Preliminary results for the CERN CLOUD cosmic ray experiment

What? An actual physical testing of a hypothesis? What the heck is science coming to? /sarc

“they have seen sulphuric acid and water combine to make particles when blasted by the CERN beam, for example, in a way that matches predictions of the most recent models. ”
This is so unpredictable result.

This is most exciting from several aspects. Greatly so since it is the application of experimental science in an attempt to calibrate the numerical and other types of models. We have empirical measurements of many factors but as yet lack the understanding of how they interact with each other. I guess us science junkies will just have to sit on our hands and hold for results. Three years is not all that long just think about Voyageur.

David S says:
December 16, 2010 at 8:32 am
…So which effect dominates?
That depends greatly (as I understand it) on the type and altitude of clouds that exist. It’s safe to say, however, that climate models that do not properly simulate clouds cannot be trusted as anything other than a software exercise.

I honestly think the cloud / temperature / sun link is obvious and direct.
Lets look at Night vs Daytime weather.
Often the cloud cover is reduced at night and temperatures fall away rapidly and, that cover increases during the day.
You only have to wake up early on a clear sunny morning and by 10 am clouds are forming, and the temperatures increase throughout the day.
At night the clouds cover reduces and the temperatures fall back.
But since when has observation and empirical evidence have to do with climate science.

This falls under the category — tease!!!
I’ve been watching for CLOUD results since I read ‘The Chilling Stars’. Now I have to wait 2-3 more years??

The year 1998 had high cloud cover, but that was a warm year.

I’m guessing there are two or three levels of abstraction here (possibly more): solar changes causing cloud condensation nuclei concentration changes, causing cloud changes, which cause ocean heat content changes, which cause atmospheric temperature changes. There would be various lags and feedbacks associated with each, so it probably isn’t a simple case of finding the phase correlation between any two of the variables and thinking you’ve got to the fact of the matter.

2 to 3 years ? It may be the sign that the results undermine the AGW theory.
If they had been pro AGW, all the media in the world would have written about them by now.

remembers how amazingly rude they once were.
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. says:
December 16, 2010 at 8:16 am
“This is most exciting from several aspects. Greatly so since it is the application of experimental science in an attempt to calibrate the numerical and other types of models. We have empirical measurements of many factors but as yet lack the understanding of how they interact with each other.”
Pardon me for being a purist, but I would like to see the word “hypothesis” in here somewhere. If this new work produces nothing more than data points to be “fitted” to climate models then I see no advance at all. I take it that the scientists have some hypotheses about interactions among cosmic rays and various constituents of he atmosphere and they are running experiments to test these hypotheses.

“Caleb says:
December 16, 2010 at 8:15 am
It’s the sun, stu——, I mean, my fellow scientists.
When I think back to the blasting I used to get, back around 2007, when I so much as suggested the sun had any influence on warming and/or cooling periods on earth, it amazes me. I wonder if those folk will ever get around to eating crow, or their hats, or whether they will simply fade away quietly, and hope no one remembers how amazingly rude they once were.”
Nah, they’ll claim that it is exactly what is predicted by global warming “science” and the models.

Slowly leaking out the CLOUD results over two or three years gives the warmistas a chance to extricate themselves from their extremist warming dogma of the past in hopes of saving face.

Theo Goodwin says:
December 16, 2010 at 9:20 am
“…Pardon me for being a purist, but I would like to see the word “hypothesis” in here somewhere. …”
The very use of the word “experiment” implies an hypothesis. The cosmic ray-cloud cover linkage is one of the few experimentally testable hypotheses that have been advanced regarding the mechanisms of climate in the last decade. It’s the only one that actually reduces the number of “forcings” [goshaweful word that] necessary to model global climate effect, thus actually meeting one of the demands of Occam’s Razor. CO2 actually increases the model complexity because of itself it can only have a minuscule direct effect of air temperatures. Consequently, “complications” have be to added before the model remotely parallels empirical data records, a violation of Occam’s Razor. So rest up, there really is a hypothesis in the works.

Sorry, forgot in my previous post that all of those extra clouds post-1998 seem to suggest that clouds appear to compensate for extra warmth.

Along with what Stephen Rasey posted I remember reading how temperatures dropped in the U.S. when all aircraft where grounded during 9/11. Has there been any follow ups to this?

Sun Spot says:
December 16, 2010 at 9:51 am
Slowly leaking out the CLOUD results over two or three years gives the warmistas a chance to extricate themselves from their extremist warming dogma of the past in hopes of saving face.
It also makes the fight to get their paper(s) published a little easier if those who waved absurd flags are given time to back down from absurd positions before they become reviewers.

