Oh. And since I forgot to respond to Joph's silly reposting of the same funny/joke graph he's posted in the past, let me say there are two things wrong:
1. The argument by GW skeptics does not have anything to do with the graph the joke uses. It's a strawman, at best. What GW skeptics actually argue is present in the other graph...
2. If you pay attention, the plot in the second graph is incorrect (deliberately so). It angles a bit too shallow in order to make the last 10 years appear as though they still plot to an upward trend line. But if you were to actually plot a trend line to that data, you'd find that the line peaks sometime around 2000 (depends on how many years they roll the plot), and begins coming down for the last 10 years. But that's not a very good representation of what the joke want's to say, so they just average that line out so that it appears to have a steady upward slope instead of a sharper upward slope, followed by a downward trend.
In case you're missing it *that* is the argument the GW skeptics (like myself) make. I have argued for a decade now (at least) that what we're seeing is a 60-70 year cycle of rising then lowering temperatures. In fact, if you pay attention to the joke graph, it abruptly cuts off at the low end in 1968, right at the point where it kinda looks like the graph was coming down temperature wise. It's like if they extended it 30 years prior, you'd see a downward trend to the last 60s, then an upward trend to the late 90s, and now a new downward tend.
Of course, the "joke" assumes that most people will just look at the trend line and not notice how it doesn't really match the underlying data. They present a laughably wrong strawman opposition so that you wont notice that their trend line is wrong as well. When you understand the actual arguments against GW and look at that graph by itself (ie: ignoring the joke), you'll see that the cyclical theory that GW skeptics actually argue for appears to be correct. But hey! Let's not let actual science get in the way of a good joke!
Edited, Jun 12th 2014 8:04pm by gbaji
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