It's Hotter In The Australian

It was a warm last three months in the Northern Hemisphere apparently but the story got even hotter by the time it reached The Australian newspaper two and a half hours later.


Agence France Presse's wire story reported the tale as 'adding fire to global warming concerns' while The Australian's edit was 'fuelling further fears of global warming' and, in effect, both agreed that global warming was to blame.

But AFP allowed the mitigation of El Nino and noted:

...El Nino rapidly weakened in February, as ocean temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific cooled more than 0.3C and were near average for the month.

However, The Australian expunged all mention of El Nino and hysterically pronounced:

...a review of computer climate models suggested that global warming could transform the North Pole into an ice-free expanse of open ocean at the end of each summer by 2100.

Of course, it's all bull.

Not only does NOAA - America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - know only too well where it's funding is coming from but cherry picking periods of time:

(Headline:) Earth bakes in hottest quarter on record

...is a guaranteed way of bending statistics to your desired point of view. Since when was December-February a 'quarter' in the common understanding of the term?

-- Nick