Why I love Skeptical Science

Here’s their supposed debunk:

Climate Myth: CO2 lags temperature

CO2 didn’t initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming. In fact, about 90% of the global warming followed the CO2 increase.

The article is the usual contortions, they discuss cause and effect in a circular sort of fashion, convincing nobody but their Disciples.

But to really shoot themselves in the foot, they include this chart. Click to enlarge:

That shows a clear correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, doesn’t it?

Historically, yes. But actually… NO!

Look at the right and left hand scales. In case it’s not obvious, I have cut and pasted the chart into Excel, extended the scales, and extended the blue CO2 line to indicate current CO2 levels.

(The current high CO2 levels are almost certainly due to us burning fossil fuels over the last two centuries, so we can rule current levels as being caused by higher temperatures, whether or not that was true in the past.)

Handily, this extrapolation also rules out CO2 as a cause of higher temperatures, or else current temperatures would (or will) be about 18 degrees hotter than they are now. In which case humanity will be pretty much buggered and we might as well throw in the towel. Click to enlarge:

—————————————————
Sometimes I wonder whether Skeptical Science isn’t actually a sophisticated Big Oil-funded counter-propaganda exercise?

Taken at face value, Skeptical Science is an endless series of appallingly cack-handed own goals and unforced errors, all in apparent sincerity.

Proper Alarmists would have left off the left hand scale on the first chart and then included a “close up” chart of CO2 vs temperature for the last century, which would also show a very close correlation and quite possibly have fooled a lot of people.

You’d have to look closely to spot that in the first chart 80 ppm = 9 degrees (and 0 degrees is set at 260 ppm); and in the second chart 80 ppm = 0.8 degrees (and 0 degrees is set at 340 ppm), i.e. if second chart is correct, temperatures would be about 0.2 degrees warmer than they are now (which I am sure we can cope with). I thought that the “science was settled”? So can they not tell us whether temperatures will be 18 degrees higher or 0.2 degrees higher? That’s out by a factor of a hundred.