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
@Leif Svalgaard says: August 25, 2011 at 8:15 pm
And around 1840, what was the starting global temperature?
Rational Debate says:
August 25, 2011 at 9:12 pm
And around 1840, what was the starting global temperature?
http://www.leif.org/research/Global-Temperature-Since-1850.png
@ur momisugly anna v says: August 25, 2011 at 8:37 pm
Nicely put Anna V.
My apologies to all for being a bit sharp with my comments of late.
Leif, I would concur that well designed and controlled (including inputs) computer models and simulations can be incredibly useful and powerful tools. They are, however, just tools and are only useful to the extent that those designing and using them recognize that fact, and are able to do a really good job of accounting for and controlling all base assumptions, confounding factors, confirmation bias, data input flaws, and so on – AND calibrating against good empirical observations and data. They also must account for all credible competing hypotheses – and if used over longer time periods or model results used as a basis for other research, these things must all be thoroughly re-evaluated and adjusted accordingly on a regular basis. Otherwise it is very much ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ There is just no way that computer models and simulations of highly complex systems with massive unknowns and can even begin to be considred to be the flip side of the real world.
Also, am I alone in thinking that while 5nm nuclei are insufficient to create water drops on their own that having 10 times the number of these 5nm water drops during solar weak cycles would greatly increase the rate at which 5nm water particles will come in contact with one another and become bigger water particles?
It seems that Kirby is downplaying this because he wants to still get dinner invitations from his peers.
Doug Badgero says:
August 25, 2011 at 5:12 pm
R. Gates,
You seem to be implicitly acknowledging that the feedback coefficient is not constant, or even linear. Oh well, at least we all get to keep on arguing about what we think we “know” if we ignore this reality.
———–
I will explicitly acknowledge it. Feedbacks, both negative and positive must be chaotic in the sense that when certain thresholds are crossed, the feedbacks jump to a different regime or level, and in complex systems like the climate that level may not be entirely predictable based on the previous trend. The best example of this may be the Younger Dryas period when the Milankovotch cycle was tending toward greater insulation, CO2 was rising, and the earth was coming rapidly out of the last glacial, then suddenly, within a decade or less, the trend radically reverses, and 1300 more years of glaciation sets in, before an equally radical shift back toward the Holocene optimum.
I do not know how to respond to someone who ignores the entire objective of the experiment because he is of the opinion nano particles have not been proven to nucleate such as to encourage water coalescence, when the point of the experiment was to prove that the formation of such would likely result in cloud formation. We already know such particles grow and nucleate. It is true we do not know the exact chemistry. Hence a bit of discussion on ammonia, etc. Eh?
Rational Debate says:
August 25, 2011 at 9:29 pm
useful to the extent that those designing and using them recognize that fact, and are able to do a really good job of accounting for and controlling all base assumptions, confounding factors, confirmation bias, data input flaws, and so on – AND calibrating against good empirical observations and data. They also must account for all credible competing hypotheses – and if used over longer time periods or model results used as a basis for other research, these things must all be thoroughly re-evaluated and adjusted accordingly on a regular basis.
And what makes you believe that all that is not done as carefully as humanly possible? Here is an example: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL048438.pdf
R Gates,
Then surely you must concur that the science of AGW (“c” or no “c”) is far from settled………for our lifetime it probably never will be. Even this simple reality assumes that there is nothing, or very little, that we don’t know we don’t know. And finally, that both weather AND climate are chaotic.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 5:09 pm
M.A.Vukcevic says:
August 25, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Nearly 500 readers of this thread have looked at
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NorthAtlanticOutlook.htm
And how many of those have come forward in praise?
————————————
I can do without the praise you are getting, but I still have to read today’s bunch .
CR’s are flavour of the day, some time ago was Scafetta and 60year cycles, then Archibald and short cycles, your good friend Livingstone, and not to mention perennial barycentrists.
Not that we agree on many things, but at least you stick to your FLAT SUN, and I will delve into the gmf hinterland.
On serious note I think that the post about the Denmark strait current was most relevant recent finding, except I do not think it is a new long term existing current, just a re-configuration of the flows (another case for correlation flip, don’ you think so?).
