“Why Joe Bastardi sees red: A look at Sea Ice and GISTEMP and starting choices“. Groan. Anthony Watts is promoting another “simple question” from Joe Bastardi: “If it’s warmer than normal, you should not have an increase in ice.” Joe, the chart is of temperature anomalies not temperature. So even though its warmer in the arctic that doesn’t mean that it’s warm. Joe Romm’s post on Climate Progress takes this on more fully – “Accuweather’s “expert long-range forecaster” Joe Bastardi has now firmly established himself as the least informed, most anti-scientific meteorologist in the world.”

GISS surface temperature anomaly, Dec-Jan-Feb 2010.

Naturally Anthony’s totally onboard with Joe Bastardi’s dark hints about conspiracy theories and “magical readjustment”. Also, he claims that using red to denote positive temperature anomalies is deceptive.

Anthony also posts a blizzard of charts which boil down to an exercise in picking a baseline date at a time when some of the global warming has already occurred to reduce the apparent temperature anomaly. Why didn’t he just set today as the baseline and declare NO temperature anomaly? If you’re going to misuse data might as well go all-in.

He the cooly admits that “anomalies can show anything you want based of choosing the base period.” We know, Anthony, you just gave us a master-class in biased analysis!