Can the link between pirates and global warming be dismissed as mere coincidence?

Question

Clearly there is a strong corrolation between pirates and global warming as discovered by Bobby Henderson of the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster. Can this be dismissed as coincidence?

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

Answer 1

Na-No Fizdub

Answer 2

totally, oh and i love spagetti...d**n u made me hungry

Answer 3

spaghetti is yummy

Answer 4

Shiver me timbers 'tis true!  Thar be global warming pirates that make me hardees have to work more.  Arrrrr!

Answer 5

Arrgh!! This be no coincidence.

Answer 6

Where is Douglas Adams when you really need him?

Answer 7

The graph looks professional.  Just one thing - to create more alarm the horizontal axis should be longer.  This would give the appearance that there was a greater effect over the loss of pirates.

Answer 8

A correlation is of scientific value if it is part of a larger package of evidence.  And that package generally includes known physical phenomena (e.g. radiation absorption bands of greenhouse gases).  So, the answer is "yes" the correlation between pirates and global warming can easily be dismissed.

Answer 9

Yes.  There is no physical mechanism for pirates to cause global warming.

But increased CO2 must cause global warming, it's very basic physics.  There's not merely an association, there's causality.

Which is why:

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

No offense, but I'll take their opinion over unsupported statements by non-scientists.

Any day.

Answer 10

I cant argue with these conclusions!

because if I did I would be put in the dreaded skeptic/denier camp reserved for those who dont accept the pirate consensus.