UPDATE: see some reactions to this announcement here
From the GWPF
This refers to the CLOUD experiment at CERN.
I’ll have more on this as it develops (updated twice since the original report now), but for the short term, it appears that a non-visible light irradiance effect on Earth’s cloud seeds has been confirmed. The way it is posited to work is that the effect of cosmic rays (modulated by the sun’s magnetic variations which either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays) creates cloud condensation nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere. With more condensation nuclei, more clouds form and vice-versa. Clouds have significant effects on TSI at the surface.
Even the IPCC has admitted this in their latest (2007) report:
“Cloud feedbacks are the primary source of inter-model differences in equilibrium climate sensitivity, with low cloud being the largest contributor”.
Update: From the Nature article, Kirkby is a bit more muted in his assessment than the GWPF:
Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
Update: Bizarrely, New Scientist headlines with: Cloud-making: Another human effect on the climate
================================================================
CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Influence Climate Change.
by Nigel Calder
Long-anticipated results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva appear in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature (25 August). The Director General of CERN stirred controversy last month, by saying that the CLOUD team’s report should be politically correct about climate change (see my 17 July post below). The implication was that they should on no account endorse the Danish heresy – Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that most of the global warming of the 20th Century can be explained by the reduction in cosmic rays due to livelier solar activity, resulting in less low cloud cover and warmer surface temperatures.
Willy-nilly the results speak for themselves, and it’s no wonder the Director General was fretful.
Jasper Kirkby of CERN and his 62 co-authors, from 17 institutes in Europe and the USA, announce big effects of pions from an accelerator, which simulate the cosmic rays and ionize the air in the experimental chamber. The pions strongly promote the formation of clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules – aerosols of the kind that may grow into cloud condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form. What’s more, there’s a very important clarification of the chemistry involved.
A breach of etiquette
My interest in CLOUD goes back nearly 14 years, to a lecture I gave at CERN about Svensmark’s discovery of the link between cosmic rays and cloudiness. It piqued Kirkby’s curiosity, and both Svensmark and I were among those who helped him to prepare his proposal for CLOUD.
By an unpleasant irony, the only Svensmark contribution acknowledged in theNature report is the 1997 paper (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen) on which I based my CERN lecture. There’s no mention of the successful experiments in ion chemistry and molecular cluster formation by the Danish team in Copenhagen, Boulby and latterly in Aarhus where they beat CLOUD to the first results obtained using a particle beam (instead of gamma rays and natural cosmic rays) to ionize the air in the experimental chamber – see http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/accelerator-results-on-cloud-nucleation-2/
What will historians of science make of this breach of scientific etiquette? That Kirkby was cross because Svensmark, losing patience with the long delay in getting approval and funding for CLOUD, took matters into his own hands? Or because Svensmark’s candour about cosmic rays casting doubt on catastrophic man-made global warming frightened the national funding agencies? Or was Kirkby simply doing his best (despite the results) to obey his Director General by slighting all things Danish?
Personal rivalries aside, the important question is what the new CLOUD paper means for the Svensmark hypothesis. Pick your way through the cautious prose and you’ll find this:
“Ion-induced nucleation [cosmic ray action] will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles [molecular clusters] that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere [the lower atmosphere].”
It’s so transparently favourable to what the Danes have said all along that I’m surprised the warmists’ house magazine Nature is able to publish it, even omitting the telltale graph shown at the start of this post. Added to the already favourable Danish experimental findings, the more detailed CERN result is excellent. Thanks a million, Jasper.
Enlightening chemistry
And in friendlier times we’d be sharing champagne for a fine discovery with CLOUD, that traces of ammonia can increase the production of the sulphuric clusters a thousandfold. It’s highlighted in the report’s title: “Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation” and it was made possible by the more elaborate chemical analysis in the big-team set-up in Geneva. In essence, the ammonia helps to stabilize the molecular clusters.
Although not saying it openly, the CLOUD team implies a put-down for the Danes with this result, repeatedly declaring that without ammonia there’d be little cluster production at low altitudes. But although the Aarhus experimenters did indeed assume the simpler reaction (H2SO4 + H2O), differing results in successive experimental runs made them suspect that varying amounts of trace impurities were present in the air cylinders used to fill their chamber. Now it looks as if a key impurity may have been ammonia. But some members of the CLOUD consortium also favoured (H2SO4 + H2O) and early runs in Geneva used no intentional ammonia. So they’ve little reason to scoff.
In any case, whether the basic chemistry is (H2SO4 + H2O) or (H2SO4 + H2O + NH3) is an academic rather than a practical point. There are always traces of ammonia in the real air, and according to the CLOUD report you need only one molecule in 30 billion. If that helps to oil Svensmark’s climatic motor, it’s good to know, but it calls for no apologies and alters the climatic implications not a jot.
The experiment’s logo. The acronym “Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets” always implied strong interest in Svensmark’s hypothesis. And the roles of the Galaxy and the Sun are acknowledged.Technically, CLOUD is a welcome advance on the Danish experiments. Not only is the chemistry wider ranging but molecular clusters as small as 1.7 nanometres in diameter are detectable, compared with 4 nm in Denmark. And the set-up enables the scientists to study the ion chemistry at lower temperatures, corresponding to increasing altitudes in the atmosphere. Cluster production soars as the temperature goes down, until “almost every negative ion gives rise to a new particle” [i.e. molecular cluster]. The lowest temperature reported in the paper is -25 oC. That corresponds to an altitude of 6000 metres, so unless you wish to visualize a rain of cloud-seeding aerosols from on high, it’s not very relevant to Svensmark’s interest in the lowest 3000 metres.
How the warmists built their dam
Shifting from my insider’s perspective on the CLOUD experiment, to see it on the broader canvas of the politicized climate science of the early 21st Century, the chief reaction becomes a weary sigh of relief. Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases.
In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise.
For the dam that was meant to ward off a growing stream of discoveries coming from the spring in Copenhagen, the foundation was laid on the day after the Danes first announced the link between cosmic rays and clouds at a space conference in Birmingham, England, in 1996. “Scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible,”Bert Bolin declared, as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As several journalists misbehaved by reporting the story from Birmingham, the top priority was to tame the media. The first courses of masonry ensured that anything that Svensmark and his colleagues might say would be ignored or, failing that, be promptly rubbished by a warmist scientist. Posh papers like The Times of London and the New York Times, and posh TV channels like the BBC’s, readily fell into line. Enthusiastically warmist magazines like New Scientist and Scientific Americanneeded no coaching.
Similarly the journals Nature and Science, which in my youth prided themselves on reports that challenged prevailing paradigms, gladly provided cement for higher masonry, to hold the wicked hypothesis in check at the scientific level. Starve Svensmark of funding. Reject his scientific papers but give free rein to anyone who criticizes him. Trivialize the findings in the Holy Writ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. None of this is paranoia on my part, but a matter of close personal observation since 1996.
“It’s the Sun, stupid!” The story isn’t really about a bunch of naughty Danish physicists. They are just spokesmen for the most luminous agent of climate change. As the Sun was what the warmists really wanted to tame with their dam, they couldn’t do it. And coming to the Danes’ aid, by briefly blasting away many cosmic rays with great puffs of gas, the Sun enabled the team to trace in detail the consequent reduction in cloud seeding and liquid water in clouds. See my posthttp://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/do-clouds-disappear/ By the way, that research also disposes of a morsel of doubt in the new CLOUD paper, about whether the small specks made by cosmic rays really grow sufficiently to seed cloud droplets.
As knowledge accumulated behind their dam and threatened to overtop it, the warmists had one last course to lay. Paradoxically it was CLOUD. Long delays with this experiment to explore the microchemical mechanism of the Svensmark effect became the chief excuse for deferring any re-evaluation of the Sun’s role in climate change. When the microchemical mechanism was revealed prematurely by the SKY experiment in Copenhagen and published in 2006, the warmists said, “No particle accelerator? That won’t do! Wait for CLOUD.” When the experiment in Aarhus confirmed the mechanism using a particle accelerator they said, “Oh that’s just the Danes again! Wait for CLOUD.”
Well they’ve waited and their dam has failed them.
Hall of Shame
Retracing those 14 years, what if physics had functioned as it is supposed to do? What if CLOUD, quickly approved and funded, had verified the Svensmark effect with all the authority of CERN, in the early 2000s. What if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had done a responsible job, acknowledging the role of the Sun and curtailing the prophecies of catastrophic warming?
For a start there would have no surprise about the “travesty” that global warming has stopped since the mid-1990s, with the Sun becoming sulky. Vast sums might have been saved on misdirected research and technology, and on climate change fests and wheezes of every kind. The world’s poor and their fragile living environment could have had far more useful help than precautions against warming.
And there would have been less time for so many eminent folk from science, politics, industry, finance, the media and the arts to be taken in by man-made climate catastrophe. (In London, for example, from the Royal Society to the National Theatre.) Sadly for them, in the past ten years they’ve crowded with their warmist badges into a Hall of Shame, like bankers before the crash.
As I reported on May 14th, 2011 in Update on the CERN CLOUD experiment:
From Physics World Head in a CLOUD:
In this special video report for physicsworld.com CLOUD project leader Jasper Kirkby explains what his team is trying to achieve with its experiment. “We’re trying to understand what the connection is between a cosmic ray going through the atmosphere and the creation of so-called aerosol seeds – the seed for a cloud droplet or an ice particle,” Kirkby explains.
The CLOUD experiment recreates these cloud-forming processes by directing the beamline at CERN’s proton synchrotron into a stainless-steel chamber containing very pure air and selected trace gases.
One of the aims of the experiment is to discover details of cloud formation that could feed back into climate models. “Everybody agrees that clouds have a huge effect on the climate. But the understanding of how big that effect is is really very poorly known,” says Kirkby.
Here’s the video, click image below to launch it.
=====================================================
More coverage: Big hat tip to WUWT reader “Andrew20”
Cosmic rays get ahead in CLOUD
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/August/24081102.asp
Cloud formation may be linked to cosmic rays
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html
Cloud formation study casts a shadow over certain climate models
======================================================
Update: From Nigel Calder’s blog
A graph they’d prefer you not to notice. Tucked away near the end of online supplementary material, and omitted from the printed CLOUD paper in Nature, it clearly shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules (“particles”) that in the real atmosphere can grow and seed clouds. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03.45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. It also tended to remove molecular clusters made in the neutral environment (n) but some of these accumulated at a low rate. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04.33, natural cosmic rays (gcr) raining down through the roof of the experimental hall in Geneva helped to build clusters at a higher rate. How do we know they were contributing? Because when, at 04.58, CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles (ch) from the accelerator, the rate of cluster production became faster still. The various colours are for clusters of different diameters (in nanometres) as recorded by various instruments. The largest (black) took longer to grow than the smallest (blue). This is Fig. S2c from supplementary online material for J. Kirkby et al., Nature, 476, 429-433, © Nature 2011
Is Prof. Svensmark finally vindicated?
I had no idea Calder was so bitter over all this. I’d like to read some from a more disinterested source. Maybe Nature’s editors will have something worthwhile, err, well they won’t. Or perhaps, umm, they’re even worse.
I assume the paper will be behind a paywall.
Congratulations to Svensmark
It’s the sun, stupid.
If this isn’t the final nail in the coffin for CAGW, I don’t know what is.
Svensmark deserves a Nobel Price, but only after the ones of Gore and Pachauri are taken back.
The endgame has finally started. Victory is near!!!
Here’s the paper abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html
Received 9 September 2010; accepted 24 June 2011.
Rather than quote the GWPF’s interpretation of the report, why not quote straight from Nature where it says “Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.”
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html
REPLY: Because I didn’t see the Nature report until just a few minutes ago, as noted at the top, I’ll be adding more as it develops. The tendency here by those on the publci funding dole will be to reduce the impact of the study by saying there is no connection and/or that it needs further study. I’ll post both sides. – Anthony
Nature News:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html
Cloud formation may be linked to cosmic rays
“Experiment probes connection between climate change and radiation bombarding the atmosphere.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth’s atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.
The findings, published today in Nature1, are preliminary, but they are stoking a long-running argument over the role of radiation from distant stars in altering the climate….”
