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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Well call them whatever you like; butit is a demonstrable fact that primary cosmic ray particles striking the earth’s upper atmosphere end up creating charged particle tracks . Such tracks are easily observed in Wilson Cloud Chamber, and also photographic emulsion tracks.
So whether those ionisation tracks are caused by lower energy and maybe charged particles from the sun or by high energy, either charged or uncharged particles from deep space; it is fair to use the term cosmic rays to capture all those sources of high atmosphere ionisation tracks caused by some species of incoming energetic particles. Such events also produce neutron events which can also be detected at the surface, as a signature of “cosmic ray” events.
And such ion tracks DO result in cloud or water droplet nucleation; the question is NOT do they; but HOW MUCH do they create.
vukcevic says:
January 21, 2011 at 3:11 am
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 .
No, there is no evidence and trace of any such [and none would be expected above the noise].
Robuk says:
January 21, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Has MacCracken et al been debunked.
Rao says:
“The actual cosmic ray flux in interplanetary space derived from 10Be observations during 1800-2000 has been used to calculate the average helio-magnetic-field (HMF) which clearly shows that HMF has increased by a factor of 3.5 from a 11 year average of about 2 nano-tesla to about 7 nano-tesla”
This peer-reviewed paper http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf [e.g. Figure 10] finds otherwise, namely that HMF during the latter part of the 20th century was comparable to HMF 1830-1870, and that no such steady increase has taken place. This simply yanks the rug out under the Rao paper. End of discussion.
(SarcOn)The IPCC announced the discovery of Dark CO2 tomorrow in an effort to forestall budget cuts because FatAlbert had been jumping up and down at the steps of the Lincoln Center in his designer underwear saying the Science of Global Warming was “Proven”. Dark CO2 is apparently something that cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt, but it is nonetheless anthroprogenic in origin and has a halflife of 16.3692 Million years and causes Global Warming, and Climate Change of all sorts, and Sea Level Rise and Fall, and Russian Forest Fires, and Austrailan Floods, and European and North American Blizzards, and Baldness in Women over 65, and North Atlantic Icebergs.(SarcOff)
Rao concludes:
U.R. Rao’s Contribution of changing galactic cosmic ray flux to global warming
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 100, NO. 2, 25 JANUARY 2011
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/25jan2011/223.pdf
See also a review of Rao’s paper:
Discussion Paper 1&2, INCCA: INDIAN NETWORK FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT”
CONTRIBUTION OF CHANGING GALACTIC COSMIC RAY FLUX TO GLOBAL WARMING GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS, LOW CLOUDS AND GLOBAL WARMING: A COMMENTARY, U.R. Rao, Chairman, PRL
GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS, LOW CLOUDS AND GLOBAL WARMING: A COMMENTARY V. Ramanathan, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Ramanathan:
CERN is performing experiments using a state-of-the-art chamber built to study the effects of high-energy particles, such as galactic cosmic rays, that can induce cloud formations to cool Earth. A knowlegeable source of information informed me today that “CLOUD has operated at CERN in three runs of about 6 weeks each, since startup in November 2009. The experiment is performing like a precision instrument and is providing very high quality data … first results (may be ) published in the next 2 months. The results are very interesting but must wait for publication.”
I hope this may soon shed more light on how cosmic rays that penetrate Earth’s atmosphere can have a profound effect on our climate. If Earth is shielded from cosmic rays by magnetic fields including the Sun’s, and if the Sun’s field varies with the long-term cyclic variations of the 11-year sub-cycle of those (magnetic) sunspots, such long-term cyclic modulation of the Sun’s magnetic field could account for the pronounced warming period during the latter middle ages and the subsequent Daulton minimum when crops froze and hunger or starvation prevailed. There is no dispute that anthropogenic carbon dioxide was not a factor affecting Earth’s climate during those previous periods of wide global-temperature variations.
Here are some links to CLOUD-related material on the CERN
document server that may be of interest:
Dear Bob,
Thank you for your interest in CLOUD, and for the comments on Rao’s
publication, which i know about.
CLOUD has operated at CERN in three runs of about 6 weeks each, since
startup in November 2009. The experiment is performing like a
precision instrument and is providing very high quality data.
We expect to have our first results published in the next 2 months.
