"Right after the year 2000," climate change skeptic Tony Heller claimed last month, federal climate scientists "dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer....This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend." Heller (nom de blog Steven Goddard) says that these adjustments " cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934."

Heller's assertions induced a frenzy of commentary, attracting the attention of The Drudge Report, the Telegraph, The Daily Caller, and Fox News. A few days later, the hullabaloo was further stoked by reports that scientists at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) had quietly reinstated July 1936 as the hottest month on record in the continental U.S. instead of July 2012.