Redstate

The best is still Encoldening from Skanderbeg.

For Pliny to stop worshiping at the AGW altar it would have to be a cold day in he... wait a second, it is!
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Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words...-Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes

Even Hell, Alaska is in the middle of...
...Never mind. It snowed there yesterday...

"Guns don't kill people...
"...But they sure help!"
-Paul Giamatti, Shoot 'Em Up

Well, thanks for thinking of me. I didn't rush to join in because the topic seemed
very familiar. But here's a graphical version of my now-standard response. Think of the DJIA, rising as it does propelled by economic expansion, measured say by US GNP (plotted in billions):

The scaling varies, but the relation is pretty clear. Now let's look at the first few years of this century:

What's wrong with this picture? Well, there's more than just GNP involved.

The Stock market is only loosely related to the U.S. economy not determined by. There are mechanisms in the financial world that cause the separation.

The warming argument says the increasing CO2 is a direct determinant of temperature. The more CO2 the warmer it gets. To use your own words "Its a causal argument".

So unless you can provide a climate equivalent of the irrationally exuberant investor, how is your comparison relevant ?

The only reason that Pliny can use these two graphs is because they look the same, and in terms of correlations, they are both equally craptastic. Pliny can't compare graphs and simultaneously pick and choose arguments, so, his causal argumentmust be applied equally. The argument for the DJIA graph would be "the GNP goes up with the rough DJIA data, therefore the GNP causes DJIA to go up over the course of its entire history, but not lately, for some unknown reason."

The problem is that the DJIA data can be replaced with the incidence of cancer, with the increase in population, with the number of high school shootings in the US, with the use of psycotherapy in Calfornia. All equally meaningless to the GNP, and here's why. These factors, like the DJIA can be elimiated. Abolished. The stock market can be closed. And yet the GNP could chug merrily along in its exponential rise.

Further, why isn't NASDAQ used in the abcissa? Why not the S&P 500? Why not combine them all in some proportion?

The DJIA is speculative to say the least, and has problems with reflecting real market value.

Why not just define the GNP as a function of the total American production.

Oh wait...

Yeah, it might be nice if the GNP were related to what it was actually a function of: the sum of amount we produce. And the changes in the GNP curve would then be related to all the little changes in production which all have their underlying reasons for change. Factor all those changes in their correct proportion, and you yield a curve which overlaps the GNP precisely. Then your understanding of all the little things (one of which MIGHT be the stimulation of business by changes in the DJIA), and TO WHAT DEGREE EACH FACTOR IS SIGNIFICANT, would be useful.

Too bad nobody has done that for all the little factors, (one of which MIGHT be CO2 as a inhibitor of heat loss), for global temperatures, yet.

One glaring deficiency in every last model I've seen is the absence of a biospherical component (or at least one that acutally emulates a biopshere, rather than fudges it with a single arbitrary constant. Temperature models are notoriously bad for focusing on a single variable (the presumptive causal CO2 concentration). This is bad science.

All global temprature models will continue to be absolutely useless unless all the processes that actually control temperature on the planet are employed.

You know, global temperature, graphed as a function of thermodynamics and thermochemistry and how they change the temperature, and what aspect is significant in what proportion, that's the sort of thing you want.

The correct constants won't change with component concentration or politics. That's when you know you've got the answers.

Too complicated for the world to do at this point? Maybe. But bad science and craptastic comparisons don't even come close to helping, except where politicians smell an opportunity to wrest power with the exploitation of popular apprehensions.

"If you don't elect us this time around, (we only have a handful of years left) you're all going to suffer immensely, and so will your children and grandchildren. Don't you pay no nevermind, we have a plan, but you have to vote us in first before we reveal it." Now there's some familiar argument.

It is the claim of the MMGW theory proponents that rising carbon dioxide concentration causes rising temperatures. However you are now comparing the relationship between temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, with the relationship between GNP and DJIA levels.

I think it's possible your comparison is insightful. Huh? I agree with you? Yes, because the reason that GNP and DJIA are so closely linked, isn't that one line causes the other to move. Rather, the two are both moved by a third, uncharted variable: inflation.

Likewise, it would definitely be possible that tempeartures and CO2 levels are both moved by a third, uncharted variable: solar input.

As long as we agree that there's yet no demonstrated causal relationship between temperatures and carbon dioxide, any more than there is one between GNP and DJIA (either way).

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Caveat Lector! :>)

For better explanation of stock prices, read chicken entrails. Actually, it's not better, but you get to eat the chicken.

I'm not seeking to promote any particular Wall St wisdom here; just to illustrate how short term effects can mask a long term relation. In fact the point of my second graph is to show that GNP is not a functional predictor.

However, GNP is not irrelevant to the DJIA. Most people think price/earnings ratio is a significant determinant of a share price. So for blue-chip stocks, it's held reasonably constant by bthe market. And the GNP is a reasonable proxy for the combined earnings of the DJIA companies. So that is the mechanistic link between the two. Which, as I say, works reasonably in the long term, but is overlaid with lots of noise in the short term.

We are not taling about stock market averages.
We are talking about temperature correlations to CO2 that calls the AGW models into question.
Dissembling to the behavior of stock market indices in relation to GNP is beyond pointless.

CO2 is a necessary, but not sufficient, ingredient for plant growth. They've done studies showing that plants don't grow faster or better in a CO2-rich environment than they do when there is just a little CO2. They need it, but excess doesn't help them grow. It's sort of like us and water or vitamin C.

Also, cities are warmer because they generate and retain more heat, not because they have less shade. In fact, in most places the city has as much or more shade than the surrounding countryside. It's the concrete that does it. Rural areas have less exposed rock (concrete), not more plants and shade.

Finally, plants are a source of water vapor, which they give off to cool themselves. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas several times more potent than CO2. In cooling themselves, plants pollute the environment, leading to global warming.

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Gone 2500 years, still not PC.

... crap. where was that warming trend again?

Fred Thompson, 2008

Lower albedo, higher absorption. More heat absorded, higher temperature. Just ask James Hansen of NASA why they started putting the temperature sensing stations on top of buildings, right next to parking lots.

"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.

Plants regulating temperature because plant shade is cooler.

Got it.

But snarling about apocalypse, just the same.

I have never claimed AGW would create an environmental catastrophe. In fact, I've repeatedly said that such claims were wrong and a hoax. In my opinion, the evidence still supports continued warming, but I do accept there are valid scientific arguments to the contrary. I've also previously discussed CO2's role in changing the ocean's chemistry, but I doubt anyone remembers (or read the blog entry).

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

I'm really swamped, so I don't have much time for lengthy emails.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

Email me and I'll put the answer, unmodified, straight into my blog. So if you're too scared of answering in public, don't answer at all.

"Guns don't kill people...
"...But they sure help!"
-Paul Giamatti, Shoot 'Em Up

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921