(See more…)
I wonder if Svensmark will now be forced to live out the remainder of his days under house arrest in the basement of CERN?
It seems to me that the CLOUD experiment was more of a severe test (cf. Popper) than anything that the CAGW folks have been able to muster.
Read write up here and on the Gavin’s blog. None the wiser.
I am still ploughing on with a different idea and the more solid data: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NorthAtlanticOutlook.htm
gee, looks like Hunstman owes Perry an apology …
Wonderful article. The great benefits that will come from the work of this team and Svensmark include the fact that this is genuine science, conducted entirely within the standards of scientific method, that Svensmark and friends are really good explicators of their work for the common person, unlike everyone who is a “mainstream climate scientist,” and that the public will get to learn the difference between genuine science and what the MSM has passed off as science.
Also, there is the small matter of the politicians who jumped on the “global warming” bandwagon and the settled science who will now learn that the science wasn’t settled.
Nature’s words on the topic have the same value of Osama’s words on Christianity …
…”The pions strongly promote the formation of clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules – aerosols of the kind that may grow into cloud condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form. What’s more, there’s a very important clarification of the chemistry involved.”….
I wonder if this has implications for Venus with high levels of sulphuric acid in the atmosphere.
From the abstract of this paper:
“We find that atmospherically relevant ammonia mixing ratios of 100 parts per trillion by volume, or less, increase the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles more than 100–1,000-fold. Time-resolved molecular measurements reveal that nucleation proceeds by a base-stabilization mechanism involving the stepwise accretion of ammonia molecules. Ions increase the nucleation rate by an additional factor of between two and more than ten at ground-level galactic-cosmic-ray intensities, provided that the nucleation rate lies below the limiting ion-pair production rate.”
Hooray!!!!
The AGW hoax is dead!
Henrik Svensmark should be given a REAL Nobel Prize!
REPLY: Not dead, just dented – Anthony
Finally, from the paper’s conclusion:
“Although we have not yet duplicated the concentrations or complexities of atmospheric organic vapours, we find that ion enhancement of nucleation occurs for all temperatures, humidities and cluster compositions observed so far. Ion-induced nucleation will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere. However, the fraction of these freshly nucleated particles that grow to sufficient sizes to seed cloud droplets, as well as the role of organic vapours in the nucleation and growth processes, remain open questions experimentally. These are important findings for the potential link between galactic cosmic rays and clouds.”
Sir…This and the recent article from the University of Colorado that confirms the oceans continue to rise 3.2 mm per year…only 3.2…
Should set us up to get something reasonable from the UN’s IPCC in a year or two…
I am sure they…those that write the story for governments…are paying attention.
We..the people all over the world…need get off the idea that CO2 is “bad”
Acorn1…San Diego
I’m lost for words … fantastic news.
It is not the nail in the CAGW coffin, but it is strong evidence that the question remains on what is influencing the weather and by how much. Before the age of political graft, that was called science.
It’s a pity Calder is so sour. It detracts from the impact of the results.
I am very happy to see my discipline (Nuclear Physics) being used to such good effect in establishing the truth about climate change, and in cooperation with the chemists elucidating some of the finer detail of the mechanisms.
And scrapping the windmill programme will pay for many a CERN….
Erm it doesn’t confirm it, the original nature says tentative, and even Kirby says “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,”
It’s a little to early for Calder to be proclaiming game,set & match, but still interesting results.
Wow … we’ve had the CO2 study showing it’s the warming that’s increased CO2 levels and now this. What’s left … as the sun’s activity diminishes prove an increase in Earth’s albedo exists?
Hope this stays top post its extremely VIP as far as this whole climate scam goes. Svensmark deserves nobel prize for this and Gore et al should have it withdrawn except R Spencers role LOL!
“REPLY: Because I didn’t see the Nature report until just a few minutes ago, as noted at the top, I’ll be adding more as it develops. The tendency here by those on the publci funding dole will be to reduce the impact of the study by saying there is no connection and/or that it needs further study. I’ll post both sides. – Anthony”
Extremely well balanced.
Right, Louise, this report does not prove that the sun is the cause of all climate change. However, the work reported on is classically good science and it is extremely important for that reason alone. Having imbibed “mainstream climate science” for so many years, all of us are ready for a dose of genuine science.
The beginning of the end for CAGW! At the very least the GCMs will need to be reprogrammed
Calder, of course, co-authored ‘The Chilling Stars’ with Svensmark an excellent read. I fully understand the frustration that Calder and Svensmark must feel.
The next few weeks will be interesting especially the response of the MSM.
With apologies to Mr. Spock…
Only human arrogance would assume the warming must be caused by man.
Try this address for Jasper Kirby’s entire CLOUD concept excellent presentation at CERN in 2009 but be patient with the first couple of minutes of introduction spoken in German followed by Kirby’s presentation in English :
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
I’ve been telling my students about Svensmark’s model since his book came out. Now we can discuss experimental support for the model- wow! what a teachable moment. Science at its best! You bet we’ll also discuss the politics – the kids are getting quite savvy about this scam.
Thanks…Anthony. We await your next…
“omitting the telltale graph shown at the start of this post.” This post? No tale-telling graphs located; still searching …
Nigel, thanks much for your insights. I don’t know how Svensmark will be viewed in some circles, but, here in the real world of climatology, we know his contributions.
You are spot on about the costs of not exploring properly the issues raised by many, including Svensmark. It can’t be quantified, but the expense was great, and will continue until the politics dictating direction of research and flow of money is changed and the silly obsession over CO2 is abated.
I won’t bother anyone with my limited knowledge of molecular chemistry, but, I would point out that during my observations of the greater climate discussions there are two topics which the discussion always comes back to. The sun and clouds! It seems to me, any legitimate discussion on what runs our climate has to include both.
Strangely, the words running through my head now are lyrical…….
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
and
Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
and for those that would ignore the effects of the sun…….
…………….
They call the Rising Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I’m one
It’s worse than we thought:
Organic chemical vapours may have a previously unimagined cooling effect on global climate. Measurements by researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) show that current theories can’t fully explain how clouds form and hint that organic aerosols – tiny liquid or solid particles suspended in the atmosphere – play an important role in the process.
BUTif we can only find out what those organic aerosols ARE, we may be able to forestall global cooling by introducing a suitable taxation mechanism. Of course, this will mean major adaptation to our existing models which some of us had started to question anyway …
Cosmoclimatology is a discovery of historic significance !!!
Congratulations to Svensmark
P.S.
A few years ago I tried to give a colleague that has a science interest Svensmarks book “The Chilling Stars” (he is fanatically warmist) . He got angry and accused Svensmark of being anti-science and me of being dumb for falling for something so stupid (just in incredible).
Brian – for the telltale graph, see Calder’s article here:
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-ray-action/
Looking for indictions against the leading AGW fraudsters for crimes against humanity from the ICC any day now … as if.
As I read the abstract, the following points are made:
1. More than half the cloud droplets come from ion-induced droplets.
2. Current ammonia levels in the atmosphere increase the nucleation numbers by 100 – 1000 X at occurring in a non-ammonia containing atmosphere.
3. Current cosmic ray densities increase the amounts of nucleation between 2 and >10 relative to a non-cosmic ray environment as long as there is enough ammonia in the atmosphere. (the rate increases until saturation or stability occurs at the higher rates).
We “know” average cloud cover is about 26% (?) and cloud albedo between 0.6 and 0.9, averaging for this purpose 0.75 (?). The current insolation, averaged over the globe, is TOA 340.5 W/m2.
The IPCC give a value of about 3.4 W/m2 for a radiative value of the doubling of CO2, leading to a 1.4C – 3.0+ under current projections (> 2 ppmv/yr CO2) for Y2100.
So:
1. There is more than enough ammonia in the atmosphere to “use” more cosmic rays.
2. An increase of cosmic gamma rays by 2% (for example) leads to a 4% – >20% increase in nucleation numbers.
2. An increase of 4-20% increase in nucleation numbers leads to a 2-10% increase in cloud formation.
Given what we “know” about current cloud covers and insolation, a 2% increase in cosmic ray input leads to between an increase of 0.52% to 2.6% cloud cover (.265 to .286 cloud cover), and an increased reflectance of a 0.135 W/m2 to 6.64 W/m2 (using an RF of 0.75 for clouds).
Conclusion:
1. The equivalent radiative power for a 2% increase in cosmic ray input, 0.14 – 6.6 W/m2, is within the current range required to account for the global temperature increase since 1820, and beyond that of a worst-case scenario for CO2.
2. This experiment establishes an “as-good-as” mechanism as anthropogenic CO2 for the observed post-LIA temperature rise, and, in particular, the post-1965 temperature rise IF a rise in cosmic ray input equal to or less than 2% of the pre-LIA and/or pre-1965 period can be established.
So:
1) Could someone check/redo the math?
2) Could someone pull up a cosmic ray input graph of density vs time?
Bottom line – how much cosmic ray increase do we need to replace CO2 as a heating factor?
Thanks.
I’m a tad confused. Are the results from Cern a cause for conCERN, and if so for which side of the AGW debate? So far the way I read it that the increase cloud effect is only possible if ammonia is present? Bu then Calder says ammonia is always present in the real atmosphere. So is Svensgard right or not.
As usula annoyingly unclear.
Since there is no trend in cosmic radiation over the last 50 years, it is simply not possible for changes in cosmic radiation to have caused the trend in global temperatures. The experiments reported in the Nature paper are useful and interesting but do not change this basic fact.
Good news. It’s the Sun after all.
No wonder our “world’s foremost solar scientist” is silent.
It’s easy for the Americans to wonder why Nigel Calder is so bitter. But, see: Europe is crippled by Kyoto and the crazy 20:20:20 initiative of the EU; Europe’s rulers (the unelected EU Commissioners) and nearly all ruling parties of the member states are warmists (with the notable exceptions of Czechia and maybe Poland). This continent is run by mad people; and elections don’t provide a remedy as all the parties try to out-green each other. If you think the Chevy Volt is an expensive failure of your government pork schemes, you’re welcome, we have projects like that in the EU all over the place, too many to mention. It’s the biggest theft in history. All of this has been driven by the AGW science movement. One could actually have done something useful with all the money, for instance leave it in people’s pockets.
Now to see if science really does matter to the AGW beast – or will it continue to feed on its own momentum and rhetoric?
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The timing couldn’t be better with Perry getting so much attention by calling AGW folks anti-scientific.
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BTW, this doesn’t mean CO2 doesn’t play a role. It just means the positive feedbacks that turn a physically likely 1-1.5C rise per CO2 doubling into 5-7C per doubling are, misdiagnosis based on models that denied the sun a role.
Nigel Calder said,
—————–
The consensus aCO2 biased IPCC is being shown and will be recorded in history as the blocker of profound scientific progress. Indeed, it wasn’t about science for the IPCC it was the advancing of their chartered CAGW political agenda.
John
The Graph from the Supplementary material is the “smoking gun”. I’m not surprised that Nature concealed it.
The reason Svensmark probably didn´t receive much attention in the paper is because his results have long been refuted in the literature. The new Nature paper is interesting, but it is unable to put the causal link between cosmic rays and GW implied in this post. See some of the steps required (from Gavin´s post)
1. … that increased nucleation gives rise to increased numbers of (much larger) cloud condensation nuclei (CCN)
2. … and that even in the presence of other CCN, ionisation changes can make a noticeable difference to total CCN
3. … and even if there were more CCN, you would need to show that this actually changed cloud properties significantly,
4. … and that given that change in cloud properties, you would need to show that it had a significant effect on radiative forcing.
The CLOUD results don´t provide much insight into all of this, and moreover we have seen no long term trend in GCR´s that would explain the warming observed since mid-century.
Calder bitter? Appears to me he is speaking the truth about his experience. I ask Anthony and others to read this review of the science from 1998-2009 on cosmic-ray influence of Earth’s climate vis-a-vis solar max-min (esp the magnetic field): http://theclimatetruth.org/science/solar-variability-and-climate-cycles/cosmic-rays/. Does anyone believe they must be “careful” about acknowledging that this is the most significant theory at present, with vigorous evidence from experiments, observations, and paleoclimatology beyond anything else? I am not a scientist. Please help me.
