1. Apples and oranges. You're comparing 12-month averages to a 6-month average, despite the fact that the Earth undergoes a 12-month climatic cycle.

2. Outlier. The trend in the dataset is upwards. You can't just decide to input some arbitrary splitting point in your data and compare trends before and after. That's not how you do serious time-series analysis. Nor can you pick out single points and compare them.

- Jake

And yes, we in Europe might get bread and circus, but in the US I'm not sure, if they haven't somehow managed, to make only circus, but no bread.