Forget what global warming activists would lead you to believe – 2015 was not even close to the hottest year on record.
Satellite temperature readings going back to 1979 show 1998 was by far the warmest year in the satellite era, followed by 2010. 2015 comes in third. And these results are only for the period since 1979.
2015 should have been warmer. This past year saw what is likely the most powerful El Nino during the satellite temperature record. With a record El Nino, we should have experienced record high temperatures. Yet we didn’t.
A record El Nino resulting in less-than-record temperatures is another sign that global warming is not all that activists crack it up to be. Indeed, if a record strong El Nino cannot bring global temperatures back to the warmth of 1998, what can – and when will that be? 18 years after 1998, global warming still has not created the runaway warming we were told to expect.
Satellite temperature measurements show 1998 and 2010 were warmer than 2015. Image courtesy of drroyspencer.com.
Of course, it is not too difficult for activists to paint a picture of an exceptionally warm world – record El Nino or not – when they conveniently define “the record” as merely extending back to the late 1800s. Global warming activists do not extend “the record” back any further, they say, because it has only been since the late 1800s that we have had a global network of mercury thermometers. But we do have other reliable indicators of temperatures before the late 1800s, and the evidence shows temperatures have been warmer than today for most of the past several thousand years, including warmer-than-present temperatures for most of the human civilization time period.
