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
Richard S Courtney says:
August 28, 2011 at 12:16 am
John Finn:
At August 27, 2011 at 6:04 pm you say;
“To be totally serious: while it may take a few decades for the ‘equilibrium’ temperature change to be fully realised, a significant decline in [ocean] temperatures will be evident within a few years. We’ve now had low solar activity for ~5 years.”
And continuing being “totally serious” there has been a significant decline in ocean temperatures recently; see
http://oceanmotion.org/html/gatheringdata/satellites-jason.htm
Your link is related to sea levels – not temperature.
and the sea level shows recent sharp fall, too; see
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/nasa-notes-sea-level-is-falling-in-press-release-but-calls-it-a-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas/
Yep – but that happens during La Nina. The link even points out the transition from El Nino to La Nina in 2010 which corresponds to the dip.
@- Venter says:
August 27, 2011 at 7:48 pm
“The AGW scientists clique actively aided and abetted in this policymaking by becoming vocal activists. … The AGW promoting climate scientists are actively a part of the scam and have been deeply involved in it. And the rest of the climate science clique remained mute against this travesty. ”
The rest of the scientific community have NOT remained mute, they have declared their active support for climate science, look at the declarations by just about every national body, institute and association of scientists around the globe.
Scientists are often, if not always advocates for their science -especially if they think it has profoundly serious implications for the stability of modern societies.
Politicians rarely pay much attention – until people start dying. In this case it was a right-wing politician in the UK who first echoed the warnings of her scientific advisors and declared the danger inherent in AGW required a significant response. Perhaps her acceptance of the warning from the scientists was because rarely among politicians she had a science degree.
“You may be a good scientist but if this is what you really mean you are a lousy realist, in denial of what’s really happening today in the world due to bad behaviour of the AGW climate scientists clique. Wake up and smell the coffee. ”
Now who is being naive. Do you REALLY think that the political system would pay ANY attention to the activism of scientists unless it was politically expedient – or the reality of the danger from warming was not evident and being reported to those politicians from every scientific source.
AGW is not a scientific scam perpetrated by a few ideologically motivated activists, it is the result of well over a century of the accumulation of evidence and understanding by the scientific method. As with the dangers from CFCs and Acid Rain before it is inevitable that the scientists who first identify the dangers would make the obvious warnings that derived from their discoveries.
And as with those issues politicians only pay attention and act when it is expedient to do so.
And usually after a long and intensive campaign by any business affected by the discoveries to oppose regulation.
In this case the scientists have failed. It is clear to anyone not mired in naivety that mitigation by globally coordinated emission reduction is NOT going to happen. The World lacks the political system capable of enacting such changes to the energy markets.
Adaption is going to be the only game in town to any impacts on the agricultural ecology.
Hopefully that adaption will not involve the use of military conflict to gain access to dwindling resources…… – although THAT is naive!
Oh my Gawd. Get to the point eh some folks. What AGW promoters left out was the effect of the
Green house gas that makes up 95% of the total GHG. Your arguments are suggesting STILL
that CO2 drives the climate. Well it doesn’t get real. CO2 makes up only 4% of GHG and over 3% is naturally not human activity produced. Do you sums. Is 95% of water vapor less of an effect on climate than CO2. When it has been known for years that subatomic particles bombarding earth combine with water molecules to help form clouds. Their effect is lessened when there is increased solar activity. What the hell can we do to moderate climate change –
nothing. That big globe in the sky dictates our climate not us and to think that carbon emissions produced by humans if lessened will help cool the climate is a con. Nor should we pay that poxy
UNCCF billions to help change the climate, if you think it will, well you are absolute politically influenced and with no scientific reasoning. Climate is what we expect – weather is what we get
and weather kills us. So does volcano eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes or typhoons or cyclones.
Axel says:
August 27, 2011 at 7:09 pm
This has not been empirically measured. These figures are derived from
mathematical calculations and rely on unproven assumptions, presumably.
No citations are given for how these figures are arrived at.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. The atmospheric increase is fairly well established. There is an average annual increase of 1.5ppm to 2ppm per year. The conversion rate is 1 ppm ~= 2.1 GtC – so the 3 to 4 GtC figure seems sound. That just leaves the human emissions ‘estimate’ of 7 to 8 GtC. That figure would have to be significantly in error if it is to invalidate my point.
In any case, as I said in the earlier post, both atmosphere AND oceans are gaining CO2 … and I keep reading how CO2 is giving us a greener planet so I don’t see how else you can explain the increase.
John Finn says
and I keep reading how CO2 is giving us a greener planet so I don’t see how else you can explain the increase
Henry@John
The statement that an increased GH effect by the increase in CO2 causes extra warming is totally wrong. In fact, very few people know how or understand how it works anyway, but that is beside the point.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
I am saying that more carbon dioxide is good as it causes more greenery whilst others are saying it is bad as the increased vegetation causes some extra warming. Both the above statements are most probably true.
What do you say?
No one is arguing against this Finn. Get back to the topic please. The CERN experiment proves
that GHG of which 95% is water vapor and can be controlled by cosmic or galactic sub atomic particles and solar activity from space either from Super Novas or maybe evenly an ongoing bombardment from the original ‘Big Bang’ or both partly responsible for this. Now are you suggesting STILL THAT CO2 FROM HUMAN ACTIVITY CONTROLS CLIMATE? When only 4% of C02 in GHG are mostly naturally produced? And less than 1% is actually from human activity.
