Low Standards for Data Produce Record High Temp Claims

You can pretty much bet that today is the warmest on this date "on record" somewhere, and also the coolest somewhere else. It might even be the hottest day ever — again on record— somewhere, and likely also the coldest somewhere too.

Nevertheless, some politicos and pundits continue to cook up overheated reasons to worry.

Citing a July 4 article in The Washington Post by Jason Samenow, Al Gore, tweeted, "Another ominous record has been set. The city of Quriyat, Oman, hit an overnight low of 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday — likely the highest minimum daily temp record recorded on Earth. For those suffering from the heat in the U.S. this weekend, be safe and stay cool!"

Although 108.7F is definitely hot, that recorded high was surpassed by 135F in Death Valley, California in 1913 — a year before Henry Ford introduced moving assembly lines.

Headlined "Red-Hot Planet: All-Time Heat Records Have Been Set All Over the World During the Past Week," Samenow’s article also breathlessly highlighted other intended attention-grabbers. Denver tied its all-time high record of 105F on June 28; Mount Washington, New Hampshirte, tied its all-time warmest low temperature of 60F on July 2; Burlington, Vermont, set its all-time warmest temperature of 80F on July 2; and Montreal recorded its highest temperature of 97.9F dating back 147 years.

Did you happen to note here that those 147 years push the date back to the year 1871before the Industrial Revolution brought CO2-belching smokestacks, along with real pollutants?

Then there’s that overheated Denver matter. Based upon reporting records going back to June 2018, that latest 105F "all-time-high" dates back only to 1995 when the weather station opened. It might also be noted that as for record state-wide Colorado highs, temperatures reached 114F on July 1, 1933 in Las Animas, and again on July 11, 1954 in Sedgwick.

Paul Homewood’s blog, "Not a Lot of People Know That," checked on NOAA charts of all-time-high temperatures for all 50 U.S. states. The most recent were a 113F record set in South Carolina in 2012 — and a 120F South Dakota tie in 2006 with one set in 1936.

Beardsley, Minnesota set an all-time-high on July 29, 1917. A 117F Montana record set in 1893 was tied in 1937.

In fact, the vast majority of all-time-high records in the U.S. and Canada were set in the period of 1910-1940, followed by three decades of cooling. Incidentally, most of this record-setting warm period predated huge amounts of CO2 released into the atmosphere by WWII armament industries.

Not to be outdone by The Washington Post in seeking temperature terror traction, The New York Times featured a June 29 op-ed by Lauren Markham which headlined that "A Warming World Creates Desperate People." The article attributes rising temperatures and drought as significant reasons for surges of Guatemala refugees heading to the U.S.

Francis Menton challenged the veracity of Markham’s claims in a July 8 review posted in the Manhattan Contrarian. Menton’s fact checking revealed that Guatemala’s temperatures could hardly have been more perfect, both for people and veggies. Highs between 1901 and 2015 averaged about 70F during months of January, and about 77F in May.

As for droughts, Guatemala is a tropical rain forest country. Guatemala City reportedly gets more than 100 inches of rain per year. Even half this amount would be far more than needed for bountiful agriculture. Rainfall in the Central Valley of California, one of America’s most fertile producers, ranges from a high of about 20 inches, down to about 5 inches in some areas.

Any climate refuges headed to Houston should be forewarned that today’s temperature is expected to reach 104F. Some newcomers blame global warming. Natives call it "summer."

Then, there’s Europe, where Scotland offers extremes for anyone to hate and love. On May 11, 2016, the country simultaneously recorded both the highest and lowest temperatures in the UK.

The city of Skye was the warmest at 78.8F, and Shetland was coolest at 48.2F.

The UK Met Office, its national weather service, was forced to retract a report that Glasgow, Scotland had set a hottest-day record of 91.8F on June 28, exceeding a previous 89.4F sizzler in August, 2003. They explained that an ice cream truck had parked close to the temperature sensors with its engine running to keep freezers working.

So as it turned out, the only broken record had reverberated once again as unfounded "worst-ever" claims in media echo chambers.

The story worthy of real alarm is that a guy with an ice cream truck simply attempting to avoid a climate-caused product meltdown had transformed an unremarkably warm day in Scotland into an international crisis spectacle that should even make Al Gore envious.

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2012). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.