I saw on a Nova program that there are these things called sun cycles. In solar minimum (or minimus, I don't know), the sun has the least activity (solar storms, etc.) and in solar maximus or maximum, the sun has the most activity. I don't know if this is true, as the show was made in 2012, but we are heading toward solar max. A solar storm occured in 2014. Maybe solar max is contributing to global warming. Maybe humans and their cars made the earth teeter on the edge of global warming and solar max made it fall into this hot, melty, watery catastrophe. (Trying to use something other than just the words, "global warming.")

Source: Nova