From the Register and Nigel Calder’s blog via bunches of people who submitted in Tips and Notes, hints of a new project, the RCC (Real Climate Collider) /sarc.
CERN ‘gags’ physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment
What do these results mean? Not allowed to tell you
The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN’s proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.
CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment.
“I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them,” reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?
Because, Heuer says, “That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”
Full story here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/18/cern_cosmic_ray_gag/
===========================================================
Calder writes on his blog:
Four quick inferences:
1) The results must be favourable for Svensmark or there would be no such anxiety about them.
2) CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to remain politically correct about the man-made global warming hypothesis. It’s OK to enter “the highly political arena of the climate change debate” provided your results endorse man-made warming, but not if they support Svensmark’s heresy that the Sun alters the climate by influencing the cosmic ray influx and cloud formation.
3) The once illustrious CERN laboratory ceases to be a truly scientific institute when its Director General forbids its physicists and visiting experimenters to draw the obvious scientific conclusions from their results.
4) The resulting publication may be rather boring.
The interview with Welt Online (in German) is here:
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article13488331/Wie-Illuminati-den-Cern-Forschern-geholfen-hat.html
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/%E2%80%9Cno-you-mustnt-say-what-it-means%E2%80%9D/
I agree with some others – I think CERN may actually be doing the right thing. As long as they publish the data there are plenty of smart people who can lend it an interpretation.
If they get mixed up in the ridiculously non-subjective politics of AGW they will lose no matter what. If they come across as being deniers, they could lose funding – and that would impact the ability to perform good science. If they try to put an unwarranted AGW spin on it (which I imagine many of them would) they lose all credibility with other people of science (as opposed to people of spin).
Report the data and let the facts fall where they may…
Folks all over the world need to get their ducks in line and their bunkers
prepared for the fallout from the CLOUD results from CERN.
The credibility of Piers Corbyn of weatheraction.com, Chris Folland at the
UK Met Office, Professor Terry Sloan of Lancaster University, Jon Egill
Kristjansson at the University of Oslo, Jim Hansen, Ray Bradley of the
University of Massachusetts (and Mike Mann’s old boss), Ari Jokimaki at
SkepticalScience.com, A.S. Erlykin in the Department of Physics at
Durham University, and a host of others who, through their writings
and specially created “studies”, managed to dump on Svensmark and
his theory over the past eight years.
We can expect a lot of sleight of hand waving and twisted pretzel logic
over the next few weeks peoving just how unimportant this subject is
in the way things are? to climate change.
With Mike Mann’s University of Virginia e-mails due to surface in
August or September, it promises to be a very warm fall.
Kevin Trenberth thought it perfectly acceptable to hold a news conference touting all the AGW tripe about hurricanes despite it having zero evidence, leading to the resignation of Chris Landsea. The list is long for similar examples. Every “knee jerk” AGW proclamation no matter how weak gets public exposure and front page reporting by the water-boys-for-AGW journals.
Who can forget the Holy Pronouncement from Mike Lockwood at his press conference just before that U.N.(?) meeting; the “final nail in the coffin” meme.
@frank K
Here’s another for you:
Dessler et al
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf
Oh yes, the virtues of pal review and IPCC transparency.
After comments from anna v and John Day, the realization came to me, though it should have been obvious. CERN is a bunch of Physicists. After someone gets a PhD in one field although they know that field intimately, that’s no assurance that they have more than a high school education in any other field.
What the Director is saying is: “You guys know physics, describe what you saw in the physics experiment and leave the climatology to those who study climatology.”
Which is a reasonable caution to make for someone in his position.
Just like the FASTEX experiment in 1997… that was supposed to demonstrate the primary control of altitude over lower layers weather… and ended up exposing the opposite. Plouf!
I went to Welt Online to read the story and then composed a comment but by that time the comments were closed – probably due to a seven hour time difference. Here it is:
“Herr Professor Heuer sagt von das „Cloud“ Experiment: „Es geht hier in der Tat darum, die Wolkenbildung besser zu verstehen.“ Wir verstehen das. Wir verstehen ferner das andere Einflüsse kann Witterung auch beherrschen. Aber warum sind die Wissenschaftler verboten von die Deutung ihrer Ergebnisse zu sprechen? Inspirationsquelle für dieses Experiment war Klimatheorien von Henrik Svensmark. Klimaforscher haben das Recht zu einer vollständiges Mitteilung von CERN, einschlieslich Bewertung, nicht für eine faule und inhaltslose Ausrede. Eine wissenschaftliche Anstalt muss nicht ihre Mitteilungen verarzten um Politiker zu erfreuden. Arno Arrak”
In October 2009 Rasmus at Realclimate was calling for an end to Svensmark’s funding…
Here is the comment I left then:
6. Antonio San says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
9 October 2009 at 1:16 PM
Meanwhile Willard Boyle, 2009 Physics Nobel Prize winner -a scientific award, not the political one…- described his days as a researcher for Bell labs, as the most exciting of his life… What is needed is “an appreciation for the free will, free spirit of scientists. Give them a chance to do the things they want to do.”
