Ok, then why do you ridicule it?

I think that the only indoctrination on schools comes from one child to the next, at least here in the Netherlands, and that the rest is just technobabble to kids, something to forget when they grow older.

I don't remember much from school anyways, and I can't remember any indoctrination.

Maybe the Netherlands are different from other countries. Is there indoctrination in other countries?

“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science.

We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen – of whom we have an ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”

John D. Rockefeller, General Education Board (1906)

 

 

Do a little research into how much the Rockefeller and Carnegies had on the education system.

Zombie sure knows how to spark a debate.

I was gonna say "because it was worthy of ridicule" but ridicule seems too strong a word for having simply quoted text from the article.  A scholarly, peer-reviewed article.  For better or worse, a lot of bad, wrong stuff gets published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.

I'm not saying those dudes aren't smart or don't deserve respect for their intellect.  I'm just saying the science they are practicing is so much mush - if this is this and if that is that then maybe those are those.  (Hey, I might have just penned a new Marx Brothers routine!).  There are so many potential amplifying and mitigating variables, with interactions of immense complexity, and we don't have a clue about a lot of them, maybe most of them.  Sucks if you're a climatologist, but that's what you have to work with.

A bunch of sophisticated mathematics is impressive & sciency but when applied to a bunch of assumptions the results depend entirely on the assumptions.

This article showed that one of those assumptions was wrong, made observations and showed a better assumption.

That's advancement of knowledge.

And as far as the assumptions go: those go into the error-bars of the measumerement.

But that's a tricky part, it can be hard to place uncertainties on assumptions. Something might seem completely reasonable and having a low error, but in practice it can be erroneous. Like this article showed.

I don't think it's bad that science works this way, I don't think there's any other way really. No one person knows everything.

The fact that it was published and reviewed and everything and can still contain errors, that does not really invalidate the entire scientific process. A peer review only removes the obvious errors and in observational science, detecting error is hard to do (because the reviewers haven't done the measurements). Especially if they show new kinds of data.

The scientific papers are a way to share knowledge between scientists. They don't have to be perfect... as long as there are other people reading it and correcting them when they have the chance.

It's just how the world works...

And yes... one way to check if something's wrong is to see if the observations match expectations. If they don't, either the results are wrong or the expectations were wrong. The researcher then has to figure out which is the case, like this article did.

That is also just the way the world works.

Anyways... the original paleosol data showed that the earth was hot when CO2 levels were at 2,000 ppm or so. Subsequent measurements didn't find nearly such high values. Now this article figured out why there was such a difference and that the paleosol CO2 values were too high.

That means that the temperature-CO2 sensitivity is higher than thought earlier. And that means that in the year 2100 we can have a climate like the one in wich dinosaurs evolved, with global temperatures that could be a much as 6 degrees celcius higher. Hot enough that there is no (permanent) ice at either pole.

Which is a scary thought.

Which hasn't worked out real well in climatology over the past 15-20 years.

Which is pure sarcasm that masks significant progress made in the last 20 years.

Actually I think that the paleo-data set is fairly good, because there are many different data (each with their own problems) but it looks like they are reasonably well in agreement.

It's not perfect of course. That's not possible for millions year old data.

I'm not talking about modeling here, you probably are? I prefer to look at the past, because that gives you an actual real-life example. You can't get more reliable than that now, can you?

Like AGW, this is pathological science.

According to the currently accepted laws of physics, there is no way to extract chemical energy from water alone.

The liberal/socialist utopian panacea. Thank you. This is why Logan's Run is one of my favorite movies. It reminds me how dangerous utopians are. 

Based on what: to each according to his need?

Another favorite: rationing. This always works well for a society when you artificially limit resources.

Will you also arrest people that install natural gas generators, diesel generators, burn fires to keep warm, burn oil for light or heat? I'm assuming this will be a capital offence in your utopian world. 

Thank god we have all these people we pay to think for us. 

Nah, future generations will probably hang the people who burn oil or gas.

What we can semi-reliably document is less than an eye-blink of geologic time.  Anything prior to that is approximation, our best guess.  Without being there and knowing all the variables affecting what happened at the time, we're really just trying to get close.  Within broad timelines, we're probably pretty close.  But there's a helluva lot more we don't know than we do know.

Now you're gettin' in the spirit!

But, why wait?

Well... as far as physical processes go, we have direct observations from our own time.

We can use those observations to understand/model how carbon was captured a long time ago.

Therefore I think that you're to negative about it, there's a lot we know about biology and physical processes.

Although you're right that we can never be 100% sure. That's why there are (large) error-bars in the estimated value of CO2.

Hopefully those uncertainties will get lower in the coming years, as scientists get a better understanding of the environment at the time. And that takes a lot of (field)work.

I hope we can agree that this kind of observational research is very important to our understanding of climate?

