How Is This The Hottest Year On Record? Climate Science At Work

You probably were taught in school about something called the scientific method. Although the number of steps can vary according to the specific formulation, a typical formulation of the scientific method is shown below:

But this isn't how it often works, particularly in climate science. What we often see is something like this:

And this is how this became the hottest year on record:

Update: It isn't just climate science that operates under this new version of the scientific method. After I had posted this, I saw this article--"Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract at least three papers"--over at Vox Day's site. From the lede:

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will resign effective Aug. 31, according to communications released by the University Wednesday morning. He will also retract or issue lengthy corrections to five widely cited papers for which he was principal author after a Stanford-sponsored investigation found “manipulation of research data.”