So Rasmus, who and in under what competence is to decide what Svenmark and/or others should research or not? You? How convenient!
Jay says:
July 18, 2011 at 2:23 pm
– Comparing data for Rays vs climate shows very plainly that correlation between the two breaks down in modern times and affirms that CO2 is currently the primary driver of contemporary warming.
Intriguing. Are you admitting that their previously was a correlation?
So if there was a correlation in the past — there must have been a physical mechanism. And why would that mechanism no longer operate now because there is more CO2 in the air?
I would suggest that if there was previously a relationship that there must still be a relationship, even if hard to detect under other modern influences, and that no study of climate is correct which ignores is.
So far not much mention about “Jasper Kirkby”, he is a good man and his results will be outstanding ……….. I have a feeling they will speak for themselves !!!
Watch and learn …………. http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
I strongly second this! I saw this last year, and it utterly destroys AGW (IMHO) without trying. It covers climate change in the pre-industrial period, and looks at sunspots, sea levels, etc. Even mentions the Livingston & Penn sunspot paper, where he questions why it was rejected (must have offended someone). Very comprehensive. Eventually he actually gets to the CLOUD experiment.
It is about an hour long so grab some popcorn. Bring the kids and grandma.
(Someone else may have posted a youtube version).
Anyone have a link to the slide pack he used?
One indication whether a hypothesis is correct is the hypothesis’ ability to explain paradoxes that lack an explanation. An example is the faint sun paradox ( how to explain the fact that the earth’s oceans where not frozen as the early sun was roughly 30% less luminous than the sun is at this time.) or explaining why the earth entered ice house periods repeatedly when atmospheric CO2 has high.
Shiva (See my link above to the papers that provides an explanation for the faint sun paradox (The stellar wind is roughly 3 to 4 times faster for young stars. The faster solar wind reduces the magnitude and number of GCR that strike the earth’s atmosphere which in turn result in less planetary clouds.) and forcing function that coincides with the timing of the occurrence of the ice house periods. Every ice house period coincides with high galactic cosmic ray periods as the solar system passes through the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy).
Svensmark’s following paper provides an explanation for what is called the polar see-saw. The Greenland ice cools when the Antarctic ice sheet warms and visa versa. Svensmark explanation is the solar cycle modulates GCR on a millinium basis which explains the Little Ice Age and the Medievalle warm period. The affect of changing low level cloud cover is different for the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet is isolated by the polar vortex from the sounding ocean. The albedo of the Antarctic ice sheet is sufficiently high that an increase in low level cloud cover result in warming as the increased greenhouse warming of the water in the clouds more than off sets the radiation that is reflected up into space from the increase in low level clouds. Svensmark shows that that cyclic temperature changes occurs on both the Greenland Ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet and notes there is no time lag in the cycle. The alternative hypothesis is that a see-saw in the ocean conveyor is the cause of the observation. However the ocean conveyor has a theoretical delay roughly a thousand years from pole to pole. In addition recent detailed measurements of ocean currents has found that there is no ocean conveyor. The ocean currents do not move a single conveyor which completely invalidates Wally Broeker’s hypothesis which was a wild ass guess rather than hypothesis based on direct observation.
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612145v1
The Antarctic climate anomaly (my comment: Polar see-saw) and galactic cosmic rays
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygen-isotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
Evidence has accumulated in recent years that the influx of galactic cosmic rays, as modulated by solar magnetic activity, influences the Earth’s temperature by varying the cloudiness at low altitudes [1, 2, 3]. Electrons liberated by muons help to make the cloud condensation nuclei on which water droplets form [4]. There is now no reason to doubt that the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a natural cloud chamber that registers the passing muons. What remains to be demonstrated is that the resulting clouds affect the climate, and that is the purpose of this paper.
Clouds warm the underlying surface by trapping the outgoing long-wave radiation, and cool it by reflecting the short-wave radiation from the Sun. In general the cooling effect is greater than the heating effect, resulting in a net cooling of the Earth of the order of 15 W/m2. A small percentage change in cloud cover can therefore result in significant forcing.
The cooling effect is not evenly distributed. As shown in Fig. (2 a) it is minimal around the Equator and increases towards the mid-latitudes. In polar regions the clouds can have a warming effect if their re-radiation of long-wave energy downwards dominates over the loss of short-wave solar energy blocked by the clouds. This warming has been well recorded on the surface in both the Arctic and Antarctic [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
Anyone up for a shot of double standards?
