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
Let us now assume for one moment that the positive feedback claimed for aCO2 is unity – the CERN result allows us to speculate that that could be the case – and tackle this misnomer ‘greenhouse gas’ with its entirely negative connotations: no atmospheric gas of any stripe acts in exactly the way a greenhouse does.
I propose we call the effect STIR – semi transparency to irradience. That semi-transparency is in both incoming and outgoing directions and leads to a delay in the heating effects of solar irradiance leaving the atmosphere. That was how the phenomenon was taught in 1964 and I see no reason to accept a different explanation. So, a STIR index could be constructed and each gas given a relative value which when multiplied by its concentration would give its absolute value.
There may of course be some +/- feedbacks yet to be confirmed once we better understand the role of each gas, particles injected and particles created in the atmosphere. This study could be left to atmospheric scientists and other established disciplines to understand. Climatology can then be eased toward those other ologies of phren etc. where its natural home is.
“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”
Every set of tastebuds on this planet are wired a little differently. Little wonder we disagree on how sweet, sour, bitter, the same thing is. Hummmmm… think it’s possible we’re all right? I mean “correct”. (And “OK”?;-) As with Art, Science is in the Eye of the Beholder. Enjoy the moment for whatever you think it’s worth, it too will pass.
savethesharks says:
August 24, 2011 at 9:07 pm
“…Far beyond a troll, on here, he/she has consistently demonstrated over many many hours days and months, a complete and sometimes completely illogical intransigence to admitting right or wrong.
It is like talking to an atheist totalitarian government official or a religious fundamentalist…in either case in either extreme…both are circular reasoning on steroids and not worth the time of day for conversation.“…
_________________________________________________________________________
I’ve come to view the initial “R.” as standing for “Robert”, as in: “Baghdad Bob”.
The person is either a consummate professional propagandist/P.R. flack engaged in fighting fires in the media, or they are completely incapable of facing the truths of the world.
Go for it, R. Gates. Run down that road as far as you can.
Strap yourself in, though: when you inevitably begin to face the truth, the ride will likely become a very bumpy one, for a time.
That’s ok- the destination will be well worth it.
kuhnkat says:
August 24, 2011 at 7:40 pm
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.
————–
Changes in level or trends? And please link to the data.
Friends:
This thread has been inundated by trolls all claiming the paper by Kirkby et al. does not affect the validity of the AGW-hypothesis.
In one sense that are right because the AGW-hypothesis has yet to obtain any empirical validation and, therefore, it has no validity. Indeed, this is why it remains an hypothesis: it could be said to be a conjecture but it certainly cannot be claimed to be a theory.
However, the paper by Kirkby et al. demolishes the two main arguments used by proponents of the AGW-hypothesis. Both these arguments are logical fallacies, but ‘warmists’ believe in them so disproof of them is important in debate of the AGW-hypothesis.
Firstly, ‘warmists’ say, “Greenhouse gases (GHGs) must have caused the warming because we cannot think of anything else that could have.” Indeed, R Gates has repeatedly used this argument in this thread where he argues that GHGs must have caused transition from the last Ice Age (e.g. see his post at August 24, 2011 at 3:39 pm).
But this logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ has always been a tool of people with an agenda (e.g. those who said, “Witches must have caused the crop failures because we cannot think of anything else that could have.” ).
The paper of Kirkby et al. provides a complete rebuttal of the logical fallacy: now it can be rejected by saying, “But we do know that changes to cloud cover induced by GCRs could have caused the warming so there is no need to invoke the AGW-hypothesis”.
Secondly, ‘warmists’ say, “You need to provide an alternative theory if you don’t want to accept the AGW-hypothesis.”
But this, too, is a logical fallacy. Proving one thing is wrong does not require an ability to show something else is right: otherwise it would be impossible to show an accused person did not commit a crime unless and until the true criminal were identified.
And the paper of Kirkby et al. provides a complete rebuttal of that logical fallacy, too: now it can be rejected by saying, “There is an alternative theory and it has withstood all tests: changes to cloud cover induced by GCRs could have caused the warming, so there is no need to invoke the AGW-hypothesis which is refuted by much evidence (e.g. missing ‘hot spot’, ‘missing heat’, missing ‘committed warming’, etc. )”.
