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
John Peter says:
January 21, 2011 at 12:21 am
It it not over yet and with the MET office here in UK predicting 2011 beeing cooler than 2010 ”
Do you have a reference for this, and what the forecast from the Met. is? TIA
Here is the bit I liked,
You tell ’em sir.
Will this peer-reviewed paper appear in the next IPPC report?
I am beginning to think I shall soon agree with the IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri and dismiss this as “voodoo science.” – Though what we dismiss may not necessarily be the same thing. Quote – “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.” – So “all human activity, —, contribute 1.6 watts/sq.m to global warming” Are they no longer talking “enthusiasticly” about CO2? And if so, should they be let off that particular hook?
Being a mechanical engineer (now retired) I feel I have got to ask; “where does this sample 1sq.m upon which these measurements have been established live? – Is it at the ‘top of the atmosphere’, somewhere inside the atmosphere or somewhere on the planets surface? – And then there is my old question, which is now nearly as old as me: ‘how can gas emissions into the rest of the atmosphere contribute 1.6 watts/sq.m to global warming?” – When measuring air and other gaseous spaces I used to have to measure that in cubic units. Like for ex. CC (Cubic centimeters) for engines et cetera. (Diesel engines use adiabatic compression laws to ignite the fuel all the time (i.e. high air temp. caused by piston compressing the air above it.)
The gases emitted from the exhaust pipe, CO2 and H2O amongst them (those two are not the pollutants in exhaust gases by the way but may hold on to heat energy for longer than the rest) are naturally warmer than the air they are emitted into but convection takes it up and away until temp. equilibrium with surrounding air is reached.
This is only one out of maybe many thousands of reasons that makes it important to be sure the measurements are made in the right place (or places). I am afraid there may be by far too many for forever changing variables involved to be able to make any sensible measurements (or estimates even) of which heat comes from what and where (even if measuring is possible).
Well, has a “slip of the tongue, (or typing finger)” ‘snook’ in here – and it is all the same old thing i.e. not CO2 emissions but atmospheric CO2 which already have been emitted and thus are in equilibrium with it’s surrounding gases that “contribute 1.6 watts/sq.m to global warming”?
This is actually a huge “breakthrough,” as such. The Indian press has been stating AGW as fact for over a decade, and it’s worse there than even the UK.
See as some have said before, It is the sun
Is this the same UR Rao who was publishing science papers on cosmic rays back in 1963? Or is it his grandson? Long career, if it is the same man. Congrats to him!
So it may not all be due to CO2?
Those darned cosmic rays!
Better paint our roofs white (with Green materials) and send those rays back into space!
Piers, I think some people may be saying “cosmic rays” when they mean to include charged particles. Some of this may arise from poor translation filtered through the press.
This is good news! If CAGW ever did come to pass (which I very much doubt) we could put up satellites to project charged particles into the upper atmosphere and “seed” clouds to cool us all down again!
Now I understand why them climate hippies always run around with tin foil hats.
A story reported in today’s Investor’s Business Daily as an editorial comment shows how far the politicians in Virginia will go to defend Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”. They are proposing a new law that would kill the Virginia attorney general’s current probe seeking to uncover whether there was a violation at University of Virginia, where Mann was employed, of the state’s “Fraud Against Taxpayers Act”. At U.Va Mann received huge taxpayer-funded grants to pursue his possibly doctored research. That probe, if allowed to continue, could have some very interesting consequences. The entire IBD editorial is pasted below:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Investor’s Business Daily, 1/21/11 IBD Editorials
Yes, Virginia, A Climate Cover-Up
Posted 01/20/2011 06:53 PM ET
Junk Science: Democrats in Virginia are trying to stop their attorney general from probing climate fraud carried out by university researchers at taxpayer expense. Are they afraid of finding the inconvenient truth?
