AP Reports That 2014 Was the ‘Hottest Year on Record.’ Then They Issue a ‘Clarification’ That Says Something Very Different.
The 650 million-to-one statistic, the AP noted, was a bit out of context, and the original story also omitted an explanation of the margins of error in hottest year calculations — margins of error that could easily negate the claim that 2014 was the hottest year on record.
Read the AP’s whole clarification below:
In a story Jan. 16, The Associated Press reported that the odds that nine of the 10 hottest years have occurred since 2000 are about 650 million to one. These calculations, as the story noted, treated as equal the possibility of any given year in the records being one of the hottest. The story should have included the fact that substantial warming in the years just prior to this century could make it more likely that the years since were warmer, because high temperatures tend to persist.
The story also reported that 2014 was the hottest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, but did not include the caveat that other recent years had average temperatures that were almost as high — and they all fall within a margin of error that lessens the certainty that any one of the years was the hottest.
An earlier version of the story quoted Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis as noting that the margin of error makes it uncertain whether 2014 was warmest, or the second, third or sixth warmest year. She said that regardless, the trend shows a “clear, consistent and incontrovertible” warming of Earth. That reference to the margin of error was dropped in later versions.