So, the findings of Kirkby et al. are a devastating blow to the tactics used by promoters of the AGW-hypothesis. Hence, it should surprise nobody that the main ‘attack dogs’ of the ‘warmists’ are swarming over this thread and other climate-realist blogs in attempts to discredit those findings.
Richard
He ducks like a quack!
I am so stealing that…
Regards,
Ric
“Leif Svalgaard says:
August 24, 2011 at 6:40 pm
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?”
You are ignoring the fact that details of the mechanism are being elucidated by this experiment. It matters.
Well said Richard. at 5 am. The cosmic rays theory is not new it has been conveniently ignored as well as the report by IPCC that they ignore the fact that 95% of GHG’s is water vapor. But when CERN announced this and not to be drawn into the climate debate is really an opening for others to ignore the effect cloud cover has on climate. C02 is indeed a greenhouse gas only 4%
and a fraction of this is enhanced by human activities, but not the sole source of CO2.
So if you want to reduce greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, you have to dry it out first and the sun does that. More rain, more nitrogen gets absorbed by the plants. Too much rain and we get floods and hurricanes. But I forget that now its little green men who are bombarding us with cosmic rays from outer space. Give me patience. Good imaginations these warming scientists.
But it now shows what value to climate science these AGW promoters have been, useless. They can’t do their science objectively or honestly.
“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”
– Carl Sagan
http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/between-us-and-the-enveloping-darkness/
Chris Colose says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:33 pm
//Try Venus.//
Nope. Try again.
I think that might have been a hint that you need to get out more.
“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,”
A very accurate statement it seems to me. The CLOUD experiment wasn’t intended to be a verification of cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate. I fail to see why people are waving that around like it’s some kind of backhanded refutation of Svensmark. I also fail to see why people are waving the results around like they ARE a confirmation of Svensmark’s cosmic ray effect on climate theory. It isn’t. CLOUD’s intent was to verify a small part of Svensmark’s idea, that high energy cosmic rays can affect cloud nucleation and it appears to have verified that small part, as Dr Kirby states, it is an important first step.
I also found the New Scientist article enlightening, “If it is significant on a global scale, it might mean that the natural emissions of organics is also important in cloud formation,” says Bart Verheggen of the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands in Petten.
What exactly does Mr (Dr?) Verheggen think provides the Dimethyl Sulphide (the most abundant biologically produced sulphur) around the oceans if not emissions from algae? Dimethyl Sulphide emitted by various algae in the ocean is broken down in the atmosphere into sulfur dioxide, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), dimethyl sulfone, methanesulfonic acid and sulfuric acid. A couple of these provide the basis for cloud seeds. So we’ve known for a long time that natural emission of organics is important in cloud formation.
Well, I propose that we drink a toast to Dr, Svensmark, his theory now thrice tried and not found wanting. He can now reasonably invoke Lewis Carroll’s Bellman, who claimed that “what I tell you three times is true”, and cloud researchers can get on with trying to quantify the influence on the process of sulphates or ammonia, how the “too small” nuclei grow and so on.
So, how are things at AGW HQ these days? Trenberth found his missing heat yet? Is the tropical hotspot attracting any tourists? Just asking.
“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.”
I reluctantly concluded that liberals (er, now “progressives”) are happy to tear down if it empowers their replacement agenda, even when they cannot articulate their goals. Now we can see that agenda clearly and thus liberals must deny it in public. To assuage their self-loathing over our prosperity, the agenda demands that liberty and prosperity must be suppressed. A major avenue of attack is energy production and use. If liberals and liberal causes can financially benefit from such suppression efforts, all the better, and especially when their precious Gaia can be returned to her pristine purity in the process.
I’m no expert on this subject, so I have to ask; do clouds produce a net cooling or net warming effect? Certainly clouds in the daytime reflect sunlight, which produces a cooling effect. But clouds also block infra-red heat from radiating back out into space. That creates a warming effect. And at night there is no sunlight to block so there can only be a warming effect. Which effect dominates, warming or cooling?
Richard S Courtney says:
August 25, 2011 at 5:01 am
‘Secondly, ‘warmists’ say, “You need to provide an alternative theory if you don’t want to accept the AGW-hypothesis.”
