So NOAA thinks that the absolute absence of any significant increasing trend in global temperatures for almost two decades is "increasing at a steady rate"? That's right: using the standard Mann-Kendall test for trends, there is no significant trend in global temperatures since 1995.

At The Hill, which bills itself as "a top US political website, read by the White House and more lawmakers than any other site – vital for policy, politics and election campaigns," Laura Barron-Lopez has an article on NOAA's latest climate report that apparently shows that "changes in the earth's climate are increasing at a steady rate ... Greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels, global temperatures and super storms all are trending upward, NOAA said."

Barron-Lopez's article also states that "Last year ... California experienced its driest year on record and Oregon had its fourth driest year." That would be interesting if a NOAA report said that last year was the fourth driest in Oregon's climate record, since NOAA's own climate data says last year was actually the third driest on record. So which is it? Fourth or third driest?

And of what relevance is telling the readers (in a climate change story only 260 words in length) that "California experienced its driest year on record and Oregon had its fourth driest year"? Perhaps to suggest that there is a trend towards less precipitation in these states? If so, that wouldn't be true. Neither state has even remotely close to a significant trend in annual precipitation since records began in 1895. Unfortunately, that isn't the message that comes across to the general public when they read these types of stories that provide alarmist data points out of context.

Over in Montana, summer heat alarmism is making the rounds. The Helena Independent Record reports the following:

Dr. Linda Rudolph, co-director of the Climate Change and Public Health Project in the California Public Health Institute's Center for Climate Change and Public Health, recently visited Montana to meet with politicians, activist groups, local governments and others to discuss the impacts that climate change will have on public health ... According to climatecentral.org, Helena's summer temperatures will increase from a current average high of 79.59 degrees to more than 91 degrees by 2100. In less than 80 years, the website says, the cool, dry conditions Montanans have come to know and love during the summer will be replaced by weather more common in Riverside, Calif. As a result, the number of "extreme heat days" is increasing each year, Rudolph said, putting more vulnerable populations at risk for a greater portion of the summer. "People often don't think of extreme heat as a killer," she said. "Our number of extreme heat days are increasing and will continue to warm as the climate changes."

Climate skeptics are often accused by the alarmists of cherry-picking their data and locations. The focus on summer heat in Helena is a classic example of alarmist cherry-picking. Summer high temperatures in Helena are predicted to massively increase due to anthropogenic climate change up to conditions currently seen in Riverside, CA? It might be relevant to note that there has been no significant trend in Helena's summer high temperatures over the past 30 years.

There had been a significant trend in Helena's summer average high temperatures since 1970, but the trend became non-significant by 1980. How do you explain that using the anthropogenic global warming model, whereby greenhouse gas concentrations have been increasing ever more rapidly (i.e., accelerating) over time up to the present? If Helena's summer high temperatures are any indication, there is absolutely no significant correlation with atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Of course, Helena is but one of the National Weather Service's six climate regions in the state. What is going on with summer high temperatures in the other five regions? Nothing. There is not a single significant trend in summer high temperatures elsewhere in Montana over the past 30 years, or since 1970. In the Missoula, Great Falls, Glasgow, and Billings regions, there has been no significant trend in summer high temperatures since records began – dating back to the 1890s for all but Billings, whose climate record starts in 1935.

You would think this overwhelming absence of significant trends in summer high temperatures throughout Montana would be front and center in climate science reporting. But it is not, because it gets in the way of the activist agenda that passes for science journalism nowadays. The inconvenient truths lie against the alarmists' side, because the climate reality is nowhere near as neat and tidy as the narrative they try to spin. And in many cases, a critical look at the raw data contradicts the alarmism.