From the Hindu
Physicist U.R. Rao says carbon emission impact is lower than IPCC claim
A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday.
Physicist and the former ISRO chairman, U.R. Rao, has calculated that cosmic rays — which, unlike carbon emissions, cannot be controlled by human activity — have a much larger impact on climate change than The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims.
In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent.
‘Cosmic ray impact ignored’
Releasing Dr. Rao’s findings as a discussion paper on Thursday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh noted that “the impact of cosmic ray intensity on climate change has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific consensus.” He added that the “unidimensional focus” on carbon emissions by most Western countries put additional pressure on countries like India in international climate negotiations.
The continuing increase in solar activity has caused a 9 per cent decrease in cosmic ray intensity over the last 150 years, which results in less cloud cover, which in turn results in less albedo radiation being reflected back to the space, causing an increase in the Earth’s surface temperature.
While the impact of cosmic rays on climate change has been studied before, Dr. Rao’s paper quantifies their contribution to global warming and concludes that “the future prediction of global warming presented by IPCC’s fourth report requires a relook to take into the effect due to long term changes in the galactic cosmic ray intensity.”
Policy implications
This could have serious policy implications. If human activity cannot influence such a significant cause of climate change as cosmic rays, it could change the kind of pressure put on countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Mr. Ramesh emphasised that Dr. Rao’s findings would not reduce domestic action on climate change issues, but he admitted that it could influence the atmosphere of international negotiations.
“International climate negotiations are about climate politics. But increasingly, science is becoming the handmaiden of politics,” he said.
In November 2009, Mr. Ramesh had released a report by glaciologist V.K. Raina claiming that Himalayan glaciers are not all retreating at an alarming pace. It had been disputed by many Western scientists, while IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri dismissed it as “voodoo science.” However, Dr. Raina was later vindicated by the IPCC’s own retraction of its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.
“Since then, Western Ministers have reduced talk about the glaciers to me, they have stopped using it as frequently as a pressure point for India to come on board,” said Mr. Ramesh.
When Mr. Ramesh sent Dr. Rao’s paper to Dr. Pachauri, he replied that the next IPCC report was paying special attention to the impact of cloud cover on global warming. The Minister expressed hope that Dr. Rao’s findings would be seriously studied by climate researchers.
“There is a groupthink in climate science today. Anyone who raises alternative climate theories is immediately branded as a climate atheist in an atmosphere of climate evangelists,” he said. “Climate science is incredibly more complex than [developed countries] negotiators make it out to be… Climate science should not be driven by the West. We should not always be dependent on outside reports.”
Disputing IPCC claims
According to the latest report by the IPCC, all human activity, including carbon dioxide emissions, contribute 1.6 watts/sq.m to global warming, while other factors such as solar irradiance contribute just 0.12 watts/sq.m.
However, Dr. Rao’s paper calculates that the effect of cosmic rays contributes 1.1 watts/sq.m, taking the total contribution of non-human activity factors to 1.22 watts/sq.m.
This means that increased carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere are not as significant as the IPCC claims. Of the total observed global warming of 0.75 degrees Celsius, only 0.42 degrees would be caused by increased carbon dioxide. The rest would be caused by the long term decrease in primary cosmic ray intensity and its effect on low level cloud cover.
This means that predicting future global warming and sea level rise is not as simple as the IPCC makes it to be, since it depends not only on human activity, but also significantly on the unpredictability of cosmic ray intensity.
“We conclude that the contribution to climate change due to the change in galactic cosmic ray intensity is quite significant and needs to be factored into the prediction of global warming and its effect on sea level raise and weather prediction,” says the paper.
full story at the Hindu
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Climate atheist now that’s a better description.
This from JoNova’s blog might be interesting in this regard. Play with the transparency slider to see the clouds.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/01/while-the-cat-is-away-number-2/
comment #66:
Joe Lalonde:
January 19th, 2011 at 11:58 pm
This is REALLY impressive!!!