But this, too, is a logical fallacy. Proving one thing is wrong does not require an ability to show something else is right: otherwise it would be impossible to show an accused person did not commit a crime unless and until the true criminal were identified.’
Warmista seem to be hard-wired on this point. Yet the fallacies in their argument are as obvious as the nose on one’s face. In addition to the fallacy that you point out, there is a Classic Case of Argument from Authority; that is, their “theory” is true or must be treated as true until a better one is presented. Sorry, but no cigar. It could be that our assembled ideas about a topic do not amount to a theory or even a reasonable hypothesis about the topic. They use Argument from Authority in the most harmful way, namely, to shut down criticism of their scientific theory. Science is the critical discipline par excellence and proponents of a theory are duty bound to be its most severe critics.
Thanks for your excellent post.
Who’d a thunk it? Maybe any high school kid who has seen a photo of a cloud chamber!
Pardon me if I am late with this news. The Guardian has an article out today by Ian Sample that leaves open the possibility that Svensmark and Kirby might be onto something. Of course, that fact is hidden within the Politically Correct filler.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/24/cloud-formation-study-climate-models
Many commentators here have lost sight of the fact that this new paper describes just the first phase of the long running experiment.
Yes, thet have not demonstrated that they can produce rain or even clouds.
The intention is for the experiment to go on until all the details are nailed down.
This is just the start.
When it’s over we will all know what causes the climate to change.
Typos – always typos.
For “thet” read “they”.
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.”—————
So who kept saying “wait”. If there is no evidence of this I am calling this story telling by Nigel Calder. It smells like “I made this up to keep the narrative going”.
I have not seen much interest in these experiments apart from here. I consider them nearly irrelevant because the results are not novel. We already know that ions produced by whatever process, including cosmic rays, produce ionic clusters and these can act as nucleation centers.
The involvement of CERN in this looks like a publicity stunt since it’s not needed to do the experiment.
Useful information would be numbers such as formation rates in the real atmosphere. Then the importance of the process can be calculated and compared to other processes in the atmosphere. This includes other processs that affect cloud formation such as biological dimethyl sulphide production.
Anyone getting all excited before this happens just does not understand and is engaging in wishful thinking.
I think we can see that Mr Bart Verheggen is a full team member.
This is from the home page of his ECN web site.
“Working on a sustainable future
Energy is very important to the World. Energy use increases due to economic growth. As a result CO2 emissions increase and the climate changes. Clearly, the energy system needs to become more sustainable, which can also offer opportunities for businesses. The Energy research Centre of the Netherlands, the leading Dutch institute for energy innovation, is dedicated to realising this.”
@ur momisugly Ric Werme August 24, 2011 at 11:11 am: “I had no idea Calder was so bitter over all this”.
No surprise to me. He has fought against climate junk science for longer than most of us and encountered more than his share of stonewalling from all quarters, so he has every reason to be bitter. That does not invalidate his analysis of the situation, nor his untiring support for Svensmark’s work.
After Climategate (never to be underestimated nor forgotten) and now this, politicised science is at last on the way out and unbiased real science might have some chance of clawing its way back into the mainstream.
That’s my twopenn’orth.
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2011 at 1:43 pm
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!
Wow, you cheer easily! I think we all agree that C02 has some warming effect. Is that what all the fuss was about then? C02 isn’t an evil monster, then, threatening humanity and the planet? We can continue using fossil fuels until something else comes along? Whew! Glad that’s settled!
So if you are a lead author for the next IPCC report what do you do?
Do you mention the climate/CGR link with one sentence or do you include it as a natural forcing with wide uncertainty limits or something else?
I recognize this science is at an early stage but surely the IPCC has to deal with this even if it’s early. I guess I’m just looking for speculation/opinion on this.
The loud cacophony from cAGW true believers trying to minimize these CLOUD experimental science results is proportional to the fear they have in the uncertainty of their cAGW belief.
China, India, Japan, Canada, Brazil etc. etc etc. , those countries whose scientists don’t buy into the cAGW meme, when they get a hold of the CLOUD results, that’s what the cAGW true believers really fear.