re: #463 Iron Fist

Given that a lot of the evidence points to CO2 levels lagging temperature increases it seems at best premature to say that CO2 causes temperatures to increase.

Reading too much into a graph like that can be dangerous, as I’m sure you would agree. There can be, and most certainly are, more than one factor in climate change, and there can be “tipping points” involved that swap out different factors at different time; and the base historical data itself can be more accurate for one factor (eg temperature) than for another (eg CO2).

The graph in question suggests that there are fewer CO2 measurements for a start, due to the more apparent smoothing of the graph.

However it does appear that the “lag” you mention is only significantly pronounced when temperatures are decreasing, not when they are increasing, suggesting more than one factor at play.

This by itself does not appear to prove anything beyond the correlation and one really needs to argue the science in the present rather than the estimated history, IMHO.