Something interesting just happened on the net. In an article that got quickly deleted, Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine linked to this "study", supposedly by researchers from the University of Arizona and the University of Goteborg in Sweden, claiming to have found an exact correlation between global temperatures and CO2 emissions caused by ocean bacteria. I searched the net for other references to this site, but the only other one I could find had also been just recently posted and deleted. The website of the "Journal of Geoclimatic Studies" curiously lists only one issue on its website - which website was curiously registered just a few days ago on November 2 - and of the several "articles" listed for that "issue", the one about benthic bacteria is the only one available for reading. Meanwhile, John Fleck comments that "the University of Arizona doesn't really have a 'Department of Climatology'" as referred to in the "study".

Looks like a prank. :-)

The exact match in the graphs alone should be a dead ringer - it's very implausibly convenient.

But isn't April 1 the traditional time for elaborate pranks of this kind?