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
As of this moment, there are 417 comments on this post.
Yet, not one seems to have commented on CERN’s having a “strong electric field” making the experiment tainted, as long as the electric field was turned on.
When I commented earlier, I confess I had not read all the way to the end. (I wonder if I am the only person who often just HAS to spit out his comment(s) before he reads any further….) So, I read this just now, and in the middle of it, I thought, “WHAAAA??? If there is a strong electric field, doesn’t that bogus up the results?” Then I read about them turning the field off, and WHAM! the un-tainted experiment then had a chance to begin. The field could not have been to set a datum baseline, not that I can see. Datums are supposed to be completely without factors that can affect results. A strong electrical field – can it ever be present and NOT affect results?
These results are remarkable.
But WHY did they stop at 2.5 nm’s? (Tin foil hat time: Or did they?) With the effect being every bit as strong on producing 2.5 nm clusters as any of the smaller clusters, though they were slower to form. But nature doesn’t give damn if it is a little bit slower.
The real question is this:
What is the largest clusters that would form?
They should have kept going until no larger clusters would form. It is obvious from the data points shown that clusters larger than 2.5nm would also form – since the slope of the 2.5nm clusters is as steep – weaning readily and profusely produced. That the curve was – to all intents and purposes – parallel to all the others means that they had in no way exhausted the cosmic rays’ capacity to form clusters.
And the verticaltity f those curves after the boost was turned on means that they had 100% found a correlation. I mean, it was almost like a nuclear pile with the graphite rods taken out.
But what is the upper range of cluster sizes? It looks like they either hid other results or they had no intention of finding this out – yet one of the warmists’ arguments is specifically that only small clusters were produced. In making such arguments, the warmists are ridiculing the results – in spite of the obvious lack of ANY data on larger cluster formations. If the large ones were in there, there should be some additional data curves that showed the increasing flattening of their curves. But there aren’t ANY larger clusters shown.
I don’t believe that they didn’t see some larger clusters. But where is the evidence of them?
In the New Scientist article, Kirby is quoted, “…an increase in 1 nanometre particles does not necessarily translate into the 50 nanometre CCNs needed for cloud formation.” Since they apparently didn’t even graph the data on larger-than-2.5nm plusters, who the heck would know if 50nm clusters formed?
Am I missing something? Where is the rest of the data?
Wht kind of scientists would not have gone farther to find out about larger clusters?
Kirkby et al. have done a good job. This paper confirms what several people have claimed during the last decade that the current climate models are missing an important ingredient which would have the effect to greatly amplify the solar effect on climate by means of a direct solar/cloud coupling that would modulate the Earth’s albedo. I believe that this study is a strong validation of the work of those scientists, including me, that have claimed that climate system must be studied starting from the data that show strong correlation with solar patterns which implies a very strong climate sensitivity to solar (TSI+cosmic ray modulation) changes. Even if not all issues are fully solved by this paper, I believe that the AGW advocates are ethically contraddicted because they have often claimed their case by stating that the “science is settled”, which was evidently false, and they have falsely accused people that questioned such assumption to be “deniers” or worst.
Right now I am in Beijin in China at a workshop on climate change organized by the Accademy of Science of China. I need to say that here the people were quite open to the possibility that the current IPCC AGW theory could be wrong because the climate models are too questionable yet, and people were quite interested in empirical-model studies of climate change that were showing that a strong solar/natural effect on climate.
R. Gates:
At August 25, 2011 at 4:52 pm you assert to Phil Jourdan:
“Well then Phil, you’ll need to explain the science behind how a little forcing (i.e. Milankovitch cycles) lead to a disproportionate amount of warming in interglacials.”
No! Absolutely not! Are you competing with Izen in attempt to present the most illogical post in this thread?
You are asserting that “radiative forcing” directly affects “warming”.
Phil Jourdan points out that it does not.
And your response is to claim he needs to show how a lilttle forcing induces large warming.
No! You need to prove that radiative forcing causes ANY direct warming.
You made the assertion so you need to prove it.
All Phil – and anybody else – has to do is to point out that observed reality disproves your assertion.