It looks like a lot of work still needs to be done to demonstrate the effect of this discovery on the global cloud coverage and as a consequence the effect on the global warming/cooling, but definitely it’s a huge milestone in understanding the complex mechanism that is the Earth climate. I don’t expect AGW proponents to give up any of their mantra and I am waiting for their rebuttals that will affirm that the effect of cosmic ray, although present is minimal and unable to explain all the global warming observed in the past century and so on. Unfortunately it will take years of rigorous studies and experiments and discussions to prove the validity of this theory. And the scientific demonstration it’s not the biggest challenge I foresee. Most of all it will have to fight against the multibillion AGW industry.
http://www.apis.ac.uk/overview/pollutants/overview_NH3.htm
Yes Ammonia is a naturally occurring atmospheric gas – however amounts in the atmosphere have increased due to anthropogenic causes – so we’ll be to blame for the cooling now instead… 😉
There’s nothing like megabuck physics to break a logjam. This will give cover to the folks who have been inching towards the exits as the AGW bandwagon has faltered.
Perhaps it will finally be time for the American Physical Society to seriously review their position on CO2 and climate.
Someone once told me that the science was settled.
REPLY: Not dead, just dented – Anthony
I haven’t seen something this dented since the last time I watched a demolition derby.
Well I hope Dr. S. would find some time to comment.
Rate of the GCR’s impacts depends on the heliosphere’s magnetic field strength. However changes in the Earth’s magnetic field are of much larger magnitude (as Dr. S. has stated before) and these changes do correlate well with the temperature reconstructions:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
What I have discovered and suggest is that the Earth’s magnetic field in the Arctic also responds to the solar activity (I would appreciate any reference to this Arctic- Sun magnetic link prior to August 2009):
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC9.htm
But doesn’t the AGW consensus agree clouds cause warming?
Although a bit dated, one of my favorite series of 7 videos, The Cloud Mystery, starts with this one:
Now rather than say “Gosh, what a novel idea” as you view the sequence, you can see science in progress.
Lawrence Beatty says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:56 am
Calder says ammonia is always present in the real atmosphere.
Urine breaking down makes ammonia so we are back to cows!
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:11 pm
It isn’t the “long term trend in GCR’s that would explain the warming observed since mid-century”, it is the increased activity of the sun that’s been blocking GCRs during the last half of the last century.
With higher sun activity comes less cosmic rays; with less cosmic rays comes less clouds, and with less clouds comes more surface warmth on the earth. Now that sun’s overall activity has decreased–expect more cosmis rays, more clouds and less warmth.
This last statement, as quoted in the Nature press release (here) seems designed to give cover to the hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘Climate Scientists’ in order to preserve their funding until either they can retire or find another field. It reminds me of the standardized last sentence of practically every peer review paper published today: “…however, this subject need further study.”
Also, I’m not sure if it was Kirkby or someone else, but I remember reading an article a couple of years ago stating that the funding of the CLOUD experiment was delayed and almost halted because the person proposing it at the time had made some statements about the possibility of disproving AGW. I can’t find the article now but will continue to look.
Perhaps Chris Colose can explain why a large pot of water put on the stove gets hotter and hotter, from room temperature all the way to boiling, despite no long term trend in the size of the flame underneath? Just a step from off to full.
The sun’s magnetic field and solar wind about doubled in the early 20th century, and has crashed back below normal just a few years ago. It will only take about a 2% worldwide increase in low clouds (per Cal’s Dr.Muller) to negate all the warming forecast by the IPCC, and 2% is on the order of what Svensmark found in his Forbush decrease analysis.
We live in interesting times.
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:11 pm
You could prove it caused a 30% increase in cloud formation and Gavin would still deny there was any connection to climate. It just isn’t in his genes, or is it jeans (referring specifically to his pocketbook)?
@ Chris Colose
Seriously?
REPLY: Colose is predictable, and shows up here with brethren anytime the status quo is threatened, they on the Team can’t handle any alternate ideas that may even figure as a portion of climate forcing. Just look at how hard they try to make UHI go away. These ideas must be squashed, much like the ridiculous spin from the New Scientist – Anthony
RockyRoad,
Chris Colose hasn’t been right yet, why should this time be any different?
As for Gavin’s RealClimate Steps to climate salvation:
They’re pretty well covered by Forbush Decrease event studies. These studies show a sudden change in the sun leads to a sudden change in clouds. That covers steps 1-3.
ftp://ftp.spacecenter.dk/pub/Henrik/FB/Svensmark2009(Forbush).pdf
But that paper is by Svensmark, so don’t expect Gavin to even acknowledge it’s existence.
For the other side of the story, RealClimate already has a post on the paper here. where they state:
So if I understand this correctly, the CLOUD results so far say that Svensmark COULD be right, i.e. that solar modulation of cosmic rays COULD have an effect of unknown magnitude on the Earth’s climate system. In other words, Svensmark hasn’t been proven right, but his work just passed an important test that could have proved it wrong.
In that sense, cosmic ray climatology is a lot like CO2 climatology (i.e. plausible but unproven), except there’s no money (or votes) in it. Hey, that explains a lot… 🙂
“The endgame has finally started. Victory is near!!!”
No.
That game is political. Scientific results may have little to no bearing on how that game ends. They had next to nothing to do with how it started, afterall.
In light of the CLOUD results, one can reasonably expect to see the so-called consensus scientists, who have staunchly supported the IPCC assessments, continue to do so faithfully. They are the legacy scientists as opposed to the developing scientists outside of the aCO2 meme.
What the legacy aCO2 scientists say about CERN’s CLOUD experiment paper will not have any impact on those advancing scientists stepping into the exciting new area of study opened up by the Henrik Svensmark hypothesis and the resulting CLOUD experiment. The advancing scientists have no need of the legacy aCO2 scientist’s assessments; rightly so.
Congratulations to Henrik Svensmark for his brilliant hypothesis and to CERN for its achievements.
John
It’s interesting to read what Real Climate has to say about the subject. Of particular note is how rigorous they want the science before being able to say the sun affects climate, where as they only need a computer model to believe the importance of CO2 (this is not saying they’re wrong to want rigorous science, but that all science should be equally rigorous).
“Chris Colose hasn’t been right yet, why should this time be any different?”
Ha! So true….and always with the hoity-toity attitude.
The fist-bumping at the new ¨death blow¨”(as there is one every day on this blog) and the hostility toward me was very predictable…very well, I will let you all continue to misrepresent the scope of the paper…doesn´t matter to me. It´s what WUWT does best.
REPLY: In the meantime, perhaps you’ll learn not to be such a sourpuss and learn to smile, eh Chris? Or has the doom and gloom you defend permeated you permanently? – Anthony
Northern California Bureaucrat says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:41 am
“With apologies to Mr. Spock…
Only human arrogance would assume the warming must be caused by man.”
I’d say more pampered western civilistion self loathing and guilt from idiots who wished humans had never started any fires and we all lived back in the stone age. Those really were times to remember; if you lived long enough that is. Those days a man could so easily really come well acquainted with nature, usually a tape worm hanging out his you know what-ah yes hockey stick.
Lets not get too elated here. There may well be other important actors beside cosmic ray shielding and, if so, the warmers will say ” But that can’t account for all of it. The rest must be CO2! ToldYaSo!”
And a reasonable skeptic must allow that CO2 may be a part of it.
I shall always recall a few years ago “Rasmus” on Realclimate advocating for Svensmark’s funding to be reallocated… LOL
Louise, my dear
If you’re going to quote Kirkby, try “there are huge, important areas where our understanding is poor at the moment”. He, rationally, doesn’t seem to accept “the science is settled”. Or attempt to reverse the null hypothesis. The “Svensmark hypothesis” has just passed its third empirical test. Better performance than the models!
In the new book “The Philosophical Breakfast Club” by Laura J. Snyder (Broadway Books, 2011, 439 pp.), she reported that a relationship between sunspot activity and atmospheric conditions was predicted long ago by the eminent astronomer Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822). Heinrich Schwabe (1789-1875) reported on his seventeen-year study of sunspots, which led him to conclude the there was a ten-year cycle of maximum sunspot activity. From Schwabe’s research, Edward Sabine (1788- 1883) recognized that the earth’s magnetic field was determined, in part, by cosmic factors such as sunspots. These magnetic studies showed that William Herschel had been correct to suggest a connection between sunspots and atmospheric conditions on earth.
According to the AGW camp the sun has hardly and affect on earth whatsover-why don’t we just turn it off and save energy.
RockyRoad,
I understand the theory. If you want to explain the warming with a decrease in cosmic rays, then detecting a decrease in cosmic rays would be a good first step, no? I realize the whole point here is to glorify any idea that goes against AGW, simply because it goes against AGW, but try to be as skeptical about alternative ideas as you are about what CO2 can do.
The Nature paper is highly valuable, and will play a great (but still preliminary) role in understanding of aerosol chemistry. But the links to trends in cloud cover, to radiative forcing, to AGW being dented, etc is nowhere close to being justified by this work. If people feel the need to be hostile and angry by me pointing this out, perhaps it´s time for self-evaluation of how much you are actually interested in the advancement of science vs. cheerleading for anything that allegedly goes against AGW.
REPLY: Colose is predictable, and shows up here with brethren anytime the status quo is threatened, they on the Team can’t handle any alternate ideas that may even figure as a portion of climate forcing. Just look at how hard they try to make UHI go away. These ideas must be squashed, much like the ridiculous spin from the New Scientist – Anthony
=======
Thanks for that explanation. I literally laughed out loud when I read what Colose wrote… followed shortly afterwards with a face palm.
Chris Colose says:
“It´s what WUWT does best.”
Wrong as usual. What WUWT does best is to allow all sides to post comments, instead of the wholesale censorship practiced by alarmist blogs. That allows the truth to eventually be sifted out. Wake me when realclimate and its ilk start allowing a meaningful discussion.
Gary Hladik,
Indeed, there are a lot of ¨could be´s¨ which is precisely why people are studying this stuff. Svensmarks ideas have already been shown to be too small to matter, e.g.,
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/-search=50886201.1/1748-9326/3/2/024001/erl8_2_024001.pdf?request-id=61da3477-b905-41cf-8542-b9cb1ee5af4f
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL037946.shtml
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/2697/2011/acpd-11-2697-2011.html
You won´t see a lot of WUWT coverage on these because they don´t go against AGW, but there is a lot of good science here.
“What if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had done a responsible job, acknowledging the role of the Sun and curtailing the prophecies of catastrophic warming?”
There would have been no ‘fear porn’ for misguided and misanthropic enviro-nuts.
Chris Colose:
“Earth currently absorbs more sunlight (the power output per unit area) than any other body with an atmosphere in our solar system.”
No comment.
The solution to CAGW should be obvious to all now thanks to CERN. We impose a cosmic ray tax and we sequester underground all the cosmic rays that come out of coal fired powerplants and the exhaust pipes of SUV’s. Any leftover cosmic rays will be chopped up be the windmill farms and absorbed by solar panels. Problem solved. Now wasn’t that an easy way to save GAIA?
DirkH,
Is there a particular problem with that statement…?
I don´t understand the hostility that comes from trying to tell people to not misread a paper, and to accurately report results. Is this a bad thing?
Okay, so assuming that GCR’s aren’t constant, now we need to measure GCR’s outside of Earth orbit over time, then compare that to CGR’s at top of atmosphere and ground level over time, then compare those to clouds over time. That should tell us the nature of the relationship. For example, is there a delayed reaction like with Mt Pinatubo, or is it faster or slower? Is it light side of the earth only, or is it both light and dark sides? Does it vary by latitude? Enough work remains to make a career out of it for someone. That’s the person who will get the Nobel.
Has the ‘Team’ starting smearing the authors as being in the pay of ‘big oil’ yet?
It is a stake through the heart of the notion that “the science is settled”
The IPCC can no longer maintain that there is a consensus about what caused the heating of the planet form 1975 – 2000. It is now a debate they cannot ignore.
Wait… it’s still our fault… according to New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128274.900-cloudmaking-another-human-effect-on-the-climate.html
Just like CO2, ammonia is important to the life cycle.
