Day by day, this year is getting closer to becoming declared the warmest on record. According to some scientists, it is the warmest in the last four-thousand years, no less. The trouble is that many other years in the new millennium are very close in the average global temperature achieved this year. It is getting warmer and warmer by the year, that is. But a brief search for the warmest year on the World Wide Web is great fun. Many are celebrating the horrible news. Others are deploring it. But some are bringing all sorts of evidence that this is not the warmest year on record, after all. The evidence arrayed by the key institutions concerned with meteorological phenomena is declared pure fiction. At any rate, the cacophony is simply amazing. Thus I can already envisage two humans meeting in the middle of New York City or London a century or so from now and arguing vociferously about the reasons for the deplorable ruins surrounding them. “Climate change!” yells one. “Pure fiction!” yells the other. And the winner is decided by a bloody fistfight.

Addendum (January 21, 2017)

As it turned out early in 2015, 2014 was indeed the warmest year on record. Soon enough, it was surpassed by 2015. And by quite a margin. As of a few days ago, though, the warmest year on record is 2016. Judging by the chart put together by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which points straight up the last few years, new records are just behind the corner. And 2017 is the next in line, soon to be followed by 2018, and so on. Alas, climate change is getting to be boring, boring, boring…