Cherry-picking, the king of tricks
Every 'global warming stopped' claim in history has been a window trick: start the chart at an unusually hot year, end it before the next record, and the trend disappears. Zoom out and the staircase keeps climbing.
The defense is boring and effective: always ask what happens outside the window. If someone chose 2016 as a start year, ask about 2015 and 2017. Watch them squirm.
Correlation, causation and viral nonsense
One cold morning in Jos does not disprove warming, and one hot afternoon in Kano does not prove it. Climate is the average of weather over decades. Any claim built on a single day, in either direction, is noise.
WhatsApp forwards love a different trick: the true number with the false cause. 'Prices doubled because of X' where the number is real and X is whatever the sender already believed. The number being checkable makes the causal claim feel checked. It is not.
The Cylin checklist
Before sharing any claim with a number in it: Who published this, and can I find the original? What are the axes, units and baseline? Who chose this time window, and what happens outside it? What other causes could produce the same number?
The ambassador's rule is stricter: never teach a number you have not traced to its source. This assessment tests exactly that discipline.
Hold on to these
- Window tricks make trends vanish. Always ask what happens outside the chosen window.
- Single days prove nothing about climate in either direction.
- A true number does not validate the causal story attached to it.
Check yourself
No grades here. If you can answer these out loud, you own the lesson.
- 1.How would you respond to a chart showing 'no warming' over a five-year window?
- 2.Give an example of a true number carrying a false cause.
- 3.Recite the four questions of the checklist without looking.