David S
’98 started with high cloud cover but dropped rapidly to a very low level. Was ’98 warmth the cause of cloud coverage decrease, or was the decrease in clowd coverage the cause of the unusual warmth? Dr Spenser seems to believe the latter; reduced cloud coverage was a component of the exceptional warmth of ’98, along with the impact of the exceptionally strong El Nino and the high sun spot activity in ’97 & ’98. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure the AGW proponents don’t know either! And they should!
Bill

Dave F;
Clouds can be caused by man as well.
“The Asian Forest Fires of 1997-1998”
“From October through November 1997, fires in Indonesia and the resulting haze made front-page news around the world as the haze spread as far the Philippines to the north, Sri Lanka to the west, and northern Australia to the south. As the Southeast Asian “tiger” economies collapsed, fires burned thousands of squares miles of rainforest, plantations, conversion forest, and scrubland in Kalimantan, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Bali, Lombock, and Sarawak, Malaysia.”
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/08indo_fires.htm

@J: December 16, 2010 at 8:53 am
“@tallbloke
Nobel Prize? What have they done to deserve that ignominy?!!
;)”
———————-
Tallbloke wasn’t mentioning the “Peace Prize” such as that which was given to Al Gore but was referring to the real one. 😉

The graphs on page 3 of Jasper Kirkby’s paper show the similar fluctuations between GCR and climate:
http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf

The results haven’t yet been published, so Curtius declined to discuss the details.
Depending on where it’s going to be published, that’s unlikely to stop the Team from getting the heads up in advance. See the story over on CA regarding the attempts to get McKitrick and Nierenberg 2010 published in IJOC. Keep eyes peeled for a shift in stance by the Team.
Can’t wait to see the results though given the controversy there’s been around the GCR theory(s).

“But it had a hard time getting off the ground – perhaps in part because Kirkby received bad press for emphasizing the importance of cosmic rays to climate change…”
I learned very quickly that blocking test and experimentation was a strong indicator of misuse of models and/or simulations. Contrariwise, people who are developing and applying models and simulations correctly, myself included, can never have enough test and experimental data to V&V them.

How sweet of Sol to arrange to go spotless just as this new paper is released.
Perhaps Douglas Adams was on to something. Those whom the gods……..

Darell C. Phillips says:
December 16, 2010 at 10:51 am
Sadly the preposterous awards to Gore and Obama have traduced the entire Nobel concept.

tallbloke says:
December 16, 2010 at 8:31 am
I would like to see Svensmark and Kirby jointly recieve a Nobel Prize one day in the not too distant future
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
and Al Gore’s humbly returned to Olso.
So Hansen’s et al’s cli-mythology is over and done with.

tallbloke says:
I would like to see Svensmark and Kirby jointly recieve a Nobel Prize one day in the not too distant future.
I concur. If his model is corroborated — which all indications suggest it will be — there is no doubt that Svensmark deserves a Nobel prize.

David S: your
So which effect dominates?
Depends on cloud altitude and time of day. High clouds tend to allow cooling at night, and warming during the day, while low clouds cause warming at night, and cooling in the daytime.
It also depends on the dew point. A hot clear day can become a warm night, if cloud cover forms during the evening.
But, the warming effect from lack of clouds should dominate. Assuming equal galactic Cosmic ray (GCR) concentration globally, there should be less cloud on the daylight side, NOT forming in otherwise marginal areas where sufficient “seeding” would form cloud cover if not for the lack of GCR. This non-cloud formation would be from solar heating, and marginally (or maybe more) from being in the solar GCR “shadow”.
This paper suggests that GCR preferentially forms lower cloud cover (3 km). There is a 2%-3% change in lower cover with changes in GCR, but less than 1% in high cloud cover.
http://orbit.dtu.dk/getResource?recordId=205271&objectId=1&versionId=1

