Independent: You may not have realised, as you shivered under the grey and drenching skies of August, that you were living through the 10th hottest year ever recorded — but you were. Figures released by the UK Met Office show the last 12 months constitute the 10th warmest year in the global register, which dates back to 1850. The world’s average temperature for 2008 was just over 14.3C, which is 0.3 degrees above the long-term average for 1961-1990. Yet Britain experienced one of its …