Last month was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, or was it? A number of news stories proclaimed that the month of July 2019 was even hotter than July 2016. That made it the hottest month on record.

Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer argues that July 2019 was not the warmest on record. He acknowledges that it was the hottest based on global average surface air temperatures. But he rightly explains that those temperature measurements have three major problems. Let me focus on just two of them.

The urban heat island effect has caused a gradual warming of land thermometer sites because of such factors as buildings, parking lots, air conditioner units, and vehicles of various types. The impact of this may be localized but still affects the overall temperature measurements.

Another measurement comes from ocean temperatures. But these apparently are uncertain due to changing measurement technologies as well as influence from ship engine intakes and buoys. We now have satellite measurements, but only since 1983.

He therefore, recommends meteorologists use the reanalysis data that is available from NOAA’s Climate Forecast System. We can put a map on the Point of View website. If you do look at it, you will notice it matches with your weather experience last month. For example, much of the Midwest all the way to parts of Texas actually had cooler than normal temperatures in July.

So why don’t scientists track global temperatures using these reanalysis datasets? They only go back a few decades and don’t provide a longer look. The longest record of temperature data comes from surface thermometers.

Dr. Spencer believes that July 2019 was probably the fourth hottest month in the last four decades. Unfortunately, all the headlines said it was the hottest ever.

In light of the publicized mass shootings, pundits and politicians are calling for action. Certainly there are some policies that should be considered. However, these policies need to be informed by accurate numbers and statistics. Unfortunately, most Americans believe many things about gun violence that aren’t true.

One article that appeared in the Washington Post earlier this year warned that, “Most Americans incorrectly think gun-murder rates have gotten worse, not better.” Also, suburban and small-town women had the least accurate views about the murder rate. Some believe this demographic group will be swing voters in the 2020 election. In case you are wondering, the murder rate between 1995 and 2017 dropped by almost half.

It is easy to understand why people might not know this since every time there is a shooting, we are subjected to wall-to-wall coverage. Of course, that is not always true in some cases. In the days leading up to the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, there were 60 shootings in Chicago. There were so many in fact, that one hospital had to stop accepting patients on Sunday because the trauma center was maxed out.

Gun violence isn’t uniform. Most firearm murders are concentrated in a few areas. Over half of all murders occur in just 2 percent of the nation’s 3,142 counties. And a high percentage of those murders are linked to gang or drug activity.

Also, a high percentage of gun deaths are due to suicides. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each year publish data on gun deaths. In any year you pick, gun suicides outnumber gun homicides, sometimes by as much as two-to-one.

There will be a major push this year to change current policies in an effort to stem gun violence. As we are debating these issues, it is crucial the pundits, politicians, and even voters have an accurate understanding of the statistics associated with gun violence.

Should the government step in to make sure big tech companies respect free speech? Dennis Prager argues “Don’t Let Google Get Away with Censorship.” He understands the reluctance many conservatives have about government regulation. So he tries to make the case for intervention.

He does know something about censorship. So far, YouTube has placed 56 of his videos on their restricted list. These videos include prominent lawyers, politicians, and researchers. Many of them have been on my radio program and aren’t the sort of people to say something that would deserve restriction.

He has asked Google and YouTube for an explanation. The only time an explanation was given was in a Senate hearing. The “Ten Commandments” video was restricted, according to a Google representative, because the video referred to “murder.” I’m not joking. Apparently, Dennis Prager was joking when he then offered to release a Google-friendly video on “The Nine Commandments.”

The big tech companies want to have it both ways. The 1996 Communications Decency Act provided them with immunity from legal action because they presented themselves as a neutral platform. But they also censor and restrict content and therefore are acting like publishers.

Yes, they are private companies and there is good reason to debate whether government should step in even in the midst of obvious censorship taking place. Dennis Prager, writing in the Wall Street Journal, asks this important question.

“If the four major U.S. airlines announced they would not allow passengers carrying The Wall Street Journal to travel to some American cities, would any conservatives or libertarians defend the airlines’ right, as private companies, to do so?”

That’s a good question and one that members of Congress need to consider, especially in this election year.

Many members of Congress have been talking about the Green New Deal throughout most of this year. Green Party candidates originally proposed this idea more than a decade ago. Now many Democratic presidential candidates and members of Congress have been proposing it as a way to address climate change.

What would it cost? That is a question that the Competitive Enterprise Institute asked and set out to answer. They wanted to get a reasonable estimate about “What the Green New Deal Could Cost a Typical Household?” As I started to discuss it on radio the other day, one of the roundtable guests summarized it by simply saying it would cost more than the annual income for a typical American family.

The authors concluded that in four of the five states they analyzed (Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania), the Green New Deal would cost a typical household more than $70,000 in the first year of implementation. The cost for households in Alaska would be much higher: more than $100,000 in the first year.

The reason for the high cost is simple. The goal would be to completely de-carbonize the American economy. That means that anything that contains carbon (oil, gas, coal, even wood) that is burned emits carbon. Eliminating all of these sources of energy would be expensive and complex.

It is also worth mentioning that the Green New Deal is about much more than just energy production. There are proposals in it that would supposedly guarantee “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security.” And that is just a small summary of a few items on the utopian wish list.

Thanks to this recent analysis, we now know the answer to the question: What will it cost? The answer is “more than a typical household could afford.”