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck
Doug Badgero says: August 25, 2011 at 10:55 pm
And finally, that both weather AND climate are chaotic.
But Doug, is not what this whole debate has been about?
On the one side have been the warmists, who believe the climate is just the sum of the obvious parameters — with a tiny bit of irrelevant noise that averages out in the end, and if they can only combine them into a suitable equation, then they can predict the climate, so their whole philosophy takes them down the road which ends up as WARMING = 3x (WARMING THAN CAN BE EXPLAINED BY REAL SCIENCE) – obviously I’m spelling it out to show how ridiculous it is, but they really do believe that an equation is possible.
On the other side, who I suspect is filled with engineers and others who have experience of applying science to real life situations, we have the assumption that the climate is largely chaotic and that any perturbation due to a change of a parameter will be set against a huge background of chaotic noise. We have tools and techniques from real life that avoid the need to characterise the whole system in complete detail .. we can work with chaotic systems by devising “rules of thumb” that characterise the response to perturbations and can accurately predict its response to future perturbations.
I would characterise the two approaches as “deconstructionalist” and “holistic”. In one they believe they can deconstruct the system into its component parts (the effects of CO2, H20, albedo etc) and once they have an equation to predict the behaviour of each component part they think they can simply add them all together (put in a convenient multiplication of 3 to make theory match reality) and hey presto, because it is the “best” model of the climate it must be the “best” way to predict the impact of e.g. CO2.
In constrast the sceptic approach see the system as a whole, it looks for known responses that can be shown to be a result of CO2 (like e.g. looking at the iceages) it uses a bit of “nouse” (common sense) to work out that CO2 can’t be that important, and we hold our hands up and say: “with a system this complex it’s impossible to say what caused the heating problem love” (Joke … typical words of plumbers).
The irony of this new sunspot-climate link is that (once the nutters running science admit it) that the system moves a lot further from the “mostly unknown” toward the “can be modelled” and it is even possible that it will take it to the “tipping point” where the majority of the climate can be modelled using known parameters. In other words, once they accept they have been wrong … that sunspots are linked to climate, then they will be right to predict the climate using their techniques … although whether people with such a poor grasp of noise (1/f) will ever understand the noise in such a system is doubtful particularly given their atrocious record.
Obviously we must now wait for the models to be revised before any valid pronouncement about the future of climate can be made.
The other side of the delay coin.
Oops, I should have explained the joke “averages out in the end” … the point with systems with 1/f noise is that they don’t “average out in the end”. The annoying thing with such a system is that however many samples you take, there is always a noise component which is greater if you just took more samples. It is literally impossible in a system with 1/f noise (like the climate) to average out the noise … indeed, the paradox, is that because it is 1/f noise and the noise level decreases, the shorter the period you look out, the best way to get rid of the noise is to REDUCE the period. Obviously, too short a period and you run into Gaussian type noise which increases noise/signal the smaller the period … so there is an optimum compromise not too short and not too long.
And in my next post I shall attempt something easier … like explaining the rules of Cricket or how to create a multi-parameter model that predicts the behaviour of women.
@Leif Svalgaard says: August 25, 2011 at 8:15 pm
First, I must confess that on reading your last sentence, my face is no longer quite so straight, it’s a little curved. :0)
Leif, you’ll have to help me out a bit with your graph 10, because I don’t see a similar genesis from ~1850-1900 compared to ~1950-2000 (& I’m not sure what to do with your starting ranges, since they yield a possible difference of as much as 30 years. Or if you are using a current end date of 2000 or 2010?). Anyhow, it seems to me that from 1850-1900 from your own curve fit B(IDV) is decreasing pretty much along the entire length, where from 1950-1980 it was increasing, and had the curve fit ended in 2000, it would likely have been plateaued – but as shown, it looks to be decreasing from about 1980 on. Either way, how is that a similar evolution over the two time periods?
M. Simon says: August 25, 2011 at 11:58 pm
The other side of the delay coin.
There is absolutely no doubt that this whole CLOUD episode has been full of the most blatant politically inspired delays … for obvious reasons.
