AP snake-oil salesman Seth Borenstein cranks the hype meter to 12: In describing an average temperature of 55.32 degrees F, uses words like "superhot" and "roasts"

Hey Seth:  I challenge you to live for just one year in your own house with the thermostat set at 55.32 degrees F, then describe that temperature as "superhot".

Twitter / borenbears: NOAA had to expand temp charts ...

NOAA had to expand temp charts to fit superhot US 2012 in; Old charts stopped just above 54 dF; 2012: 55.3 dF; http://bit.ly/VNdhry

US roasts to hottest year on record by landslide

WASHINGTON (AP) — America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.

A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.
...
"It was off the chart," said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which calculated the temperature records.

Last year, he said, will go down as "a huge exclamation point at the end of a couple decades of warming."

...[Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University] said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.

"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."