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| This chart from Climate Central shows the reality. (Cick on it to make it bigger and easier to read. El Nino years (orange bars) are hotter. The period just after El Nino is cooler (blue bars) but the overall global temperature trend is up, up, up. |
The reason: A false story claiming global warming is "over" and that global temperatures are plunging.
The Daily Mirror published it, Breitbart republished and repurposed it, and the so-called House science committee re-tweeted it.
Who cares if none of what they published is true? Breitbart doesn't, but lots of other people do.
Lots of people were quick to draw bullshit on the article. Because, obviously, the article is total bullshit. But that never stopped anyone in this post-fact world.
The Breitbart article is titled "Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists."
The silence from the so-called climate alarmists is probably from banging their heads against their desks too much from dumb "articles" like this.
As always with the climate deniers, the Mirror and Breitbart bullcrap writers cherry picked dubious data to come up with their climate change is over myth.
There are three main sources of satellite data that estimate temperatures in the Earth's lower atmosphere. All three showed a bit of a decline in temperature from early this year to about now.
That mini trend was widely expected by virtually all climate scientists. A strong El Nino came on top of global warming, which sent worldwide temperatures rising to record levels. El Ninos tend to increase Earths' temperatures, with or without global warming.
El Nino is gone, and so are its effects. With El Nino's influence gone, temperatures have temporarily gone down slightly.
As many, including Bob Henson and Jeff Masters at Weather Underground note, The Mirror and Brietbart are masters at cherry picking data to come up with wildly incorrect conclusions that nonetheless fit their false narrative.
The Mirror and Breitbart used one source of satellite data, RSS, to claim global temperatures plunged by 1 degree Celius this year. RSS had a bigger decline in temperatures than other sources, and there have been problems with RSS data lately. They're working on a fix.
Actually the RSS data showed a bit of a reversal in temperatures as we got into November and showed readings across the globe rose a bit then. But Breitbart ignored that. Not part of the narrative.
Republicans on the now badly named U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology committee, who are into the climate change denial racket, approving retweeted the Breitbart article.
As always, Bernie Sanders had just the right response. He tweeted back to the committee: "Where'd you get your PhD? Trump University?"
Yeah, something like that, apparently.
You should watch The Weather Channel's Kait Parker's glorious takedown of the Breitbart/House Committee bullcrap at the bottom of this post.
Parker's money quote: "Here's the thing: Science doesn't care about your opinion...Cherry picking and changing the facts will not change the future, not the act - note: fact, not opinion- that the earth is warming."
Of course, pointing out how extremely off the mark Breitbart, et al are is nice, but cynical me wonders if it would have any effect.
Trump and many Congressional Republicans aren't going to deal with global warming, especially with all the oil company donations that pour into their campaigns.
Plus, they don't want to upset their all important "base" who have taken the climate denial Kool-Aid.
You'd think the debate on whether climate change would be over and we'd be far into the debate on what to do about it.
But we're in that bizarro fact free world now, so the Powers That Be will just keep going on with their self invented narrative. It's comfortable for them, I guess, but pretty scary for the rest of us.
Here's that Weather Channel takedown that I enjoyed:
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