Guest Posting by Ira Glickstein
Total US Debt (public and private) as a percentage of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) correlates with NASA GISS US Annual Mean Temperature Anomaly better than CO2 levels! So, if we want to reduce warming, cut the debt!
The base chart tracks Total Public and Private US Debt as a percentage of GDP (black line) from 1870 through 2009. Notice how it slowly increases from 1880 to 1930 and then peaks sharply in the early 1930’s, declines through the 1950’s and then rises steadily through 2009.
NASA GISS data for the US Annual 5 year Mean Temperature Anomaly from 1880 to the present is superimposed (red line), and fits remarkably well. It is a bit noisier, but it too increases from 1880 to 1930 and then peaks sharply in the early 1930’s. It then declines through 1970, and then rises steadily through 2010.
Notice how CO2 levels (dotted blue line), estimated from 1880 through 1957 and based on Mauna Loa from 1958 through 2010, fail to indicate any peaking in the 1930’s.
It is amazing how the Warmists point to human-caused CO2 as the primary cause of Global Warming when Total US Debt as a Percentage of GDP matches so much better! Perhaps cutting the GISS budget will do more for the Warmist cause than wrecking our economy by cutting energy use and sequestering CO2? Let us save the environment by increasing US productivity and reducing deficits!
BOTTOM LINE:
1) I really do not think that US Debt is related to warming temperature at all, but it seems to be more related than CO2. (A geometric analogy: An ellipse has no corners at all, but it has more corners than a circle :^)
2) Correlation does not prove causation, and CO2 does not even correlate all that well as the cause of warming. Therefore, human activities, while most likely responsible for some small part of recent warming (see this) are overwhelmed by natural cycles and processes, responsible for most of the actual warming since 1880. Indeed, the greatest human cause of the supposed warming has been Data Bias, due to “adjustments” and re-analysis by NASA GISS.
onion2 says:
February 16, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Haha too funny. So we need to know how the globe is warming, by ignoring 98% of the Earth. Sadly I doubt your post was intended to be a joke.
That’s not fair! Briffa needed only one tree, Mann his bristlecones, Jones didn’t even need any data or any recognizeable method, Hansen gets to do all kinds of strange things with his ever changing data and data base, and Steig certainly wouldn’t have any trouble at all in correctly spreading the U.S. data over the whole world, that is, if it could only be shown to give the correct result!
So it should be especially obvious to you, onion2, that the real problem with using all of that U.S. data which shows not much temperature change, is that it means too much of the wrong kind of data within that 2% of the Earth is being used to construct the USGMT curve – by some very, very sad excuses for Climate Scientists!
That must be Obama’s plan all along. To increase debt enough to buttress the arguments of the global warming crowd.
If you like that correlation, try correlating temp anomaly vs. World population. It’s a tight fit and focuses the debate . . . We just need to eliminate the people.
Makes you long for the Clinton years, he is only recent Pres to have a positive debt…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Wow, the only other Pres to move the debt in the right direction was CARTER. Who would have thought that…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Brad sez:
“Makes you long for the Clinton years, he is only recent Pres to have a positive debt”
Of course we had a Republican House AND Senate at that time. So Brad, please send lots of your money to the Republicans to assist with the 2012 Senate campaigns. We your help we CAN do it!!
Frank and Brad: The correlation I found is between NASA GISS US 5-year mean temperature and TOTAL US Debt, Public AND Private as a Percentage of GDP. Looking at the graphic, you can see there has been a continual increase in that measure since 1970, which includes the latter part of President Nixon and the terms of Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama, so this is not a political partisan issue.
I offered the correlation as an example of possibly spurious correlation, which does not prove causation, or, if there is causation, in which direction. The close correlation may indicate causation in the other direction. Perhaps it is rising Temperatures that cause GDP to go down and Total Debt to rise?
Getting back to Climate Science, the ice core data shows that Temperature changes LEAD CO2 by 800 years or so, which indicates that increasing Temperatures may cause CO2 to rise hundreds of years later. Both Temperature and CO2 stay up for thousands of years, and then, while CO2 is at its maximum value, Temperatures begin to fall for hundreds of years and CO2, after a considerable LAG, begins to fall as well. That fact is one of the faults of former VP Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth movie, even acknowledged by the Warmists at Real Climate.
“onion2 says:
February 16, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Haha too funny. So we need to know how the globe is warming, by ignoring 98% of the Earth. Sadly I doubt your post was intended to be a joke.”
Onion, why don’t you have a look at these two threads on Digging in the Clay.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/mapping-global-warming/
and
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/kml-maps-slideshow/
and if you use Google Earth why not download the actual KML files and look at the individual station data (and trends) for yourself (by clicking on the coloured dots within Google Earth).
