Lies, damned lies and statistics. Associated Press’s Seth Borenstein was sure true to that aphorism when it tried to be cute with data to erroneously make it seem like August 2026 was the hottest month ever.
AP’s climate prophet of doom is back at it with another one of his eco-catastrophe specials September 9. “Global heat is stuck on high,” Borenstein screeched in part in his headline. He continued: “Earth cooked to its hottest month on record in August, blowing far past a key climate threshold, due to the dangerous double whammy of human-caused climate change and a supersized El Nino, according to the European climate service Copernicus.”
That’s quite the statement. That is, until you read 12 paragraphs down in Borenstein’s piece: “Copernicus data goes back to 1940.” Ah, so apparently, the earth only started rotating on its axis 86 years ago and humanity catapulted it into Armageddon at blinding speed. Who knew! But Borenstein proceeded to play loose with the facts, regurgitating the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) estimation released on Wednesday “that for the first time, summer in the Lower 48 states was hotter than during the peak of the devastating Dust Bowl in 1936.”
Here’s the issue. The difference was only “nearly four tenths of a degree warmer than the mark set 90 years earlier,” which signifies a clear embellishment on Borenstein’s part given his emphasis on humanity being the culprit behind the warming trend.
In essence, the official average barely nudged past 1936, while the worst heat-wave extremes of the drought-heavy Dust Bowl still look unmatched in large parts of the country. So was humanity causing climate change back then? What makes the case so certain now? In fact, when looking at NOAA data itself, a large share of the highest recorded “maximum temperature(s)” for each of the 50 U.S. states all occurred from the early-to-mid 20th century. Borenstein, in effect, is selling the small new 2026 mean like it’s proof the old heat extremes have been erased. Reality check: It did not. What’s even more damning is that this is not even the first time Borenstein pulled some B.S. like this. This was the same Borenstein who mindlessly touted the output of an unofficial climate model — not actually measured temperatures — to sensationalize in a July 6, 2023, headline how “[f]or third day, it was the hottest day on Earth, as global temperature matches record set Tuesday.” Borenstein and his co-author would later update their headline after it was clear they got the story wrong: “Earth hit an unofficial record high temperature this week – and stayed there.”
Borenstein may get a thrill-up-the-leg that whacked-out climate activists are wielding the weapon of — *checks notes*— “joy” to hug, laugh and flatulate their way to a world without fossil fuels. However, he seems to get more of a kick out of over-exaggerating climate data in order to dupe readers again into thinking they’re the main reason why there’s another “hellish” summer “of earth’s discontent.”
Old habits die hard?
