A Drudge headline this morning points to this story that claims sea levels have been falling for the past 6 years. And the story is correct. Here's the graphic proof based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
Nothing to look at here. Everyone's safe. No worries.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the source, the picture fails to tell the whole story.
Here is the same graph extended back to 1910.
According to the data--yes, the same data used in the top graph--sea levels fell from about 1920-1930, and again from 1945-1950, and again from 1970 to 1980, and again from 2000-2005 and from 2008 to 2009 and from 2010-2016.
Yet somehow sea levels rose from 1910-2016.
By almost .4 meters.
Upshot: Part of the story doesn't tell the whole story. As I tell my students in my econometrics classes: If you tell me the conclusion you want people to draw, I can find data to support your conclusion. But the trick to good statistics is to draw conclusions from the data and not draw data for the conclusions.
