"World's hottest day since records began"
(Science Week, day 5!)
Today's short article from Matt McGrath at the BBC recounts an estimated record-breaking temperature last summer – apparently Earth's hottest day since the availability of temperature readings over a century earlier. In this case, "El Niño" happens to augment the heat with its non-yearly but recurring contribution from the tropical Pacific Ocean area. And this temperature is the latest high point of a slow upward trend.
These are topics now regularly surfaced in political and corporate venues. But the magnitudes of changes in a planet's average temperature, of its melting ice and resulting rise of its oceans, and the ability of its atmosphere to foster the locking-in of sunny energy, are not political questions, but scientific questions, or more plainly, questions of fact.
I've little more to add, so with what sentiment do I share this simple information today? I think I'm encouraged that we have this history of data, and that scientists are able to be present to observe so much of what occurs to them. Since there are less scientifically-motivated entities with selfish reasons to ignore the consequences of this particular steady trend, I can imagine an alternate world in which humanity lacked scientists to take such measurements and make such calculations. Observation of reality is where science begins, and there's no science without it.