The Red States: NOAA Confirms GW

NOAA confirmed in a press release yesterday that Global Warming is happening, and is being caused by humans, according to the New York Times and other news agencies.

There's hype going on here from both NOAA and the media. Although the papers have been quick to judge, NOAA is still CYA'ing [WikiPedia]; in the PR they actually say "It is unclear how much of the recent anomalous warmth was due to greenhouse-gas-induced warming."

If you follow NOAA's releases, this map is really amusing:

Normally, you see one of various shades of light blue or pink, colored in by states. But this time they took the whole nation into account. But if you look at the actual state data, only one state (New Jersey) had their warmest 2006 on record:

December looks even less impressive, with at least 1/3 of the nation "near normal." Five states had their warmest December. It's worth noting that Colorado, which had 2-3 major blizzards, still ended up "above normal."

It's interesting though if you look at this NASA image -- the warming in December was neither global nor, well, warming, outside of the United States or Europe (NOTE: This image compares 2006 to an average from 2000-2005).

NOAA's graph is also of interest -- they don't say what the red line ("filtered") is but I'll tell you what it looks like -- it looks like a "trend line" like you could apply in Excel. But if you measure on, say, a 6-year trend to smooth things out, the line would end in 2000 because statistics dictates that you don't have enough information to go on, beyond that. And why is no one talking about the 1.0 degree drop between 1998 and 2001, the same change that, when turned positive between '04 and '06, supposedly made NOAA believers?

I report, you decide. Voice your opinion over on our Global Warming Blog. A new "Headline Earth" video will be posted there soon with Dr. Joe Sobel's opinion on climate change.