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
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-cern-cloud-team-pieces-puzzle.html
Richard Spacek says:
August 25, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Richard Black of the BBC backed the wrong horse (Terry Sloan) against Svensmark back in 2008; I wonder if he feels chagrined?
=======================================
I don’t think these fake-socialists care which horse they’re on except that they get good mileage out of it before it can’t be flogged any more. They’re our saviors remember, pursuing that noble cause of wealth redistribution.
…… and it’s OK when they find that the net result was a redistribution of poverty, because they’re the BBC and they can tell everyone, with the usual aggrieved looks and mannerisms, that it’s someone else’s fault.
In fact, I can tell you whose fault it is right now – it’s Rick Perry’s fault.
Dr. David Whitehouse writes:
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/3702-cern-finds-qsignificantq-cosmic-ray-cloud-effect.html
“CERN’s statement continues: The CLOUD results show that a few kilometres up in the atmosphere sulphuric acid and water vapour can rapidly form clusters, and that cosmic rays enhance the formation rate by up to ten-fold or more. However, in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, within about a kilometre of Earth’s surface, the CLOUD results show that additional vapours such as ammonia are required. Crucially, however, the CLOUD results show that sulphuric acid, water and ammonia alone – even with the enhancement of cosmic rays – are not sufficient to explain atmospheric observations of aerosol formation. Additional vapours must therefore be involved, and finding out their identity will be the next step for CLOUD.”
This quotation from CERN shows the most important criticism of “mainstream climate science” that can be inferred from Kirkby’s work. Warmista models do not contain usable information about cloud formation or aerosol formation. (Is that not a grand enough scandal to throw the whole bunch in jail now?)
And why do Warmista models not contain a credible account of cloud formation or aerosol formation? Because the Warmista have not done the empirical research necessary to produce such an account. The Warmista had to wait for Kirkby to discover that such an account is needed. Once again, the Warmista have no interest in empirical research at all. Their lack of interest undermines their own models.
So, we can conclude that the forecasts based on Warmista models have no credible account of aerosol formation. That alone shows that the models are baloney. It also shows that the Warmista who preach their superiority as “thinkers of the higher science” whose work cannot be understood by ordinary mortals are themselves full of baloney and deserving of the same respect as baloney.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 25, 2011 at 6:07 pm
And why do Warmista models not contain a credible account of cloud formation or aerosol formation?
But they do. “[1] The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has developed a global non‐hydrostatic cloud‐system resolving capability within the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System global atmospheric model version 5 (GEOS‐5). Using a non‐hydrostatic finite‐volume dynamical core coupled with advances in the moist physics and convective parameterization the model has been used to perform cloud‐system resolving experiments at resolutions as fine as 3.5‐ to 14‐km globally. An overview of preliminary results highlights the development of mid‐latitude cyclones, the overall representation of global tropical convection, intense convective activity within the eye wall and outer rain bands of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane Bill validated by satellite observations, and the seasonal predictability of global tropical cyclone activity with realistic intensities. These preliminary results provide motivation for the use of GEOS‐5 to simulate multi‐scale convective systems within a global model at cloud resolving resolutions. Citation: Putman, W. M., and M. Suarez (2011), Cloud‐system resolving simulations with the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System global atmospheric model (GEOS‐5)”, Geophys. Res. Lett. , 38, L16809, doi:10.1029/2011GL048438. http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL048438.pdf
It would seem that Kirby/CERN experiments validate the calculations by Pierce and Adams http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL037946.pdf
“r. In this paper, we present the first calculations of the magnitude of the ionaerosol clear-air mechanism using a general circulation model with online aerosol microphysics. In our simulations, changes in CCN from changes in cosmic rays during a solar cycle are two orders of magnitude too small to account for the observed changes in cloud properties; consequently, we conclude that the hypothesized effect is too small to play a significant role in current climate change.”