Ric Werme,
A while back I posted a comment on a well known Australian blog referring to Nigel Calder and something he had written way back in the 1970’s relating to global cooling. Nothing particularly sensational about what he said.
The response was vitriolic, with commentators denigrating him at every turn. I believe this was shortly after ‘The Chilling Stars’ was published. So perhaps he is right to feel a bit peeved.
Might be worth reviewing the Watts Up With That blog post of May 20, 2011 by Dr. Roy Spencer entitled “Indirect Solar Forcing ofr Climate by Gallactic Cosmic Rays: An Observational Estimate” that had 419 comments.
Chris Colose says:
“Earth currently absorbs more sunlight (the power output per unit area) than any other body with an atmosphere in our solar system.”
Try Venus.
Of the little research money expected in the severe global economy, we can see that a much higher percentage should now go to develop a line of science based on the exciting results of the CLOUD experiment. That means less $ for the aCO2 centric IPCC consensus science. The consensus scientists claim their science is settled, right? So they really don’t, by their own settled views, need more money. Oops. : )
John
Comments like this:
Scarface says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:13 am
“If this isn’t the final nail in the coffin for CAGW, I don’t know what is.”
_____
Show me how wide ranging the lack of understanding of the bigger perspective on climate is. As though the notion that yes, cosmic rays may have some effect on climate, negates the fact that CO2 does as well. As though this is an all-or-nothing proposition. There are many multiple factors (forcings) that affect climate on vastly different time scales, with different set of feedbacks, and different net effects on climate. Milankovitch cycles, greenhouse gases, solar cycles (long and short), volcanoes, biosphere interactions such as phytoplankton, etc. all are factors, and research such as this gives us more definitive ideas about how cosmic rays may play their part, but it in now way lessens the actions or potency of the other contributors to the climate puzzle.
It is possible, and I would say likely, that the solar/cosmic ray/cloud relationship could be a real effect ALONG WITH with the notion that increasing greenhouse gases by anywhere from 30 to 300% could also affect the climate. It is not all or none when it comes to the complex puzzle that is the climate. More importantly is to know when, where, and how each forcing acts and to what degree.
KnR– No, in fact they have posts stating how it is very interesting.
and of course at RC they try to bring down the paper…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/
//Try Venus.//
Nope. Try again.
Who’s going to be first to call ammonia a greenhouse gas and regulate it?
Well if anything was guaranteed to knock dear Irene off pole position this is it.
I find it amazing how in such a woefully short period of time the discussion can become so polarised. I can understand individuals having strong views, but scientific publications? Unless of course they have been studying the paper? I will wait my time, it will take me awhile (more like a long time) to gain comprehension.
I can understand somebody saying there are things to learn from the paper but I give no truck to the view that this “changes nothing”, that at such an early time, can only be described as arm waving of the most desperate kind.
Time will tell, developments should meet with increasing interest.
Kirkby is ‘a bit more muted’ because he got his wing clipped back in 1998 when he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.”
According to an article in the National Post (here):
This is a nice report on some good science – with appropriately bitter reflections on those who tried to block it.
Lots of people here seem to see it as some kind of climate wars coup – but it isn’t. On the contrary, it is a long term “good thing” -whose most important political/emotional effect will, I think, be to push a few more fence sitters caught between funding exigencies and the need to do science off the right side.
Ray– They are not trying to bring down the paper. They are trying to bring down inappropriate misrepresentations of the paper, or articles that try to significantly expand the scope of what they say in the paper. Read it more carefully.
nycoordinator says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:29 am
Hooray!!!!
The AGW hoax is dead!
Henrik Svensmark should be given a REAL Nobel Prize!
REPLY: Not dead, just dented – Anthony
_____
I’m really suprized at you Anthony, for thinking these results “dent” the concept that increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases could affect the climate. The two are not mutually exclusive and both could be true to one degree or another.
pochas says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:55 pm
“Lets not get too elated here….a reasonable skeptic must allow that CO2 may be a part of it.”
_____
Three cheers for all reasonable skeptics!
Colose, you can cut and paste from RC darn good.
“Of course, to show that cosmic rays were actually responsible for some part of the recent warming, you would need to show that there was actually a decreasing trend in cosmic rays over recent decades – which is tricky, because there hasn’t been.”
Why don’t you observe the actual data and not Gavin’s orchestration.
http://helios.izmiran.rssi.ru/cosray/months.htm
1. Analyses that highlight correlations between solar activity and climate indices have been given new respectability, and will be pursued and vigorously disputed.
2. Hypotheses and experiments to quantify the real cloud droplet formation rates, over temperature, pressure, and humidity, from the cosmic-ray induced particles, will be pursued and vigorously disputed.
Pre-normal science is prevailing.
I just love the delicious irony here of a True Believer in C02-driven climate change lecturing us about skepticism. Say, Chris, perhaps you should follow your own advice.
Team defence to the rescue?
This is obviously worrying the RC crowd LOL
That should be a fascinating news story for all people interested in climate. It is a genuine breakthrough in the understanding of the climatic cycles.
No doubt that early work needs to be challenged, reproduced, amended, etc. However, it’s funny how some people now want a direct proof, a causal relationship, etc., before being convinced. There’s nothing wrong with being skeptical, but such a hard proof is missing too from the CO2 hypothesis.
Now imagine the headlines on your daily newspaper tomorrow morning if such an experiment would confirm instead the CO2 hypothesis: it would be a riot of “proved beyond doubt”, “settled beyond discussion”, etc. I’m not making that up: I’ve seen such headlines in the last 10 years (well, less of them in the last 2). Take for example the miserable hockey stick story: a statistical study, and a poor one at that, not even checked, becoming the emblem of a whole movement.
Speaking of double-standards, the UCS, very concerned and very keen on “scientific integrity”, has not published the results of its cartoon contest (see the post of 08/20) as of now. The page just says “Thanks for your vote”… Perhaps some people don’t accept the data (vote tally) when it does not fit their theory? They did accept the candidacy of cartoon #8, though, which somehow speaks for them.
R. Gates,
I found the perfect woman for you! : click
The paper, on which Kirkby is lead author, says: “…the fraction of these freshly nucleated particles that grow to sufficient sizes to seed cloud droplets, as well as the role of organic vapours in the nucleation and growth processes, remain open questions experimentally”
Is it not then incorrect for Kirkby to say: “those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds” when he has published that he does not know this?
Is there still some PC arm twisting going on?
@Gates, Colose
Don’t you realize that this is science. Observations, experimental evidence, contradicting the models. Svensmark’s hypothesis may or may not be true. It’s just passed its third experimental test. Frantic spinning will not affect its validity.
RGates
Nice of you to finally acknowledge that there are other factors invovled with changing climate, not just CO2. I doubt anyone here says that cosmic rays are the only factor, indeed, we know there are many that have been dismissed by the alarmist because they do not fit into the popular meme.
@chris
“Earth currently absorbs more sunlight (the power output per unit area) than any other body with an atmosphere in our solar system.”
And yet Earth has a vastly smaller (by 3 to 4 order of magnitude) concentration of CO2 in its atmosphere than Venus or Mars. Same with other greenhouse gasses such as sulfuric acid in the case of Venus.
rob m says: August 24, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Someone once told me that the science was settled.
Yes but where? I hear it got moved to some place in outer Mongolia!
Indeed sir, and in order to accept that the CO2-based computer models demonstrate a causal link between global temperature and human-released CO2, I personally would need to see these steps completed.
1) Agreement with observations.
When you have that, get back to me.
The Emperor’s New Clothes was a fairy tail written by a famous Danish writer HC Andersen.
Now a Danish scientist have proved that entire AGW empire are naked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes.
Smokey,
If that is real…..I don’t know if laughing or crying is the correct response, however, I laughed. Hysterically.
Anthony, I neglected to commend you for your excellent summary history of the “wall” and the science. How wonderful and exciting it would have been to have poured our resources into developing real science over the last 15 years rather than perpetrating a fraud. So many years lost from one perspective. But from another, I bet few inquiring minds would have brushed up on all their various fields of science without the impetus of being “gored”. Now we need to develop a new media to explain this “new” science to the public — and to help those politicians standing for election explain these truths to the electorate. Thanks again and thanks for WUWT, one such new media.
It’s good to see GISS bloggers here, blogging on government time…our tax dollars at work!! Hooray!
The
conceptASSERTION is that increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases DOMINATES the climate.Backpedaling already?
@chris
By “concentration” I meant to say “composition”. Percentage of the atmosphere (though Venus’s atmosphere is 90x more dense than Earth, “concentration” doesn’t hold true for Mars which is much thinner, but still predominately CO2)
Chris Colose: – Is the ‘non-trend’ in cosmic rays at all disputed (yes I saw Gavin’s chart)? What would Svensmark’s answer be? Also is Svensmark’s apparent correlation between FD and cloud cover accepted or disputed?
Gates says:
“Three cheers for all reasonable skeptics!”
Why, thank you, R.☺
R. Gates,
“It is possible, and I would say likely, that the solar/cosmic ray/cloud relationship could be a real effect ALONG WITH with the notion that increasing greenhouse gases by anywhere from 30 to 300% could also affect the climate. It is not all or none when it comes to the complex puzzle that is the climate. More importantly is to know when, where, and how each forcing acts and to what degree.”
Quite true, but what you are saying goes against IPCC cannon. In previous reports, solar activity has been relegated to 0.1% variations in forcing, and this is indeed how the models are programmed. If CGR does play a role in climate, then aren’t we also saying that the models are wrong by omission? Since models do not include the warming effect of decreased CGR then does it not follow that they must in fact be overstating the warming effect due to co2 in order to produce their hindcasts?
Smokey says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:47 pm
R. Gates,
I found the perfect woman for you! : click
That is the funniest thing I have seen this week.
Chris Colose, you are right to warn against taking the paper (and the underlying results) beyond what is merited — good advice to all participants in the discussion.
With that caveat in mind, where do you think we should go from here? With CLOUD’s verification of (at least part of ) Svensmark’s idea, do you believe his hypothesis merits additional consideration, and funding, so that we can get a better handle on the influence of cosmic rays on climate?
Frank Black says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:44 am
“I’ve been telling my students about Svensmark’s model since his book came out. Now we can discuss experimental support for the model- wow! what a teachable moment. Science at its best! You bet we’ll also discuss the politics – the kids are getting quite savvy about this scam.”
Yes, real science can command broad public interest. It just might be the “Rock & Roll” that cures the MSM of its love affair with CAGW.
Ged– I´m not sure what your points have to do with my simple statement that Earth absorbs more sunlight per unit area than any other planet or moon (though I should probably have said input and not output, but I think everyone understands). This is just a simple fact and I never attached much physical significance to it in my home page.
It’s easy to tell when a really important paper has been posted here. All of Gavin’s trained seals come here to toot their horns.
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:36 pm “I’m really suprized at you Anthony, for thinking these results “dent” the concept that increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases could affect the climate.”
And what odds would you now give that CO2 feedback with water vapour is greater than unity?
I’m waiting for the release of “The idiots guide to the results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN”,
before I weigh in.
Just wunderin’ whether Colose punched the time clock at realclimate before he came here for his shift or if he’s arguing in his spare time?
Smokey, you are an amusing sage, thank you for brightening many a day of mine.
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:00 pm
First of all, I’m a scientist and an engineer–a strange breed of professional that sees science not only for what it is, but also for what it does. I’m looking for glorification only as a counter to closed-minded AGW acolytes who think they know the theory but what they actually know is not applicable or salient. And it is never as catastrophic or apocalyptic as they report.
But enough about me–this whole problem is that your vaunted “cheerleaders” of AGW, such as Gore, Mann, Jones, Schmidt, Trenberth, and so forth, are really not acting like government- or academia- or tax-paid scientists. THEY are the ones you should investigate; they feed at the public trough and take grants and tax money and make all sorts of claims and seldom divulge data or methodology (“lost” data or emails seems to be all in a day’s work for the AGW crowd; suppression of dissent is their standard public relations). On occasion I have called them “climsci” people–which stands for “climate science” and I foreshorten it because they only pretend to be scientists and seldom directly study the climate. (I’ve read the HARRY_READ_ME file and it makes me sick–is this what you hold up as a shining example of AGW science? There are many more examples and the joke is on you if you don’t see it.)
