The University of Maine has a website entitled “Climate Reanalyzer” which has an extraordinary amount of data on climate change. The site has recorded three successive days (3, 4, and 5 July ) in which the highest global temperatures ever measured occurred. Maine’s records are very good but they do not meet the international criteria for climate data, so we should not consider the matter decided. Nonetheless, the average global temperature is close to the mark for what matters other than record-keeping:
“Thursday’s planetary average surpassed the 62.9-degree mark (17.18-degree mark) set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. Until Monday, no day had passed the 17-degree Celsius mark (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in the tool’s 44 years of records.”
The graphic demonstration of the records is dramatic (remember–the Southern Hemisphere is currently experiencing winter):
There are several climate anomalies this year. The sea ice surrounding Antarctica is currently at its lowest recorded level for this time of year. The North Atlantic ocean is “nearly 2 degrees (1.09 Celsius) above the mean dating back to 1982, the earliest year with comparable data.” Perhaps the most frightening anomaly occurred in Algeria: “the nighttime low in Adrar, Algeria, was 39.6C (103.3F) on Thursday.”
Climate change is unquestionably the most urgent issue facing humanity today. But the current politics of the world make an effective response improbable. The answers will not be found in the current ruling generation–its interests and ideologies are too deeply entrenched in preventing change.
World Politics News 
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