It's rather significant that the last time the global temperature for a month was below its 20th century average was February 1985, and that May 2012, the hottest May on record, was the 327th consecutive month above this average.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that the 12 warmest years since records began have been in the last 14, and the last decade was warmer than the previous one, and that warmer than the one before it.

Despite all this evidence, there are still those who question whether global temperatures are still rising. In the main, these voices favour the fossil fuel industries which feel threatened by attempts to wean us away from carbon-producing coal, oil and gas. It’s in their interest to prove that global warming isn’t happening, or if it is, then it’s just normal variation, or caused by sun spots.

They feel their case has some merit as the rate of change over the last few years has apparently slowed down a little, and, though still increasing, is not front page dramatic, despite the forest fires, extreme heat, long droughts, and extensive flooding that are now the norm somewhere in the world every year. Just last month, Buenos Aires had six inches of rain in two hours, and was under water.

However, the real test of what’s happening is the balance between the energy coming in from the sun, and that radiating out again. Satellite measurements at the top of the atmosphere show more energy arriving than going out because some of it is trapped by CO2 and water vapour – the greenhouse gases.

It’s rather like a bank balance – if you put more in than you take out, it gets bigger. This extra heat has to go somewhere and the accounts it’s stored in are melting ice, growing plants, the air, and the oceans.

Turning ice from a solid to a liquid takes 80 times as much energy as it does to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree, so some of the extra heat melts polar ice and mountain glaciers, without the temperature rising.

However, this is only a fraction and a similar small amount is used in helping plants to grow bigger, though photosynthesis slows right down at more than 35C.

That just leaves the atmosphere, which is warming still but at a slower rate, and the oceans – and that’s where most of it is going. Indeed, 90 per cent of the surplus heat warms up the oceans, and recent evidence shows much of it is now at depths below 700 metres.

Getting into hot water is not a sensible way forward for seven billion humans.