Pete:As a radiative force,CO2 is the largest. I did not say that all the CO2 was in the atmosphere. KIPP

Brett: A quick question for you -- NOAA says that this will be a tough winter to predict because of neither El Nino nor La Nina clearly developing, but that it should be warmer than average throughout much of the central USA.

My question -- if it is a neutral year, shouldn't we kind of expect average temperatures throughout?

Reply; Not necessarily. There is a lot more to it than just looking at the ENSO.

Off topic but very interesting if you think the Government wants to do away with the evil oil companys.

According to http://auto.howstuffworks.com the United States consumes an average of 400 million gallons of gas a day. The federal government taxes each gallon with a consumption tax of 18.4 cents according to www.gaspricewatch.com .

Now for the math:

400,000,000. gallons x .184cents per gallon = $73,600,000.00 of revenue to the Government a day.

$73,600,000.00 x 365 days a year = $268,640,000,000.00 billion of revenue per year to the government.

EVIL oil company, ExxonMobil, America's largest oil company made $164,000,000,000.00 billion in pre tax gross profit last year. How dare them! That kind of profit is obscene and not FAIR.

The United States Government TAKES 41.4% according to http://seekingalpha.com/article/63131-exxon-s-2007-tax-bill-30-billion

"ExxonMobil paid, [Update: The $40.6 billion and $39.5 billion figures are after-tax profits. For 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion.]
The majority of the owners of ExxonMobil stock are 401K plans and small investors.

Exxon's tax payment in 2007 of $30 billion (that's $30,000,000,000.00) is a record, exceeding the $28 billion it paid last year.

So just from the sales tax and only ExxonMobil not including the other American oil companies, the Federal Government made a net profit of.
$298,640,000,000.00 billion per year

The Federal Government doesn't have to do any thing but TAKE the money. It doesn't have to transport the oil and gas or refine it.

Does anyone really think that the Federal Government wants an alternative fuel? The only way the Federal Government will help with an alternative fuel source is if it can TAX it for huge government profits.

We all know that only the government can be fair and that it knows how to invest money and spend it better than anyone else.

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." Thomas Jefferson

Uh, Mr. G., I think you're an order of magnitude too high in your calculation of annual consumption tax revenue:

365*73.6*10^6 = 26.9 *10^3*10^6 = $26.9b

So the number you're jumping up and down about is simply mistaken.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you've just demonstrated that Exxon's NIAT of $39.5 b alone is nearly DOUBLE the per-gallon gas-tax revenue collected from ALL consumption.

Since the cited NIAT figures are NET PROFIT, the costs you mention (transport and refining) are irrelevant.

The plain and simple truth is that the Exxon profits are obscene.

There's more to short term or seasonal weather patterns than ENSO variations. For North America, the North Pacific SSTs and the NAO come into play, as well as intermediate oscillations such as the MJO. The interaction of both the North Pacific and the North Atlantic can set up interesting hemisheric weather patterns. Last winter the warm North Atlantic SSTs and the cold North Pacifc set up a strong zone of upper level baroclincity across most of North America. The result was a series of strong storms that plagued much of the Rockies and eastern US.

I cannot recall what the models predicted, but if I'm not mistaken, NOAA predicted a continuation of positive temp anomalies through most of the US for the 2007-2008 winter. The preceeding autumn was quite warm if I remember. It was so warm that the Cherry Blossoms in DC were even blooming.

The phrase "Climate change" is redundant. It should just be climate, because it's a given that climate has always changed, always changes, and will always change. So we should be looking at the effects of El Nino and La Nina on climate, not climate change. But alarmists will never drop the "change" because that word reinforces the myth that man is changing the climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is bogus. IPCC computer simulations are created to produce results they desire, and IPCC predictions haven't materialized in the real world. IPCC science is fraudulent, erroneous, and its scientific methods are anti-scientific.

Thanks for your anti-government diatribe, Mr. G. No wonder you and your ilk have been thrown out of power.

Your math doesn't come out right. Using your numbers, the government collects $26.8 billion per year in gas taxes (not $268 billion, as you claim). Pretty big difference. This money goes to build our highways, which even Republicans will tell you is underfunded.

Exxon's profits are unique, because they have nothing to do with innovation or ingenuity. It's tied directly to the price of crude oil. The price of crude skyrockets, so does Exxon's profits, and vice versa. Indeed, Exxon and the rest of the oil companies have churned out the same product for the past fifty years. The only "innovation" coming out of the oil industry is fancier ways of drilling holes in the ground. Compare this with a company like, say, Apple, which actually creates innovative new products.

