The record goes back to 1880, you see.
But since we've been emerging from a little ice age since around 1850, the fact that our planet is warming should not be a shock.
What should be a shock is that despite the general warming trend and despite--since around 1950--humanity's contribution to warming the planet through use of fossil fuels, that there was a span of a few decades from the 1940s to the 1970s when temperatures declined (leading scientists to warn of a new ice age--I remember very clearly learning that in science class in middle school) and that we are in a "pause" in temperature increases that has lasted so long that my youngest child and perhaps my oldest child have never experienced a single day when the planet's temperature has been rising.
Oh, fluctuations there will be. But if man's impact is dominant on all the factors that shape our climate, why have other factors overwhelmed mankind's contributions to a warming planet twice in my lifetime? So much so that as old as I've gotten, I've only experienced a couple decades of warming of the globe.
But by all means, wreck our economy and control our lives just in case our role in the climate is the most important part.
