My favorite attempt by the Cold Earthers to cling on to their faith that global warming is not taking place comes from Men’s News Daily, which argues against the report, as it quotes, that “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported Thursday that the January-June period was the warmest worldwide on record, based on average land and ocean temperatures.”
Robert F. Gay, writing for Men’s News Daily, attempts a tricky rhetorical maneuver. He uses the structure of critiques of Cold Earth ideology, saying of NOAA’s data, “This is summer, and what they’re talking about is weather, not climate change.”
If Gay had actually read the report he’s arguing against, he would have seen that the data cover the period from the beginning of January through the end of June, which actually include only one and a half weeks of summer and two and a half months of winter. It’s little mistakes like this, calling January and February summer, that are leading the majority of climate scientists to reject Cold Earther arguments. Besides that, the NOAA report compares current temperatures to well over 100 years of temperature records from the past. That makes the work a clear measure of climate trends, not just the weather.
And the NOAA report compares this january to June against all january to June periods.
So the comparison is against the same time of year.