Paris, here they come!

The devil is in the details, as they say, and the map (above) illustrating the claim — reverently reported by the Fairfax press, of course — that June, 2015, was the hottest month ever recorded on Planet Earth makes the point. According to the “news” organisation’s Peter Hannam, SMH environment editor, “land and sea-surface temperatures last month and for the first half of 2015 were the warmest in 136 years of records, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Monday.”

Now Quadrant Online cannot speak for sweaty sorts in Brazil and we are in no position to agree or differ about what the mercury has been doing in Malawi. But we do know about Melbourne, which has been enduring one of the harshest winters in decades.

How cold? Well, it has been a snap to get the cling wrap off your delivered morning newspaper because near-freezing overnight temperatures make the plastic brittle and easy to unfurl. There has been snow in places that seldom see it. Little kids being dropped off at school by their mums are so rugged-up and padded they make the Michelin Man seem svelte.

So what does the NOAA say has been happening in Australia’s south-eastern corner? It seems we have have been witnessing a further symptom of Mother Nature’s CO2-fuelled torment, with alleged temperatures said to be mildly above average! Really? The global map’s finer details are too small to be fully legible, but notice that the enlargement (above) paints our region in pale pink, rather than a frigid blue.

Hannam, billed as the “carbon economy editor” until it became apparent, even to his Fairfax editors, that there is no carbon economy worth editing, does offer something of an explanation for NOAA’s extraordinary claim — albeit one to which his pre-disposition for banging the warmist gong quite likely renders him blind (emphasis added):

The record temperatures come as nations prepare for a global climate summit in Paris in late 2015.

What a coincidence! Just as the world’s rent-seekers, climate careerists, credulous kiddies and room-service environmentalists pack their bags for the City of Light, an institution that has been as keen to promote global warming as see its budget swell, quite suddenly concludes that the global climate has never been more fevered.

And what a sad oversight we have in Hannam’s citing of the NOAA’s temperature, er, record and the NOAA’s alone. Had he consulted the UAH global satellite climate data set, he might actually have had a story — a decent, interesting, informative and balanced report on the way global temperatures are estimated and adjusted. In the course of his research he might even have come across this post by Bob Tisdale at Watts Up With That, where NOAA and UAH numbers and methods are compared and contrasted.

Silly, of course, to entertain such a thought. Such an exercise would be journalism and Hannam works for Fairfax.

Tisdale’s conclusion that NOAA is cooking the climate books can be read in full via the link below. The Age and SMH can be read until the plug is pulled and the presses stop rolling for good. Given the parlous state of Fairfax finances, we’ll likely see that long before the widespread adoption of beachwear in July.

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