I had been waiting for this news ever since I stumbled upon Jasper Kirkby’s now famous lecture: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073 . I had no doubt about the outcome and I am sure that the panic that the warmists were in lately, even fudging the past records to ‘show’ that the decade just ended was the warmest on record, was in anticipation of the CERN CLOUD experiment outcome. Kirkby had been trying to carry out this experiment since the late ’90’s, but the warmists had great power then, even more than the geniuses at CERN. But to his credit, (and more so to Svensmark who practically had already proven the effect) Kirkby managed to go the subtle way and instead of saying: AGW is nonsense he reworded his original push by stating that the GCR’s effect is an unkown factor but could be large enough to be one the major forcings on the earth’s climate and therefore needs to be looked into. So he managed to get the go ahead and the funds for the CLOUD experiment. Now he and Svensmark must be the happiest people on this (currently freezing) planet.
I personally consider the science as settled now, that is, climate change is mostly natural and we 5 foot-8 inch of human beings have a very minor, if any, and insignificant effect on the climate.
So where do we go from here? Do we pull the plug on WUWT and its heroes and go home? Definitely not. We still need to keep on telling the truth, to save the planet, humanity, from the red/green cabal who defintely will not disband or disappear from sight. They have the money, the newspapers and a handful of alchemistic scientists who would continue to sell their scientific soul to the red-green politicians.
This international left-wing, world-dominating cabal are currently seeing their second temple, AGW, (their first was the Soviet Union) collapse within a span of twenty years. Their next trick could be ocean acidification/oxygen depletion, whatever, to try to keep their control on global energy sources. (He who controls energy controls the world).
But, as Forbes magazine publisher Steve Forbes optimistically asserted a few days ago, the whole world is “awash in energy.” This energy is in the form of hydrocabons, that energy that has produced the modern society, where people live to a ripe old age of 80+ years, can warm our homes in winter and cool them during the hot summer months, produce cheap, plentiful and healthy food for all, cheap medicines, fast and cheap travel etc etc.
But the green/left cabal does not want this, no matter what; over their dead bodies.
This is our next fight for the truth: WE HAVE CHEAP AND ABUNDANT ENERGY FOR ALL.
So, having proven that the energy sources that God or mother nature have provided us are not harming the planet in any way whatsoever, but actually increasing global food production due to the higher levels of CO2, we now need to tell the world that it is good for all humanity, especially the poor of the third world, that we get as much hydrocarbons as possible out of the bowels of the earth for the benefit of all and that the technology that was utilised two centuries ago, namely windmills and drying things by placing them in the sun will only send us back two centuries into the past.
Abiotic oil is now being found at levels that could only be described as abiotic and not biotic and there is more and more evidence that oil and natural gas are the product of geological activity and not dead dinasours or microbes.
And tell the UN that the OPEC cartel, like any other cartel must be delared illegal. Does any democratic government on this planet accept any type of commercial cartel/ No. So why should we accept OPEC?
I may have digressed a bit from the CERN CLOUD experiment results, and I apoligise for this, but I strongly feel that the future of our children and grand children does not depend on CO2 ppm, but on the price and availablity of energy, as has been the case for our recent ancestors of thelast two centuries, who have seen their lot improve one generation after another due to this energy revolution.

Please buy and read “The Chilling Stars” by Svensmark and Calder.
Great news.

David S says:
December 16, 2010 at 8:32 am

“Ok I see a strong correlation between cosmic rays and cloud cover. But what about temperature? The year 1998 had high cloud cover, but that was a warm year. Cloud cover has diminished since then and so has the earth’s temperature. That seems to imply that clouds have a net warming effect.
It’s certainly true that clouds can block sunlight and that produces cooling. But it’s also true that clouds can act like radiation shields, absorbing radiant energy leaving earth and reradiating part of it back to earth. That produces warming. So which effect dominates?

During the day it’s a no-brainer. Is it cooler in the shade or in the direct sun?
At night it’s a different story. Clouds slow down how fast the surface cools at night.
So it boils down to a matter of which effect is greater: clouds as reflectors of sunlight during the day or clouds as insulators at night.
Since the global ocean dominates the earth’s surface we can focus on that. Water has a very low albedo when the sun is high in the sky – very close to zero percent reflection. Clouds have albedos varying from 10% to 90%. High thin clouds are at the lower end of the albedo range and low thick clouds at the higher end.
On average the energy emitted by the surface at night is the same as the amount absorbed during the day. This must be true according to the most basic laws of thermodynamics. A cloud can at best cut the rate of surface heat loss at night by 50% as it absorbs 100% of upwelling infrared radiation and emits 50% back toward the surface. However that same cloud during the day can block 90% of the incoming energy. So the answer, given equal day/night cloud cover, would be that low clouds have a net cooling effect. High thin clouds don’t reflect visible light as well but they are still usually good infrared absorbers so the net effect of high thin clouds will tend towards surface warming.
I wouldn’t trust that graph of “low cloud cover” one tiny bit. Measuring the earth’s average albedo to an accuracy of 1% is a difficult task where even today various ways of trying to measure it are not in satisfactory agreement. Trying to estimate low cloud cover from satellite images is error prone because high and middle level clouds block the view of low level clouds.
Your inclination to look for global average temperature vs. cosmic ray flux correlation is on the right track IMO.
The problem is that this is but one small factor of all the variables that influence regional and global climate trends. Most of those factors are poorly understood. Some are cyclical and predictable while others are not. Cycles from one thing overlap cycles from other things with different periodicities. Trying to pick the influence of just one factor out of all that is like trying to determine how how a flea perched on an elephant’s ass influences the way it’s ass wobbles as it walks. Obviously if the flea will have some small influence if off-center but the problem is there are ticks, flies, bits of mud, imperfect symmetry, and a host of other factors besides the flea and many if not most of them outweigh a single flea.
About the only thing that can be called “settled science” is the greenhouse effect due to non-condensing greenhouse gases. If everything else was equal and the effect of greenhouse gases was independent of and had no influence on any other factors then yes Virginia more CO2 equals warmer surface temperatures. The problem IMO is that warming is a good thing for the biosphere especially when most of it occurs in higher northern latitudes during the night where it is most needed by green plants to extend growing seasons. More green plants means more animals that eat plants and more animals that eat animals. Moreover CO2 is well known to increase plant growth rate regardless of climate warming and it also reduces the amount of water the plants need to grow. For the entire living world more CO2 is undeniably a good thing and it remains a good thing far past the point where fossil fuel combustion can possibly raise it – there isn’t enough fossil fuel to raise it higher than it’s been during most of the earth’s history – a history overwhelmingly dominated by much warmer temperatures and far greater biomass – after all those rich fossil fuel beds were laid down during the time of great biological abundance.
Given the lack of understanding of most of the things that effect the climate the two things we do understand – GHG effect and CO2 influence on green plant producitivity – it’s absolutely friggin’ insane to want to lower atmospheric CO2 levels. The sane thing is to keep it growing and hope it might end the ice age and restore the earth to its normal state which is green from pole to pole.

