Lying With Charts, Global Warming Edition [View all]

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http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/lying-charts-global-warming-edition

n my email today, the Washington Times passes along some great news: "Global warming trend ended in 1997, new data shows." The link is to a piece in the Daily Mail that, sure enough, tells us that our real worry isn't warming, it's the possibility of the Thames freezing over. And to prove that the world is no longer heating up, they include one of my all-time favorite graphs. I've recreated it using NASA data:



Look! No warming trend! But do you see the problem? I've given you a hint by embedding the 1997-2011 data within a larger chart, instead of just producing it on its own, as the Mail did. So that should make things pretty obvious. But in case you need a bigger hint, click the link for the full set of data, not cherry-picked to begin with the huge El Niño spike of 1998.


Hey look! The warming trend is back!