If You Don’t Like The Data–Change It!

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about the latest numbers released (make that changed) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) about temperatures in America’s corn belt last summer.

The article includes two charts–one of the actual temperature data and one of the data after NOAA ‘adjusted’ the numbers:

These are the charts:

Source: NCDC climate data presented by Roy Spencer on www.drroyspencer.com.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The article reports:

Meteorologist Anthony Watts has also caught NOAA changing the temperature record. For two years, NOAA claimed that July 2012 was the hottest month on record — that is, until it quietly adjusted the data so that July 1936 was the hottest month on record.

“Two years ago during the scorching summer of 2012, July 1936 lost its place on the leaderboard and July 2012 became the hottest month on record in the United States,” Watts wrote. “Now, as if by magic, and according to NOAA’s own data, July 1936 is now the hottest month on record again. The past, present, and future all seems to be ‘adjustable’ in NOAA’s world.”

Generally speaking it is very easy to lie with statistics–you can make them say anything you want them to say. However, it is really easy to lie with statistics when you arbitrarily change the numbers. That seems to be what is going on with NOAA.