Alex the skeptic says:
December 16, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Fossils fuels are abundant and cheap but they’re not unlimited and not free. As the good stuff in convienient locations near the surface are used up it becomes more expensive to recover and distribute. We’ve basically been picking the low hanging fruit nearest where we live first and now have to go farther and farther afield at higher cost to keep up with demand.
There is a vastly greater potential source of energy that promises to be cheaper than any fossil fuel ever was. That source is the sun. We simply need better technology to capture and distribute it in ways that are copacetic with current infrastructure – i.e. liquid fuels, natural gas, and electricity. Synthetic biology is quickly nearing the point where it can be leveraged to turn sunlight, water, and air into liquid fuels and natural gas. IMO photovoltaics, which are just another form of solid state electronics, will soon reach a point where it’s cheaper to turn sunlight into electricity than it is to generate it with a natural gas fired turbine (the current cheapest way to generate electricity). There remains a problem with electricity in storing it and I don’t see any great leaps forward on the horizon for that problem. So unless we get our photovoltaics in orbit where the sun shines 24 hours a day and transmit it to the surface where it’s needed via microwaves we’ll still be depending on other sources of electricity to fill the gaps when the sun isn’t shining. I’m hopeful that there will be a breakthrough in cost of lifting mass from surface to orbit (space elevator) but that technology seems farther off than the others.

I only had to read the first part of this post to realise that this is a “skeptic” experiment.
The very fact that it is testing a hypothesis using real data as opposed to some hypothetical computer generated world that climate scientists live in was enough to label this as a “skeptic” experiment.
Physicists have spent decades designing and building experiments to test their hypothesis and yet despite the fact that climate scientists get billions in funding they have failed to do so much as grow a tree and measure the impact of various environmental factors on its growth. But then since the science is settled why should they design real experiments.

kwik says on December 16, 2010 at 3:33 pm
—–
My point precisely and I quite agree.

When this work reaches its full fruition it may inspire fear and horror.
Firstly, we may see before us a fate we cannot escape, wrought by Nature.
Secondly, fiends may start to get ideas.

I’m not going to be thankful that cosmic rays can have that much effect but there have been three lasting cold spells in the last 400 years and they all line up perfectly with decades of low sunspot counts. In the past 50 years the number of sunspots have been higher than any time since records began.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
If the sun has entered a quiet period we’ll at least get a test of the hypothesis. We can only hope another Little Ice Age isn’t in the making. That won’t be good.

Stephen Wilde wrote:
“I prefer the alternative explanation of latitudinally shifting jets”
Stephen, could you please post references to this theory? I am very interested.
TIA,
– Alexi

Jeff T says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Take a look at the plot of cosmic rays from 1950 onwards. the cosmic ray counts fluctuate significantly, but the overall trend for the last 60 years is flat. Cosmic rays can’t be responsible for the overall increase of global temperature in the last 60 years.
I am not a believer also….it may be a player, but not the major contributor. I can’t see a trend that would influence ocean and atmospheric cycles that follow the temp record.

William says:
December 16, 2010 at 7:22 pm

If you look at the attached graph (GCR Vs planetary cloud cover) linked to immediate below there is very close correlation of GCR levels and low level planetary cloud cover up until around 1994 at which time there is a net reduction in planetary cloud cover.
I am not sure we have the ability to measure low level clouds accurately??
Solar cycle 24 is an anomalous cycle. It appears that has been an interruption to the mechanism that creates the magnetic ropes that form sunspots. The magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots are becoming less and less. If the trend continues the sun will no longer be able to create new sunspots, as the magnetic ropes require a minimum field strength to avoid being torn apart as they float up from the tachocline
It’s called a grand minimum, don’t be swayed by bad science, solar magnetic strength has been increasing as SC24 progresses, this is normal heading towards cycle max (however weak)

This all seems rather unnecessary. We have known for a century that ionizing radiation will cause water droplets to form in a H2O-saturated gas. Charles Wilson got the Nobel prize for Physics in 1927, not for discovering the effect, but for inventing the Cloud Chamber that is based upon it. This now apparently controversial effect was then used for a generation as the prime method of detecting and studying elementary particles. Several more Nobel Prizes were awarded for work based on a principle that now apparently has to be proven all over again.

