Despite the 2012 announcement that July 2012 was the hottest month on record, meteorologist Anthony Watts noticed that the government secretly backtracked on the data.
Watts pointed out that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reinstated July 1936 as the warmest month “as if by magic.”
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When NOAA originally declared that July 2012 was the hottest month on record (in the continental U.S.) with a national average of 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the broadcast networks bought in completely. The networks repeated the claim eight times in less than two weeks and used it to push climate change alarmism about increasing extreme weather and melting ice.
ABC, CBS and NBC warned that “ice is disappearing fast” and that there “record droughts and huge wildfires” because of rising temperatures. Climate alarmists regularly assert that climate change is causing more droughts and wildfires, despite evidence to the contrary.
CBS used the “hottest month” news to warn glaciers in Montana would soon be gone: “Evening News” correspondent Ben Tracy fretted over Montana’s Glacier National Park, saying “scientists say human-fueled climate change has made the melt quicker and more extreme” on Aug. 18, 2012. Tracy even warned that “all of these glaciers could be gone in just 10 to 20 years.” A similar report aired on Aug. 27, “This Morning.”
At the time, the networks said that July 2012 was the hottest month since records began in 1895. The previous record had been set in July 1936 during the disastrous dust bowl, and is now the record again, according to NOAA.
The networks’ climate alarmism was sharply undermined on June 30, 2014, when meteorologist Anthony Watts revealed that “As if by magic, and according to NOAA’s own data, July 1936 is now the hottest month on record again.” Strangely, NOAA never explicitly revised their earlier statement, still contending that July 2012 was the “warmest month on record for the nation,” but the agency had revised July 1936’s data to a higher 76.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
So far, the networks have ignored the NOAA revision.