I do not get paid by government or research grants or Big Oil. I am in the private sector out of the fog of AGW but I have been skeptical about CO2–as skeptical as the data allows but that’s what helps me determine that CO2 isn’t the culprit you think it is–not even close. Theory embodied in models doesn’t withstand scrutiny. In fact, I’m a cheerleader for fossil fuels because of the long-term benefits. Yup, benefits. They far outweigh the fanticized downside.
Ray wrote: and of course at RC they try to bring down the paper…
Not so. They praise the paper, but they dispute the hypothesis that changes in GCRs are related to 20th century global temperature changes. I think they are too credulous regarding AGW, but on this topic they are appropriately skeptical.
@chris Colose
Or, for a sane observer, just to note that the warming has stopped for 10+ years when the models said it wouldn’t.
R. Gates :
The entire premise behind CO2 being part of the warming was stressed in the 1990 IPCC report number 1. Don’t you remember your history? They stated (paraphrased) that we can not account for X warming and since the only theory on the table IS CO2 based warming, this must be the culprit. Of course every report went farther after the first one especially number 2 in 1996 which stated that the science “discovered” the human imprint on the climate. This caused quite a shock among the scientists at the time as it was added after they went home and indeed they never had found the human thumbprint. In fact, scientists to this DAY have never found that thumb-print.
Since we now have a viable theory, the entire IPCC line of reasoning is gone, and the entire settled science is defeated. There is another theory which has actual empirical results to back it up. The physics works, the measurements works and you don’t need aerosols to explain the cooling from 1940 – 1970 or in the last 10 years.
In other words, there is NOT one way this theory is not better today. If you still think the climate is driven by CO2 in other words, you are simply back-pedaling and denying the evidence presented here. Sure, CO2 can still have an effect, but you never proved back at the start what this effect was other then the “we can not account for the warming so it must be man” fallacy.
This is a much better theory that fits the bill much better. Yes, I tend to agree that CO2 has an impact and consequently so does man, but we can argue the actual effect later. This just throws the IPCC assesment figure of 1.5C to 4.5C per doubling of CO2 out the window. Throw it away. Give it up. Look for new theories.
This theory has now stood up to scrutiny which is something the CAGW theory never could do. As someone else mentioned here:
Northern California Bureaucrat says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:41 am
“With apologies to Mr. Spock…
Only human arrogance would assume the warming must be caused by man.”
And indeed that is what the history books will look back at CAGW and call it. Arrogance. That is what I see here when a more viable theory is posted about the 20th century warming and all they can do is tell us “but CO2 has an effect.”
Great, prove that CO2 has more of an effect then clouds (cosmic rays now too) and maybe you will get somewhere.
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:11 pm
“The reason Svensmark probably didn´t receive much attention in the paper is because his results have long been refuted in the literature.”
Is the only purpose of science to prove what causes GW? So, because Svensmark has not proved that the sun controls global warming, you want to claim that his science is refuted? I do not think that word, ‘refuted’, means what you think it means.
“The new Nature paper is interesting, but it is unable to put the causal link between cosmic rays and GW implied in this post.”
Ah, but it opens investigation of a causal link between cosmic rays and global warming. You would not want to discourage good scientists from pursuing such an investigation, would you?
@chris
“This is just a simple fact and I never attached much physical significance to it in my home page.”
That’s my point, so why did you bring it up when it is irrelevant?
Chris C. – thanks for coming along and proclaiming some much needed precautions. I too, while simpathetic so some of the skeptical arguments, am very tired of reading ‘the final nail in the AGW coffin’….that gets old and tiresome. Anyway, don’t know if you have any sort of relationship with Gavin, but if you do it would be great if you could persuade him to ‘open up’ his website for real dialog. Thanks.
Tim Clark wrote: Why don’t you observe the actual data and not Gavin’s orchestration.
Why did that graph, dated August 2011, omit data since 2006?
Are you claiming that there is a relationship between the data in that graph and some observed sequence of weather/climate data on earth over the same time span?
—————
R. Gates,
Your criterion for ‘reasonable’ appears incoherent with and inimical toward a broad spectrum of those interested in independent (of the IPCC consensus) assessment of our climate system.
Speaking of independent, at lot of scientific energy and funds will start to flow toward the line of science opening up as a result of Henrik Svensmark’s original brilliant hypothesis and the associated CLOUD experiment results. The aCO2 centric and IPCC consensus funding lock now is gone.
Now that is something for independents (a.k.a. skeptics) to really cheer about.
John
Didn’t we already know that such particles could provide condensation nuclei ?
The real issue is whether they do so in practice given that there is no shortage of nuclei already.
My problem with the Svensmark hypothesis is that the simple production of more clouds doesn’t seem to get us far in explaining the other observations of what happens when climate changes occur namely latitudinal shifts in the jets, changes in atmospheric blocking frequencies, shifting climate zones and changes in the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere.
Subject to further investigation I still think that our best bet to cover all that is chemical processes involving ozone in the upper atmosphere varying as the level of solar activity changes, especially in the UV wavelengths.
Most likely the Svensmark process helps a bit but overall not much with it just being coincidental that cosmic ray quantities also increase at the same time as and in the same circumstances when the upper atmospheric chemical changes occur.
pochas says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:55 pm
‘Lets not get too elated here. There may well be other important actors beside cosmic ray shielding and, if so, the warmers will say ” But that can’t account for all of it. The rest must be CO2! ToldYaSo!”’
The Warmista have gone to the max against Svensmark for sometime. They have overplayed their hand big time. If there is any connection along Svensmark’s lines between cosmic rays and cloud cover on Earth, the Warmista will be dining on Crow indefinitely.
Anyone can see that when the Ivory tower leaks unpalatable truth, it becomes very stinky in the ivory tower. This is such a case. They’re scrambling fast to find an exit now because their own members are saying things that go against what was previously said.
@ Scarface
No, I think we need to find a crossroads, carrying a sharpened wooden stake, garlic, a cross and a mirror. Sunlight would help ……. but, hey, I forgot that the Sun has no (zero, nada …. ) influence!
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:17 pm
“I don´t understand the hostility that comes from trying to tell people to not misread a paper, and to accurately report results. Is this a bad thing?”
The problem is your obsession with proving CAGW. That is all you care to discuss. When posting here, all you care to do is take whatever cheap shots you can at any science that does not support CAGW. You come across as a Bot. There are many other things to discuss.
Svensmark’s work will improve our understanding of cloud behavior and will contribute to our understanding of climate behavior. Warmista have nothing on cloud behavior. Svensmark’s work is first rate science that fulfills perfectly all the standards of scientific method. No Warmista dare talk about scientific method. If Trenberth were made aware of the existence of scientific method, somehow, he would declare something like “Reverse the damn scientific method” as he did about the null hypothesis.
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:17 pm
No, it’s quite a good thing to help set the limits of what the CLOUD experiment can cover. What’s a very bad thing is the condescending attitude you’ve picked up in the Ivory Tower – you should spend some time as a TV meteorologist and visit all the schools in the viewing area. That would help teach you how to convey what you have to say without riling up the people you currently talk down to.
It also doesn’t help that you said (or at least I read) that which CLOUD didn’t test doesn’t exist, e.g. the small molecular clusters growing into functional CCNs. Emphasize what CLOUD looke for, what it found, and note what still needs to be studied. Admit you don’t know some of the answers yourself and be interested in future research that’s needed and people will take you more seriously.
Earlier in my software engineering career, I was pretty condescending to people who didn’t know as much as I thought they should about what I worked on. These days things are so big and complex and there’s so much stuff I should know something about but don’t that I spend a lot more time being humble about all of it.
Clearly what we now need is a controlled experiment.
It should be possible to build an accelerator that will produce a free-space beam of high-energy particles, perhaps pions, provided that it operates in vacuum. Such an accelerator should be built and placed in orbit, then used to irradiate selected areas of the Earth while cloud formation (or not) is observed.
Going by previous experience (Hubble, e.g.) this process would take approximately fifteen years, from design phase through Green-inspired litigation to launch, further litigation, and finally beginning the experiment.
The true value of this approach is hinted at in the “…waiting for CLOUD” remarks, above. Colose et. al. could simply shrug and say that, since the crucial experiment has not been performed, AGW can proceed as scheduled. If the apparent ages of the people involved are as they seem, it would allow a considerable number of flimflammers to remain on the Government teat until retirement.
Look for a serious proposal any day now.
Regards,
Ric
Steve Geiger says:
“…it would be great if you could persuade him to ‘open up’ his website for real dialog. Thanks.”
It will never happen. Transparency and the scientific method would destroy the Mann/Schmidt AGW scare in short order. So the climate scammers will continue to censor, while being paid by an unwilling public.
These people are defrauding taxpayers by blogging and writing comments throughout their work day. Chris Colose has been commenting here for half the day on this thread alone, and I regularly see his comments on other sites. As he states in his blog, “…I have also written for other blogs, including RealClimate.org and SkepticalScience.com.” There are so many like Colose with their snouts deep in the public trough that as an overburdened taxpayer I dream of the day when someone takes action against their fraudulent misappropriation of public funds. The internet never forgets, and at some point there will be a reckoning.
Chris Colose wrote: If people feel the need to be hostile and angry by me pointing this out, perhaps it´s time for self-evaluation of how much you are actually interested in the advancement of science vs. cheerleading for anything that allegedly goes against AGW.
I read WUWT and RC regularly, and I post at each occasionally. You can expect derision, anger and hostility at both places, even for well-formed, well-informed, and reasonable comments. That’s just the way it is.
I think that the CO2 promoters are wrong, but at the same time I am not convinced by the GCR count either, since number of GCR protons is just as low as the number of CO2 molecules in respect of the atmosphere’s composition; both are negligible, the effect is probably there, but to move the global climate highly unlikely, regardless CO2 or GCRs.
The AGW zealots are totally unrealistic about the CO2 effectives, so sceptics should not fall into same trap, until the GCRs are shown as the likely principal agent for the natural change; for the moment the link is very tenuous indeed. Let’s remember that the principle was discovered decades ago, when the Wilson’s cloud chamber was invented.
I agree with the (now surprisingly absent) Dr. Svalgaard’s past comments on this particular matter!
I will not bother with Chris C & Gates, since their comments have failed to bring anything which would advance my knowledge or even diminish my ignorance.
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:00 pm
“I understand the theory. If you want to explain the warming with a decrease in cosmic rays, then detecting a decrease in cosmic rays would be a good first step, no?”
There are plenty of proxies for solar variability which show that solar activity has remained high throughout the 20th century. Usoskin seems pretty clear about this in Fig 4. from this paper:
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/2002ja009343.pdf
It’s also important to destinguish between CR’s (which you mention above) and GCR’s (i.e. energy levels), and remember that Svensmarks hypothesis involves muon’s – which are the main source of ionisation in the atmosphere at the low cloud heights that he’s interested in. Counts of cosmic-ray muons at low altitudes were historically low when record keeping stopped in the early 90’s.
Svensmark also apparently gets a pretty good fit over the last 20 odd years when he plots Huancayo/Haleakala Neutron data (as a proxy for muon’s), against tropospheric air temperature (HadAT2), or ocean sub-surface water temperature (SODA).
Although the CLOUD team haven’t yet discovered the specific compounds which are responsible for an ion-induced mechanism at the boundary layer, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time…
There seems to be a lot of very quite, naked, people standing around today! I wonder where they all were, yesterday, and why the world didn’t notice them? After all, They were not wearing ANY CLOTHES!! Congrats to all! GK
No suprise that when real science rears it’s head, out pop the table top scientists”modelers”
and start whining.
It was a sad day for science when they took the results from GCM over real observation.
science settled? ….indeed, shame on you..
This thread is hilarious. After over a decade of trying to experimentally demonstrate a theory with regards to clouds, a 3rd and very solid result is obtained that supports the original theory. That theory is that GCRs affect cloud cover.
Cloud cover ultimately affects W/m2 on the earth more than CO2 ever will, this is an acknowledged fact of the matter.