Almost ALL of the northern hemisphere land mass is covered in cloud cover.
http://uk.weather.com/mapRoom/mapRoom?lat=10&lon=0&lev=1&from=global&type=sat&title=Satellite
Sounds to me as if my countryman Svensmark is coming to the fore here. Maybe the CERN results, when available will further strengthen this line of reasoning. It it not over yet and with the MET office here in UK predicting 2011 beeing cooler than 2010 and the US House of Representatives hopefully beginning to analyse NASA/GISS temperature records we may be on our way to more sense being injected into climate change research.
Seems to me that if you want to get ahead in the field of climate science, then the areas to be in are not CO2 warming, one of the many other emerging areas of research.
The ground is being prepared for the results of the CLOUD experiment to be released – the final nail perhaps in the AGW coffin.
Good for us we have Ramesh: 2 IPCC 0
India not country much enamoured by Westerners pushing their ideas in ‘evangelical mode’ believing the Indians are ignorant about life the universe and everything, see the saga of the Southern Baptists, when India has been thinking about such things for the last 10,000 years plus. As an aside, I think their conclusion, in a nutshell, can’t be bettered.
http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/006.htm
It seems as if every few of months the IPCC’s claims are being called into serious question or debunked. Even their scientists credibility is being called into question now.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/ipcc-nobel-laureates-lack-scientific-credibility/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/20/another-ipcc-claim-contradicted-with-new-science/
“…glaciologist V.K. Raina claiming that Himalayan glaciers…”
Golden Oldie: V.K. Raina and Richard North about Pachauri and the Himalayan glacier
Maybe I’m missing something, but the numbers don’t seem to add up.
IPCC says 1.6 W/m2 human, 0.12 W/m2 other, so total is 1.72 W/m2.
Dr Rao says 1.1 W/m2 are due to cosmic rays.
1.1 as a percentage of 1.72 is 64%, not 40%?
I tink cosmic rays are merely a proxy for solar activity levels and not a significant factor on their own.
In fact the changes in solar activity levels act on the polar vortices to alter surface pressure distribution and thus jetstream zonality/meridionality.
As I said elsewhere:
i) The jet stream started to become less zonal as long ago as 2000. I am on record as having been saying that for over three years now. It is only now being noticed by the mainstream because recent events have shown quite extreme meridionality. In my opinion we are over half way back to LIA conditions. I watched the jets get steadily more zonal from the late 70s to 2000 and noticed the reversal soon after it started. It is not and has not been a ‘short term change’.
ii) The supposed Anthro forcing is from more CO2. That has been increasing slowly throughout and therefore cannot be linked to the change of trend as far back as 2000.
iii) The problem for all those ‘best brains’ is that they claimed the zonal trend as a permanent consequence of Anthro forcings. They are having some difficulty in executing the inevitable about turn because it will destroy their small residue of remaining credibility.Some are showing resistance by trying to suggest that increased meridionality does somehow not involve an equatorward shift in net jetstream latitudinal positioning They will have to concede the issue shortly. It is quite clear that blocking high pressure cells divert jets equatorward far more than poleward so any claim that there is a balance is not tenable.
iv) The reason for it all is clear in my view.The Polar vortices change size in line with solar activiy. The size of the equatorial air masses changes in line with the rates of net energy release or net energy absorption by the oceans and the jets are pushed and pulled between the two. In consequence global albedo changes because meridional jets generate more clouds, global albedo changes and the globe switches between net warming and net cooling depending on the balance between zonlity and meridionality.
v) The only reason this is not accepted by all is the emotional and financial interest in AGW theory.
Well this is interesting… developing countries are fighting back with science… maybe some long overdue competition in the ‘debate’ about climate and what drives it…
Also interesting the use of religious language to describe the AGW brigade… well it does sound rather like a religion….
Be interesting to see what response there is from western scientists….
He’s wrong about humans having no effect on cosmic rays. Wind turbines are just as effective against them as they are in affecting CO2 levels.
Another nail banged into the IPCC coffin by the same Indian minister who released VK Raina’s paper that became Himalayagate! He is doing more to undermine the AGW cult than all the western politicians put together, he is making history whilst our career politicans are making money.
“Voodoo science”, Rajendra Pachauri chimes in with a nose dangerously trending upwards.