He HAS pointed that out, and your answer admits he is right.
Richard
Svalgaard – Vukcevic concord
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/S-V.htm
see also
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Atlantic-Essential.htm
or start of yet another discord?
anna v says:
August 26, 2011 at 12:55 am
For too long mediocre prophets have been using model outputs to push their political agendas.
Here we are in 2011 and people are still saying “Look, the computer said it, it must be right.”
One thing is for sure Anna, they’re not prophets, mayby, propheteers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propheteer
Scottish Skeptic clouds keep the surface temperature trapped in Winter. Humidity levels increase and that will encourage rain. You know when you are near the sea and there is rain about to happen then it feels muggy and hotter. The higher the humidity or atmospheric water vapor increase the more likely hood of rain. Clouds do contain some carbon dioxide so it can be said CO2 can increase warming, but they forget to say when no clouds are present particularly in winter the frost can form. It’s like a blanket or shade cloth.
It looks like the alarmists have finally gotten it right, after all.
Since man has only an inkling of how the real climate movers and shakers influence the grand system, then the term Climate Disruption can fit any result.
It’s still all your fault.
Pay up.
Um, no, I do not have to do anything, as I have not putting the cart before the horse. I prefer the scientific method of discerning answers instead of creating them. Once the answer is known, I will be glad to explain it to you. However, until such time as we know it, why explain something that is yet to be explained? Again, I ask questions, and record observations. I do not jump to conclusions with insufficient information.
I do agree that there was more sunshine or less clouds, in the past 40 years as one can clearly see from my tables.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
It was the maxima that drove much of the means and minima up.
However, if you look carefully, you can see there is a difference between the warming NH and SH.
I have been to correlate this “extra” warming in the NH to increased vegetation
which in turn is partly caused by the greenies (wanting more trees and gardens) but could also partly be caused by the increase in CO2 which probably acts as fertilizer and accelerator for more growth.
All that I have not been able to figure out is the mechanism.
Is it that a more greener earth reflects less sunshine back to space?
Or is it the entrapment of moisture that prevents more heat from leaving earth? (GH effect)
Or is the chlorophyl capturing more energy (UV) during the day than it really needs, and gives it off during the night as IR?
Anyone any idea?
To clarify my previous post:
I meant the mechanism that causes the extra warming of earth
anna v says:
August 26, 2011 at 12:55 am
“The fact that some models work fairly well for some interval of future projections and some parameters does not exonerate all models and modellers. … 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 anomalies LinkText Here . ( one of seven bad fits that I have accumulated) .”
Hi Anna V,
Since terrestrial climate seems to be connected with the processes on the sun and the movements of the planets, there is an outlook, alike the prediction of the eclipses, simple calculate the global climate in 100 years or in 1000 years.
The terrestrial impedances have phase shift effects on the frequency oscillations of the earth. The QBO frequency is twice the frequency of ENSO frequency and the chandler wobble frequency is twice the frequency of the QBO. The chandler wobble frequency of the earth is ten times the frequency of Jupiter.
But the terrestrial impedances are also superimposed on solar system frequencies which are well known for – 5000 years and +1000 years. From these data and a few parameter for the strength, it is not out of the question simple to calculate the global climate in 100 years. A rough impression for as well high frequency temperatures and very low frequencies can give from some fits I have done.
http://volker-doormann.org/images/comnispa_vs_x.jpg
http://volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_23_edwards_2b.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/images/hall_plot.jpg
http://volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_23_ghi_null.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/images/ghi2_xx.jpg
http://volker-doormann.org/images/bolshakov_plot.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_1600.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/gif/ghi12x_vs_sst.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/gif/bulloides_1650_a.gif
Seems that the geocentric world view of climatology is over.
V.
PhilJourdan,
Excellent response, right on target.
R. Gates
August 25, 2011 at 4:52 pm
“Well then Phil, you’ll need to explain the science behind how a little forcing (i.e. Milankovitch cycles) lead to a disproportionate amount of warming in interglacials.”
