Meanwhile Outside...

Enjoy the science while you can, my friends.  Science (the magazine) is reporting that Donald Trump's proposed budget would do some damage to NOAA:

The request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would drastically cut into the agency's climate research, shuttering a host of labs and programs. The agency released a detailed guide to these proposed cuts today—and described the programs on the chopping block in glowing terms that seemed to emphasize their value even as it proposed their elimination.

NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), one of the agency's primary research arms, would see its budget drop by 22%, from $514 million to $400 million, under the proposal. Despite these cuts, the proposal reads, the office would continue to "provide robust science that is instrumental to preventing the loss of human life, managing natural resources, and maintaining a strong economy."

Of course not researching the climate will ultimately change the climate - or at least make us see it more clearly, right?  I mean it just makes alternative-factual sense, right? 

Anyway, here's what the science says about April:

The combined global average temperature over the land and ocean surfaces for April 2017 was 0.90°C (1.62°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F)—the second highest April temperature since global records began in 1880, trailing 2016 by 0.17°C (0.31°F) and ahead of 2010 by 0.0.7°C (0.13°F). April 2017 also marks the 388th consecutive month that the globally-averaged temperature across the world's land and ocean surfaces was nominally above the 20th century average. December 1984 was the last time a monthly temperature was below average at -0.09°C (-0.16°F). Overall, April 2017 tied with March 2015, August 2016, and January 2017 as the 12th highest monthly global land and ocean temperature departure from average on record (1,648 monthly records).

And then the year-to-date:

The global land and ocean surface temperature during January–April 2017 was 0.95°C (1.71°F) above the 20th century average of 12.6°C (54.8°F). This was the second highest such period since records began in 1880, behind 2016 by 0.19°C (0.34°F) and ahead of 2015 by 0.10°C (0.18°F).

This has happened and will keep happening regardless of how many non-scientists Trump installs at the EPA or how much his proposed budgets ignore the truth.

But in Trump's post-modern world, if the science isn't telling us what we want to hear, we call it a hoax, defund it, and then in or collective ignorance declare victory because no one will have any actual data to refute our alternative facts.