My dad, being the avid Fox News reader he is, mentioned he thinks the warming climate is "maybe" because the Earth is just closer to the Sun -- it isn't, it reached its furthest point in its orbit a few days ago, and it's also a yearly cycle, which wouldn't affect things over the course of multiple years.
After I pointed that out to him, he mentioned some crazy conspiracy theory (which he doesn't buy into, I think) about sunspots being portals to Hell, which prompted me to look into sunspots a bit more, and now I'm realizing we're in a variable-but-roughly-decade-or-two-long solar cycle, the maximum of which we're expected to reach by the end of the year now. That solar maximum, if I remember correctly, is primarily magnetic, and might cause some radio issues (the NASA page says stuff like satellites and GPS mostly) and maybe, if we're lucky, it could maybe bring the aurora further south, but probably not.
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