Your ignorance knows no bounds, Gates. Milankovitch cycle ADDS NO FORCING. It changes the seasonal temperature difference between winter and summer. Warmer winters and cooler summers give ice the advantage. This happens when orbital precession has perihelion in the middle of northern hemisphere winter and when axial precession has the inclination at a minimum. The calander date of perihelion traverses the calander once every 24,000 years and axial precession is a 42,000.year cycle. Currently perihelion is on Jan 4th and axial precession is halfway between extremes. Both are moving towards point where difference in insolation between NH summer and winter is minimal. Holocene interglacial is already 2,000 years older than 10,000 average length of interglacials. Conditions are ripe for ending it. One big earth cooling volcanic eruption will probably be the trigger that ends it. The unpredictable timing of large volcanoes is likely what causes the variability in interglacial length but conditions remain advantageous for ice for thousands of years as Milankovich cycle is near point of minimal seasonal difference between winter/summer temperatures. Over thousands of years you can pretty much guarantee a large enough eruption for the trigger.
Please stop talking about things you know very little about.
Rational Debate says:
August 26, 2011 at 12:16 am
Either way, how is that a similar evolution over the two time periods?
http://www.leif.org/research/HMF-Now-and-120yrs-Ago.png
Richard S Courtney says:
August 26, 2011 at 3:22 am
R. Gates:
You are asserting that “radiative forcing” directly affects “warming”.
Phil Jourdan points out that it does not.
_____
This is nonsense of the highest order. Of course radiative forcing directly affects warming, and we all should be glad it does to a point. No radiative forcing, no nice greenhouse effect…very cold planet.
PhilJourdan says:
August 26, 2011 at 5:00 am
However, until such time as we know it, why explain something that is yet to be explained?
____
Phil, honestly, can’t you see the absurdity of this statement? Thank God for the curiosity of the human mind in wanting to explain and understand things that are not yet understood…it’s the soul the scientific process.
Ice core samples and the patterns of gases, dust, isotopes in them are a mystery to be solved. Combined with Milankovitch astronomical forcing, they reveal the roadmap for the past 800,000 years of climate. CO2 positive-feedbacks provide a plausible explanation for at least part of that puzzle. Other explanations or alternative hypothesis welcome…
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 25, 2011 at 5:19 pm
“There is no such documented correlation. We have solar activity and climate proxies going back thousands of years and there is no correlation.”
Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum both line up perfectly with cooling and Modern Maximum with warming.
You’re in denial. Stop it.
It’s DENTED, Jim. Let it go.
[snip]
Reply: We’ll do the moderation. Thanks. TB-mod.
anna v says:
August 26, 2011 at 12:55 am
For too long mediocre prophets have been using model outputs to push their political agendas.
Where is the mediocrity and dishonesty you are postulating in this:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL048438.pdf
[2] The development of global non‐hydrostatic atmospheric general circulation models capable of cloud system resolving weather/climate prediction has progressed steadily with the accessibility of large supercomputing resources and the improved scalability of models. This has permitted experimentation at resolutions as fine as 3.5‐km globally capable of resolving cloud clusters of deep convection in the tropics [Satoh et al., 2008; Tomita et al., 2005]. Building on the conclusions from the World Modeling Summit for Climate Prediction [Shukla et al., 2009], experimentation with very high‐resolution global climate modeling has gained enhanced priority. The U.S. National Science Foundation has recently dedicated an entire 18,048‐core Cray XT‐4 supercomputer, Athena, for a series of global climate and weather simulations at resolutions ranging from 28‐ to 7‐km [Dirmeyer et al., 2011; J. L. Kinter et al., Revolutionizing climate modeling ‐ Project Athena: A multi‐institutional, international collaboration, submitted to Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2011].
Dave Springer says:
August 26, 2011 at 7:03 am
“There is no such documented correlation. We have solar activity and climate proxies going back thousands of years and there is no correlation.”
Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum both line up perfectly with cooling and Modern Maximum with warming.
Perhaps you should look at the data instead: slide 20 of http://www.leif.org/research/Does%20The%20Sun%20Vary%20Enough.pdf
Leif
So there is no difference at all, models and physics are two sides of the same coin.
