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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (6830)	4/3/2009 10:28:34 AM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 86356

I don't see it as willful ignorance. I see one camp with a sunspot theory and another camp with a CO2 theory. Both seem logical to me. The thing is that science and statistical theory should be able to resolve this question VERY EASILY. All one needs to do is get some data streams across the last few centuries for CO2 levels, # of sunspots, and temperature levels and then run a multiple regression analysis. That will tell us for sure what is going on. I would start by running an equation that attempted to replicate sunspots in a sine wave and CO2 levels as a steadily rising curve, both against temperature to determine how much of temperature's fluctuations could be explained by those two variables. I'd bet you'd find both COMBINED to explain most of temperature's fluctuations. Then my question, also which could be answered by statistics, would be how much does each variable independently contribute to the temperature fluctuations. That way you could rank order their contributions and definitively say that CO2 has more impact on temperature or sunspots have more impact on temperature. Statistical theory can answer these questions. Surely a study has been done on this. It's simply science. I'd bet you'd find something akin to the relationship between stocks and bonds in a portfolio. Over time your portfolio increases in value, but most of the increase is due to stocks, not bonds. It could be that CO2 and sunspots both impact temperature, but it could be that CO2 levels are more impactful over the long run.