Maybe you'll find this interesting. I found it today, haven't finished it yet:

http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~kcobb/ocean_acid/Tripati%20et%20al%202011.pdf

I think that figures 11 and 13 are nice.

And recently I also read about the "Azolla event". It's a super-algae that more or less terraformed our planet about 49 million years ago. Isn't that just amazing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event

Come on now, Dr Guy, you know anything on WUWT is on the forbidden reading list.  I'd be on guard for a visit from the Ministry of Truth SWAT Team if I were you.

Edit: Acronym fixed.

I am just a naive seeker of truth and data.  I was not aware it was forbidden fruit.  I will ask Joe to pen his explanation on a neutral site.

As long as the team allows him to that is.

Yes funny, but everyone deserves a break now and then, even the people in the US. There's nothing wrong with that.

This is also interesting, when I was looking about permafrost.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2282750/Study-Siberian-permafrost-caves-shows-global-warming-just-1-5C-pump-TRILLION-tons-methane-CO2.html

Of course it's alarmist, but the underlying study is interesting. It shows that the last time a certain stalactite grew, was 400K years ago during an era when the earth was 1,5 degrees celcius warmer on average. It tells about what we can expect for permafrost.

Of course permafrost won't thaw overnight, after all it's ground that's frozen solid up to a hundred meters depth. It will take a very long time to thaw all the way down. This scientist gets it right (I think):

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/02/15-degree-threshold-for-widespread-permafrost-melt

Sometimes I think that alarmists also need to get a reality check...

I've also thought about temperature/CO2 correlation during ice ages.

Some people seem to think that if temperature rises, CO2 is released from the oceans, which leads to a self-sustaining rise in temperature and CO2. I do not think this is possible, because partial pressure in the atmosphere rises as well, which will mitigate the rise in CO2. I think (I'm not sure) that it is a process which, once initiated by a certain rise in temperature, will reach an equilibrium without a runaway feedback effect.

After all, we see in practice how very good oceans actually are at absorbing CO2. The oceans tend to mitigate rises in CO2 (and hence, temperature), this is not a system that seems unstable to me.

This is a serious research:

It's december already ... perhaps it's time to make predictions for the new year!

I predict a winter that is warmer than average in the Netherlands  Maybe 1 month with some snow and mild frost.

I also predict that next summer will be ranked in the top 10 of warmest summers on record.

I also predict that the CO2 content of the atmosphere will rise by about 2.5 ppm.

I also predict that a new massive iceberg will be released from the Antarctic.

I also predict that past agreements on mitigating climate change will be scrapped and that all focus will be on expanding the economy, on expanding exploration of coal, oil and gas to bring in lots of tax dollars.

I also predict that there will be much less sensationalist (or any) press releases on global warming.

I predict this endless 'debate' will continue long after one 'side' or other is vindicated.

The Readers Digest version of War And Peace was...."A man was born...he lived...he died. The end."

The Readers Digest version of this thread is...

"You don't know shit."

"No....YOU don't know shit."

[but there IS no end]....;p

We might as well all make predictions.  We'll have the same likelihood of accuracy as the experts. 

I predict that the polar icecaps will continue their record growth next year (35 year high currently).  

I predict that China will continue to grow their CO2 output regardless of what the international community or scientific "consensus" tells them they should do.  They will be close to their 5 year average growth rate of 9% YOY.  They will pass, if they haven't already in 2013 (the estimates aren't available yet) 30% of the world's share of yearly CO2 output. 

I predict that EU and US CO2 growth will remain roughly 0 from 2012 and 2013 largely due to stagnating economies.  

I predict the EPA, on orders from higher, will try yet again to do something with carbon taxes despite lacking the legislative authority to do so.  They will fail due to congressional complaints from the House. 

I predict that doomsday predictions will be fewer and further between as the industry realizes it can only have so many giant whiffs on its sky is falling nature before people stop paying attention.  

I predict we will hear more about "global cooling" as the new threat.  

I predict that this thread will continue ad infinitum.  

I predict that Jafo and DrJBHL will continue to help keep it alive by posting and complaining that this thread is still alive.

I predict that Jafo will also make another creepy statement about getting rid of large quantities of people as a solution to the problem.  

I predict that our predictions here will have roughly the same error rate as the experts predictions on mean global temperature and next year's hurricane season.  

No....just every second commenter to the thread [call it a cull]....;)

There cannot be debate when the other side simply calls the data fake, and the evidence based on those data. Without data you cannot prove or disprove anything, and the observations of 1-2 decades are not enough to predict trends, as they show regional diversity and fluctuation.

Only if they are counter to the narrative.  If they jive, they're slam-dunk proof.

Only reason to stay in this thread is to torment Jafo.

Did I ever mention I used to pull the legs off bugs one at a time when I was a kid?