More on the Global Cooling Myth

Now I know where the myth of global cooling is coming from. When I saw Laura Ingraham on Fox News simply dismissing reputable experts asserting that global temperatures are rising, I figured she was simply nuts. But the currently popular book Freakanomics and just plain and simple fun with statistics seems to be feeding this notion that global temperatures are declining. Luckily, we have Al Gore. He has pointed out the work done by statisticians showing how easy it is to creatively show a global cooling trend, if you simply pick and choose your data carefully. Yes, 1998 was a particularly hot year, and since then, temperatures have been cooling, relatively speaking. That is, until 2005, another very hot year. And, of course, if you take a broader look, you'll see that this decline from 1998 to 2005 is really just a blip in a long-term overall rise in temperatures that has been occurring for the last 30 years, if not the last century. Just to be sure, the AP gave raw temperature data to various scientists and asked them to look for "trends," without telling them what kind of trends to look for. None of the scientists found cooling trends.

So, if you are looking for cooling trends, you can find them, though it appears it requires a little bit of creativity. Most scientists would apparently not see a cooling trend without massaging the data.

In this super-charged atmosphere of partisan polarization, what used to be reasonable is now a battering ram against Obama. I thought Republicans were actually coming around to the idea of doing something about climate change? Apparently that was simply a blip in the Republican trend to drive us into corporate-controlled oblivion and tear down President Obama as much as possible.

I guess I can always that someday we will have "change we can believe in." Just not yet.