It is possible that they do not want to enter the “interpretations of the results” if the results indicate that GCR’s have a more profound effect than considered.
If it does have a more profound effect, coupled with a lengthy period of low solar activity should lead to global cooling….
What scientific group would want to touch that hot potato.
Just throw it out, and let it stick.
And who said climate science wasn’t politcal? … and so it goes …
John Day,
and cwj
CERN’s main funding comes from the member countries in pre signed contracts as a percentage of the GDP of each country. For the next few years no extra funding will be sought, as happened for building the LHC, so the political correctness of the DG is just that, and shows his acumen in physics and sophistication in scientific policy (NOT).
There are more than ten groups in the experiment, from all over the world , and though the spokesman Kirkby comes from the CERN group and is an employee, and may have to tow the line if it becomes formal in CERN, the collaboration as a whole decides on publications and most of the groups in CLOUD are climate groups, so they can interpret.
This was an unfortunate statement , if true, from a man who seems not to know how the high energy physics community publishes!!! And possibly not even how it is governed.
Ulrich Elkmann says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Just one by-the-way clarification: AGW is not the greatest scandal and fraud ever to be perpetrated “in the name of science”. That dishonour belongs to Lyssenkoism, which after all caused thousands of scientists to die in the GULag. It is just the greatest fraud to be launched in the free world, by scientists not enslaved to the beck and favour of a tyranny. Morally, that makes it worse.
*********
Sorry but Lyssenkoism was not a fraud. Today it goes by the name of epigenetics. It also has been proven time and again. (actually the Darwinian Theory used as it’s proof the variation in finch beaks, which is now believed to be a result of rapid epigenetic changes rather than genetic mutations)
The problem was that politics entered the picture and corrupted the interpretation. In the Soviet Bloc the evidence corroborated Maxist Theories so anything else was Thoughtcrime. In the West, to do research into the science behind his theories was a political crime. So all that was taught (and researched) was Darwinism.
It was only after several generations had passed that Western biologists could investigate the theories without losing their academic positions. The result was spectacular, and had to be renamed to avoid refusal to publish. A biological trait can be acquired and handed down though a hundred generations. But change the environment and the trait disappears. All because of methylation on the chromosomes.
This is a storm in a teacup – CERN is a laboratory staffed by expert technicians, who do the experiment, present the results for the client then to interpret.
Same procedure for my geochemical samples sent toma laboratory – I would no more ask the lab people to interpret the data as to expect the technicians at CERN to likewise.
Nothing sinister people, just overreactions.
Nikola Tesla wrote in 1931
” My theory was strikingly confirmed when I found that the sun does, indeed, emit a ray marvelous in the inconceivable minuteness of its particles and transcending speed of their motion, vastly exceeding that of light. This ray, by impinging against the cosmic dust generates a secondary radiation, relatively very feeble but fairly penetrative, the intensity of which is, of course, almost the same in all directions.”
It is now rumoured that scientists have discovered such a ray and have found that it is changing the decay rates of radioactive materials, which were thought to be constants. If this is true we would have to change everything to do with radioactivity, and we could not use their decay rates as constants in physics!
“It doesn’t make sense according to conventional ideas,” Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, “What we’re suggesting is that something that doesn’t really interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed.”
OT…it would be SO helpful if comments were numbered so that you could read an exact number (say 50) and then come back later. i know they are timestamped, but that just isn’t as easy to remember as leaving off at a particular time would be.
Publish & be damn’d sir.
Rolf-Dieter Heuer “One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” He’s being economical with the truth. The CERN results are likely to be one huge parameter.
Rolf-Dieter Heuer also uses the phrase “highly political arena of the climate change debate”, a statement that seemingly ignores the CAGW mantra that there is NO debate, because the Science is Settled!
All in all, I suspect that CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer is going to regret his ill-advised words.
So you interpret what is not out to interpret. That is equally silly if not seriously stupid.
Anna V. From your inside experience, what would you say the impact of going against the DG’s guidance would to to researchers’ prospects of future projects at CERN ?
I think a few people (Calder included) are reading more into this than is necessary.
One of the first things I was told as a researcher is that there is no such thing as bad data, just incorrect interpretation.
As such, it is essential that the data obtained in an experiment is reproduced as accurately and as ‘raw’ as possible (i.e. only really subject to quality control checks and corrections relating to instrumental drift or similar experiment-related inaccuracies).
CERN was the facility where the experiment was undertaken, but it was not their experiment. As such they should be avoiding interpretation of the results as far as possible (at least until the CLOUD team have had the opportunity to evaluate and interpret THEIR data).
Moderator: Someone forgot to turn off italics sometime around 6:30 on 18 July.
Reply: Fixed
There, fixed it for you.
😉