Will 2009 be a 'hot year???

It seems to me that the 'easy' prediction is that the new year will be warm...here is a report by Christopher Booker in the UK...

Last week, as Britain shivered in sub-zero temperatures, the Met Office predicted that 2009 would be one of ''the five warmest years on record''.

This statement entertained various US climate experts, such as Dr Roger Pielke Sr of Colorado University, who recalled how last September the Met Office forecast that this winter in the UK would be ''milder than average'', just before we enjoyed the coldest autumn and winter for decades.

Dr Pielke also recalled the Met Office's prediction two years ago that 2007 would be globally ''the warmest year on record'', beating the ''peak'' year of 1998 (see the Watts Up With That website). Even as they made that prediction, temperatures began their steepest plunge since they toppled off that 1998 highpoint, dropping by nearly 0.7C – equivalent to the entire net warming of the 20th century.

The reason why US scientists take a particular interest in the forecasting skills of the UK Met Office is that, through its Hadley Centre, its temperature data are one of the four official sources on which the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change bases all those projections of global warming which have the Western world's politicians under such a spell.

The Met Office, which played a key part in setting up the IPCC, has long since abandoned any pretence that it is an impartial scientific body when it comes to promoting its favourite cause of man-made climate change.