Will Climate Change Impact Cherry Picking?

Although Wisconsin's Door County is still known for cherries, the cherry picking talked about this week in "The Global Warming Debate" involves data.

One type of cherry picking found in the global warming debate involves time scales. The graphic on the left above shows that over the last 300M years, there has actually been global cooling. Of course, at techtonic time scales, peak temperature occurred at a point when crocodiles where swimming at the North Pole. During the period of modern human civilizations (the far right graphic above) we are about to enter the warmest period modern human civilizations have experienced. Whatever the cause of the warming, the bigger question is what are human civilizations going to try to do about it (if anything).

Another kind of cherry picking involves focusing on a single decade. From that perspective, 2008 was the coldest year in the last decade. Taking a longer time scale, 2008 was the 9th warmest year on record.

One outcome of the global warming debate might be that people will take a little longer view of statistical data. But, myopia is endemic in the analysis of current events. From March 2009 to the present, the DJI has increased by 150%, a great Bull Market, but from October 2008 to March 2009 it fell 230%.