George E Smith
What we can do is measure the “earthshine” reflected from the income sunlight incident on the Earth to the Moon and back to see if there is any trend in the albedo of the Earth. This is being done and has been used as a proxy for cloud cover. The warmists positively hate this approach because it supplies actual numbers and they tend to vilify researchers like Phil Goode by the usual methods.

Today, Nikola Tesla tweeted this:
“I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.”
http://twitter.com/#!/JamesonLewis3rd/status/15743987868504064

I see a what appears to be an annual cycle in cloud cover. When is the peak. To the eye it appears to be in January or Feb, but these eyes are old. Any info on this is appreciated.

wayne Job says:
December 17, 2010 at 3:27 am
“The Earth as a chaotic system has two points of stability in climate, the one we enjoy now and the other for 90% of the time colder.”
That depends on the temporal length of your samples. The current ice age is about 3 million years old. Ninety percent of the time during the past 500 million years the earth was virtually ice free and green from pole to pole. We are in an ice age today. These brief retreats of the glaciers that last 10,000 years or so are nothing like the planet’s normal stable state.

JamesonLewis3rd says:
December 17, 2010 at 4:29 am
No joke, this is real:
US Patent: 00685957:
“Apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy”
Nikola Tesla
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Biographies/TeslaBio-Patents.htm

Jeff T says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:54 pm
“Suppose that cosmic rays do increase cloud cover and that this increase does decrease global temperature. Take a look at the plot of cosmic rays from 1950 onwards. the cosmic ray counts fluctuate significantly, but the overall trend for the last 60 years is flat.”
It’s flat like the top of a plateau and this particular plateau is higher and longer lasting than anything in the past 400 years. The scary thing is the 100 years beginning in about 1650 when the “plateau” was damn near at sea level (Maunder Minimum) and lined up pretty precisely with the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the Maunder Minimum the trend has been a series of upward step changes with smaller declines every 100 years where the decline lasts about 50 years. These also line up with historically cold periods in Europe and North America. Fifty years ago was another step change upwards to the highest plateau on record and there hasn’t yet been the smaller downward decline. Not surprisingly if you conflate correlation with causation, which is something the warmists embrace with religious fervor when it comes to manmade CO2, the past 50 years of high sunspot activity called “The Modern Maximum” has lined up pretty much with 50 years of milder winters which has been a boon to agriculture and doubtless is a large factor in the radiation of the human species to every terrestrial nook and cranny that gets even a short growing season and the tremendous population growth during that time. In general the past 200 years since the end of the Little Ice Age has been a time of increasingly warmer climate and in which the human occupation of the planet grew exponentionally. There’s still room to grow if it keeps getting warmer but if it gets colder there’s going to be some big problems as our whole civilization has become dependent on increasingly better conditions for agriculture. Those will continue getting better with more warmth and more CO2 while any significant cooling and/or reduction in CO2 is going to strain an agricultural industry that’s barely enough to feed the world as it is – population grows as the food supply grows and shrinks as the food suppy shrinks. It isn’t rocket science – cooling is bad, warming is good.