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up, as the saying goes. In the case of former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann and his supporters, it may be both. Not only did Mann participate in perhaps the greatest scam of modern times, but he may have also have fraudulently used taxpayer funds to do so.
At least Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli thinks so, and has been diligently trying to obtain from U.Va. documents and e-mails related to Mann’s work there. Mann reportedly received around $500,000 from taxpayer-funded grants from the university for research there from 1999 to 2005.
Cuccinelli is alleging a possible violation of a 2002 statute, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. The AG has said that he wants the documents, including grant applications and e-mails exchanged between Mann and 39 other scientists and university staffers, to help determine whether Mann committed fraud by knowingly manipulating data as he sought the taxpayer-funded grants for his research.
Mann was at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal when e-mails were unearthed from Britain’s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. In one e-mail sent to Mann and others by CRU director Philip Jones, Jones speaks of the “trick” of filling in gaps of data in order to hide evidence of temperature decline:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” It was that attempt to “hide the decline” through the manipulation of data that brought down the global warming house of cards.
Mann was the architect behind the famous “hockey stick” graph that was produced in 1999 but which really should be called the “hokey stick.” Developed by Mann using manipulated tree-ring data, it supposedly proved that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century.
Mann et al. had to make the Medieval Warm Period (about A.D. 800 to 1400) and the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1600 to 1850) statistically disappear.
The graph relied on data from trees on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. Here, too, the results were carefully selected. Just 12 trees from the 252 cores in the CRU’s Yamal data set were used. A larger data set of 34 tree cores from the vicinity showed no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages. They were not included.
Attempting to block Cuccinelli and rising to Mann’s defense are Virginia state senators Chap Petersen and Donald McEachin. They are backing legislation that would strip the attorney general’s office of its power to issue “civil investigative demands,” otherwise known as subpoenas, under the 2002 statute.
They claim they are defending academic freedom, but they are trying to hide what many consider academic fraud, work that found its way into the reports of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It led to Kyoto and Copenhagen, and formed the basis for the EPA’s endangerment finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that needs to be regulated.
After Mann left U.Va., he went to Penn State, which the Obama administration awarded with $541,184 in economic stimulus funds to save, according to recovery.gov, 1.62 jobs so that Professor Mann could continue his tree-ring circus fraudulently advancing the myth of man-made global warming that through equally bogus remedies like cap-and-trade and EPA regulations would bring the U.S. economy to its knees.
In a glaringly arrogant e-mail, Mann said he was grateful to the legislators for pressing the issue and hoped the action would give Cuccinelli “some second thoughts about continuing to waste their time and resources attacking well-established science.” Hide the decline, then hide the truth.
We hope the legislation fails, the truth will come out and Mann et al. will be held accountable for engineering a scientific and economic fraud that would have made Bernie Madoff blush.
A story reported in today’s Investor’s Business Daily as an editorial comment shows how far the politicians in Virginia will go to defend Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”. They are proposing a new law that would kill the Virginia attorney general’s current probe seeking to uncover whether there was a violation at University of Virginia, where Mann was employed, of the state’s “Fraud Against Taxpayers Act”. At U.Va Mann received huge taxpayer-funded grants to pursue his possibly doctored research. That probe, if allowed to continue, could have some very interesting consequences.
REPLY: Thanks but already on the main page of WUWT
Probably most posters know that there is an interesting debate on going on clouds on Dr Roy Spencer’s site. Well worth a read.
Piers Corbyn says on January 21, 2011 at 1:19 am:
“—the cosmic ray climate theory is rubbish (or at least 99.97% rubbish)”
The cosmic ray climate theory is just that, Piers – a theory, a theory which is being worked on at the moment (a theory in the making, so to speak)
It involves just one amongst many reasons for formation of clouds. It may one day be proved wrong – or right, i.e. it has, or has not got a major influence on cloud formation. When, and only then, when it has been proved to have a major influence on clouds, can it be linked into global warming and cooling theories.
