Two months ago, Grist blogger Philip Bump took a look at a new study of global warming data, prepared a short post explaining the findings, and wrote this headline to summarize his interpretation of the numbers: “If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had reported an alarming but unfathomable statistic — that the previous month had been “the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature” across the Earth’s land and sea surfaces. [...]
His choice reframing of this information took wing across the web, the press, and social media, landing everywhere ... It has now reached the status of “statistic you no longer need to cite a source for ..."
Of course, the moment a number reaches that status, it also becomes a target for would-be debunkers. Some folks, like this guy at Forbes, charged that the headline was misleading, because — though the data for global average temperatures is quite clear — members of the under-27 set have nonetheless experienced “colder than average months” if you look at local, rather than global, averages. This is a convenient but specious dodge; the NOAA data was worldwide, and so was our point. We’re talking, after all, about the planet, not your neighborhood.