When I make charts and graphs, I generally make it a practice to scale the vertical axis of a chart from zero (0) to the upper bound of the range. Compressing a chart’s vertical axis can be grossly misleading. For example, the usual chart the climatistas display of ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide levels looks like this:
Oooh—that looks scary! Look how fast CO2 is rising! We’re galloping toward the all-important doubling of CO2, after which the world will come to an end.
Here’s the chart I typically use when displaying the same data, but with the vertical axis starting at zero, and indications of the bounds of pre-industrial CO2 and where the level of a doubling will be:
Now that doesn’t look as scary, does it? No wonder the climatistas compress the vertical axis to make it look scarier.
Likewise, the typical chart of the global average temperature is usually displayed this way:
Whoa! We’re all gonna fry!
But what if you display the same data with the axis starting not just from zero, but from the lower bound of the actual experienced temperature range of the earth? I had never thought of this until an acquaintance sent it along today:
A little hard to get worked up about this, isn’t it? In fact you can barely spot the warming. No wonder you need a college education to believe in the alarmist version of climate change. No wonder the data (click here for original NASA data if you want to replicate it yourself) is never displayed this way in any of the official climate reports.
If this chart were published on the front page of newspapers the climate change crusaders would be out of business instantly.