For over 20 years, other people have been saying that human released CO2 is causing what will ultimately be catastrophic global warming. They have never run an experiment. They have models that they hold up as evidence. They had no experiments demonstrating their model’s accuracy. If anything, the global temperature has diverged from their projections, and their tropical Hot Spot has failed to materialize in all measurements made. Despite this, they told everyone for 20 years that mankind was affecting the climate by driving SUVs instead of hybrids and that our actions now would put our children at risk. They shamelessly bankrolled this into political momentum that declared many free thinkers who dared to question to be evildoers and worthy of execution for crimes against humanity (I’m not making any of this up).
Now, when a single website hails this new EXPERIMENTAL result (not a model for you model lovers), and declares that the other theory is now in serious trouble… somehow we’re guilty of cheerleading. HOW DARE WE NOT BE SKEPTICAL OF OUR OWN RESULTS GUYS!! HOW DARE WE!! WE SHOULD EXPRESS APPROPRIATE DOUBT ABOUT THESE EXPERIMENTS!! Even though those other guys never doubted model results for 20 years… oh dear me.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
I’m looking at you, Gates and Colose.
For those who did not grow up on a farm, all decaying animal or vegetable matter releases ammonia. Starting at about age 12, I managed a chicken farm with a capacity of about 13,000 chickens. The ammonia from chicken manure will knock you on your butt.
Smokey says:
August 24, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Now Smokey – I think Chris (and his mentor/hero “Gavin”) can blog AND produce those much needed, can’t-do-without “climate products” that NASA/GISS … errr… well, produces. Hooray for government-funded climate products!!
Watts, this is absolutely GREAT! The hit’s just keep on coming :),,,,,,,,,
—————–
Chris Colose,
Chris, your “I will let you all continue to misrepresent the scope of the paper…” says it all about your worldview. You will let us? You wonder at our courtesy when you give us that condescending pathology? Really Chris.
You and I both know that the only thing propping up the aCO2 biased consensus science is the sanction of the UN for the IPCC assessments. Without the UN/IPCC involved there would be no aCO2 dominance for the past >20 years. Other aspects of climate science were slowed or blocked because of the UN/IPCC pre-emption toward aCO2. We know this. Everyone knows this. Even the consensus aCO2 IPCC supporters know this. The man in the street knows this; the electorate knows this.
The lines of research that were pre-empted by the aCO2 biased IPCC consensus are now breaking free of the protectionist consensus scientists. That is really great for the broad perspective of an objective science versus the IPCC subjective venue. This is happening by efforts of some real scientific heroes . . . . they will inspire even more independent scientists that will maintain the challenge to the IPCC roadblock.
Fist bumping? No, a serene moment of reflection on the lessons learned that all independents can use to expose the next piece of consensus gamesmanship.
John
I love it. What’s really amusing is that the cloud chamber, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_cloud_chamber, a major instrument developed to study cosmic rays, was originally developed in 1911 for “studying cloud formation and optical phenomena in moist air”.
Jeremy,
It is this statement that I find hilarious:
“and declares that the other theory (i.e. AGW) is now in serious trouble…”
____
It’s funny, but I’ve long thought it quite likely that GCR’s affect cloud cover, and that this was part of (with high energy UV being the other) the missing connection between sun and earth’s climate. Now, the fact that I’ve got no problems seeing the full scale and spectrum of forcings that can affect the earth’s climate, with CO2 being just part of the equation…how does that make me a hypocrite?
As you have no idea who I am or what I believe, I’ll forgive your ignorance this one time. But your suggestion that finding a potential connection in ONE of the ways the earth’s climate is regulated somehow negates the effects of another way is suggestive of the kind of desperation that skeptics are showing in trying to disprove AGW.
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:36 pm
“I’m really suprized at you Anthony, for thinking these results “dent” the concept that increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases could affect the climate. The two are not mutually exclusive and both could be true to one degree or another.”
Yes my good man, it is the degree that is in question. Adding another piece of the puzzle certainly lessens the degree of warming that CO2 supposedly causes. Perhaps your “40% increase in CO2” isn’t as fatal as you fear it to be.
It’s great to see more and more legit science as time goes by…..
Of course this shows that there are many factors that come into play where climate is concerned.
Cosmic rays influencing cloud formation aside, my only other comment is that previous articles have mentioned a decline in atmospheric methane….doesn’t this completely obliterate any supposed notion that CO2 drives increases in temperature?
The Bish is on a roll:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/8/24/cloud-experiment-links.html
simpleseekeraftertruth says:
August 24, 2011 at 2:08 pm
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:36 pm “I’m really suprized at you Anthony, for thinking these results “dent” the concept that increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases could affect the climate.”
And what odds would you now give that CO2 feedback with water vapour is greater than unity?.
_____
Glad you asked that. You see, the big driver of climate, is, and has been for millions of years, the Milankovitich cycles. Unfortunately, at the core of these cycles, which do follow glacial and interglacials cycles quite nicely, is what is known as the “disproportionate effects” problem. Quite simply stated, the effects produced by the Milankovtich cycle, when taken in total, is far greater than the cause (i.e. the change in NH summer insolation). It is in fact, disproportionate by quite a bit. Interestingly, when looking at the ice core samples and matching them up to the Milankovitch cycle, an very revealing thing is found, CO2 follows temperatures, but lags a bit at the start of an uptrend in temperatures, but then quickly catches up and follows quite nicely. This remains one of the strongest clues (along with the amount of dust deposited in the ice) about what’s going on, and the answer to the fact that the effects of the Milankovitch cycles far exceed the slight change in insolation. It’s called positive feedback, and it happens with both CO2 outgassing from the oceans, but also, the taking up of CO2 by the phytoplankton of the oceans. As the oceans warm and more moisture is evaporated, that moisture travels to the land areas where the dust was being produced. Those areas now produce less dust, and hence, less fertilization of the plankton, which take up less CO2, further enhancing the warming, and the positive feedback loop is established. The only way Milankovitch cycles can produce the degree of warming they do is through positive feedback loops involving CO2. Let me repeat: The only way Milankovitich cycles can produce the degree of warming they do is through positive feedback loops involving CO2.
So to your question: What do I think the odds are that CO2 feedback with water vapor are more than unity? 100%. They have to be or we’d never break out of an ice-house world.
============
Theo Goodwin,
I was born and raised on a small family owned dairy farm in northern NY State. I moved tons of pig, chicken, goat and cow manure. Perfume! Ammonia, methane and all. : )
John
Jeremy says:
August 24, 2011 at 2:57 pm
absofeckinglutely! well said!
I find R Gates ‘acceptance’ that GCRs may be a part contributor to AGW fascinating – but I suspect this will be the ‘new’ direction (aka excuse) of the warmists…..
I do not doubt that CO2 plays some part in earths temperature – but catastrophically? – definately NOT – and as for the human contribution, I cannot see it being sufficient, so for me, once I started looking into the subject, CO2 was ALWAYS the likely minor player! Not least because indicators point to CO2 rising after temp rises as per ice cores, etc.
The climate and all its ‘parts’ is a weird wonderful and complex place – and I don’t care if your name is Bill Gates and you can set a billion computers working on a ‘model’ of the climate – it’s still a fecking model and it’s unlikely to be ever complete enough to make crazy future climate predictions! This is what causes the ‘hoax’ calls by some quarters – because in ANY other similarly complex and virtually unmodelable system, no-one would even bother trying! To my mind it would be like trying to predict the colour of a pubic hair left on a toilet seat in a specific booth in Heathrow airport on 22nd July 2100….the assumptions you would have to make are simply too enormous and the uncertainties far outweigh the natural variability!
As for those who feel it is the final nail – I can’t agree, as per the style of dictators desperate to stay in power, the Team will fight tooth and nail…………Personally, I don’t care about them – as I still believe that the scientific truth will out ……eventually!
M.A.Vukcevic says:
August 24, 2011 at 2:48 pm
“… so sceptics should not fall into same trap, until the GCRs are shown as the likely principal agent for the natural change…”
_____
Is that what the skeptics are saying now? GCR’s are the “principal” agent for natural change? Wow, from zero to hero, eh?
However, quite unlikely.
Agust Bjarnason says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:14 am
Nature News:
Cloud formation may be linked to cosmic rays
“Experiment probes connection between climate change and radiation bombarding the atmosphere. It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth’s atmosphere and changing the climate… ”
Well, a pattern simply added from heliocentric tide aspects of some planets, gives evidence that changing the climate is mostly solar system home made:
http://volker-doormann.org/gif/climax_a.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/gif/climax_b.gif
In detail there are some anomalies visible, which could be of terrestrial cause and/or its oscillations of the fluids. But it seems that the climax function is inverse to Svensmark.
However, Bob D. said:
“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.”
V.
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 12:52 pm
The fist-bumping at the new ¨death blow¨”(as there is one every day on this blog) and the hostility toward me was very predictable…very well, I will let you all continue to misrepresent the scope of the paper…doesn´t matter to me. It´s what WUWT does best.
REPLY: In the meantime, perhaps you’ll learn not to be such a sourpuss and learn to smile, eh Chris? Or has the doom and gloom you defend permeated you permanently? – Anthony
I’m not defending or objecting to any particular viewpoint here, but I find the owner of the blog taking pot-shots at a contributor via a “REPLY:” within the comment as over-stepping the mark of what is fair and reasonable. This area (the comments) is a discussion; Chris has as much right to his opinion as anyone here – including you, Anthony. Reply by all means, but do so in the same way that other contributors do: via a separate comment.
REPLY: Your objection is noted – Anthony
9,5 month between submission and acceptance by Nature : a good score for such a boat rocking paper ; most probably, the CLOUD team should already have in hand some further ‘ammunition’ for a second paper ; would be interesting to know whether they will publish again before IPCC’s AR5 deadline !
Popcorn hour every hour seeing all the climate communist community running around yapping and peeing ’emselves every which way.
Are you not also describing a scalable “weather control” device?? Say it isn’t so, especially in light of the sulfur effect, another adjustable parameter. GK
Chris Colose says on August 24, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Are you sure that is correct? I would have expected Venus and Mercury to absorb more sunlight per unit area than the Earth.
So Svensmark gets his revenge by bombarding us with cosmic rays!
“A furore normanorum, libera nos domine.”
We are so doomed.
So our next President Perry was right all along. Must have gotten the preliminary results.
In a sane world, devoid of lying politicians, this should end the AGW hoax, once and for all.
No wonder Al Gore had a hissy fit weeks back. Sorry Al But you were and are a quack. Gonna give back your Nobel?
Real science is debate and questions.
Consensus is religious dogma…
The warmists will take the spin put on the paper as proof of man cooling the climate and carry on as per, while us realists see it as confirming (so far) that Svensmark was onto something. However, maybe more of the undecided and unaware will have their eyes opened to the lack of concensus and start to get a little bit upset at the political games being played.
DirkH said @ August 24, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“It’s easy for the Americans to wonder why Nigel Calder is so bitter. But, see: Europe is crippled by Kyoto and the crazy 20:20:20 initiative of the EU; Europe’s rulers (the unelected EU Commissioners) and nearly all ruling parties of the member states are warmists (with the notable exceptions of Czechia and maybe Poland). This continent is run by mad people; and elections don’t provide a remedy as all the parties try to out-green each other.”
Everywhere seems to be run by mad people. And if elections actually changed anything, they would be made illegal…
I “like” the Nude Socialist’s final paragraph. “Of course, it is obvious that this effect is small”
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:39 pm
“Let me repeat: The only way Milankovitich cycles can produce the degree of warming they do is through positive feedback loops involving CO2.”
=========
The only way ??
No other possible explanation ?
No doubt in your mind?
Scientists in the future will chuckle at our current theories, and more so at those that proclaimed anything like a certainty.
Douglas Dc says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Real science is debate and questions.
Consensus is religious dogma…
——————————————————
Yup, and now its time for jaw jaw
R.Gates, and the others, the significance of this is that it undermines the dismissal of the variation in solar TSI as being the cause of GW. The argument, if you recall, was: It can’t be due to anything else we know of, so it must be due to CO2. Now we know there were things we did not know.
The warmistas must now re-assess this argument from ignorance. It has been shown invalid.
Derek Sorensen says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:54 pm
“This area (the comments) is a discussion; Chris has as much right to his opinion as anyone here – including you, Anthony.”
