Warmer... Warmer... Warmest? 2015 in Climate Change

Winter is a special time of year when the nation’s top-elected climate denier, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, sometimes pulls a snow-based stunt mocking the global-warming “hoax.” After a 2010 blizzard, for example, his family built an igloo in Washington, D.C., and dubbed it “Al Gore’s New Home.” This February, the man himself hurled a snowball on the Senate floor, declaring “climate change has been occurring since the beginning of time.”

For such chicanery this December, though, Inhofe might have to make do with the slushy discharges of a Slurpee machine. It’s been so balmy in D.C. you could sunbathe on the National Mall in a Borat mankini. In fact, things are piping-hot in many places of the U.S.; at least 1,426 high-temperature records toppled to extreme warmth in just the first 13 days of the month.