Kudos to the CERN-team for providing a much needed [from a brilliantly performed experiment] confirmation of this important theoretical result. Science progresses when theory and experiment work together hand-in-hand.
Friends,
There are many natural against unnatural forces that influence our climate and weather. Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get. And weather kills us. CERN have done what most scientists should do, they haven’t concluded clouds alone control the climate. But it is obvious to any layman or woman with just a little knowledge of physics that cloud cover does two things.
It produces meteors either rain, mist, fogs, snow. It keeps us warmer in some seasons and colder in others. Deserts are hot during the day and temps dramatically drop at night sometimes in their winter to minus C. When there is cloud cover frost does not form. If cosmic rays (subatomic) meld with water vapour or molecules then they can form clouds, not the sole source though. And with solar activity these cosmic rays are deflected from the planet. Carbon is visible in many
forms from diamonds to soot. And us of course. CO2 is 4% of GHG with water vapor 95% and 1 % trace gases.
What the warmists have done is remove water vapor from their equations. We can’t stop volcanoes either that have been known to plunge parts of the world into a nuclear winter, ie.
Toba in the Indonesian archipelago 70,000 is supposed to have killed off humans because plant life was effected. Cause and effect.
Simple – no clouds no rain, and places suffer drought. It doesn’t rain all over the planet at one time either, we have seasons. Anyway although simplistic my reasoning is, the fact is, we can’t influence climate or weather because we can’t control our orbit, solar activity or cosmic rays and ocean currents. Nor volcanoes or hurricanes and earthquakes. As some blame these on climate change and AGW. As CO2 is mainly produced naturally, then by humans cutting emissions will not have any effect on our weather. Isn’t that strange that some think we can? Hope H Irene misses you all too. CO2 is not a POLLUTANT.
I have to say I agree with Leif on this one.
Which just leaves my proposition that shifting air pressure distribution changes cloudiness and albedo and such shifting is a result of an interaction between top down solar and bottom up oceanic processes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14670433
sort of topical in a seasonal sort of way
Sometimes you must say a thing three times before it is heard.
For the benefit of those posters who still cling to the Nature piece
But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds.
This sentence does not accord with the paper itself which 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”.
Uncertainty over the number that grow large enough is a very far cry from the position implied by “those particles are far too small”. Kirkby (not Kirby please) also says: (about 2mins 30secs into the video) “These (ionised particles) may be responsible for helping the formation of these seeds which then become the seeds for cloud droplets.”
How then do posters such as izen for example (August 25, 2011 at 8:54 am) interpret this as
That shows that cosmic rays are incapable of causing cloud formation at low altitudes
With regard the low altitudes by the way Kirkby also says in the video: “When they (Galactic Cosmic Rays) hit the earth’s atmosphere they collide very high up, at about ten kilometres, and produce a spray of particles which come down and penetrate all the way down to the bottom of the earth’s atmosphere.
(izen also says: “…anthropogenic organic compounds are necessary and sufficient for cloud formation” which makes me wonder how clouds formed before the advent of man – but that is OT)
Finally
“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.
He also says (last sentence of the video) “If you ask me in two or three months I will be able to tell you about it”
Can’t wait!
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Theo Goodwin says:
August 25, 2011 at 6:07 pm
And why do Warmista models not contain a credible account of cloud formation or aerosol formation?
“But they do. “[1] The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has developed a global non‐hydrostatic cloud‐system resolving capability within the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System global atmospheric model version 5 (GEOS‐5).”
I see I need to rephrase my question. The new question is this: why is it that the Warmista had not discovered what Kirkby discovered before Kirkby discovered it? In other words, why did the Warmista not tell us that the combination of water vapor, sulphuric acid, and ammonia is “not sufficient to explain atmospheric observations of aerosol formation?”
Why did the Warmista not tell us that “additional vapours must therefore be involved, and finding out their identity will be the next step for NASA?”
