Last year was the hottest year ever, they screamed.

Of course “ever” generally means since 1850, or 1945 or whenever they started measuring things. Though I swear I saw or heard someone say the hottest year in the last 100,000 years. I didn’t know they had thermometers back then?

Of course there were a clatter of other records which they gleefully announced. The hottest year, the hottest month[s], the wettest, the driest, the windiest and anthing else they could point a gleeful finger at to prove we are all doomed.

They are announcing now that holding the temperature at 1.5 degrees is imminent and not in the mid century as they claimed before. In fact they are claiming it is already too late and we have reached it now. Grand. If we have reached it, then maybe they’ll stop wittering about it? The world hasn’t exploded so maybe their target will be reset to 2 degrees? That’s my bet.

There is one thing though that is puzzling me. They produced lots of graphs as people tend to do when they have a spreadsheet. This is one of them –

Now what puzzles me is the sudden massive jump. I would have expected the “hottest year” to be at the top of the wiggly lump of the previous years, but suddenly it has drastically shot up out on its own. Last year must be down amongst the grey lines but suddenly BANG! Why? What caused this jump? Nothing mankind can do will ever cause such a huge increase so it has to be something natural. They mutter about El Niño but that pops its head up every few years so that must be included a few times in the previous graphs?

So what’s the cause? Volcanoes? Solar activity? A sub-oceanic earthquake that redirected currents? Fungy the Dolphin?

Or was it an “adjustment” in their figures to make things look scary?

Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t caused by my trips to the village in my filthy petrol burning car.