Thread: Facts debunk global warming alarmism

Lets audit the work of the denier who authored this article (I prefer the word 'denier' in this case, 'skepticism' is the nobel use of rational scrutiny, this article is nothing of the sort - creationists would cry if they had stooped so low to write such rubbish). As usual I only care about the claimed facts and interpretation of those facts. The he-said she-said guess-some-motive political parts are just opinion that can not be put to test.

The article opens up being inaccurate and misleading in just the first sentence. Quite an achievement:

THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures.

This claim has been taken verbatim from this source without attribution:
NOAA: U.S. breaks or ties 115 cold and sets 63 new snowfall records Watts Up With That?

The esteemed author cannot even get this right though, despite it being handed on a plate. The blog explains that the numbers refer to a single day, specifically October 29th 2008. Not the whole of October. That's the inaccurate part.

Now for the misleading part. You are supposed to read both the blog and Australian article and think "WOW! 115 cold records broken!". That's how they are geared up. What they don't tell you (and hence how they mislead) is that 115 cold records in a day in the whole of the USA simply aint that much relative to cold snaps in previous years.

Below you can see the number of cold record temperature broken every day in the US for the last 7 years. Each horizontal bar represents 100 record cold temperatures broken. You can see the 115 record cold for October 29th on the right hand side, it just creeps over the first horizontal bar. But look at the past, in particular look how often cold record temps cross that first bar, and frequently they go much further.



So there really wasn't anything remarkable about October the 29th. But of course 115 cold records broken sounds remarkable so the denialists rush out to print it in their blogs and media stories.

Like I said, this is the first sentence of the article and already it is being inaccurate and misleading. A whole post has just been devoted to just that first sentence.

I can't be bothered to go any further, it doesn't get any better.