You need to complete the circle of this one. You see, in physics, we derive a theory usually through mathematics, or question an observation, we then use that mathematical model to run a computer ‘model’, we then test the results of that model against reality. Now that’s where climate models have feared to tread. If the model doesn’t reflect reality/observations precisely we search for the limits of that failure and then redefine the experiment and the computer model.
However, many physical theories, particular those postulated by Eistein, Bohr et al have yet to be confirmed and where they haven’t been confirmed by observational data we say so. It’s a question of honesty, you see.
Gates
Milankovitch astronomical forcing
Forget it gates, Milancovic cycles are not a forcing. This is team talk to make i seem like everything forces the weather/climate. Force is a unit of work. MC does no work.
Volker
“That is a fallacy. About the unknown, or that what one don’t know one cannot say nothing. (Wittgenstein)”
I have said no such thing. I have simply pointed out that it is possible that there are things we don’t yet understand about climate. Hardly much of a leap for the truly skeptical. For instance, for centuries we did not know that Newton’s laws of motion were incomplete.
“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.”
Are you denying the existence of deterministic chaos?
feet2thefire says:
August 26, 2011 at 2:52 am
“Yet, not one seems to have commented on CERN’s having a “strong electric field” making the experiment tainted, as long as the electric field was turned on.
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.
…If there is a strong electric field, doesn’t that bogus up the results?” Then I read about them turning the field off, and WHAM! the un-tainted experiment then had a chance to begin. The field could not have been to set a datum baseline, not that I can see. Datums are supposed to be completely without factors that can affect results. A strong electrical field – can it ever be present and NOT affect results?”
Kirkby and team are not trying to measure aerosol formation in nature. They are trying to measure the effects of a particular kind of cosmic ray beam on an artificial environment. Notice that they added water vapor, sulphuric acid, and ammonia in a controlled way. In this way, they learned something about the interactions among those four items. The electric field is an attempt to limit the experiment to those four items. What they are trying to do is test the most basic physical hypotheses about aerosol formation. They are not jumping ahead to the question(s) that gets debated here, namely, can increases in GCRs increase cloud cover. That questions remains far down the road after they have done many more tests in development of the basic physical hypotheses.
They stumbled upon what I consider to be a great discovery. They found that those four items do not create the aerosols in an environment similar to the environment of low flying clouds on Earth. Now they can search for an additional item or items that will produce such aerosols.
I hope you can see the scientific method at work. You start with your basic hypotheses, you perform experiments, and you build on those results. To me, the most important aspect of Kirkby’s work is that we will get to see his system of physical hypotheses grow. Along the way, some will be pruned and it will be sometime before there is enough growth to shed light on the question of cloud formation. However, the scientific method guarantees that the more complicated system of physical hypotheses will be as solid as its foundation. That is the great beauty of scientific method. Computer models do not work that way.
In a computer model, you model something. Would you agree? When you model something, you create a simulation of that thing. The simplest example is a linear programming model that simulates the shipping patterns of a large corporation such as the Defense Department. Each run of the model is a simulation and is a set of numbers that specifies what goods are in warehouses, what goods are at destination points, and what modes of transportation were used. Notice that the fact that I am using a model means (requires) that I build in a whole raft of assumptions that are necessary just to get the model to run (solve). The step-by-step procedure followed by Kirkby is not possible for anything on that raft of assumptions. Why? Because the assumptions have to be there for the model to run and generate one simulation of the shipping network. Is there any way to get at those basic assumptions? No. Modifying an existing assumption does not help because it means that I now have two distinct models whose assumptions cannot be investigated.
If Kirkby’s work is not stopped by the powers that be, the world will get to see scientific method in action as it is applied to this problem of low-flying cloud formation. The very fact of progress through an ever more impressive and better tested set of physical hypotheses will stand in stark contrast to the models used by “mainstream climate science.” However, as in all applications of scientific method, we must be patient. This work could take decades. The most important virtue of a scientist is humility. With Kirkby’s work, the public has the opportunity to share in that humility. Don’t laugh. Back in the Fifties, the educated public understood the necessity of humility for scientists.