Markey: New temperatures figures more proof of climate change

The numbers tell the truth, Representative Edward Markey asserted this afternoon in his latest effort to overcome what global warming skeptics call "Climategate."

At the international climate change conference in Copenhagen, the United Nations weather agency reported today that this decade is on track to become the warmest since records began in 1850, and that 2009 could end up in the five warmest years. Only the United States and Canada had cooler conditions than average.

Skeptics have seized on embarrassing emails from climate change scientists to argue that the data has been doctored to prove that carbon emissions from humans is causing the global temperature rise.

The new findings beef up the "overwhelming scientific record that global warming is real and is accelerating," says Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who co-authored the sweeping climate change bill passed by the House in June.

“Global warming deniers are trying to say this is all a trick, but the truth of the matter is that our world is getting hotter, faster,” Markey said in a statement. “There is a mountain of evidence proving global warming is a fact, but the defenders of the fossil fuel status quo are using a molehill of a scandal to distract the world. The deniers will not win, because they are wrong.”