For the above reason(s) I think it may be a bit early for all of us to dismiss “The cosmic ray climate theory” as rubbish – at least not until it has been fully formulated. Unless, that is, you also dismiss any link between clouds and climate, which, it seems to me, is what the warmers (IPCC) do.
Should this become a straw man then one more, or one less, knocked down straw man does not necessarily make their proof for warming by CO2 suddenly appear.
– Whether they need it to or not.
We should pester them more for proof of their CO2 theory. Maybe shaming TV companies (The BBC is a good candidate as they do have a certain remit) and the IPCC to have a panel of IPCC experts explain their case to a panel of skeptical experts (who are allowed to answer back – uncensored.) – I am talking two groups of scientists here.
Piers Corbyn says, “Charged particles yes, but not cosmic rays? No! Please have a look at – “Global cooling has…. (a link, see above)”
Mr. Corbyn, I read your linked PDF. Where’s the science? Lots of hand waving. You sound like an alarmist, making claims and not backing them up. Am I supposed to follow a rapidly expanding tree of additional references?
There is excellent correlation between cloud cover and cosmic ray flux, and here are examples from WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/25/something-to-be-thankful-for-at-last-cosmic-rays-linked-to-rapid-mid-latitude-cloud-changes/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/16/preliminary-results-for-the-cern-cloud-cosmic-ray-experiment/
And this figure in particular from the post above
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/cosmic_rays_and_cloud_cover-marsh1.jpg
Mr. Corbyn seems to strongly disagree with the idea that cosmic rays are or create charged particles. Mr. Corbyn, where exactly do your favored charged particles come from? Lightning? Evaporated ocean spray?
The basic idea of the cosmic ray hypothesis is they act to tip the balance in favor of cloud formation under conditions near saturation with water vapor. If you have ever built a cloud chamber, or watched one in action, you will understand exactly how it works (we made a simple one in physics lab – very cool). The shower of particles coming from just one cosmic ray will produce multiple charged centers. The clouds formed may not produce more rain, but simply reflect more sunlight. But Mr. Corbyn knows that.
It is such a simple and compelling mechanism once the idea is explained. Why the resistance Mr. Corbyn? The figure (URL above) clearly shows the correlation. It is hard to believe cloud cover controls the cosmic ray flux, so it seems likely the cosmic rays are influencing the cloud cover.
The numbers in the article don’t add up. In addition, the article contains a number of items that require clarification. One of those is that it seems that the terms carbon and carbon dioxide have been used interchangeably. Aside from that, there is no possible way in which human emissions of either, carbon or carbon dioxide can contribute 90 per cent of warming, not even if both of their alleged warming impacts are combined.
The article discusses “carbon emissions” (that could mean soot) that can be controlled by human activities.
It also mentions, “The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent.” However, to my knowledge, the IPCC did not produce any models, nor can I believe that it would be correct to claim that anthropogenic carbon emissions contribute that much to global warming.
Farther on, the article mentions carbon dioxide emissions.
Is it possible that a physicist is so imprecise, or is it more likely that the author of the article wrote about something he does not quite understand?
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/Discussion-paper-INCCA-1-2.pdf
links to the discussion paper. Unfortunately in his Figure 1, Rao has used Mike’s trick of splicing proxy and instrument data to create the decline.
Jairam Ramesh, India’s dynamic Environment Minister has done it again. A paper published by his ministry termed UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s claim on human induced global warming, as highly exaggerated as the latter’s impact is significantly reduced by Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) that is responsible for low cloud formation over earth in the last 150 years.
The paper’s lead author was U R Rao, former chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was released by Jairam Ramesh himself. Analyzing the data between 1960 and 2005, Rao found that lesser GCRs were reaching the earth due to increase in solar magnetic field and thereby leading to increase in global warming. Says the paper:
“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.”