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/google-earth-kml-files-spot-the-global-warming/
Provided you are prepared to take the time to look at these and to analysis the NCDC GHCN data yourself, you’ll see why the multi-decadel trends in continental US (CONUS) temperature data are so important in this whole man-caused global warming debate. Dismissing it out of hand as you are attempting to do because the surface area of the CONUS is only 2% of the surface area of the planet is foolish (remember that approx. 70% of the surface of the planet is covered by oceans/in-land lakes) and is only the sort of thing a CAGW alarmist like Hansen (and his helpers Reto and Sato) would do when confronted with errors in their GISTemp analysis of historical temperature post the year 2000 (the so called Y2K error http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/03/hansens-y2k-whopper/ and http://climateaudit.org/2010/11/11/y2k-re-visited/) and the failure of his post-1988 Congress testimony CAGW predictions (in which he was 99% certain) to come to fruition.
The fact is there is (with the possible exception of the CONUS and some parts of western Europe.) very little multi-decadel (so called ‘long lived’) station temperature data that spans most of 1880 to 2010 NCDC GHCN time period available for most parts of the planet (http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-station-drop-out-problem/). Other than the outputs from the ‘tuned to produce catastrophic global warming’ climate models, the whole case for man-caused global warming rests on the premise that the late 20th century warming period (from 1970 to 2000+) is ‘unprecedented’ in the last 130 years and Mann & Co would even have us all believe it is ‘unprecedented’ in the last 1000 to 2000 years. This claim is not supported by the actual (NCDC GHCN ‘raw’) temperature data as the actual temperature shows that there is no such think as ‘global warming’. At any given time in the last 130 years parts of the planet have been warming while other parts (of the planet) have been cooling at the same time and vice versa.
The links I’ve provided above show clear evidence of multi-decadel cyclic warming/cooling trends – warming from 1910 to 1940, followed by cooling from 1940 to 1970, followed by warming from 1970 to 2000. Even Phil Jones (in his interview with Roger Harrabin) is prepared to admit that the late 20th century (1970 to 2000) warming trend is statistically indistinguishable from the early 20th century (1910 to 1940) warming trend.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
“Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
“
Don’t forget the hot air emanating from the mouth of Al Gore.
The base chart shows “Estimated CO2” levels prior to actual measurements begun in 1958 at Mauna Loa.
There is no need to “estimate CO2” prior to 1958. Just go to Beck 2007, and you can use actual measurements made by hundreds of scientists over the last 180 years. The measurement in 1825 shows CO2 at 425 ppm, higher than it is today.
all those looking at us debt figures – and the con by the Cons about cutting the deficit
here is the match to the US site above – our very own UK debt bomb
http://www.debtbombshell.com/
I wonder how CO2 correlates with Internet IP addresses ?
Charles: Thanks for mentioning Beck’s CO2 data based on chemical analysis. Anthony posted this about the Beck data in 2008, reproducing Beck’s graphic and writing: “…My personal opinion on this paper is that I’m ‘on the fence with it’, and I encourage a rigorous debate, pro and con. – Anthony”. Beck’s obituary was posted by Anthony in 2010.
This Beck graph compares the Arctic ice core data (smooth, almost linearly increasing gray line, similar to my “Estimated CO2”) with Beck’s data (wavy red line that varies up and down and extends up to 100 ppm above the ice core data). I would appreciate it if WUWT readers would provide any information that may confirm Beck’s analysis. Until I see better evidence, I tend to discount Beck’s data, but I have an open mind.
Beck’s data uses chemical measurements from a variety of places which are subject to horrendous amounts of noise. In fact, about the same amount of noise as you get moving around a major city (or by measuring from one spot and having wind direction change) – location alone can explain the entire variance.
Such changes in atmospheric composition cannot be explained by any known volcanoes, and are equivalent to ~10% of vegetation biomass in the world decomposing in a single year iirc. Occam’s razor says Beck’s results are not global.
“YES, I do trust the satellite data in general and Spencer’s analysis in particular. Looking at his graph, take his first January (1980) anomaly, which is -0.1ºC, and compare it with the most recent January (2011) anomaly, which is 0.0ºC, and you get a net warming since satellite data came available of only +0.1ºC, a lot less than the +0.5ºC I have allocated to warming since 1880.”
Are you serious?
Linear regression gives a much better idea than cherry picking 2 months. It’s +0.14 C for the UAH period of ~20 years, i.e. approx +0.5 C.
But of course, atmospheric temperatures are very noisy and a lot of this isn’t related to climate change, but to internal heat transfers. Sea level is a much better diagnostic of climatic change (albeit with a lagged response thanks to the cryosphere and so on).
You can see that this drastically reduces the noise, and it’s a better thermometer than the atmosphere because that’s where 95% or so of the heat energy actually goes (thermal expansion + latent heat of fusion when ice melts)
This may not be as far fetched as it sounds.
I found a similar close correlation between temperatures and jet fuel usage… think about it….
So when the economy grows, folks fly more and airports are hotter (where we increasingly keep our thermometers…) AND we borrow more money when we all feel good ( think “housing bubble”). Then when the bubble pops, we slow down our travel and cut fuel use cooling the airports a bit (and spend a few years trying to get debt levels back under control and rebuiding the GDP growth).
So this could be a random accident, or it could just be that we put the thermometers near where the fuel is burned and both flying and debt are tied to economic cycles…
AS;
“a circle has one corner?” No, that’s a teardrop.
;P