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I've been seeing some misleading buzz in the blogoworld today, in part I think thanks to shoddy reporting by FOX.

First the bad news, global warming is still a reality we have to deal with. As you can see from the graph above (with the adjusted figures), our planet is heating up. The graph (courtesy of NASA), shows global annual mean surface air temperature change. "The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean." (NASA)

So what is all this fuss about 1934 being the hottest year on record? Here's what happened. Steve McIntyre sent a note to the folks at NASA about an odd 1999-2000 jump in data for North American monitoring stations. NASA looked into it, made an adjustment a few days later (and sent McIntyre a thank you email).

FOX, and others, pounced on this, saying, McIntyre "forced NASA to admit it was wrong when it said that 1998 was the hottest year on record". The FOX report goes on to say, "In fact, five of the hottest 10 years on record occurred before World War II."

What the FOX anchor somehow failed to mention is that these changes are for US data only. For the world as a whole, 2005 is still the hottest year on record, just as NASA has said all along.

See Real Climate for details and discussion. See Media Matters to watch the FOX report. McIntye's blog is here. The data in question, including a US only temperature graph, can be found on NASA's website.