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/
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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/
Probably depends on the Big Picture: How soon AGW is
discombobulateddemolisheddiscrediteddeconstructeddismantleddisprovendethroneddisplaceddisgraced.anna v says:
July 18, 2011 at 10:53 am
… I can assure you that the Director General of CERN has no control on what the groups publish in any way.
Then why would the Director make such a statement?
Actually, AGW in its by-blows, the deflection of agriculture into biofuels, and its crimp on energy development in poor countries, is likely responsible for 10s or 100s of millions of “excess deaths”. Increases of food and fuel poverty for those hovering on the brink is deadly.
But it’s OK, because it’s just part of the necessary culling of “the surplus population”, as Dickens’ Scrooge put it. In about 1875.
Many of us are competent spellers, even!
;p
I understandthat that CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer takes the stance he does because he has to protect the government funding, after all that is his primary job. However, several commenters on this blog seem to think that it is BAD science to infer what the results mean in the discussion section of a research paper. If that’s the case, then I suppose then that these very same people must conclude that Mann, Trenberth, Phil and all the other main AGW scientists are doing bad science because they don’t refrain from drawing conclusions in the discussion section of their papers?
Sometimes WUWT is on the money sometimes it’s not … this is a not case.
Perhaps some of you might hit the studies on the subject and find out what happened in 2009.
Lets see if I can give you a few hints try wikipedia and perhaps go to the very bottom of the page and read the last entries. Next try cosmic ray and something big happened in 2009/2010 … try actually reading and doing some study. You may want to then cruise over to icecube nuetrino observatory which WUWT actually mentioned but really missed the whole point and actually read around.
CERN doesn’t allow publication on Flat Earth or any other theories based on defunct and disproved ideas either. The problem with the whole cloud seed reporting is it is based on defunct models proven to be wrong not through any fault of the groups involved the physics they relied on was fundementally wrong, no conspiracy not because the groups wanted to mislead it was just plain wrong.
The stand has been taken until the fundemental models are fixed which should occur with data from AMS-2 and the LHC reports all they are doing is adding confusion into the debate.
There is a effect no one will deny but to publish papers on climate science while the fundementals are in dispute is just crazy and hence the temporary blocks on publications.
A portent?
GOING INTO NEXT WEEK BOTH OPERATIONAL RUNS OF THE GFS AND ECMWF DROP A SYSTEM DOWN FROM THE NORTH AND HAVE IT NEAR OUR CWA MONDAY/TUESDAY. ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT FORECAST TO HAVE ANY MOISTURE TO DEAL WITH ITS VERY COOL NATURE (IT IS CURRENTLY JUST WEST OF THE ALEUTIANS) IS REMARKABLE FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR.
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This is the Monterey CWA. It is supposed to be high summer right now. However, it appears Fall is already knocking on the door.
Oh no’s!! This is horrible news.
Now manmade electromagnetic fields from power generators and electricity transmission lines is affecting cloud formation, leading to EVEN MORE WARMING, suffering and tragedy. Of course this means that we need to stop all electricity usage immediately, especially things that broadcast, such as radio, television and cell phones. This is just another example of how mankind is destroying the planet. The United Nations needs to assume control of all broadcasting, clearly. We can limit broadcast signals to only those found appropriate under UN guidelines. It’s for your own good. Oh, and it’ll create millions of green jobs too, of course.
Kidding of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised to read something like that from Gavin.
John, you are one of the people old PT Barnum talked about coming along every minute- Suckers, if you forgot the word! Cynicism indeed! If you can’t tell black from white go see an eye doctor!
@ur momisugly P.Gosselin, if not those who did the experiments, you’d rather have climate expert to interpret these results. So would you trust Trenberth and consorts…?
I know I don’t.
@ur momisugly LdB, “There is a effect no one will deny but to publish papers on climate science while the fundementals are in dispute is just crazy and hence the temporary blocks on publications.”
tell that to the AGWists… and you don’t need to check wikipedia.
ferd berple says:
July 19, 2011 at 6:41 am
anna v says:
July 18, 2011 at 10:53 am
… I can assure you that the Director General of CERN has no control on what the groups publish in any way.
Then why would the Director make such a statement?
He expresses his wishes, and he might prevail on a direct employee of CERN, though I have never heard of such censoring having happened. Psychological pressure for grade advancement etc might play a role on making his wishes known. But the CERN group is one of over ten groups, many of them climate meteorology and environment departments and he cannot have any say there.
LdB says:
July 19, 2011 at 8:24 am
CERN doesn’t allow publication on Flat Earth or any other theories based on defunct and disproved ideas either.
That is not the way HEP research works. I have never seen “allowed and not allowed” lists for CERN preprints and yellow reports,which are the only CERN publications. There are editorial boards and committees that would approve a submission for a CERN preprint , but the DG is not involved in that.
Research results go the way of the usual submission to a peer reviewed appropriate journal, and the DG again has absolutely no say there and the non CERN groups cannot be censored..
You do not know what your are talking about.
Stark says:
July 19, 2011 at 2:39 am
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 ?