The oil companies get more subsidies than all of the alternative energy industries COMBINED. Even the corporate apologists can't explain why a mature, profitable industry needs to have subsidies.

Katie I bet Michael McPhaden would be able to computer model my "Underwater Suspension Tunnel" idea! Since they can regulate SSTs in the deep Western boundry ocean currents upon the Earth they should be able to to regulate the influence that El Nino and La Nina have upon the Earth. Remember they can regulate the temperatures between 70 and 90 degrees at the surface if needed.

There is a small predictable cycle in El Nino indicies, global temperatures and even the Keeling curve of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This occurs with a period of 3.6 years and appears to be due to North Pacific Rossby waves. The details are thrashed ou in (some of) the comments to this thread:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/co2-blip/

I did not make up these number or do the math. And I am not Anti-Gov. but this artical gives an example of the massive tax revinue that will be lost if there were no "BIG OIL" and does not even touch all the areas that are taxes in the production distribution and sale of petrolium products. The only thing that I was pointing out was how unlikely it is that the Gov. that depends on tax revinue will give up such a large amount of money. I don't think it will happen any time soon.

David B.Benson: I can't believe your theory. There may be a pattern for Enso, but that would be determined by temps and currents from the south and south west. The rossby waves and the Coriolis effect would cancel each other out. The Coriolis effect would be going east with Enso and the rossby waves would travel west. Does this make sense to you. KIPP

David B.Benson:The rossby waves you were referring to take an easterly track, but with the PDO, lagging behind El nino and La Nina.

"Perhaps more important than Jacobs' pioneering observation of an interannual Rossby wave is his explanation of its origin. When he altered the wind stresses forcing the model, Jacobs found that the 1982-83 El Ni�o event generated the Rossby wave he observed in 1992-93 data. Moreover, he argues from an analysis of sea surface temperature data that the wave could have influenced weather patterns in the North Pacific a decade later". KIPP

Brookline Tom:

Ok, so the evil gas company made $164billion in profit, but what was their profit margin? I understand they make about a 10% profit. (compare to pharmaceutical companies that make around 18% profit)

Simple example of profit margin:
It costs me $1.00 in material/shipping/marketing/etc. to bring a widget to market. I want to make 10% profit, and so sell it at $1.10. I sell 100 million in a year and make $10 million. Ok, my costs have just doubled for the same widget to get it to market to $2.00. I still want my same profit margin and sell for $2.20, and for the next 100 million sold, I make $20 million.

So, I double my profits (OBSCENE!!!) without increasing my profit margin...and profit margin is why I have investors invest in my company.

Sorry, high net profits does not mean obscene profits.

brooklyin tom,

since you decided to promote yourself as the expert on when corporate profits become obscene, i was wondering if you consider that al gore's and james hansen's speaking fee's are obscene?... at what point, just for the record, do you think they will cross the line of obscenity, as their income is solely based upon expelling alot of hotair, rich in co2 no less?..based on your above "obscene" corporate profit statement, it is apparent that you think exxon would be a whole lot better ok if they would just "spread the wealth"...shame, shame bro, smells like socialism to me...have a nice day, dudes...

I did not make up these number or do the math.

You posted them, under your moniker. No government running an annual deficit in excess of one TRILLION dollars should contemplate "giving up" ANY tax revenue.

Sorry, high net profits does not mean obscene profits.

Exxon's profits went through the roof because speculators drove the price of oil through the roof. It had nothing whatsoever to do with your attempted rationalization.

It's true that characterizing these profits as "obscene" is a value judgment. Some of us share that judgment. You, apparently, do not. Fair enough.

However we characterize it, the impact of the unbridled corporate greed that produced these extraordinary profits is all around us, and the taxpayers are now footing the bill.

Feel free to carry the flag for such behavior if you like, but don't be surprised when the vast majority of the public -- whose wallets are being emptied -- take whatever action is needed to stop it.

David B. Benson: Attached to my name is a link to an SST Update post I did about a week ago. The first graph is of weekly NINO3.4 data that's based the Optimally Interpolated (OI.v2) SST data set. Please download it, mark it up to illustrate the 3.6-year cycle, and repost it. Thanks. Or if you've got another link to an illustration of the 3.6-year cycle, please post it.

I also did a post on Nov 6 in which I presented monthly NINO3.4 data smoothed with a 25-month filter. The assumption behind the 2-year filtering is that the "typical" ENSO event is made up of an El Nino one year and a La Nina the next. This is consistent with a number of hypotheses where the La Nina phase is simply a process where east equatorial Pacific SSTs return to the "normal" state. There's a link in the post that explains it better.