Actually, Derek, only Anthony has a right to comment here. He has passed that right on to selected others, it seems, but not to me or the vast majority of people who post here. Also, he has the right to ban commenters. Chris is ripe for banning, mostly because most of us believe he is a Bot.
Real scientific endeavour started behind the eight ball, overwhelmed by propaganda and ridicule.
This puts real science in front of the eight ball and adds to all the other voices of reason and provable science.
Those hiding the truth are now slowly but inexorably being exposed, MSM will be dragged into exposure and the flood gates of shame will open. I feel no pity for them, well done to the scientists involved.
I proudly spoke of the reasonable Svensmark Hypothesis in a talk I gave 5 yrs ago. It made mucho senso to me. In any event, Cheers!
John Whitman says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:41 pm
Well, hello brother! On too many occasions, I had to clean the chicken houses, warehouse size, by shoveling the manure onto a two and a half ton flatbed with sideboards. Usually, we could give it away to local farmers.
By the way, several Whitman families were prominent in my Georgia community. Sadly, I have not kept in touch with them.
Also, with this facet of the ‘climate science ball’ now advancing down the field, and in light of Svenmark’s remarks about most if not all the ‘warming’ that has taken place in the past 100yrs being attributable to this alone, let’s find out how much this really does affect temps. Nothing really settled here though except for the the fact that yes, cosmic rays can likely form particles large enough for condensation nuclei in the lower trop. This would lead mostly to cooling, but let me tell you, stratus layers mean warmth in the winter north of 40N.
Jeremy says:
August 24, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Very well said! Right on the money, actually.
Very well written, clear and interesting. My congratulations to Calder.
One point. He says:
6000 metres is the mid-troposphere. In the tropics, every thunderstorm is surrounded by a ring of cool descending air. In the tropics this air is frequently descending from well above 6,000 metres, where presumably the same cluster production is going on as well. So yes, the CLOUD results do imply that in the all-important tropics, there could indeed be a rain of cloud-seeding aerosols from on high.
w.
“Bizarrely, New Scientist headlines with . . .”
What’s bizarre about it? You were expecting truth and accuracy from them?
Silly you.
This says that, given less than an already saturated nucleation scenario, Cosmic Rays are fully capable of causing clouds, you just need to have them coming in and the Sun not active.
It also says that a more Active Sun (and Solar Wind as a result) is responsible for reducing/scouring one important source of cloud ingredients.
Any climate model that does not include Cosmic Rays as a significant factor of cloudiness is wrong.
I wonder now, how long will they roadblock the ‘how much under what conditions’ research?
I have long suspected that there is a hysteresis of sorts built into the CR effect, and that this hysteresis distorts the correlations.
Meanwhile, the GCRs remain elevated at the 1970’s cooling period levels, after exceeding them for a few years. A 2nd year of La Nina looms. Will it put the icing on AGW? We’ll soon find out if Hell can freeze over.
Quite an stretch, RGates’ take on positive feedback and Milankovich cycles. The simple fact that warmer oceans outgas CO2 and thus creates a positive feedback is conjecture. we know neither how an iceage starts, nor how it ends. There is no evidence, even today of a positive feedback.
It amuses me, the contortions people make to find correlation between CO2 and temps, but the plain, easy to see correlation between solar activity and temps was ignored by the IPCC and warmists in general.
I remember clearly, before I researched the matter, thinking “well, it must be mostly the sun” But the IPCC insisted that total solar irradiance varied too little to have any impact. As demonstrated time and time again the IPCC was wrong on this as they are about most of their claims.
Clearly there are many things going on and that’s why it’s hard to completely understand. But this discovery goes a long way towards debunking the postive feedback scenario of increased CO2, which is the cornerstone of the AGW theory. A dent, at least a chip, but those chips are adding up very quickly. AGW professionals might want to brush up on your barista skills.
u.k.(us) says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:29 pm
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:39 pm
“Let me repeat: The only way Milankovitich cycles can produce the degree of warming they do is through positive feedback loops involving CO2.”
=========
The only way ??
No other possible explanation ?
No doubt in your mind?
Scientists in the future will chuckle at our current theories, and more so at those that proclaimed anything like a certainty.
______
Well, here’s how it shakes out. Take the sum total of forcings during an interglacial period (CO2 levels, plus Milankovitch forcing, plus water vapor, plus methane, plus biosphere activity), and you can pretty much get to the kinds of temperatures seen during these interglacials. And, CO2 is a major part of them. Take away the greenhouse effects of CO2, (suppose for example that CO2 didn’t increase as the Milankovitch cycle started to shift toward more NH warming) and you’d not see much of an interglacial. Just not enough forcing. Milankovitch is the trigger, CO2 is the thermostat.
Richard,
Venus absorbs less (high albedo) and I didn’t count Mercury as having an atmosphere (though if you want to be technical, all planets/moons have some molecules bouncing along the surface, though the pressure on Mercury is no greater than something around a trillionth of Earth’s pressure)
Yeah, Anthony, about the New Scientist article, which begins:
1. Those two bold examples are the only times “human” is used in the article.
2. The italicized example is the only time “our” is used in the article.
3. The two paragraphs don’t even connect. P1 talks about organisms playing a part in cloud formation. P2 talks about “our activities” and “humans” affecting the climate – with NO basis laid before either assertion. How does one go from “trees, marine bacteria and livestock” to “our activities” and “humans” affecting the climate? With NO connective facts or evidence between the two statements, the two sentences might as well read,
4. “This was a big surprise” applies to organisms. The very next sentence – without any groundwork being laid – jumps down humans’ throats.
5. I guess such writing would be pardonable if the connection were made farther on down in the article. I’ve been through it three times, and neither the headline,nor the assertions in P2 are followed up on.
6. The headline ONLY applies to the sans-foundation statements in P2, which is neither explained beforehand nor after P2.
Essentially P1 and P2 say this: “Trees and animals and bacteria were shown to have a huge effect – therefore let’s blame humans for nucleation and cloud formation.” Huh??????
WTF???
Can we say “off topic”?
What the HELL editor would pass such horrendous nonsensical point-making/connecting?
Let’s see if we can be stupid, too:
“Animals are warm or cold-blooded, therefore the Sun is hot.”
“Sunspots have an 11 year cycle, on average, therefore life is like a box of chocolates.”
“Wayne Gretzky was a brilliant hockey player, ergo Einstein was smart.”
“17 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, so let’s invade Iraq.”
Is my IQ going down, or is this the stupidest and worst written article EVER. in the history of mankind and all intelligent life in the several universes?
In 2. “italicized” should read “non-italicized.”
But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
All commenters should heed this caveat, instead of being victims of confirmation bias.
Robert of Ottawa says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:33 pm
“Now we know there were things we did not know…”
___
No one involved in the world of real scientific research thinks otherwise…and that’s why they are scientists.
toms says:
“…but let me tell you, stratus layers mean warmth in the winter north of 40N.”
____
Before the sea-ice freezes over in the fall and winter, the passage of a weather system with lots of stratus clouds can raise ocean temps by as much as 3C from the DLW radiation of the clouds.
Paul Linsay says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:21 pm
originally developed in 1911 for “studying cloud formation and optical phenomena in moist air”.
And the CERN result is no more than a repeat of that.
Kids, this nullifies the Warmista argument that the current warming (which no longer is happening) cannot be due to anything else …. Because they know it all!
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:39 pm
“The only way [we can think of that] Milankovitich cycles can produce the degree of warming they [appear to] is through positive feedback loops involving CO2.”
Fixed that for you.
Climate science has a very low understanding of the process of cloud formation.
So now, we have a new important piece of the puzzle (and we have historic Be10 records to reconstruct the effect over time).
Step two is to quantify how much impact how much change in CGRs have on cloud optical thickness which should be that hard to estimate I imagine.
Real Climate scientists should embrace greater understanding in a part of the field which is little understood.
I want to emphasize and reinforce my last comment. The Warmistas said that the opted for CO2 being the cause for warming because nothing else, including small changes in TSI, explain it, in a linear fashion.
Well, now we know that UV output from the Sun varies more widly than TSI, and now, we learn that the variation of the solar magnetic field also has an impact on cloud generation, as does UV. What is the weakest point in the Warmistas’ argument? Well, clouds! How about that!
The weakest point in the Warmista chain is Albedo … and a VERY small change in daylight cloud cover can change the Earth’s albedo dramatically.
This is why these results are so important. Skewer the Warmistas with this lineof reasoning. They are demonstrted to be NOT omniscient.
Aaaahhhhh. Especially good that Calder got in the first lick at writing up this final triumph. He was the last HONEST editor of New Scientist, before it was corrupted to New Superstitionist.
If he sounds a little annoyed, he has plenty of reason for it.
I think there is a difference. CO2 as a cause of warming started as a conjecture by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius Svante Arrhenius. The efforts since then have been dedicated to postulating a mechanism and trying to prove that it is right. The mechanism for any significant warming depends on positive feedback. The evidence for positive feedback is tenuous and disputed by Lindzen, Spencer, et al.
Cosmic rays as a cause of warming started with the observation that there seems to be a correlation between sunspots and the climate. The effort since then seems to have been to find and understand the mechanism. The mechanism seems to involve cloud formation and nobody disputes that clouds have a major impact on the climate.
The cosmic ray theory starts out, IMHO, from a much more solid position than does the CO2 theory. Anyway, the importance of the CLOUD experiment is not that it proves the cosmic ray theory (which it really couldn’t do) but that it does not disprove it (which it could). The CLOUD experiment becomes, therefore, part of the body of data that bolsters the cosmic ray theory.
On Curry’s blog Colose was praised by JC as an “undergraduate who’d only taken a few courses in Meteorology but he already get’s it”. I would suggest a career change for this young wannabe….there is NO future in AGW boot licking.
What is missing from this thread is the origin of the SO4 and NH3 that can be ‘cosmic rayed’ into cloud seeding particles. My theory is that SO4, NH3, CH4 and CO2 are all products of Earth’s, variable “cold” fission process that is controlled by cosmic ray bombardments. Details of this theory are explained at http://www.FauxScienceSlayer.com with special interest to “Earth’s Missing Geothermal Flux”. The oceans are at maximum saturation of a host of ‘elemental’ gases. These work as refrigerants, condensing at the sea floor outgas vents and evaporating futher up in the water column. There is a one way process of evaporation, always from saturated ocean to the atmosphere. So much real Earth science has sat idle while misdirected governments fished for additional carbon tax revenue streams. Disgusting really.
Fascinating. The carbon trading shills will be in a right tiz over this proper science.
Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate reviewed this paper by Kirkby very objectively and very comprehensively. What he writes is balanced and raises a number of scientific criteria that need satisfying before the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation can be fully understood.
Also: The New Scientist headline mentioned by Anthony is not a perverse misreading of the CERN result, it’s a completely separate article with a carefully deceptive headline. So far anyway, they haven’t mentioned the CERN result at all.
Perfectly New Stalinist. (After all, their own Trotsky has been the central reporter on the Svensmark work!)
u.k.(us) says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:29 pm
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:39 pm
“Let me repeat: The only way Milankovitich cycles can produce the degree of warming they do is through positive feedback loops involving CO2.”
=========
The only way ??
No other possible explanation ?
No doubt in your mind?
Scientists in the future will chuckle at our current theories, and more so at those that proclaimed anything like a certainty.
====================================================
Scientists in the future ?? This scientist (me) has been more than chuckling for a while now in the past and present.
It’s particularly chuckleworthy to see Gatesy well on his way towards shattering his own personal best for amount of inane unsupported drivel posted on a thread.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:53 pm
But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
All commenters should heed this caveat, instead of being victims of confirmation bias.
============
Heed a caveat why, what has been determined ?
Please explain.
R. Gates says, displaying a wonderful ignorance of both science and logic:
August 24, 2011 at 3:21 pm
“… finding a potential connection in ONE of the ways the earth’s climate is regulated somehow negates the effects of another way is suggestive of the kind of desperation that skeptics are showing in trying to disprove AGW.”
