New study on climate change - unknown processes, our best guess likely wrong

"Unknown processes account for much of warming in ancient hot spell"   I'm sorry, did you say "unknown processes?"   You did, didn't you?   Unknown processes? Okay, this is no surprise to me. It's a point I've been trying to get through the thick and scientifically illiterate heads of climate hysterics for ages now, that is, we just do not know enough about how the climate works to be rushing to assumptions about what has caused the recent mild warming of the planet, or to imagine in our arrogance that we can adjust the planet's temperature like adjusting our air conditioning.   Now a recent paper published in Nature Geoscience provides further evidence to support me.   Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum warming By Richard E. Zeebe et al.   The study's authors conclude in the abstract to the paper "We conclude that in addition to direct CO2 forcing, other processes and/or feedbacks that are hitherto unknown must have caused a substantial portion of the warming during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum."   Other processes or feedbacks "hitherto unknown." Not just carbon dioxide.   Now, apart from being pleased to see someone use the word hitherto, this neatly sums up why we shouldn't be listening to the entrepreneurs of fear like Al Gore and Tim Flannery and why we should calm down and take a few steps back. Dare I say, be alert, not alarmed?   Both Gore and Flannery are using this fake crisis to make lots of money. In Gore's case, if governments around the world give in to his lobbying on behalf of his own companies and press ahead with various 'cap and trade' schemes and the like, he will literally make tens of millions of dollars.   But his enriching of himself will come at your cost. He can afford to pay the higher price of just about everything which will be the inevitable consequence of his presciptions, but can you?   So now more than ever we need cool heads and an appreciation for the limits of our knowledge.   Because our knowledge is limited. Very limited.   We are discovering more things about the climate we never imagined, such as the recently announced Indian Ocean oscillation that controls rainfall in south-eastern Australia, all the time.   How much more do we have yet to discover? No idea, but my guess is that it is lots.   Many people do not know this, but the currently asserted level of confidence that carbon dioxide is the sole cause of recent warming is in fact based upon this argument - 'we can't think of anything else that might be causing it, therefore it must be CO2.'   But here we have evidence that even if we do not currently know what other processes might cause the planet to warm from time to time, we are in no position to airily discount them.   Until we do know what they are and how they operate we cannot just assume it is our carbon dioxide that is to blame or imagine that we have control over the single most complex non-linear system known to us.   Now, this study to me could cut both ways. On one reading (of the press release and the abstract) it may be cause for even more worry than before, in as much as there was more warming than we would have expected during the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum than levels of carbon dioxide would have indicated based upon current understanding.   We simply don't know though.    The press release issued by Rice University in relation to the study said "our best guess is likely wrong."   However, I'm prepared to go along with the comedian Arj Barker and hazard a guess of my own - the SUN!   Thanks to Greenie Watch

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