The real blow to the global warmist movement is when Jairam Ramesh defended climate scepticism and cautioned against foreign funded agendas of environmental organizations and NGOs like WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Christian Aid, ActionAid etc in the name of Climate Justice Activism:
“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.”
Read more: http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2011/01/breaking-indian-environment-ministry.html
Any reader with Dish Network should bring up channel 287, Dish Earth.
That channel is a live view of the earth from the satellite. Focus on the cloud cover and consider that a 2% change in cloud cover has the same effect on the Earth’s heat balance as doubling the Atmospheric CO2.
From that high vantage point you can see that the Emperor has no clothes.
Piers Corbyn says:
January 21, 2011 at 1:19 am
…the cosmic ray climate theory is rubbish (or at least 99.97% rubbish)…
Your basis for saying that?
I’ve seen plenty of strong evidence for solar climate variability in palioclimatic reconstructions… and GCR’s provide a reasonable hypothesis. The CLOUD experiment has just presented their first results at the AGU last month… the Abstract to the presentation says:
“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… [ ] …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.”
Lots more work to be done, because it seems that they have as yet been unable to established the same mechanism at boundary-layer temperatures.
Doesn’t look ‘rubbish’ to me…
Something not quite right here. I was surprised by the graph correlating GCR flux and low cloud cover (Figure 2 in the original) which is captioned
Correlation between cosmic ray intensity as measured by neutron monitors and the low level cloud intensity during 1983–2003. The corresponding values of solar irradiance are also shown (reproduced from Jan Veizer)
The Veizer reference is ‘Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective from Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle’ http://etc.hil.unb.ca/ojs/index.php/GC/article/viewFile/2691/3114 who in turn reproduced it from Marsh and Svensmark, which in turn was shown to contain fatal flaws by Laut 2003 – ‘Solar activity and terrestrial climate: an analysis of some purported correlations’ http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Laut2003.pdf who found that
My analyses show that the apparent strong correlations displayed on these graphs have been obtained by an incorrect handling of the physical data
Oh dear, a long-discredited correlation then. Skeptical Science has more detail on the correlation which went MIA 15 years ago http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming.htm and RC commented on the Veizer paper. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celestial-climate-driver/
And what of the figure for the GCR ‘forcing’?
A 8% decrease in galactic cosmic ray intensity during the last 150 years as derived from 10Be records will cause a decrease of 2.0% absolute in low cover clouds12
which in turn will result in increasing earth’s radiation budget by 1.1 Wm–2, which is about 60% of the estimated increase of 1.66 Wm–2 forcing due to increased CO2 emission during the same period
The sole justification for this is a reference to Lee, S. H. et al., ‘Particle formation by ion nucleation in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere’ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/301/5641/1886.full.pdf which I’ve just looked at, and while it provides evidence for an increase in potential nucleation, whether this results in more clouds is by no means certain, as the paper concludes It has also been suggested that ions produced by cosmic rays can induce nucleation of particles that may grow into CCN and modify cloud properties …. I can find no justification for stating this as a bald fact nor for calculating such a concrete figure (with no uncertainty bars) on it.
(I am referring to the original paper here : http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/25jan2011/223.pdf )
Turboblocke says:
January 21, 2011 at 10:26 am
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/Discussion-paper-INCCA-1-2.pdf
links to the discussion paper. Unfortunately in his Figure 1, Rao has used Mike’s trick of splicing proxy and instrument data to create the decline.
Has MacCracken et al been debunked.
“”””” DirkH says:
January 21, 2011 at 12:17 am
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 “””””
Well even more impressive is looking at that tropical swath around the midriff, that is almost devoid of both land and cloud. Guess what fraction of incoming solar energy must be getting deposited in the deep oceans. Note also that the sahara region of North Africa is likely a Desert, as is the south western United States, and notice also the lack of cloud over that central South Aerican band; which I presume is where that Atacama or whatever it’s called desert is; supposably among the driest on Earth; and that big island North west of New Zealand, seems all desert except for the NW snippet.