What you can do with numbers and statistics . . . sigh, sigh and sigh. I haven’t written about global warming and I’m not doing so now. I’m writing on something disturbing in the presentation of a supposed news article. THIS ONE. That would be the one that starts off with these paragraphs:

Scientists are more convinced that human activity is behind the increase in global temperatures since the 1950s, which has boosted sea levels and the odds of extreme storms, according to a leaked draft of an upcoming U.N. report.

“It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010,” according to a summary of the draft obtained by CNN. “There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century.”

Those conclusions come from the upcoming report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the fifth in a series of multiyear reports seen as a benchmark on the subject. The panel’s last report, in 2007, concluded that it was 90% certain that rising temperatures were due to human activity; the new draft raises that figure to 95%.

That’s my red to point of that if we are in a period of climate change, then about half of it is do to something other than human influence. However, this is not stressed; what the writer and editor emphasis is the 90-95% certainty factor. I think we will see this repeated. This is wrong; it is an insult to science.

Consider this scenario: Let’s say of all surgery deaths, over half are caused by incompetent surgeons. Now if you stress the idea that there is a 95% chance that this is right – not mentioning that the percentage applies to only 50% of the whole –  you are going to get people to assume that if their surgeon is one of the best, their odds of surviving surgery are close to perfect. You would be putting the close to 50% chance of dying into very small print.

It seems to me that for years some have been claiming that humans ARE responsible for global warming, period. Now, in reality, they are saying that humans are responsible for half. One might wonder if they actually are backing away from the initial all inclusive claim.