The climate story of the decade is that the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s. And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s (see datasets here). Global warming is accelerating, as predicted.

The UK’s Guardian, on the other hand, believes the big climate story is “2008 will be coolest year of the decade*.” The deniers have begun pushing this meme, as Greenfyre notes here. [Even that meme assumes the decade began in 2001 -- since 2000 was quite cool -- a view mostly shared be the few dozen people who didn't celebrate at a millennial New Year's party December 31, 1999.]

Climate is about long-term trends. Perhaps the most interesting fact is that 2008 is on track to be almost 0.1°C warmer than the decade of the 1990s as a whole – and warmer than any year of last century beside (the El-Ni±o-enhanced) 1998.

The decade of the 2000s — 2000 to 2009 — will almost certainly be the hottest decade in at least 2000 years (see “Sorry deniers, hockey stick gets longer, stronger: Earth hotter now than in past 2,000 years“):

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Our guest blogger is Kevin Grandia of the DeSmog Project.

A powerful coal and oil industry lobby group called the the Western Business Roundtable is scheming to derail the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), founded by a number of progressive US states and Canadian provinces in 2007 to begin tackling carbon emissions in the face of endless inaction from their national governments. The Desmog Project has come into possession of an internal memo that the Western Business Roundtable recently sent to their members, laying bare their strategy for smearing the work of the WCI.

The WCI aims to lay the foundation for a continental cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gases 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The coalition currently has 11 member states and provinces representing 20 percent of the US, and 70 percent of the Canadian economy. They recently released their detailed recommendations for a regional cap and trade system that will be voted on for ratification by the member states and provinces.

The Western Business Roundtable is a conservative fossil-fuel industry organization whose membership includes Peabody Coal, Shell Oil, and the Western Fuels Association. WBR is a project of the right-wing public relations firm Policy Communications, which is also responsible for these other Orwellian front groups: Partnership for America, Americans for American Energy, NextGen Energy Council, and the Conservation Science Foundation.

And guess what? This group is about to release an “economic analysis” that will trash the recommendations of the WCI. Wonders never cease. The Business Roundtable memo obtained by the Desmog Project talks candidly about yet to be released “findings”: Read more

Okay, I made up that last part — but the 1976 movie Network is inching closer to reality every day.

NBC buys the Weather Channel in July and one of the first things they do is fire the environmental unit, killing TV’s only global climate change show — during their “Green Week”!

Andy Revkin reports on the millionth nail in the coffin of the MSM, “Science Journalism Implosion, CNN and Beyond,” at DotEarth:

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