The results are very interesting but must wait for publication. In the
meantime here are some links to CLOUD-related material on the CERN
document server that may be of interest:
These links to the CERN Document Server were accidentally deleted from my previous post:
These links to the CERN document server were accidentally deleted from my previous posts, so I will try again!
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1248426
These links to the CERN document server regarding CLOUD were accidentally deleted from my previous posts, so I have fixed them (I hope) and will try again because they are informative!
http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=1&sessionId=0&resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=88155
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1257940
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2009/47/News%20Articles/1221077?ln=en
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confid=52576
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1098138
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1221293
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1248426
When working on this [ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/23/confirmation-of-solar-forcing-of-the-semi-annual-variation-of-length-of-day/ ] I went through the whole OMNI2 database [ http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ]; neutron count rates were by far the best match, so my question (& I don’t need a premature answer today, rather I’m hoping qualified people will take their time thinking about this) for physicists, earth orientation parameter experts, etc. is: What key variables (i.e. that are not in the OMNI2 database) are confounded with neutron count rates if cosmic rays are not the key?
David L. Hagen:
Thank you very much for the link. I have a great respect for V. Ramanathan.
The paper about cosmic rays is very interesting, but it is not relevant for modern (i.e. from the mid 1970s to the present) global warming.
The reason for this is that cosmic ray flux is a function of solar activity. When solar activity is high, cosmic ray flux is low, and viceversa. In effect, there was an increase in solar activity since the Little Ice Age, but this increase stopped in the 1950s. Since the 1950s, solar activity was first flat, then began a slow decline that seems to be in the last few years leading us to a new Dalton Minimum or even a new Maunder Minimum , that is, back to the level of the Little Ice Age.
Here is a link to trends in solar activity and cosmic ray flux:
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/Misc/neutron2.html
There is a strong 11-year cycle, but very little trend.
The conclusion is, quoting Ramanathan:
“Observations of global average temperatures during the twentieth century, reveal 3 basic periods: A) Warming trend from 1900 to 1940; B) followed by a slight cooling trend from 1940 to 1970; C) which
terminated in the current rapid warming trend which is continuing unabated until now.
Keeping this pattern in mind, if we examine Figure 1 of Rao1, we note that GCRs
(top two panels) underwent a monotonic decrease in intensity from 1900 to about 1970 and then leveled off from 1970 onwards (revealed more clearly in the middle
panel). Clearly, the variations in GCRs can not account for the large warming trend from 1970 to 2010.”
That is, at the same time that the solar activity stayed nearly flat and then declining, modern global warming began. This fact excludes the possibility that the responsability of Greenhouse gases to current global warming is lower than the IPCC affirms. It helps however, to understand the reasons of the early 20th century warming (1910s-1940s).
Lucy Skywalker says: 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.
Lucy, there is a simple experiment that shows that CO2 is substanially nil. If you could make convection nearly nothing, and make water in the air nearly nothing, and make cloud cover nearly nothing, you would be left with the CO2 effect. So what happens when nature runs this experiment for us?
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/frostbite-falls/
Commentary on Phil Clarke statements
When one side is abetted by editorial boards to publish defamatory invectives as “reviewed” scientific articles (Laut, Rahmstorf et al….) without ever checking with the defamed parties, and the latter (Svensmark, Shaviv, Veizer…) are stonewalled or even denied a right to respond, then any alternative suggestions to AGHG can indeed be conveniently dismissed as “discredited”. Moreover, in this particular comment, are the references to partisan blogs to be considered “reviewed literature” ?
The issue is not so much whether the GCR are directly nucleating protoaerosols (clouds) or whether their records (direct and via proxies) are only a reflection of past solar intensity. The plethora of correlations of climate variables with solar indices, over many time scales, argue that the sun has played an important role in climate and we should therefore be asking “what is/are the solar amplifier(s) ?” instead of consistently ignoring or downplaying the role of the sun. At this stage both scenarios are feasible, and likely complementary, and should be treated in an objective and non-partisan way.
I regret the temporary lapse in my resolve not to get involved in these discussions outside the realm of scientific literature, a resolve that I maintained for many years. Please delete my “Commentary on Phil Clarke statement” from the blog.
Thank you.