“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.

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 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?

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

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.

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:

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]....

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

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