Obfuscation

About four years ago, I made a post on Facebook about the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, and the lack of corresponding rise in global average temperature. The information was so easy to come by, I didn’t even think that it was worthy of a blog entry.

Flash forward to today. It took me hours of research to come up with by-year CO2 measurements, and I have never found a site which lists a simple, by-year global average temperature. NOAA is the closest; I can at least arrive at a global average temperature by performing a bit of mathematics. But the vast majority of sites purporting to display this information have cluttered graphs covered in colors and multiple lines for acronym-laden datasets. There is no real way to determine what precise points were used to make the graph, nor is there much effort put into making sure that the reader understands the acronyms being used.

Tellingly, the question regarding getting data to the public on the alarmist websites is not, “how can we more clearly and precisely show the data?” but “how can we make better graphs?”

Here’s a hint: if you really have a case, and you want to win over the general public to your side, show clear data and state your case in plain English. It is interesting that, the more evidence piles against AGW (really, it was disproved as an hypothesis long ago), the more the “scientists” who are its proponents try to hide and complicate the data.