Can a state ban a presidential candidate from the ballot? This is no longer a hypothetical question. Two weeks ago, the governor of California signed a law that would prevent Donald Trump’s name from appearing on the California primary ballot unless he discloses his tax returns.

Governor Newsom argues that we live in “extraordinary times and states have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards.” I might add that the minimal standards set forth in the US Constitution say nothing about tax returns. The president probably should release his tax returns. But if he or other presidential candidates refuse to release their medical records or their tax returns, let the voters decide accordingly.

My first reaction when hearing this was to consider how the governor and legislators would have reacted if a red state back in 2008 questioned whether Barack Obama could be on a ballot since there was some “controversy” over his birth certificate. That qualification, by the way, is more relevant to the standards listed in the US Constitution.

I discovered that my argument has been made before. Apparently a similar bill was passed and sent to the former California governor who vetoed the bill for two good reasons. First, the legislation is unconstitutional. Second, it would send a dangerous precedent. Jerry Brown argued that, “Today we require tax returns, but what would be next? Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate?”

He saw the danger, and I suspect you see it as well. In fact, the editors of the Wall Street Journal even suggested the some Republican in a red state might pull a similar stunt to keep a Democratic candidate off the ballot. You can see where this is going.

I have some confidence that this political stunt will be declared unconstitutional, but the legislators should have thought this through before the passed the bill.

As I mentioned earlier this week, the Democratic presidential candidates disagree on a number of key issues. But there is one issue where there is unanimity. All of these Democrats want you to pay for abortions. That is the argument Alexandra Desanctis make in a recent column.

There may be some disagreement among the candidates about whether to implement Medicare for All. There is even disagreement about which plans being put forward qualify as Medicare for All. But all of the plans being put forward assume that the federal government should cover abortion. She says, “even as Democratic candidates try to distinguish themselves on health care, all of them who have opined on the topic support a national health-care program that would finance every women’s abortion – at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason.”

American voters should pay attention to that last point. These candidates want abortion legal from conception to pregnancy for any reason or no reason at all.

I sometimes have a caller to my radio program arguing that we should find middle ground and establish a common sense compromise on abortion. Of course, if you believe there is a human life in the womb, you really can’t compromise on that. But even so, let me ask where is the middle ground? If you believe abortion should be legal for all nine months and you also believe that all American taxpayers should pay for it, where is the potential for compromise?

Before I close, let me explain one issue. Rarely do these candidates or these plans use the word abortion. Instead, they talk about “comprehensive reproductive care” or how their plan will guarantee a “woman’s right to choose.” I think we all know what that means and know how judges and bureaucrats will interpret such language in the law. It means fully funded abortions that you will have to pay for.

Less than a month from now will be the third set of Democratic presidential debates. The field will be smaller next time, but the question is whether the debate and discussion will be motivating for primary voters. Mark Penn, writing in The Hill, referred to the previous debates as a “panderfest.”

He knows something about Democratic politics since he served as a pollster and adviser to former President Clinton and has written some important books looking at social and political trends. You can get his perspective by merely reading two sentences in his second paragraph.

“By the end of this endless debate, spooned out in one-minute dollops, I walked out with a $1,000-a-month check, an extra grand if I’m a female, untold reparations dollars if I am African American, Medicare from birth covering everything I’ll ever need until death, and the right to cross the border without any real penalty if I’m from another country.”

He also complained that the same candidates who were critical of the tweets by President Trump about a rat-infested Baltimore made it sound like the entire country was worse off than this city in Maryland. America apparently “is not a country in which 90 percent have health insurance, almost everyone has a smartphone, and 64 percent own their home.” Instead it is a “racist, misogynistic country dominated by fat cats and big corporations sucking the life out of us all.”

Most of us probably don’t know how to run a presidential campaign, but Mark Penn does. And he is disturbed that none of the candidates have a positive vision for the future. Few candidates seem to have a love and appreciation for the opportunities this country provides for so many Americans and immigrants who come here.

A month from now perhaps the candidates will change their message. But I suspect that the September presidential debates will become yet another slugfest and panderfest.

A generation ago, driving on American roads was much safer than in many other countries with lots of open roads (like Canada and Australia). That is not the case anymore. David Leonhardt reports that our vehicle fatality rate is about 40 percent higher than the fatality rates in Canada and Australia.

He says he was unaware of this country’s outlier status until he began to report on the rise of driverless cars. As you might imagine, many people are not convinced that driverless cars will be a good thing for Americans. They aren’t convinced they should trust their lives to a computer.

I understand that fear, but let’s remind ourselves that the current state of driving in America is very dangerous for a number of reasons. First, is the problem of speed. Most other countries have lower speed limits (despite the famous German autobahn). Small differences in speed make a big difference in potential harm. If we install speed cameras, speeding will decline.

A second reason is seatbelts. I was shocked to learn that one in seven American drivers still do not use seatbelts. Who are these people? Every time you see a person get into a car on TV or in the movies, they put on their seatbelt. Most cars beep at you if you don’t put on a seatbelt.

A third reason is age. In other countries, 16-year-olds often are not allowed to drive. As you might imagine, teenagers are responsible for a disproportionate number of accidents.

Drinking before driving is another problem, especially since many people who drink don’t consider “buzzed driving” to actually be drunk driving. And don’t forget that people distracted by cell phones often are as dangerous behind the wheel as people who are drunk.

Add all of these factors up, and you can see why driving in America is more dangerous than driving in many other countries. It’s time to change our bad habits.