Alex the skeptic says:
December 17, 2010 at 12:21 am
What isn’t debatable is that oil fields don’t refill from abiotic production in any practical length of time. They are discovered, explored, tapped, reach a level of peak production, and then decline. This has occurred in every oil field ever discovered. We wouldn’t be drilling oil wells a mile underwater if there were terrestrial fields being refilled or created new by abiotic processes. I’m not particularly set against hypothetical abiotic production of oil and methane (natural gas) it’s more that I’m convinced that abiotic production doesn’t matter because even if it’s true it demonstrably doesn’t work fast enough to keep reserves of light sweet crude topped off in accessable pockets where it can be easily recovered. We have a problem in the making – underground reserves of hydrocarbon fuels that are economically recoverable are being depleted faster than they are generated and the demand for fuel is growing even as it becomes more difficult to find and recover. Coal is still abundant but the earth or the biosphere isn’t making new coal faster than we using it up either. Those are the hard cold facts.
But regardless of those hard cold facts it can only be a good thing if cheaper ways to fuel civilization can be developed. Even if oil, gas, and coal really were unlimited and not growing more costly to recover then it would STILL be a monumentally good thing to find an even cheaper source of usable energy. I don’t have much faith in nuclear (fission or fusion) being much of an answer although it might be part of the answer. Nuclear generated electricity is far more expensive than generation by natural gas fired turbines, it is not decentralized enough (yet anyhow) to power a ground transporation fleet without huge and very costly expansion of the electrical grid, you’ll never see transportation aircraft powered by electricity (maybe not never but it’s not remotely practical now or in the foreseeable future), and it comes with host of problems because of the dangers in dealing with highly refined fissionable fuels and radioactive wastes which can be used for making bombs (clean, dirty, or both) and also long term storage of such hazardous wastes. New hydroelectric power is also far more expensive than natural gas turbine plants because building new impoundments means flooding a lot of developed real-estate which, at least where private property exists, means purchasing that property at fair market value. Wind power is actually cheaper than new hydroelectric or nuclear power plants but the locations where the wind is dependable enough and not too remote are so limited it can’t ever be more than a small fraction of total power generation. Currently the most expensive electricity is photovoltaic at about twice the cost of nuclear and hydroelectric and four times the cost of the most efficient natural gas fired plants. The thing is that with photovoltaics a cost reduction of 10x is easily possible and almost inevitable if it follows the trajectory of every other solid state electronic technology and I see no reason why it won’t. A 2x improvement will make it competitive with nuclear and hydro, a 4x improvement will make it competitive with natural gas, and a 10x improvement will make it less than half the cost of the most efficient source of electricity today. The only downside is it’s an intermittant source and there’s nothing on the technological horizon to cheaply store electricity so we’ll still need sources that generate 24/7 but PV solar can supply about half the total demand and it can do it without adding any capacity to the electrical grid which is very very important in getting it done because upgrading the grid has the same problem as adding hydroelectric power – too much expensive developed real estate needs to be acquired to expand the grid – transmission lines don’t expand vertically they expand horizontally i.e. doubling the capacity means doubling the width of its ground track. And just imagine all the political opposition from people who don’t want high tension electrical lines passing over their homes, schools, and workplaces even if they are compensated for it by the purchase of overhead easements.

Carla says:
December 17, 2010 at 7:08 am
“Where did all those pesky GCR come from in the isotope record? Could it be in the cloudy galactic atmosphere around us?”
All cosmic rays originate outside the solar system and generally correlate with stellar density in that region of the galaxy. More stars per cubic light year mean more supernovas and other highly energetic sources of cosmic rays. Interestingly our solar systems doesn’t orbit the galactic center at same rate as the galactic arms and it also drifts above and below the plane of the galaxy. Over periods of time measured in many millions of years the solar system crosses in and out of greater and lesser regions of cosmic ray intensity. Of course a nearby supernova can vastly increase the GCR intensity in our region of space for a geologically short period of time and can happen anytime – it’s just the odds of it increase when the solar system is traversing the galactic plane or going through a spiral arm.
Where our sun comes into play is it’s magnetic field serves to deflect more less cosmic rays as it waxes and wanes and this is independent of the GCR strength in the particular time and place where the solar system is relative to the rest of the galaxy.

It seems some didn`t want the experiment to take place.
Sir John Mason, formerly of UK Meteorological Office, what a pompous git.
B.J. Mason (1957) The Physics of Clouds Oxford University Press,
http://s446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/?action=view&current=cosmicrays.mp4
Cosmic ray, solar cycles and lake sediments, Dr Tim Patterson, Aug 2007.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8668666223073644839#

“”””” Mike Mangan says:
December 17, 2010 at 11:26 am
I would like to hear Dr. Svalgaard’s latest opinion on the Svensmark hypothesis. “””””
Well I would let Leif give Dr Svalgaard’s latest opinion on the Svensmark Hypothesis; BUT, I do recall the gist of one of the cautions that he raised ages ago. To whit :
Even if one accepts the premise that Cosmic Rays can nucleate cloud formation (Leif didn’t say he accepted that; or verse vicea for that matter), what he did say was there is a question of WHAT RATE of cloud formation could that possibly explain; given that global CRs fluxes are quite well documented.
So it’s the Brazillian butterfly thing. If your flush toilet eventually feeds the SF and Monterey Bays; and you flush twice in quick succession; what effect will that have on the surf conditions for next week’s Kona Surfing Contest ??
For me personally; the Wilson Cloud Chamber demonstrates that high energy charged particles CAN nucleate water droplets in saturated water vapor atmospheres. And then, I take Leif’s caution VERY SERIOUSLY ! OK, so it works; but is it significant ??
And for the record; at this point I have no idea if it is a significant effect; I DO believe it is an effect. And I thought that Leif (and Dr Svalgaard too), put his opinion clearly where one could understand it; so I’m not surprised he is not apparently in a rush to elaborate here. We DO have to do some of our own thinking.
But I think it is great that one of the great labs of the world is actually doing some serious Physics, on an interesting question.