What this clearly shows is that THEY KNEW THE RESULTS WOULD GO AGAINST THEM in other words, they knew that this was a valuable contribution to science and they intentionally repressed the development of good science because it wasn’t in their personal interests to see science develop this way. In other words, they blocked the development of science to line their own pockets and boost their own positions … at least I can’t see any other reasonable interpretation.
The public really deserve a few answers. And I don’t mean another “buddy review inquiry”
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Furthermore, the solar modulation of cosmic rays is much smaller than that stemming from the Earth’s magnetic field.
Indeed, as Vuk keeps reminding us http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/breaking-news-cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-rays-influence-climate-change/#comment-728154
My suggestion is to ignore anything with ppm (parts per million – CO2) or did I see ppb ( parts per billion , ammonia or whatever trace gas), with no power and no correlation !
Reality is much simpler, down to earth, literally, no fancy chemistry of questionable re-radiation, nucleiation, puny trace gasses.
Reality is mighty Earth and Ocean, with the power, mechanism and correlation using the real ocean currents, real temperatures and real atmospheric pressures:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Atlantic-Essential.htm
see all three unique graphs and then ask the CO2 or the Cosmic Rays devotees to facilitate equally good numerical demonstration of the past years, decades and centuries.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Here is an example:
Leif,
The fact that some models work fairly well for some interval of future projections and some parameters does not exonerate all models and modellers. Sure, weather prediction since I started following it on army maps back in the 1960’s is getting better and better, and can be quite accurate for a few days, so yes, some models for some time intervals work.
The specific models we are trashing in this discussion though, have fitted innumerable parameters to back data and presume to be telling us what is happening in 100 years when they can not even fit the absolute temperatures and play around with anomaliesLinkText Here . ( one of seven bad fits that I have accumulated) .
And on these shaky presumptions they ask the world to commit economic hara kiri because the sky is falling. It is no surprise that people grasp any solid scientific evidence that points towards other inputs to the temperature state of the planet, with enthusiasm. For too long mediocre prophets have been using model outputs to push their political agendas.
Warmists are depending on the majority of people not understanding graphs or scientific formulae. And it took several good honest scientists to take them on. If you didn’t have the qualifications like Lord Christopher Monckton you were expected not to produce evidence that could disprove them.(How wrong they were!). But if I have known (I do have a BA in archaeology and palaeoanthropology, Diploma of organic Agricultural production plus a few soil science and sustainability certs). Then where have we all been – it’s not new! CERN is an international body so all of a sudden they are producing scientific information already known to many. And down grading the influence of clouds on the climate. It was included in the DVD ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ as a special feature and discovered and described in 2003. If you look at the IPCC and BOM (Australia) you will see the small print. This is the amount of GHG present on a clear day (no clouds) C02 is the largest GHG in this hypothesis.
Cloud cover does trap smoke from fires. You can see in our valley the mist and underneath it a fire line of brown from wood smoke. You have smogs dangerous ones that combine sulfur dioxide with water vapour .
Why pray tell me why in ‘The Critical Decade’ a report given to the Australian government has a disclaimer on it. Page 2.
IMPORTANT NOTICE – PLEASE READ
This document is produced for general information only and does not represent a statement of policy of the Commonwealth of Australia. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy, completeness and reliability of the material contained in this document the Commonwealth of Australia and all persons acting for the Commonwealth preparing this report accept no liability for the accuracy of the inferences from the material contained in this publication or for any action as a result of any person’s or group’s interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in relying on this material.
It was printed on a black background and the words/letters are white. It is on internet by the way if you want to peruse the ‘information’. Drawn from the CSIRO, BOM, Mann and the IPCC et al
How weak? And they expect intelligent people let alone scientists will take this ridiculous bit of manufactured data as gospel when they are not prepared to accept responsibility for its accuracy! Only the Greens and the government lackeys, Tim Flannery & Co who want some reason to introduce carbon trading and a mining tax, and were paid big dollars to produce this rubbish. Shame – Shame – Shame! The CERN experiment is the start but whether it carries another weight to change the mind of governments I am not sure.
Interesting new idea for late 20th century warming
I was just reading up on cosmic rays and read: “Cosmic rays kept the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere roughly constant (70 tons) for at least the past 100,000 years, until the beginning of above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the early 1950s.”