The point is, obviously, that if you point to hoofprints in the snow in the woods and claim that it is evidence for the existence of unicorns, and I point to the fact that the woods adjoins a horse farm with some dodgy points in its fence, I am not “disproving the existence of unicorns”, which is in any case impossible. But I am pointing out a fact that makes your hypothesis much less likely to be correct.
They’ll just say that clouds are local weather and not climate. 😉
Wow, the New Scientist article is completely stunned. Can somebody who subscribes to New Scientist write in to ask them to pull the article. The author clearly didn’t even read the CLOUD paper.
Alright! Now we know that galactic cosmic rays create clouds when Sol is less active.
Now let’s find out whether solar flares, coronal mass ejections, proton-laden solar winds or the like cause tropical cyclones.
Go on. Get to work.
As Google continues to insidiously attempt to stifle any contrarian news on AGW. note recent addition of 20 AGWers to Google to make sure they censor any contrarian views
http://www.google.com.au/search?aq=0&hl=en&gl=au&tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=global+warming&oq=global
Robert of Ottawa says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Well, now we know that UV output from the Sun varies more widly than TSI
UV is but a small fraction of TSI.
———–
Ian,
I am really sure Kirby will appreciate the generous guidance from Mr. Schmidt of GISS concerning what is needed for Kirby to continue to study cloud creation via GCRs. Perhaps Kirby will seek counseling from Gavin before taking the next step in cloud research?
Gavin has an aCO2 dog in the climate discourse, so perhaps your claim of Gavin’s very objective stance can be disputed?
John
There is a long road still to travel, so there is no case for jubilation or depression yet. The way science typically unfolds, a greater combination of possible variable will have to be input and assessed quantitatively. For example, if the experiments to date have started with a ‘clean’ chamber, what can we expect if they are started with a ‘partial cloud formation already’ chamber condition. That is, we have to consider not just nucleation of clouds, but the effect on rate of growth of existing clouds. That’s just one of the many variables that come to mind.
But…but….but….the ‘science’…..wasn’t it supposed to be ‘settled’…….wasn’t the ‘debate’
‘over’…….
u.k.(us) says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Heed a caveat why, what has been determined ?
Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
Not even Kirby will take his result as support for Svensmark: ‘says nothing‘
What is it in nothing you don’t understand?
Ian says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:20 pm
“Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate reviewed this paper by Kirkby very objectively and very comprehensively. What he writes is balanced and raises a number of scientific criteria that need satisfying before the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation can be fully understood.”
____________________________________________________________________________
Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate was both objective and comprehensive?
First time for everything…
Warmest congratulations to Prof Svensmark and his team! And to Mr Calder, who has kept us updated while magazines like New Scientist went madly and partisanly warmist.
I’d also like to mention Prof Udipi Rao, past chairman of the Indian Space Agency and cosmic ray physicist, whose paper this year (as covered by Anthony) further supports these findings. Prof Rao was flamed mercilessly by the usual parties, he therefore should be included in the victory.
philincalifornia says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:22 pm
======
Yes, gates has got the gift of gab.
Wish I did, I almost get him now and then………
I would like to see if the Svensmark theory is detectable in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Jupiter has known cloud layers of ammonia as well as its own magnetic field. The influx of cosmic rays from deep space is uniform across the solar system.
John Whitman writes
“Ian
I am really sure Kirby will appreciate the generous guidance from Mr. Schmidt of GISS concerning what is needed for Kirby to continue to study cloud creation via GCRs. Perhaps Kirby will seek counseling from Gavin before taking the next step in cloud research?
Gavin has an aCO2 dog in the climate discourse, so perhaps your claim of Gavin’s very objective stance can be disputed?”
I am very well aware of the affiliations and attitudes of Dr. Schmidt to climate change having been moderated off Real Climate on many an occasion. However to make an ad hominem attack (in this case on Dr Schmidt) is one of the things frowned on by WUWT. Dr Schmidt did make some very objective statements which, if you read what he writes, are remarkably free from bias. I have no particular brief either for Real Climate or Dr Schmidt being more a sceptic than an alarmist but I am sufficiently well versed in science (I have a PhD in Endocrinology) to appreciate what others write even if (and scientifically especially even if) I may not agree with all of their philosophies on a particular issue
I think this type of experiments and conclusion that cloud formation is dependent on cosmic ray had been made by Charles Thomson Rees Wilson in 1894.
Wilson won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936 for the Cloud Chamber.
The contribution by Sir. Wilson on the cloud formation is significant.
Cloud chamber:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
Video :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cloud_chamber.ogg
“Leif Svalgaard says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Paul Linsay says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:21 pm
originally developed in 1911 for “studying cloud formation and optical phenomena in moist air”.
And the CERN result is no more than a repeat of that.”
*****
I had some respect for you until you made this statement. That’s bunk.
Live Science highlights the missing ingredient (thought to be organic chemicals by Kirby) and barely mentions GCR but it’s still a good article:
http://www.livescience.com/15733-mystery-ingredient-influences-cloud-formation.html
Congratulations!
Drinks for everyone!
Check Mate. Well done Dr. Svensmark.
Socialists dont like cloudy theories. Too foggy and nebulous for their visions.
Jim says:
August 24, 2011 at 6:15 pm
“And the CERN result is no more than a repeat of that.”
That’s bunk.
And it way way is it more? Wilson showed that ionizing radiation could work as nucleation centers for ‘clouds’. What Kirby showed was even less than that, namely that “the particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds”. So, where is the bunk?
Leif Svalgaard quotes:
August 24, 2011 at 5:56 pm
“Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.”
Let us not fall into the trap of looking at the work of Kirby and Svensmark as if its only purpose is to disprove CAGW. The science is first rate and, unlike almost everything else in climate science, satisfies all the criteria of scientific method. There are genuine physical hypotheses, genuine predictions, and genuine confirmations of those predictions. It opens investigations into connections among cosmic rays and cloud behavior. These connections must be pursued. In case you are wondering, I agree that the work does not disprove CAGW. However, it might lead to a major revision in accounts of climate change and, if so, it will do so on a rock solid scientific basis.
I would respectfully refer Leif Svalgaard, who says at August 24, 2011 at 4:53 pm
“But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
All commenters should heed this caveat, instead of being victims of confirmation bias.”
to my earlier comment. (Phil’s Dad: August 24, 2011 at 1:48 pm)
The paper, on which Kirkby is lead author, says: “…the fraction of these freshly nucleated particles that grow to sufficient sizes to seed cloud droplets, as well as the role of organic vapours in the nucleation and growth processes, remain open questions experimentally”
Is it not then incorrect for Kirkby to (be implicated to) say, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds, when he has published that he does not know this? Remember it is a journalist interpretation rather than his own words.
If I were to employ the same journalistic integrity I might suggest, given the history of this particular paper and the way the author has been treated in the past, that what he meant was “At the moment, I am allowed to say nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it (getting published) is a very important first step.”
But of course caveats are important; if you want to get published.
Craig Goodrich says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Actually, neither R. Gates nor anybody that I’m aware of (including aliens from space) has or have proven AGW. They’re continually going on and on and on and on about how skeptics haven’t disproven AGW when there’s nothing they’ve got that needs disproving.
Their’s is a slippery, diabolical slope indeed! They’re completely befuddled and they take it out on people that simply point out their befuddlement.
Now all we need to do is put up a few satellites to artificially hit the upper atmosphere with Anthropogenic Generated Cosmic Rays to make more clouds thus cooling the earth and bringing more rain to arid parts. Problem solved. Divert all climate study grants to producing AGCR or Anthropogenic Global Cosmic Rays.
http://youtu.be/z8jGFu7ys64
The CERN result seems to support this study from Dan Pangburn: “Climate Change Dominated by Natural Phenomena” http://climaterealists.com/attachments/ftp/Climatechangeisdominatedbynaturalphenomena.pdf
————————-
Ian,
Well said. I thank you for your comment.
RC’s Gavin has not sustained my respect about scientific openness and appearance of integrity. Life is short, he has not earned the respect to even be given my time when there are so many other sources who frankly I think exist in a greater scientific universe. Gavin may say something with regards to the Kirby et al paper. OK. If I get to the bottom of my list of people whose scientific judgment I value more that Gavin, then I might read what he has to say. It is unlikely that I will get to the bottom of my list though. However, if a scientist whom I value does make a comment about what Gavin says then I will go read Gavin.
I call this voting with my intellectual feet.
John
The supplemental graph included the effect of UV. Can anyone recommend a source of solar UV data for this cycle and 23?
Richard Telford,
“Since there is no trend in cosmic radiation over the last 50 years, it is simply not possible for changes in cosmic radiation to have caused the trend in global temperatures. ”
I believe more than one warmist paper rejected Svnesmark’s theory based on just this idea. Unfortunately they IGNORED Svensmark’s actual Theory that states high energy GCR’s, not the lower energy ones common to the sun and background.
There ARE noticeable changes in the levels of the targeted high energy GCR’s. Of course, it hasn’t been since the early 1900’s we have seen this low of a solar output and the possibility of measuring what a significant change would be.
Duhhhhh…..
In high school in 1957 my physics teacher should the paths of various particles given off by radioactive material in a “cloud chamber” (Wilson Chamber) He was repeating an experiment performed in the 20’s. Each of the ionizing particles caused a track similar to an airplane contrail, and we are just know connecting the dots? It seems to me intuitively obvious that ionizing particles will seed clouds. How did man ever get this far with such stupidity?
Empiricism, over a brace of centuries, has observed that low sunspot activity has coincided with periods of less than optimum human comfort.
Ok, happenstance and coincidence don’t often make for ideal bed-fellows but they may do.
For over half a decade now we’ve been bombarded with ridicule that told us that solar influence was an irrelevance. The Sun was a bit player and only Anthropogenic emissions mattered. Today we ‘learn’ that Sol may just. perhaps and maybe, play a part.
We were assured that just CO2 mattered and that only puritanical, government control could save our Grandkiddies from early Hell. Pre-normal Science has given us an alternative viewpoint on this perspective but will it be sufficient to modify mindsets?
Guess 1- No it won’t – why let facts get in the way of fantasy?
Guess 2- See Guess 1
David Archibald at August 24, 2011 at 7:38 pm
David, you could probably contact Dr Courtillot. If anyone had that dataset he’d be the one.
R. Gates, please cite your resources.
Leif Svalgaard says:
All commenters should heed this caveat, instead of being victims of confirmation bias.
Ahhh Yes. Svalgaard. The epitome of objectivity. Speak of the data from the last few decades supporting how constant TSI has been and the extrapolate that back through the eons, and you’re on very firm footing. Mention this article and it’s potential for changing paradigm of GHG alarmism and you are some slavering fool.
Very nice Leif.
“There are always traces of ammonia in the real air, and according to the CLOUD report you need only one molecule in 30 billion. If that helps to oil Svensmark’s climatic motor, it’s good to know, but it calls for no apologies and alters the climatic implications not a jot.”
How can a trace element have such a large effect. where have I heard the argument against “trace” amounts before.
Anyway, take care arguing against an effect merely the particles involved are in “trace” amounts.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 24, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Let us not fall into the trap of looking at the work of Kirby and Svensmark as if its only purpose is to disprove CAGW.
Its purpose was to show that Svensmark’s theory is plausible. We have known for a 100 years that ionizing particles can work as seed for clouds, so getting to some of details can be important. As Kirby points out they are not there yet and their results “actually say nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate”, so should not be taken as they actually did.
The science is first rate
Undoubtedly, but the wild claims and jubilation from certain quarters are not.
Eric Barnes says:
August 24, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Mention this article and it’s potential for changing paradigm of GHG alarmism
As Kirby says the results “actually say nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate”, the potential seems rather low. And don’t think for a minute that any rabid Alarmist would be convinced. Of course, when Kirby preaches to the choir, he gets applause.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:56 pm
u.k.(us) says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Heed a caveat why, what has been determined ?
Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
Not even Kirby will take his result as support for Svensmark: ‘says nothing‘
What is it in nothing you don’t understand?
==========
Forget Kirby and Svensmark, it sounds like you have something to tell me, I await with bated breath, tell me what I don’t understand.
I understand it starts with NOTHING, please proceed.
Stephen Mosher, trace elements play a key role in chemistry. They serve as catalysts even in tiny quantities. This is well-known and happens in thousands of applications daily.