Before the Little Ice Age, which began around 8 or 900 AD, the weather was roughly 1.5 degrees warmer, than before it began warming around 1800. A person could drive a set of oxen with a cart of goods, across the ice, from Queens to Manhattan. The ice was thick enough to allow bonfires on it without problems for those going to and from, on horseback or in carriages. Which means we are probably only a degree or less above what it was in 500 and for several thousand years prior.