The hottest century

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Yes, we’re living it. For the 330th consecutive month, it’s been hotter than the 20th century average. The National Climatic Data Center released some concerning data, to say the least. The globally-averaged land surface temperature for August 2012 was the second warmest August on record, at 0.9° Celsius above average, while ocean averaged ocean surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record, at 0.52° Celsius above average.

But the most worrying thing is that this is already a trend: it’s getting hotter and hotter. Second warmest, fifth, this no longer startles or alarms us – we’re already used to it; after all, for over 25 years, without exception, August has been hotter than the average. In over a quarter of a century, any given month has done the same, which seems to strongly indicate a connection between mankind and global warming: if the warming was a natural process, you’d expect to see all sort of variations, up and down, from the average, which obviously isn’t happening.