Dave Springer says:
December 17, 2010 at 9:02 am
Carla says:
December 17, 2010 at 7:08 am
“Where did all those pesky GCR come from in the isotope record? Could it be in the cloudy galactic atmosphere around us?”
All cosmic rays originate outside the solar system and generally correlate with stellar density in that region of the galaxy. More stars per cubic light year mean more supernovas and other highly energetic sources of cosmic rays.
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Thanks then you should find this interesting. Picture that supernova and expanding shell. An outer shell called S1 and an inner shell called S2. We used to live in the S1 shell (outer ring) and now very possibly are entering the flow of the S2 shell (inner ring).
But the distribution of the interstellar clouds, cloudletts, and mini clouds (thin bands) along the way are important also in the GCR distribution contribution.
“””The Solar Journey: Time-Variability in the Solar Galactic Environment and Consequences”””
Frisch, Priscilla C.
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #216, #210.01
05/2010
Abstract
The nearby galactic environment of the Sun is dominated by the low density magnetized interstellar material (ISM) in the Local Bubble void. The Sun has recently entered a flow of ISM originating from the direction of the Loop I superbubble, which may related to the Loop I superbubble itself. The physical properties of the cloud forming the outer boundary conditions of the heliosphere have changed several times during the past 100,000 years. Interstellar ionization, density, and magnetic field all affect the heliosphere response to interstellar material, as well as the flux of galactic cosmic rays at the Earth. Galactic cosmic rays at the Earth are traced by the geologic records for 10Be and 14C. Are we able to identify the properties of the clouds previously encountered by the Sun well enough to match the geologic radio isotope records with astronomical transitions? How well can we identify the next cloud the Sun encounters, in the less than 3700 years? The answer to these questions will be discussed. This research is supported by NASA.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AAS…21621001F

Anyone still ‘out there’ in comments, I have a question.
What do any of you think of (documentation-wise that I could research) on that HAARP thingie up in Alaska, and…….while I’m thinkin’ of it……..the ‘seeding of clouds’ with contrails???
Inquiring Minds Want to Know, of course………
continually a-musing……(hahaha… at least, here’s hoping I am!)
C.L. Thorpe

Hopefully, some Scientist is still ‘out there’ in these Comments, ’cause I have two questions I’d like answers to…
Where can I go to do research about that ‘HAARP thingie’ up in Alaska? I’d specifically like to know if it’s connected to the ‘Smart Grid’, too… And…while I’m at it and you’ve got a moment… Do you know where I could start reading about ‘seeding of clouds’??? specifically, the contrails-issue?
Relentlessly Inquiring Minds…continually a-musing, rather than annoying…
Cynthia Thorpe

“Steven Wilde proposes (I think) a latitudinal shift in cloud formation. I’m not tweaked in on his theory; but he has mentioned that. A CR distribution shift could take part in such a shift.”
Cosmic ray quantities would most likely just be a proxy for solar variability and need not have any effect at all but in view of the popularity of the Svensmark proposal I don’t feel inclined to discount it.
However I would judge the Svensmark effect to be very small in relation to the albedo effects that could result from latitudinally shifting the cloudbands and thereby changing both reflectance and cloud quantities along lengthened or shortened air mass boundaries.

