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WHEN extreme weather strikes, such as the floods in Pakistan, the null hypothesis is to assume that humans have not played a role, then figure out if they did.

That's the opposite of what should be done, argues Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. We should assume global warming plays a role in every climate event, then ask whether that role is a significant one. The view is likely to be controversial, but a government-convened meeting last week suggests that it is gaining favour (see "Time to blame climate change for extreme weather").

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claimed that this past June was the warmest ever in its temperature records, which go back to 1880. The global average temperature in June was 61.1 degrees, or 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees. At face value, this appears to be consistent with the theory that global warming is caused by mankind’s use of fossil fuels. But face value can be deceiving, and the value is not what it appears to be.

In fact, the claim that June 2010 was the warmest on record has no value at all.

NOAA gets its temperature data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. They calculate the average temperature of the Earth using data from land-based thermometers and ocean buoy and ship measurements of water temperature. However, there is a major problem with how GISS measures temperature in a very large region — the Arctic.

The problem is that they don’t have any thermometers there. So they make it up. No, really!

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Harvard’s slow-motion inquiry about the laboratory of Marc Hauser, one of its star academics, has cast a shadow over the several different fields in which Dr. Hauser and his students published papers.

So far only one of Dr. Hauser’s articles has been retracted, for unspecified reasons, and two have been amended. Harvard has given no reason for the retraction, leaving researchers to wonder whether that article alone was flawed or whether all of Dr. Hauser’s results are suspect. He and his students have published widely in fields ranging from animal communication to the nature of morality.

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In a remarkable monograph, Roy W. Spencer presents hard evidence that 75% of the observed warming since the start of the 20th century is due to natural processes. He offers a detailed model describing how one of these processes, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), operates in the real world. Most importantly, he demonstrates that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a minor contributor to a global climate largely insensitive to man-made CO2.

Thanks to this highly skilled climatologist and his The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled The World's Top Climate Scientists, we can now taunt the often corrupt and overtly political planetary high priests with this: PDO means AGW is DOA.

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