(ignore the obvious insertion by the warmists: any archaeologist knows you have to have a C14 calibration curve because it isn’t constant.)
My initial reaction was: “it’s a pity during the important period … we can’t know for sure what the actual level of cosmic rays were … because they increased …”
Then the penny dropped!
Now we know Cosmic rays are linked to climate (and I don’t just mean Svensmark & CERN but other research showing correlation means the balance of evidence points this way), of course a lot of those energetic particles are now manmade!!!! So, how does the apparent warming from 1970 to 2000 compare to manmade cosmic rays:
The first nuclear weapon was detonated as a test by the United States at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945 … The Treaty was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 September 1996, underground tests in the United States continued until 1992 (its last nuclear testing), the Soviet Union in 1990, the United Kingdom in 1991, and both China and France in 1996.
In short:
the majority of manmade cosmic ray production was caused by testing from 1957 to 1990
The majority of “mann-made” warming was seen between 1970 and 200
Now if someone were to tell me the half life of the nuclear products that lead to “manmade” cosmic rays was 10 years, I’d …
OOps …that was 2000, and yes cloud cover is supposed to cool due to sun-blocking… so why are starry nights colder?
CLOUD experiment website link does not work from here or other sites.
Doug Badgero says:
August 25, 2011 at 10:55 pm
“Even this simple reality assumes that there is nothing, or very little, that we don’t know we don’t know.”
That is a fallacy. About the unknown, or that what one don’t know one cannot say nothing. (Wittgenstein)
“And finally, that both weather AND climate are chaotic.”
That is a fallacy. Your statement suggests that there are physical processes possible without the laws of nature science. The universe is not dark because one has his eyes closed.
After the step to acknowledge ‘cosmic rays’ of high energy ions, it has to be explained the connection between the real global climate function and the real (source of) ‘cosmic ray’ function.
And yes, the measured cosmic ray intensity is mostly inversed to the sun spot periods, but this pattern is not visible in the global climate pattern. But the global temperature proxy pattern has a weak correlation with the time/frequency shift of the sunspot phase from the average sun spot frequency of 1/11.196 y^-1.
This means, that there is a connection between global climate and this shift mechanism. Today this shift is relaxing to the average frequency, and this suggests a phase of global cooling global cooling for the netxt years. Moreover, these pattern have also a weak correlation with simple geometries and motion in our solar system.
http://volker-doormann.org/gif/ssn_shift_ghi4.gif
In other words, the global climate time function has a link to the ‘cosmic rays’ from the sun’s phase shift mechanism connected with the dancing planets around the sun, and not with the sun spot cycle.
V.
Well I’m not a scientist [what ever that means nowadays ?? ] but I cannot agree with the heaters that the huge fiery ball in the sky that burns my skin,warms the seas makes the plants/animals thrive and grow , gives us thunder /rain and some of the best bits about our springs and summers! isn’t really a factor and we should forget about it ???
Hmm maybe it’s because if it’s a man made threat heaters can make us guilty and pay them to save us?
“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.”
Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
These computer models model nothing except the ignorance and prejudices of their programmers. The fact that they can tweak them to curve fit recent climate history tells us absolutely nothing. Remember,”With four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
That computer models are the only “evidence” that exists for the AGW theory tells us all we need to know.
Anthony — this is 1000 words, obviously its a bit long, particularly as I’m no expert on the subject, but it might be interesting. So, I’ve pasted the same content on my blog: http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/cosmic-rays-co2-and-clouds/ so please do snip it if you want.
——–SNIP———–
Just some thoughts on Cosmic rays, CO2 and clouds.
Around half the heat of the sun transferred to the earth’s surface leaves as evaporation. That latent heat cannot be lost until that water is condensed in those fluffy things in the air – which is the primary transportation mechanism for around half the solar heat hitting the earth.
Now, as that heat needs to be dissipated, and the amount of dissipation is proportional to the amount of water dissipated, whether or not it is triggered by cosmic rays really shouldn’t effect whether or not the heat is dissipated in any one volume of air that rises by convection. So more/less of an agent to trigger cloud formation shouldn’t effect how much cloud is formed by any one volume of air, but add CO2 and that does increase the rate of cooling of that air, and cosmic rays may trigger the earlier formation of clouds, with the result that any volume of air forms clouds quicker and cools quicker, thereby considerably enhancing the rate of cooling of the atmosphere … but paradoxically speeding the rate at which clouds are cleared from the sky.
