Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The Only Thing You'll Ever Need to Know About NRO


Wait... I can do better than that. Tilt!

Notice the difference? Look real close at the alignment of the chart frame and the outer frame in the second chart. With an almost imperceptible 1/2 degree rotation of the chart, the temperature record can be made to appear essentially flat. How could the editors at NRO have overlooked this opportunity? Too much intellectual integrity? I doubt it.

As a university teacher I get this all the time. There is a word for it: SOPHOMORIC -- "conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature." 

The NRO chart is based on fact. It merely misrepresents that fact. This is S.O.P. for the climate change denial cult. They are big on isolated facts wrenched out of context and presented in a misleading way. Senator Ted Cruz is a master of the technique. He is so good at it that he would never have to lie. Except that he is so good at it that he cannot tell the difference!

Senator Cruz and NRO are not the problem. They are symptoms of the problem. The problem is that misrepresentation is the currency of contemporary American life. Advertising, politics, entertainment, business, education, administration, economics. Cruz and NRO simply inflate that currency to outlandish proportions. They get away with it because "everybody does it!"

Tilt.

5 comments:

Myrtle Blackwood said...

This is land surface temperature data? The ocean temperature (especially down to 700 metres) has heated up very significantly since 1998 reports Guy McPherson.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

NRO? Thought this was going to be about the super secret National Reconnaissance Office in its budget fights with the less secret NSA and even less secret CIA.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

I shall tell a tale of the real NRO, not this pipsqueak outfit S-man is bonking (not that they do not deserve bonking). Existence of the NRO was classified until well into the 90s, and very few Americans knew of its existence, and most still do not, although it is as big as the NSA and more secret.

Anyway, when I first visited the then-USSR in the Orwellian year of 1984 I first stayed at the National Hotel in downtown Moscow. On a table in the lobby was a copy of the English language Moscow News, which still exists. The top headline on the front page was about the US NRO spying on the Soviet navy (NRO runs our spy satellites, oooog). Front page. Top story. Yeah, we were keeping the existence of the NRO secret so that our enemies would not know about it, hahahahahahaha! True story.

Sandwichman said...

"Yeah, we were keeping the existence of the NRO secret so that our enemies would not know about it,"

Just shows you they knew who their real enemy was.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

And of course you are right to bonk the pipsqueak Nat Rev Online for its silly charade with those figures.