International report confirms: 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record
 
Climate markers continue to show global warming trend
 
 
In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth's changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases ─ setting new records. These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014 report released online by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
 

• Greenhouse gases continued to climb
• Record temperatures observed near the Earth's surface
• Tropical Pacific Ocean moves towards El Niño-Southern Oscillation conditions
• Sea surface temperatures were record high
• Global upper ocean heat content was record high
• Global sea level was record high
• The Arctic continued to warm; sea ice extent remained low
• The Antarctic showed highly variable temperature patterns; sea ice extent reached record high
• Tropical cyclones above average overall

http://www.sciencedaily.c...15/07/150717141444.htm

And what about the possible coming mini ice age?
http://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
 

I blow hot and cold on these subjects.

All I know is it's going to be 98 with very high humidity. 

Not much different out here in the Pacific Northwest either.  We're going from 81 degrees F two days ago to a mini-heat wave this weekend where it's supposed to be 98 today (but very dry).  Weird weather!

bayoubill
All I know is it's going to be 98 with very high humidity. 

It's what the newspaper says will be today here in PDX/Vancouver, too!!!!
 
Like Craig ... we probably missing the rain by now ... even my rhubarb crop suffered this year ... only got it once, not the usuall twice as the early heat killed the first batch!

As I recall, the globe was a lot warmer than this for quite a while prior to the last ice age.  Man, those were some tough times ...

I saw a program a few years ago that showed the results from hundreds of VERY long 3,000 meter core samples taken near the poles.  It showed that the Earth has been warmer than this a few times, but not by very much and not for very long.  By far the Earth has spent the bulk of the last 200,000 years in an ice age.  In fact, being warm enough for life to take off is fairly rare.

More information can be found at THIS website including a graph that goes back 400,000 years and illustrates the point I was making above.