CO2 cooling … just as the physical properties of the CO2 molecule cause it to block IR, so those say properties cause it to emit IR … conveniently at wavelengths where other atmospheric molecules do not absorb. So, when CO2 is above the bulk of the atmosphere and particularly above the cloud layer, it is able to emit heat through the “window” where other molecules will not block it. In essence a “move heat direct to space” card.
So, cosmic rays would see clouds forming earlier and CO2 would see them clearing earlier, but the net amount of cloud would be largely determined by the IR emissive cross section of the clouds and the rate of energy being delivered by evaporative-convective transport. But, as CO2 improves the rate of emission of IR, the air cools quicker and I presume the amount of clouds would be smaller … hence more warming as more sunshine gets through (oops can’t say that!!).
However, what if the cosmic rays caused “premature condensation”. What if the rays triggered cloud formation at a lower level, a level where the pressure reduction was insufficient to trigger “complete” condensation? The result would be to slow the rate of upward movement of the air, perhaps causing air to condense over a longer period of time so that instead of a sudden burst of cloud, the result would be a longer more sustained cloud which tended to block less sunshine but for longer, perhaps with a net cooling.
What about larger weather patterns? The above really is based on those fluffy summer clouds that form in clear skies and lead to promising mornings turning into cloudy afternoons. We know large scale movements of air lead to weather fronts. In effect we have air that rises in low pressure areas, falls at high pressure areas and creates frontal systems where warm moist area meets colder air.
Obviously, this system is also driven by solar energy … warming moist air, looses heat when the air condenses and then falls as dry cold air. Obviously, the amount of cloud droplets is determined by the amount of evaporation at the surface. But those weather systems hang around for days. So, the cloud potentially also hangs around for days and whereas cloud during the day prevents sunshine, cooling the earth, so increased cloud at night prevents IR loss so keeping the earth warm. Now this is a very different system, whereas the fluffy clouds on a summer day directly affect the area from whence the solar heat is obtained to produce the evaporation, the dense areas of cloud at a weather front obtain the energy from areas far away. But again some of the same effects will occur.
Cosmic rays, will tend to trigger clouds earlier, again CO2 could cause clouds to loose heat quicker — so the air which was warmed by the condensation energy of the water (the opposite of evaporative cooling).
In fact, I see a battle here: cosmic rays as triggering this condensing warming, and CO2 as acting to cool. The two mechanisms are essential in opposition in the droplet formation zone (aka clouds). Indeed, cosmic rays allow clouds to form earlier, CO2 (and other IR heat loss mechanisms) allows them to dispel earlier. (although I’m less certain as I reread it)
Now clouds that tend to form during the day and reach saturation and then disperse at night … here CO2 may be actively causing the clouds to dispel quicker. So, where you have dense cloud, which cannot be “punched through” by an increased rate of cooling by CO2 during the day, during the night when the solar energy driving the system drops, and the cloud begins to dispel, the CO2 can cause more rapid dispersal of the clouds – leading to those “cold starry nights” and hence lead to cooling.
But, argh it gets even worse … when we have multi-layer clouds. Stratospheric and tropospheric, whilst obviously CO2 cooling works to an open sky, it doesn’t work if you have stratospheric clouds (but where do they come from? Cosmic rays?).
But what happens when the moist air has to move considerable distances before it condenses. A typical cyclone is 600 miles across, the inner zone is cloudy, whilst the outer zone is the “heating zone”, so the distance between the two is around 150miles. I’m going to guess (as I can’t find a figure), that the average wind speed is 10-20mph. This means that the time for air to go from heating zone to cooling zone is around 7-15hours.
This effectively means that the cooling/heating effects of CO2 and cosmic rays would be reversed compared to the “summer days” clouds, because the heat is lost when the sun is in the opposite condition. So rather than more cloud cooling, more cloud would actually form a cloud blanket reducing heat loss. So, more cosmic rays would lead to warming and more CO2 (cloud dispersant) would lead to cooling.