A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog dissecting the shoddy science and selective statistical shenanigans behind the "global cooling" myth. Despite its shaky foundations, the myth - that since 1998, global temperatures have been steady or declining and that, ergo, this climate change business is all so much stuff and nonsense - persists, thanks to the efforts of the likes of George Will.
A global warming denier I know - who, notwithstanding his willful ignorance on the topic, is a favored lunch partner of mine - trotted it out the other day, after asking almost incredulously, "You don't really believe in global warming, do you?", as if a matter of scientific consensus were the giant spaghetti monster.
Well, the Associated Press asked independent statisticians to crunch the data and their conclusion is clear: The decade of "global cooling" is a construct of statistical prestidigitation.
As I pointed out in my blog, and the statisticians underline, while 1998 is the warmest year on record according to one set of data (from Britain), it comes in second to 2005 according to another set (from the good ole U S of A). On a decade-by-decade basis, the trend is unmistakably upward, and the past decade has been the warmest on record. And the notion of global cooling only works if your start point is 1998: if it's 1997 or 1999, the alleged trend disappears.
The point, as climate scientists quoted in the AP story point out, is that cherry-picking data sets is misleading and the key is the long term trend. In the short term, on a year-to-year basis (and this is a lesson environmentalists could stand to learn, too), the strongest climate signals are the result of natural variations. For example, 1998 and 2005 stand out from the pack partly because they were strong El Nino years.
Which could prove to be global cooling's ultimate death knell. The AP story concludes by quoting NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt - who, says AP, predicts that because of El Nino, "2010 may break a record, so a cooling trend 'will be never talked about again.'"
Tags: Climate Change
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