Also, I see that I need to explain the difference between a computer model and genuine physical hypotheses. Kirkby has genuine physical hypotheses which (1) explain behavior in his little cloud chamber, (2) which can be used to predict behavior in his little cloud chamber, and (3) which have become reasonably well confirmed. Whatever you want to say is “in” a computer model, it is not physical hypotheses. For God’s sake man, if you have the relevant physical hypotheses you have no need for a computer model. NASA has no physical hypotheses of the sort that Kirkby has produced and NASA is still stuck with computer models and no physical science. It is similar to the difference between having a promise from the girl of your dreams and being in the midst of an orgasm with the girl of your dreams.
Do no scientists have a clue about scientific method?
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Theo Goodwin says:
August 25, 2011 at 6:07 pm
And why do Warmista models not contain a credible account of cloud formation or aerosol formation?
“But they do. “[1] The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has developed a global non‐hydrostatic cloud‐system resolving capability within the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System global atmospheric model version 5 (GEOS‐5).”
In what I wrote above, I left out an important point, the big picture. If NASA had the professionalism, humility, and scientific integrity of Kirkby, NASA would have said exactly what Kirkby said, namely, that formation of aerosols is not understood at this time and, for that reason, whatever we have in our models is not up to the task of simulating cloud behavior.
What that means is that NASA would be admitting that they have no account of the forcings from cloud behavior. Everyone knows, and has known since the work of Arrhenius, that no claim about the global warming that atmospheric CO2 causes can be taken seriously until the forcing from cloud behavior is understood. Being honest professionals, NASA would announce that they are Standing Down on the question of manmade global warming. Yet Hansen recently claimed that the lack of global warming is explained by China’s increased production of aerosols. Hansen’s claim is unprofessional, unscientific, and shows hubris rather than humility.
Theo Goodwin says:
August 25, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Also, I see that I need to explain the difference between a computer model and genuine physical hypotheses.
Computer models are the embodiment of the physics. We put all the relevant physics we know into the model the best we can, and the calculations and predictions from the model show us if our genuine physical hypothesis are on the right track. So there is no difference at all, models and physics are two sides of the same coin.
@Leif Svalgaard says: August 25, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Are you honestly advocating that a system with massive heat sinks such as our oceans, that has been slowly accumulating heat over the 11 decades since your chosen start date of 1900, with a supposed peak a decade ago – should magically drop down to it’s starting point over a single decade?
And you expect us to not only buy that one, but do so with a straight face and accept it as somehow being a meaningful scientific sort of proclaimation?
@- Phil’s Dad says:
August 25, 2011 at 7:23 pm
“Uncertainty over the number that grow large enough is a very far cry from the position implied by “those particles are far too small”. Kirkby (not Kirby please) also says: (about 2mins 30secs into the video) “These (ionised particles) may be responsible for helping the formation of these seeds which then become the seeds for cloud droplets.”
How then do posters such as izen for example (August 25, 2011 at 8:54 am) interpret this as
That shows that cosmic rays are incapable of causing cloud formation at low altitudes”
Perhaps because of this line in the abstract –
-“We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer.”-
I don’t think it is offtopic. Are there any study on the prehistoric clouds? Do they really exist and what evidence is used to confirm this? And more important, what are the differences between the clouds of the Holocene and the previous epochs?
Rational Debate says:
August 25, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Are you honestly advocating that a system with massive heat sinks such as our oceans, that has been slowly accumulating heat over the 11 decades since your chosen start date of 1900, with a supposed peak a decade ago – should magically drop down to it’s starting point over a single decade?
Look at figure 10 of http://www.leif.org/research/2009JA015069.pdf showing the strength of the heliomagnetic field [originating in the solar magnetic field and an indicator of solar activity]. The evolution of the activity from the 1840s-1870s to the 1900s is very analogous to the evolution the past 50-60 years, so the same magic seems to be at work. This said with a straight face.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 7:55 pm
I have the utmost respect for you as a scientist and a writer, but you have no understanding of scientific method whatsoever.
