This switch in what is reported, the position of the most recent year, or any particular year to the history of temperature records, actually tells us nothing about global warming and whether or not the planet is in fact warming or cooling. Global warming is story about global temperature trends over time not a story about a particular data points in time. The switch to the latter represents a statistical slight of hand that has been invoked by global warming alarmists because there has been no statistically significant warming for at least the last ten years, and according to some data records, the last 15 years.

Here is the slight of hand that is being invoked. Temperature records have been kept for about the last 110 years. Since the late 1800s, when these records were begun, there has been a reasonably steady climb in temperatures with two big spurts from the early part of the century to the 1940s and then from the mid 1970s to the late 1990s. This makes complete sense in that during that period the global climate has been coming out of what was called the little ice age, which ended in the mid 1800s. Since the late 1990s, the last 15 or so years, the trend has plateaued. On average there has been no warming or cooling detected. Along this plateau global average temperatures go up and down year to year, just as they did as they were climbing during the years leading up to the plateau.

So what’s going on?  Along the plateau, the average temperature is generally higher than for the years leading up to that plateau. The same is true for the year-to-year variations, i.e., peaks and troughs, in temperature that are occurring along the plateau. In other words, it only makes sense, and one would expect, that the average global temperature in any year along the plateau, whether higher or lower than the year before, would be higher than the vast majority of the hundred years or so years leading up to the last 15 years. This is why pointing to this year or last year or the year before and saying that it is the 5^th, 4^th, 2^nd, or even the warmest year on record is completely non responsive to the question: is global warming occurring? It is in fact an irrelevant response meant to take the average person’s eye off the ball. That ball being average temperature trends over time.

To put this explanation in terms that most of us living in North Carolina have actually experienced, imagine making the drive from the Triad northwest on route 421 into the mountains. As you drive the route the elevation continues to climb as you head toward Boone. At Boone you begin to head south along the Blue Ridge Parkway. As you travel along the parkway you are clearly in the mountains. As you drive along the mountains you go up long hills and down long hills. In other words, all along the parkway and through the mountain range the elevation goes up and down, but one thing is going to be true, the elevation along the Blue Ridge Parkway is higher than at the vast majority of the points along route 421 as you were making the climb toward Boone. Most of us realize that it would say nothing about the average elevation along the Blue Ridge Parkway or the trend in the average elevation along the Parkway to continuously point that out. Yet, this is exactly what is going on when people compare the average temperature in a recent year to the total temperature record for the past 110 years.

If you’ve never heard Art Pope discuss the motivation for his philanthropy, you’ll want to watch the program. For a sense of some of the themes he might cover, click play below to view CarolinaJournal.tv coverage of Pope’s November 2009 speech to the State Policy Network.

Right on both accounts.

But don’t ask me how to bet on the Super Bowl, or what Lottery numbers you should pick.

What I also said is that the “gain” is in seasonally adjusted terms — a statistical oddity that is useful for number crunchers but has little to do with the U.S. employment market month-to-month. And that in fact, the economy most likely lost about 2.7 million jobs between December and January, because that’s what it has done each year over the past decade.

Right again. Table B-1 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows a drop of 2,689,000 jobs from December (132,952,000) to January (130,263,000).

The labor market models expected the economy to shed 2,932,000 jobs; instead, it lost “only” 2,689,000. So we added 243,000!

If previous patterns hold, we’ll start adding (in real terms) a half-million jobs or more monthly in the spring. Whether the additions will beat or disappoint expectations is anyone’s guess. But, as the column said, the way the numbers are reported, when the number of jobs is growing or shrinking, is misleading and a disservice to all but the nerdiest techie types.

How, then, does that teaching coincide with Obama’s desire to tax the rich? Quick answer: it doesn’t, not by a long chalk. But let us try to see it as the president does.

Who are the servants the master wishes the manager to care for? That one is easy; the poor.

Who is the manager? Also easy: the rich.

Who is the master? Well, there’s the thing. It has to be Obama, doesn’t it? Or perhaps just the government. Either way, in Obama’s mind, the rich have been given much — not responsibility; riches — by the government (oh, no, they didn’t earn those riches on their own). Now, much riches are required — by Obama.

Who are the hearers to identify with? Why, the poor servants, of course. We are to root for Obama to take much from the rich. And we’re supposed to think something about how Jesus would’ve wanted it that way.

But who gets the money? The government. We the poor get nothing other than the consolation that Obama the master isn’t going to ask us for any more.

Follow the link or buy the magazine for the full story, but please allow me to highlight a couple of key findings.

In contrast to the president’s claim of declining mobility, I found that the percentage of poor children who made it to the middle class or even rose above it had not declined. Rather, their chances rose from about 50 percent to about 55 percent. Partly because of data limitations, the increase is not statistically reliable, but there is certainly no evidence of the sort of decline that the president claims has happened.

Winship also probed the notion — set forward by Council of Economic Advisers chairman Alan Krueger — that the middle class has “shrunk.”

Krueger presented estimates that the percentage of American households in the middle class fell from 50 percent in 1970 to 42 percent in 2010. …

… I reran the numbers using the same data source as Krueger and found that the entire reason the middle class has “shrunk” is that more households today have incomes that put them above the middle class. The share of households with income that puts them in the middle class or higher was 76 percent in 1970 and 75 percent in 2010 — figures that are statistically indistinguishable. A shrinking middle class is a problem only if it reflects fewer people’s reaching the middle class. That is clearly the impression the administration wants to give, but it is not the truth of the situation.

 I, for one, am shocked — shocked! — at this misuse of economic data. It must be unprecedented.

After three years in office? The president appears to have mended fences with his erstwhile adversary.

President Obama and his defenders claim that he has failed in his efforts to begin an era of new politics solely because his opponents refused to grant him everything he wanted. The hubris of the argument is breathtaking. The president’s expectation that in a properly functioning constitutional democracy he would win every battle bespeaks an ignorance and an arrogance the likes of which we haven’t seen in the Oval Office for a century.

And now our president has become a champion for cynicism. His triangulating proposals are designed entirely to conceal his desires and priorities. He’s streamlining government, promising savings that amount to 0.0081 percent of the 2012 budget. He once campaigned on unity and idealism, and is now in every breath spitting the bile of demonization and disunity.