From the hotter-than-Hades file, the Guardian shrieks that “the EU’s climate monitoring service released data showing August 2026 was the joint hottest month ever recorded around the world. Global temperatures reached 1.65C above preindustrial levels, scientists said on Thursday, amid warnings of further heating.” Now there’s a lot that could be said against this claim, and we already said some of it and will say more below. But the first thing to stick in our craw, and hard, is that “1.65C”. Who seriously thinks we’re measuring temperature accurately to that degree? Well, climate alarmists, that’s who. Hence Psuedoscientific American says “The world’s oceans hit 21.10 degrees Celsius last Saturday, breaking a record set in 2024”. And by how much? Why, 0.01 of a degree, which they inexplicably say is 0.02˚F (it’s 0.018). And who knows the temperature of every drop of ocean water to two decimal places and can assure us that the average of each and every last bit of it was 21.10C on August 22? Nobody. In fact if you read the fine print it’s just meant to be the sea surface temperature so never mind the briny deep. But 361 million square kilometres of rippling, surging, evaporating, descending, wind-blown spume, sea ice and lagoons, and you know it to that degree or rather hundredth of a degree? Like a clock striking 13, this assertion calls into question all that has gone before and all that is to follow.

All that is to follow being the usual gump, of course. Hence:

“‘As a climate scientist, this is not surprising to me all,’ says Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a climate research nonprofit. ‘It’s consistent with decades of research showing how our climate is changing as the planet warms. And without reductions in the burning of fossil fuels, this warming will only continue.’”

QED. So never mind, that, as the SA story also says:

“The new high also reflects the fact that we are heading into an exceptionally strong El Niño year. This cyclic climate pattern is marked by unusually hot Pacific Ocean temperatures, which can affect the entire planet’s weather.”

If it’s the El Niño cycle then the warm temperatures aren’t global warming. But to much of the MSM it’s all climate all the time and all rant to boot. So the Guardian also says:

“Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that this year’s ‘hot as hell’ summer had killed tens of thousands of people in Europe alone and ‘hammered’ infrastructure, businesses and economics, costing a likely €180bn (£155bn), as well as leading to forced migration around the world. ‘The climate crisis is now a continent-wide economic security emergency,’ he told a committee of the European parliament on Thursday morning. ‘We’ve seen mass evacuations. Power stations closed. And trade routes choked. Crops lost. Yields down. And food prices up – and set to rise further.’”

Sure, they have seen mass migration, closing power stations, rising food prices and diminished trade. But it’s all due to bad policy decisions, beginning with foolish climate policy, not a tiny change in temperatures.

The Weather Channel is if anything more brazen. It declares that:

“Earth had its hottest August dating to the mid-19th century, while the U.S. and Western Europe had a record hot summer, according to two separate just-released government analyses. NOAA’s August global climate report found August 2026 topped 2023 and 2024 as Earth’s hottest August, with the planet’s temperature 2.38 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average. NOAA global temperature records date to 1850.”

And then it shows a chart of “Global Land and Ocean Average Temperature Departures” that shows one number for both, going back to 1850. As if we knew the temperature of the oceans, or even just their surfaces, or indeed of the land surface, to two decimal places in 1855. Though in for a penny, in for a pounding, as the Duke of Wellington said, since we don’t know them to that precision even with satellites, never mind alcohol thermometers in a small part of the land and buckets of seawater randomly collected at sea.

Then it notes that Copernicus said August 2026 tied July 2023 for hottest ever whereas NOAA said July 2026 was the hottest, and soothingly assured readers:

“It’s common for separate analyses of global temperatures to differ by a few fractions of a degree.”

A few fractions? What, maybe a third and also a tenth? But anyway, if they admit that these readings are not definitive even now, shouldn’t they admit it going back? Or would it spoil the fun?

P.S. The Atlantic says of El Niño that “This El Niño Will Be Unlike Any in the Past Eight Decades/ Die-offs and floods have started already, a prelude to supercharged storms and droughts.” Well, we’ll see. But in any case, if it’s an ocean current hotter than heck, it’s creating a distortion in temperatures that has nothing to do with fossil fuels.