“A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around“. Anthony Watts posts a retired physicist’s enthusiastic number crunching that proves… if there’s any global warming it’s not because of CO2. It’s the other way ’round! However, Lon Hocker has to admit that “we offer no explanation for why global temperatures are changing“. It’s amazing what you can conclude when you remove the atmospheric CO2 trend before starting your number games.
Hocker tells us in the comments that “Excel isn’t all that hard to use, though I admit I had a bunch of learning to go though to write this. Remember I’m just using well accepted data, and high school math.” This is pretty much a confession that he’s a victim of Dunning–Kruger syndrome.
What Hocker has shown is that annual CO2 variations are, indeed, the result of seasonal temperature change and the resulting variation in vegetative CO2 production. In other breaking news, water is wet.
Wott's Up With That? 
You gotta like this excerpt:
“Long since?” I’m surprised we haven’t heard “Svante Arrhenius is Swedish. All Swedes are socialist. Therefore, Svante Arrhenius’ CO2 studies are socialism.”
Excellent post and great use of the D-K effect. However, there is a clear correlation of this post and the post by Dr. Spencer which suggests that natural climate patterns (PDO, AMO, and another?) account for ALL the warming we’ve seen since the 18th century. It’s clear what Watts is going after: CO2 is not the cause and everything is natural. Really, don’t worry, nothing to see here. Expect a ‘don’t worry about ocean acidification’ coming out very soon.
And cue a guest post from McLean reprinting his work removing more long term trend data to show… well nothing really, but it’ll be a denialist buffet of blaming short term weather patterns and invisible natural factors for the ever rising temperature rise!
Typical response by believer in global warmism, long on sarcasm or name calling, short on scientific arguments. I wonder if any fact will change Mark’s mind. For true “believers” no data will convince them of any other possibility. What I find sad is that it make environmentalists look like fundamentalists. They sound like the fire and brimstone evangelists I saw on New Years eve: turn or dburn. I don’t like fossil fuels, not because of CO2 but the other dirty stuff in them. All the attention is going on CO2 and stopping its release (which realistically isn’t going to happen) rather than cleaning the burning up (which is doable). Other worthy environmental causes are neglected because of focus on the myth of GW.
[Ah yes, those close-minded “believers” that want to act on the scientific evidence. Crazy! Mark refers to the position of a prominent AGW-doubting scientist, you vaguely bemoan alleged name-calling and lack of evidence but in fact offer an excellent example it (fundamentalists that “no data will convince”).
You sound like a acolyte of Bjørn Lomborg; “concerned”, but trying to redirect attention towards less pressing issues. Are you seriously suggesting that we are ignoring pollution? – Ben]
THE BIG TENT. They’ve done worse. Roy Spencer once authored a lengthy technical development of general climate theory, that he didn’t believe. But he thought WUWT’s readers would be interested in it. In the present case, at least there is one person, Lon Hocker, who believes it.
Way out ideas like this one deserve a place in the sun, but only a small one. Let them rise on their merits, while doing as little damage as possible.
But this is WUWT, a big league forum without sandlot ethics. And today’s collective global intelligence is being dumbed down a little bit with every reading by every person who fails to solve the puzzle in this article.
WUWT indiscriminately accepts all anti-AGW ideas. There’s toleration for all viewpoints, without considerations of consistency or reality. This is a Big Tent forum.
DOUBT. This article advances the climate denial industry’s goal of spreading doubt. And it will continue to do so, as it just sits there. First day readers will encounter some dissent in the comments. Future readers are, presumably, less likely to read the comments. There may be solutions there, but they’re too hard (270+) to find.
A close watcher may see reflections of this paper’s ideas in future comments. But no one will correct them. Doubt is the goal, under the Big Tent.
RED FLAGS. There are some very obvious up-front signs that this article’s theory has no validity: it is not necessary to go thru the details to find that it does not work.
These make it obvious that this paper goes beyond a willingness to post what might ultimately be found to be wrong. But there’s actually a penchant to publish what’s known to be wrong.
This article’s denial of CO2’s greenhouse effects fits into the lower tier’s indiscriminate denial of all things AGW. Again, the Big Tent.
Skeptical Science goes thru the details here.