From my Hide: The hottest year and other records

IT is official, 2014 was the hottest year on record since proper records have been kept.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States of America has announced that last year was officially the hottest year since 1880, and it doesn’t come much more official than that.

In a statement released at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, it was said that the average global temperature was up by 1.24 degrees Fahrenheit (0.68°C) on the temperature for the past 135 years and that this past December was the hottest ever, again, on average of course.*

The statement said that both land and sea temperatures were affected and that some countries, like Australia for example, had recorded higher temperatures on average than anywhere else. The global average, though, puts no fewer than 10 of the years since the year 2000 as the hottest on record.

It is pointed out that is not just land and sea temperatures that are affected by this increase, but all sorts of factors like wind patterns and ocean currents.

These in turn affect just about everything else, like rainfall and general weather conditions, which in turn again affect everything from general desertification to local farming practices.

As far as we are concerned, down here, 2014 seems to have been a fairly normal year where temperature was concerned, no dramatic highs or lows, certainly not in the Hide.

Another record, this time somewhat more immediate, comes with an announcement by the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, that no fewer than 1,215 rhinos were poached in South Africa in 2014.** That figure is up from 2004 in 2013. Of the 1,215, 827 were in the Kruger National Park and 68 in KwaZulu-Natal.

Rhino poaching for their horns, the main markets being China and Vietnam, has been on the increase since 2000, when just six were poached. It was also announced that arrests numbered 386, a drop in the ocean compared with the number of animals lost.

Of the five rhino species still in existence, all are registered as threatened on the IUCN Red List, of which three are listed as critically endangered. It must be remembered that rhinos of all five species are being killed in their range states in Africa and Asia.

And to end on a lighter note, but with another record – last year was the 60th year of the publication of that remarkable work, the Guinness Book of Records. The challenge sent out was to make it a Guinness record-breaking year all round and the attempts were many and varied. I have selected just one for your edification.

The dancing girls of the famous Moulin Rouge club in Paris lined up, all 30 of them, and with the perfect timing for which they are justifiably renowned, performed a line dance with no fewer than 29 cancan high kicks in just 30 seconds – a world record and a new entry for the Guinness Book of Records.***

What can I possibly say to top that? Cheers!

*Care 2 Causes

**News24.com

***Internet