What are the purposes of hypotheses? One of them is to specify the data – all the data, to infinity. Can computer models specify the data? How? They do not imply the data. All they do is spit out numbers that programmers or, worse, scientists then interpret as meaning something. Using computer simulations is far closer to art than to science.
Can individual elements of a computer program be falsified? Can a program generate a simulation which contains numbers that require you to say “Aha, our views on cloud formation are false.” Of course they do not. All the program generates is a series of numbers and it is up to you to determine that those numbers conflict with the facts and it is up to you to associate the numbers in question with a particular aspect of the program. Each and every number generated in a simulation is generated by the entire program. No number can be associated with a particular piece of the program. By contrast, in genuine physical theory, each theoretic statement has cognitive content, is about something in the world, and that individual statement will stand or fall depending on facts in the world – no programmer or scientist interpretation is required.
Do you really not see these differences?
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard says: August 25, 2011 at 7:55 pm
And thank gawd we managed to invent supercomputers, or we never would have had any physics at all!! Amazing the advancements made since the advent of the field of physics not too long after super powerful computers were developed and people learned how to program models. Laws of thermodynamics, E=mc2, none of these things would ever have been known if it hadn’t been for computer models.
I wonder where the plankton, who are also influenced by UV, will fit in the total picture.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 7:55 pm
Computer models are the embodiment of the physics. We put all the relevant physics we know into the model the best we can, and the calculations and predictions from the model show us if our genuine physical hypothesis are on the right track. So there is no difference at all, models and physics are two sides of the same coin.
And we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Hi Leif, I beg to disagree. The generation that is working on the models is the generation that has been playing video games from day one. Most of them believe that imagination creates reality rather than that reality should mold imagination.
A computer model is as good as the physics the modeller understands, in the best of cases, but has an almost infinite capacity to fool him/her and an audience, speaking of confirmation bias.
In the best of all possible worlds, and with the best and most honest scientists, your statement might hold.
anna v,
Good to see you posting again. Didn’t you know that this is the best of all possible worlds, and that all scientists are honest?☺
Is it true that the ‘snow’ on a tv screen is the reception of cosmic microwave background generated by the big bang? Man we are being irradiated by CMBs GCRs, UV, XRAYs, IR, neutrinos, magnetc field forces, radioactivity,alpha particles, radio waves,…what a buzz! Have I left any out?
Theo Goodwin says:
August 25, 2011 at 8:18 pm
you have no understanding of scientific method whatsoever.
Strong words. And incorrect.
No number can be associated with a particular piece of the program.
The program is not constructed nilly-willy. Each piece of the program represents a physical reality or hypothesis. The output is the result of all the pieces working together.
Rational Debate says:
August 25, 2011 at 8:28 pm
And thank gawd we managed to invent supercomputers, or we never would have had any physics at all!!
The things you mention were discovered 100 years ago. Modern physics is not possible without super computers.
anna v says:
August 25, 2011 at 8:37 pm
A computer model is as good as the physics the modeller understands, in the best of cases, but has an almost infinite capacity to fool him/her and an audience, speaking of confirmation bias.
There are many modellers of several generations and they are not ALL fools or starry-eyed teenagers that never grew up.
In the best of all possible worlds, and with the best and most honest scientists, your statement might hold.
How many dishonest scientists do you personal know? care to mention their names?
A nice presentation by Jasper Kirkby:
http://www.slideshare.net/NEUROMON/cosmic-rays-and-climate-jasper-kirkby-cern-462009
Smokey says:
August 25, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Didn’t you know that this is the best of all possible worlds
An optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is afraid that that is actually the case.
Gary Pearse says:
August 25, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Is it true that the ‘snow’ on a tv screen is the reception of cosmic microwave background generated by the big bang?
Some [not all] is.
How can anyone take the New Scientist seriously at this point? If you read their article and their corroborating evidence (which is also an article of theirs) you quickly realize that they are conflating solar radiation and cosmic rays.