Republicans' Favorite Climate Chart Has Some Serious Problems

There’s a chart that’s become the favorite, go-to among those who distort climate science in order to justify opposition to climate policies.  It’s shown up in many conservative media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Australian.  It’s been presented by congressional Republicans’ favorite climate witness, John Christy, in recent hearings called by Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith.

The chart, which tries to compare estimates of the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere to model simulations, is full of problems.  Its purpose is clear – to make it appear that climate models are unreliable, and thus cast doubt on all of climate science and the tremendous risks posed by human-caused global warming.  In other words, its purpose is to undermine climate policy efforts to reduce those risks by slowing global warming.

But as with all charts of such singular, unscientific purposes, it’s simply another example of cherry picked data being presented in a multiply misleading way, as the annotated version below illustrates.

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