Cruz Control

Senator Ted Cruz and others are fond of suggesting the earth has not warmed significantly in 18 years. Cruz just repeated that charade when he chaired the United States Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness in early December 2015. There's a reason he has had to keep the soundbite to the well-defined 18 years, a span which began around 1998. That high point in 1998 was a remarkable El Nino year.

In some regards, Cruz had it right, that a graph of average temperatures since 1998 shows comparable global temperatures between that year and early 2015. However, the average temperatures for 2015 through November are blowing Cruz's claim out of the water (oops, we're getting low on water, too).

If you look at a NOAA graph of temperature vs. time after 1998, it looks something like this. Seemingly not significant change, Cruz repeatedly asserts.

However, if you look at the same graph of temperature vs. time since 1880, it looks like the one below. Note the post-1998 box in the upper right corner. Like Cruz and his ilk, this graph is dated and doesn't reflect data through 2015.

Here's the latest as we wind down 2015, adapted from the Washington Post. The upward trend simply continues, despite claims to the contrary by Cruz.

Meanwhile, the National Review claims there has been no significant global temperature change by using a graph with a scale that is fifty times the fluctuation--an example of unfettered deceit by the National Review. The y-axis covers over 100 degrees, as if that temperature range is relevant. For comparison, a bogus 50x scale would suggest the US national debt hasn't gone up in the past 45 years, either.

Senator Ted Cruz should follow Donald Trump into irrelevance with his obtuse insistence on falsehoods. Cruz's statements are so blatantly skewed, I wonder if he sometimes actually believes what he says. All this bad science by Ted Cruz & Co. is killing me. And you.