From WUWT topic, “”Voyager1 – so far out, there’s no solar wind anymore””
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/14/voyager1-so-far-out-theres-no-solar-wind-anymore/#comment-550583
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Carla says:
December 16, 2010 at 5:51 pm
The Frisch team is suggesting that 2 km/sec difference would create a substantial differnce in the pressure gradient.
I don’t think they really mean that. Show us.
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Time-variability in the Interstellar Boundary Conditions
of the Heliosphere over the past 60,000 years:
Impact of the Solar Journey on the Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux
at Earth
Priscilla C. Frisch · Hans-Reinhard Mueller
21 Oct 2010
Received: date / Accepted: date
Abstract During the solar journey through galactic space, variations in the physical
properties of the surrounding interstellar material (ISM) modify the heliosphere and
modulate the flux of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) at the surface of the Earth, with
consequences for the cosmogenic radionuclides at Earth. The diverse ram pressures
and ionization levels of ISM possible in the low density solar environment generate
dramatically different possible heliosphere configurations, with a wide range of particle
fluxes of interstellar neutrals and their secondary products, as well as GCR arriving at
Earth. However, simple models of the distribution and densities of ISM in the downwind
direction give cloud transition timescales that can be directly compared with
cosmogenic radionuclide geologic records. Both the interstellar data and cosmogenic
radionuclide data are consistent with cloud transitions within the past 10,000 years
and 20,000–30,000 years ago, although the many assumptions about the ISM that are
made in arriving at these numbers indicate that the uncertainties are quite large.
1 Introduction
..The sensitivity of the heliosphere configuration to the total interstellar pressure, including
the dynamic ram pressure and magnetic pressure (Holzer 1989) indicate that the global
heliosphere is a weather vane for the circumheliospheric ISM (CISM). Sufficient data
on interstellar absorption lines are now available that the general characteristics of
the circumheliosphere ISM can be reconstructed for the past  100, 000 years (Section
2), providing a basis for evaluating the ISM-modified heliosphere (Section 3), and
comparing these historical variations with the geologic radio-isotope record (Section
4). Any scenario connecting features in the geomagnetic record with interstellar cloud
encounters will necessarily include assumptions about the ISM, as well as an incomplete
understanding of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) modulation for variable heliosphere
configurations. Our conclusions below linking cloud transitions to discontinuities in the
geologic radioisotope record are subject to these uncertainties..
2.1 Dynamics, Structure, and Interstellar Magnetic Field in contemporary ISM
..The CLIC (Cluster of Local Interstellar Clouds) is a decelerating flow of ISM. ISM kinematics towards nearby stars show the galactic environment of the Sun changes rapidly. From upwind to downwind, interstellar velocities in the solar inertial system (”heliocentric”, HC) are –28.4 km s−1
towards 36 Oph, 26.3 km s−1 in the inner heliosphere, and 23.4 km s−1 towards χ1
Ori. If all other cloud parameters are the same, there is a 50% difference in the ram
pressures of these clouds, which alone leads to a significant distortion of the heliosphere.
Using VHC for nearby clouds in Table 1, variations in the interstellar ram pressure on
the heliosphere may be a factor of 4.2 over the past 105 years..
I do think that they are trying to say that Leif.
Now I will try to finish reading this one and keep a pencil handy, “I brought my pencil.” Van Halen.

Just wanted to follow up on a previous comment about the potential for liquid fuel production from biosynthetic organisms.
Just a few months ago this patent was issued for a genetically modified cyanobacteria that produces liquid fuel (certain alkanes) directly from sunlight, water, and CO2.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=joule.ASNM.&OS=AN/joule&RS=AN/joule
This patent was filed in April 2010 and was granted in September 2010 which is in my experience (I participated in the generation of 300 granted patents) is lightning fast approval which usually means it was recognized as important to US interests.
The company who owns it is headquartered in Boston (a hotbed for biosynthetic R&D):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_Unlimited
Interestingly they built a pilot plant this year with $30M in private funding which the company claims will be producing 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre in 2011. The interesting part for me is that pilot plant happens to be in my neighborhood (about 10 miles away) on a 5-acre tract in the city of Leander, TX. I live in the Leander school district. The plant is in close proximity to the Leander wastewater processing plant and it uses gray water from that plant for its process. The location was chosen because of its proximity to very nutrient rich water and 248 days per year of clear sky subtropical sunlight. Treatment plant wastewater is high in phosphorus which is bad for dumping into lakes and rivers because it encourages cynabacteria blooms that can choke fish and cause other problems. It’s ideal if you’re actually wanting to grow blue-green algae.
Joule goes on to claim that their process can supply the US with ALL its transportation fuel from an area the size of the Texas panhandle. Cool stuff.

vukcevic says:
December 18, 2010 at 6:52 am
Anthony, here is an up to date neutron count graph:
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/~pyle/modplotth.gif
REPLY: Got a raw data source for that? – Anthony
~
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/
Scroll down the left collumn, find real time cosmic ray stations. Links provide access to preliminary archived data, as well as..
Ooops sorry for the interuptzzzz

This was the abstract from the presentation given at the AGU, there is a little bit more here than the Nature blog…
Aerosol nucleation measurements from the CLOUD experiment at CERN
Globally, a significant source of cloud condensation nuclei is thought to originate from the nucleation of trace sulphuric acid vapour (H2SO4). Despite an extensive research effort, questions remain about the nucleation mechanism and the influence of cosmic rays. Here we present the first results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN. We find that cosmic ray ionisation substantially increases the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles. For mid-tropospheric temperatures, typical atmospheric concentrations of H2SO4 and H2O are sufficient for nucleation to take place via the ion-induced binary mechanism. However, for boundary-layer temperatures, even in the presence of ions, the concentrations of H2SO4 required for nucleation are well above atmospheric values, indicating that additional compounds must be participating in the boundary layer. Our measurements of the growing sulphuric acid clusters reveal that they are stabilised by the stepwise accretion of nitrogen-containing molecules: ammonia, amines or urea. This N-stabilisation mechanism may help explain seemingly conflicting laboratory experiments and atmospheric observations. Our results constitute quantitative measurements of purely-neutral and ion-induced nucleation of sulphuric acid particles. Furthermore, in the CLOUD experiment, chemical composition of the growing clusters and the nucleation mechanism at the molecular level is revealed.