Climate change is, of course, a relentless and abrasive process; we are dumping more carbon and methane into the atmosphere every year, and that inevitably leads to higher temperatures. The real damage continues unabated, month after month—see, for example, our recent discussion of the ongoing collapse of the Antarctic Ocean Current, which cycles nutrients through the Earth’s seas. But our planet is not a simple test tube, and its peculiar dynamics mean that sometimes warming is slower and sometimes faster. The last global temperature record came in 2016, coinciding with the peak of a warm El Niño cycle in the Pacific. For most of that time since, we have been in a cool La Niña phase in the Pacific, which is a decrease in global temperatures—just a little. Every year has been in the top 10 of all time, but global temperatures have only matched, not surpassed, that record. Every time this cycle happens, climate deniers claim that the planet has started to cool down—but of course, with another El Niño, the planet sets a new record, pushed higher by all the greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the meantime. Here’s a clever graphic that makes sense quite elegantly; watch it and you’ll have a keener sense of the rhythms of our planet in this strange era. The fact that we’ve seen the most extreme heat waves and precipitation in human history during this period of slightly reduced global temperatures is terrifying—when Canada hit 121 Fahrenheit the year before last, or when China’s weather stations recorded all 30 of their hottest days on record last summer, or when parts of Pakistan recorded 700% of annual precipitation in a single month last fall, it was as if the global warming beast was growling at the end of a very exposed rope. (BILL MCKIBBEN)