The head of the United Nations’ meteorological body warned the world was going through an “alarming rate” of global warming due to rising carbon dioxide emissions — but his statement ignored the 15-year “hiatus” in warming and 2016’s incredibly strong El Niño.
“The alarming rate of change we are now witnessing in our climate as a result of greenhouse gas emissions is unprecedented in modern records,” Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said March 21 in a statement on the release of the group’s’ new climate report.
WMO’s new “State of the Climate” report says the global average surface temperature was 0.76 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average because of man-made global warming and the current El Niño — something Taalas glossed over in his remarks.
Taalas also neglected to mention the recent rise in global average temperature, spurred by El Niño, came after a 15-year or so “hiatus” in global warming. During this period, from 1998 to 2012, global surface temperatures rose at a much slower rate than in previous decades.
