Reality check

It's frigid outside, windy, with a half foot of virgin snow on the sidewalks of Philadelphia. A perfect day to discuss this:

It was the 34th-consecutive year that the global temperature was above average, according to the data center. The last below-average year was 1976.

The global land surface temperatures for 2010 were the warmest on record at 1.8 F above the 20th-century average.

At least it's not having any impact...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come.

But while scientists say a warmer world is predicted to lead to more intense droughts and floods, it wasn't yet possible to say if climate change would trigger stronger La Nina and El Nino weather patterns that can cause weather chaos across the globe.

"I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland can be attributed to climate change," said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon," he told Reuters.

But, but....um, it's snowing.