I've been writing on this topic for many years, and I've never been what the climate scolds call a "climate denier." How can one deny that the climate exists? I won't even argue the point that the climate is in a slow warming phase, and has been, with a few deviations, since the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation - the last ice age. I will point out that throughout Earth's history, it's mostly been warmer than it is now.
I will also point out that the slight current warming isn't anything we need to be overly concerned about; certainly not concerned enough to force our populace back to a 19th-century standard of living. But then, I'm looking at facts, not an agenda, unless you count "prosperity" as an agenda. The climate scolds seem to be very imprecise when it comes to facts, which is a polite way of saying that they bend and twist them to suit their agenda.
Case in point: A recent article in Axios bemoaned the fact that America's summers are getting warmer. But they mislead the reader on one important point: It's not daytime highs that are driving that claim, it's higher overnight lows. Climate Realism's Anthony Watts shows us the math.
In their recent article, “America’s summers keep getting warmer,” Axios claims that hotter summers across the U.S. are “one of the clearest ways we experience climate change.” That statement is misleading. The article focuses exclusively on “average summer temperatures” while ignoring crucial underlying details — specifically, the difference between daytime highs and nighttime lows. A closer look at the data suggests that rising nighttime temperatures — not dangerous daytime heat — are mostly to blame for the modest increase in “average” temperatures. This pattern is a well-documented signature of the urban heat island (UHI) effect, not global climate change.
The entire Axios piece rests on the idea that an increase in average temperatures over the past 50 years (from 1970 to 2024) proves human-caused climate change. But here’s the problem: an “average” can be deceptive. By combining daily high and low temperatures into one metric, the nuance disappears. And that nuance matters.
It's hard to see this prevarication by Axios as anything but deliberate. Oh, if we wish to be charitable, we could write it off to innumeracy or incompetence. But Mr. Watts is neither innumerate nor incompetent, as he goes on to demonstrate.
Here are the numbers, and they are from two sources, ironically enough, that the scolds feel they can't argue with: The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
According to detailed meteorological analysis done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), high temperatures (daytime maximums) in the U.S. have remained relatively stable, while low temperatures (nighttime minimums) have been increasing. This skews the average upward without indicating an actual increase in daytime heat — the kind that poses the most risk to people and infrastructure. This is backed up by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analysis, Mapping U.S. Climate Trends, from the NOAA climate website. This report highlights that nighttime minimum temperatures have warmed at a rate of 1.43°F per century compared to 0.89°F per century for daytime maximums during the period 1895–2016, illustrating the asymmetric warming trend.
If you like charts, and who doesn't, here's the data, going back not to 1970 but to the 19th century.
Nighttime temps, not daytime highs, are driving temperature. pic.twitter.com/bzfjOMqW17
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) June 4, 2025
See Also: Good News, Everyone! Melting Glaciers Mean New Fishing and Mining Opportunities.
So what's driving the increasing overnight lows? Much of it is the urban heat island effect. A lot of temperature data is gathered in urban areas, where city streets, sidewalks, buildings, and so on trap heat during the day and release it slowly at night. That's a local effect, not climate change.
Why, then, does Axios, representing the climate scolds, fudge this data? Well, it's lazy reporting to be sure. But I think there's more to it than that; this was very likely done to serve the agenda, as a not-so-subtle piece of panic-mongering. You can't drive an agenda by proclaiming that summer nights are getting a little warmer. Most people, honestly, probably like that, unless you live in a really hot, muggy climate; folks in Mississippi and Alabama are probably fine with cooler nights. But the data is very plain.
But hotter days? You can scare people with that claim. You can scare people enough to back your agenda. You can scare people enough to agree to surrender, incrementally, their modern lifestyle. You can scare people, at least some people, into 15-minute cities and into eating bugs.
Axios may or may not be doing this deliberately. But the result of their lazy reporting is the same either way: It serves the climate scolds' purpose, which is control.