I am truly interested in seeing a predictable 3.6-year cycle, but I haven't found it. What I do have in my library is a paper ["Using modern time series analysis techniques to predict ENSO events from the SOI time series" (2002) Salisbury and Wimbush, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (2002) 9: 341-345] that states, "The time interval between successive warm ENSO events ranges from one to eight years and averages 3.6 years."

Did someone at Tamino's blog read the above paper and assume that an average represented an underlying cycle?

Kipp Alpert | November 23, 2008 6:36 PM --- Rossby waves are always westbound, being Kelvin waves on the return. The Kelvin wave is along the equator in the open ocean and does indeed influence El Nino/La Nina, by computer experiments recently performed.

The enrgy input for this recurring pattern could come from tides, waves or, indeed, somehow from ENSO; the important point is that the North Pacific is a resonant chamber for Rossby/Kelvin waves with a 3.6 year period.

This does not mean this is the only Rossby wave; there are several modes which might be excited. But it appears that only the 3.6 year period is self-sustaining rather than damping out.

BT:

Nice to see you're still around and can type a bit.

Just curious, what is considered to be "fair" profit in your estimation?

And, would you indulge us in your business model that limits your value to society for your services to within that number?

Do you have a comment for us in regard to our President Elect's wish to adjust gas taxes so that the retail price is equivalent to $100 a barrel oil gas prices?

Oh, and oil prices surged only after a US congress was elected that would tend to be hostile towards the development of new sources of oil. Yes it was speculators driving the price up by guessing that the world would be limited in finding oil by the desires of our new madame speaker.

Oil promptly came down when it was decided to attempt to lift restrictive bans only after the public demanded it. It will be curious to see what happens in the near future. For you see, they have made it clear that they want to reinstitute te bans yet the economy, which they hastened along to its' demise, may prevent it.

Maybe the government should learn to live within the budget it takes. And really, they don't "give up" anything, they only get it through its' citizens efforts.

David B. Benson: The phase velocity (crests) of Rossby waves are westbound. The group velocity (energy flux) of Rossby waves move in all directions. So in the context that Kipp was using Rossby waves, he's correct.

Brookline T.

(in millions) revenue profits percent
Oil:
Exxon Mobil 347,254.0 39,500.0 11% profit
ConocoPhillips 172,451.0 15,550.0 8% profit
Marathon Oil 60,643.0 5,234.0 8% profit
ConocoPhillips 172,451.0 15,550.0 9% profit

Pharmaceutical:
Pfizer 52,415.0 19,337.0 36% profit
Johnson&Johnson 53,324.0 11,053.0 20% profit

Microsoft 44,282.0 12,599.0 28% profit

from:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/full_list/index.html

ok, who's profits are obscene? Yes, speculators drove the cost of a barrel of oil through the roof, and it isn't Exxon that profits, it's the people selling the oil. So, define obscene. This isn't rationalization, it's reality. I'm sure the "greenies" would be happy if Exxon went belly-up and had to file bankruptcy. Gas is back under $2.00 a gallon...these obscene claims are going to disappear among the other problems when people that have their retirement investent in Exxon realize their investments survived ok. Do you really think it's just Exxon making the money?? No, the investors are the ones making the profit.

If you hit Exxon with another tax, it'll just be passed on to the consumer.

HAHAHA...yes, Darren, oil promptly went down only when the good ol' US of A, with their massive oil deposits constituting a whopping 3% of the world's total oil reserves, decided it may open a small percentage of these 'massive' oil deposits for exploration.

The sheer lunacy of the far right never ceases to amaze and, fortunately, never ceases to give me a good laugh.

Thanks for calling me a lunatic. I really appreciate that.

You know what amazes me? How the enlightened elitists on the left are all about fairness, but in the end all they ever do is berate, belittle and belie any one, or idea, that disagrees with their point of view. Evidence and reality plays little role in that mindset.

Let me guess, the far left view of the decline of the oil price is that it is the fault of Bush because clearly his oil buddies made enough money before he left office and so now they can reduce the costs so that the president can come in and reap the benefits right?

Or, rather, Bush, being the chump he is, SOLELY DESTROYED the world economy thereby forcing oil to come down in price.

Because surely the truly smart and enlightened people on the left could not have had ANYTHING to do with it either way right?

I'd go into a more in depth review, but you know what, numbers can be twisted however you want and that game is getting very old.

In example, the entire AGW theory is based upon the concept of running data through a blender.

Darren | November 26, 2008 5:35 PM --- You could actually begin learning some climatology by reading "The Discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer Weart:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

Review of above:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63