While recognizing the good work on charged particles and cloud nucleation done by originators of this idea the cosmic ray climate theory is rubbish (or at least 99.97% rubbish) and a perfect strawman for the warmers to knock down – and they really do need something to knock down now don’t they? Charged particles yes, but not cosmic rays? No! Please have a look at – “Global cooling has…. http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307&linkbox=true&position=3
Well, if you add, to that picture of cosmic rays, the picture I’m getting from many sources that data issues (UHI and the rest) are adding something like 0.5 degC, we will end up with no room for party pieces from CO2 et al at all.
Maybe its too early in the morning for me, but I just cannot get my head around the maths in this post. Is there anyway of accessing the original paper?
“The continuing increase in solar activity has caused a 9 per cent decrease in cosmic ray intensity over the last 150 years, ”
I thought solar activity had declined significantly over recent years and we are currently around the minimum.
The IPCC rejected the research by Svensmark, probably because it was based on real world observation not some model, and still insist that the GHG theory, which is based on models and poor theory, is correct.
I am not surprised by this new paper. Svensmarks book, The Chilling Stars, explains his cosmic ray theory, how it was confirmed through actual real world observation and measurement, and how everyone rejected it because it flew in the face of the established religion, sorry science. Research is in hand at CERN to harden up the mechanism and confirm the theory.
Science is full of fact getting in the way of established doctrine but fact always won in the end.
Dr .Rao has assumed that the ipcc’s figure of 1.6watts/sq.m for human activity is correct. In fact, this figure is almost certainly a gross exaggeration because the ipcc has assumed a huge positive feedback in water vapour. This means that the solar influence is probably much larger than 40% ; perhaps as high as 80%.
“There is a groupthink in climate science today. Anyone who raises alternative climate theories is immediately branded as a climate atheist in an atmosphere of climate evangelists,” – Zing
“Climate science is incredibly more complex than [developed countries] negotiators make it out to be… Climate science should not be driven by the West. We should not always be dependent on outside reports.” – Zing
If anyone is interested there was a paper on this very subject published in 2007:
, link source:
whilst the comments are over three years old they do make interesting reading.
The Telegraph (of Calcutta, India) also has an article about Rao’s paper which is a bit more detailed than the article in the Hindu.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110121/jsp/nation/story_13473350.jsp
The Telegraph article also mentions the work by the Danish scientists Henrik Svensmark and Friis Christensen on the connection between cosmic rays and climate and comments on it by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a senior atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego and also by Juerg Beer, a physicist at the Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Switzerland, who by coincidence is in Goa to attend a conference on space and climate.
Just to add to Dr. Corbyn’s observation:
Intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s atmosphere is not only a function of the Sun’s magnetic output intensity, but also a result of juxtaposition of two major magnetospheres in the solar system (Jupiter and Saturn), shielding the Earth, together with its own magnetosphere from their impact .
The cosmic ray’s Earth impact records are used to reconstruct the past intensity of solar activity, correlate closely with null-function of the above mentioned heliocentric concurrence of the two major magnetospheres.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MagAn.htm
In addition there may be (as yet unrecognised) solar-magnetospheric close circuit electro-magnetic feedback.
Somehow one knew that physicists would eventually start having a huge impact on factors effecting climate. The high energy particles (Svensmark’s work) is, so far, the best explanation of how clouds, cloud chambers, etc., work. Out in the IPCC world, clouds just sort of “happen”. Regardless of what one’s position, the nuclear physics, precursor cloud droplets, the experimenbt Svensmark preformed, etc., is, for sure, hard science.
I’d bet CLOUD will mostly confirm Svensmark’s work. It’s such a definitive explanation of cloud droplet mechanics.
In the end, it will simply add some to the knowledge base and have some impact on the warmist propaganda declarations. I’d also bet that the warmist have a propaganda mime in the wings stating CLOUD confirms runaway global warming. I can even think of four or five narratives that could be used. After all, how many in the general population can work their way through the Lorenz transforms? The real science folks will still have to “step up” to refute the warmist. Never forget, it’s a political and public opinion. Realist science just has to provide ammo for the politicos.