Media extrapolating a trend from a single data point: 2018 Heatwave Edition

Image credit: BBC

Warren Meyer writes: ‘The implicit plea in this post goes beyond climate — if you are claiming a trend, show me the trend data. I can be convinced […] but so often the actual data never matches the arm-waving in these media sources.’

This article in something called Inside Climate News seems to be typical of many I have seen this year.

Because we have had much attention in the media on heat waves this year, there must be an upward trend in heat waves and that is a warning signal that man-made global warming is destroying the planet.

Typical of these articles are a couple of features

1 – Declaration of a trend without any actual trend data, but just a single data point of events this year

2 – Unstated implication that there must be a trend because the author can’t remember another year when heat wave stories were so prevalent in the media

3 – Unproven link to man-made global warming, because I guess both involve warmth.

I have no idea if well-publicized heat waves this year are a harbinger of an accelerating global warming trend. But since we are discussing “trends” it struck me as useful to actually liven up the discussion with some actual trend data, ie data for more than one summer.

There is a real danger to extrapolating trends from volume of media coverage, as I discussed here. If you don’t want to click through, I have a funny story in the postscript.

Continued here.