If expressed orally very little influence on submission of proposals to the SPSC and approval of them . If a written directive is sent out I suppose the usual promotion of employees of CERN might be influenced and then also the committees approving the experiments. BUT if something like that, written directive censoring, happened there would be great unrest and upheaval in the HEP community and it would probably be revoked. Herding physicists is like herding cats.
There are many comments here about whether or not the comments by the Director of CERN are good or bad for science or whether this is CERN policy or not, but I think this critical issue here is WHY he felt it necessary to make such a comment in the interview. I appreciate the point that CERN simply provide the facilities for various studies and that they don’t want to get tangled up in the politics (not to mention the horrendous over-interpretation of almost everything to do with climate change), but why should this specific topic merit such a specific statement?
Is there pressure on CERN to toe the line on CAGW, such that the Director feels the need to pre-empt any interpretation by the scientists? Is he thinking or expecting that core CERN funding will be affected? is he – actually – positioning the organization to avoid any blame if/when the IPCC concensus collapses? Since particle physics is not my area i do not know if such a statement has been made before, or if the specific nature of the advice is common in CERN – perhaps other with more experience can comment on that aspect.
As for castigating Nigel Calder for somewhat embellishing this “advice” in to a gagging order – get a grip. He is a journalist and a journalist’s job is to get you to read the article, what he has done is pose a question not make a statement and shooting the messenger simply shows that people are not prepared to consider the content of the message.
davidg says:
July 19, 2011 at 9:45 am
“””John, you are one of the people old PT Barnum talked about coming along every minute- Suckers, if you forgot the word! Cynicism indeed! If you can’t tell black from white go see an eye doctor!”””
——
davidg,
Appreciate you commenting.
Fun and games at the blogs is the norm and debate/argument is quite stimulating. A lot of learning too. I think we all benefit no matter what side of any debate one is on.
I have found skepticism a rational position offering healthy discourse. BUT NOT SO WITH CYNICISM. It seems of little value except to hint at something in some pejorative sense about something/someone in an discussion..
I am sometimes in automatic cynical comment mode. I should not do that so often.
Take care
John
If the CERN particle accelerator could be perceived as having fired a critical shot against AGW, they would be right to fear for their funding from the 20 AGW-mad member states.
Imagine 20 unhappy looking vampires knocking on your door, and asking if you recently let a girl named Buffy borrow a bundle of stakes from your garden shed.
UnfrozenCavemanMD
July 19, 2011 at 2:08 pm
As far as the budget of CERN goes it is decided with the treaty of the member states at a high political level as a percentage of the GDP of each country. In the next few years no new money will be requested, as happened with the LHC, certainly not within in the contract time of this DG (5years -.2 since his appointment). It probably reflects his ignorance on matters of climate except at a political level.
Well I found anna v’s input to be most relevent.
So evidently CERN facilities were used by (who knows who) to do the CLOUD experiments; and possibly because of the intense lay public interest, the Director simply “wished” that Cern folks refrain from interpreting, what apparently non-CERN personnel did and recorded.
The rest of us can interpret to our heart’s content, once we find out what the data is.
End of story.
Here is Dr Roy Spencer on clouds.
By the way isn’t the CERN experiment taking place right now in the real world? Sunspots and all that.
I believe that CERN had kept out of the politcally-motivated scientific debate, until now.
Hansen’s “Positive feedbacks predominate” comment is one of the less intelligent things I have heard from the GW community. If positive feedbacks dominated, then we’d all be smoking lumps of carbon. Positive feedbacks result in outputs increasing exponentially.
People who describe the Earth’s climate in terms of feedback control systems don’t, for the most part, appear to understand feedback control systems. And don’t get me started on “forcings” (which are nothing of the kind).
“Intriguing. Are you admitting that their previously was a correlation?” – Mooloo
Yes. A strong one. This isn’t controversial. Neither is the idea that Cosmic Rays may have been a significant driver of some past climate changes. What is very controversial is the idea that Rays are driving contemporary warming, it’s controversial because we have the data and the data doesn’t show that.
There’s doesn’t have to be a physical mechanism, it might just be coincidence. But because the correlation is strong it suggests that it’s worth investigating – hence the CLOUD project. If the CLOUD project reveals a physical mechanism then that’s a good thing because it helps sure up our understanding of the multi-faceted beast that is climate. But it doesn’t alter the fact that climate and cosmic rays have been heading off in opposite directions for several decades now. That’s because something else is currently at the reigns.
“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 it [cosmic rays].” – Mooloo
That all depends on your definition of correct.
Classical mechanics isn’t as complete a study as Relativity – but it does the job. And folks who know don’t think relativity is the whole story either. But I don’t think a lot of them will complain if you use it.
But you’re right. There’s certainly no harm in knowing and no harm factoring as much as we know into climate models.
Climate models clearly aren’t complete (to be fair, the rhyme and reason of a model in science is to be a useful simplification). The question is, are they useful tools for helping us understand the Climate – and the answer to that, as limited as they are, has to be a resounding yes.
Good way to discourage any further research into areas that might disprove AGM theories: You can’t make any conclusions or predictions based on your own research, leaving such fame-producing statements for others to make, stealing from you the recognition and professional standing you deserve.
“Wait a minute. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I’ve been wrong to blindly follow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a “scientific method”. Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance!…Naaaaaahhh!” — Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber