does one see that the levels of increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will likely not result in a one to one correlation with actual effects — consistent with nearly everything else in nature and science. Nor does one see that much of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations has occurred over the past several decades, causing compounded effects (on top of earlier,already anthropogenic increased levels) that we will see well after their cause has been instituted, not contemporaneously with.