{"id":356,"date":"2007-07-16T11:57:54","date_gmt":"2007-07-16T17:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=356"},"modified":"2007-07-16T11:59:28","modified_gmt":"2007-07-16T17:59:28","slug":"the-plural-of-anecdote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"The Plural of Anecdote"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things that drives me berzerk about the global warming debate is the use of anecdotal evidence. Global warming supporters will cite Hurricane Katrina or a hot summer as evidence that global warming exists. Global warming detractors will cite a cold winter<\/a> as evidence that it’s false.<\/p>\n

In science, this is known as “cherry picking” — taking only the data that support your view instead of analyzing all the data. Global warming is a slow process, one that’s much more subtle than the natural year to year variations in global temperature. It doesn’t just show up in July all of the sudden.<\/p>\n

Imagine that you were listening to the radio. Sometimes the music is loud, sometimes the music is soft. But the volume is being turned up slowly — so slowly you can hardly notice. But after a while, you have a headache.<\/p>\n

A graph of the planet’s temperature will look very spikey as we have cold years and warm years — literally noise. But slowly, the spikes are moving upward.<\/p>\n

Whatever you think of global warming, the plural of anecdote is not data (hat tip, Robert). A hurricane or a heat wave do not prove global warming any more than a cold snap disproves it. It’s the slow steady accumulation of planet-wide data that reveals the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things that drives me berzerk about the global warming debate is the use of anecdotal evidence. Global warming supporters will cite Hurricane Katrina or a hot summer as evidence that global warming exists. Global warming detractors will cite a cold winter as evidence that it’s false. In science, this is known as … Continue reading The Plural of Anecdote<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-5K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}