And that cutting fossil fuel use will actually cool or control the climate. None of this has been proved, Other than by frauds, who were paid millions to prove the hypothesis or eses of the AGW
argument. That states human activity and the use of fossil fuels causes extreme weather events like earthquakes, tsumanis and hurricanes. If this is the complaint then I would suggest that it has a frail scientific evidence and looks like something the witches in middle earth were blamed for in 16th century. Controlling the weather. We are now in the 21st Century and on the Internet
if you forget the amount of communications availability actually does pass on the messages much quickly than snail mail.
>>
Mark Wilson says:
August 26, 2011 at 3:14 pm
As to your comments about reducing the size of the boxes. Every time you have the size of the boxes, the amount of computing power needed goes up by the cube. Make the boxes half the size, your computer needs to be 8 times more powerfull. Make the boxes 1/4th, computer power required goes up by 64 times.
<<
GCM’s are four dimensional, so the values go up by the fourth power. However, your argument is still sound.
Current GCM’s have grids that vary between 5 degrees to about 0.5 degrees. We’re dealing with a sphere, so the grid size varies, depending on how the modelers divide up the Earth’s surface. A minute of arc on a great circle is one nautical mile. A typical grid size of 1 degree by 1 degree is 60 nautical miles on a side (about 69 statute miles)–although grids aren’t necessarily square. Notice that a typical GCM doesn’t have the resolution to model a thunderstorm.
The vertical resolution is from about 20 layers to 35 layers. I was once told that I couldn’t model the atmosphere with anything less than 100 layers. That’s more than three times the resolution of the current crop of GCMs.
The time increments vary from about one month to about one hour. Again, most thunderstorms only last about 30 minutes or less (but the buildup may take all day).
Jim
Leif,
Typical of you. You completely avoided my earlier post about the scam promoting activities of AGW promoting scientists. That activist stance being taken by these scientists showed your earlier post about scientists being OK and politicians being the villains in the AGW scam as naive and false. You completely avoided any response to anyone about showing models validated by empirical observations. You completely avoided the meat of what Lawrence Solomon wrote. Read the entire article. Go contest what he wrote about Svensmark’s and Kirkby’s travails with facts if you have the capability. You will not do so as you don’t have a leg to stand on in all these areas. Instead you pick out one line from Lawrence Solomon’s entire post and commented on that. That shows your activity as completely dishonest. it doesn’t matter how many Ph.D’s you have and what experience you have. You are showing yourself to be no better than Mann, Hansen, Schmidt and Co. You are wedded to your models which have not been backed by any empirical evidence and you are actively aiding and abetting dishonest and unethical behaviour.
I’ll take a bet with you. In a few years, when more work is done on the CLOUD project, Svensmark and Kirkby will be proven right as more and more data comes in from their experiments and you’ll be proven wrong. They’ll be shown as true scientists and you and your ilk of unverified modellers will bite the dust. This is just the beginning.
That would be a strong indication that string theory is correct, as it would mean we have passed into a alternate dimension and no longer on “our” Earth. The IPCC is only capable of reviewing actual science, in a parallel world. GK
Why not??
Al Gore got one for narrating a fiction asserting that CO2 controls the climate and we are going to extinguish all life, IF we do not control it! You are merely broadcasting your unreasoned bias against any alternative science. Why should any thinking person give, any heed to your words, from now on?? GK
anna v says:
August 27, 2011 at 9:57 pm
They are very meticulous to be scientifically honest.
Everybody I know is that. You know personally somebody who isn’t? Name them.
Nevertheless they have shown that a recipe for nucleation, necessary for cloud formation, is not a random hypothesis but can be produced in laboratory conditions. Not sufficient, but a first step in building a proof for a hypothesis of cosmic rays influencing cloud formation.
Or disproof, depending on further experiments.
Now what do you mean by “apart from the solar cycle undulations” . I thought that that is part of the hypothesis to be eventually proven: solar cycle undulations of cosmic rays correlate with cloud formation and albedo.
Undulations are the regular solar cycle that makes the cosmic ray flux vary by a few percent in a cyclic manner. That variation sits on top of a unvarying background, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Rays-Hermanus.png Presumably the clouds are influenced as much by the background and by the small waves superposed upon the background, or are you suggesting that the cloud formation is only influenced by the modulated cosmic rays and not by the vastly more numerous background?
And we know that chaotic outputs, though they have oscillations, their frequency may with difficulty be associated with specific cycles in the input contributions.
Yet, Svensmark asserts that there are such ‘specific’ cycles.
On a side line, it is interesting that no albedo paper comes out in a google search that uses more recent data than up to 2008. Considering the importance of the measurements, it smells fishy. No grants? inconvenient truths? to whom?
I’ll ask Enric Palle [who makes these measurements] about the status. His latest data [through 2008] shows an about 1% increase in albedo since 2000.
I have question to someone more addicted to the CERN experiment and it’s results:
I’m not quite sure if that was basically the right way to use pions there.
AFAIK, pions are not identical to original cosmic rays.
Pions are bosons with zero spin, and they are composed of first-generation quarks. They have a mean lifetime of 2.6×10-8 s.
Cosmic rays however, are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space. They may produce secondary particles that penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere and surface.The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation. Most primary cosmic rays (those which impact the atmosphere from deep space) are composed of familiar stable subatomic particles that normally occur on Earth, such as protons, atomic nuclei, or electrons. However, a very small fraction are stable particles of antimatter, such as positrons or antiprotons, and the precise nature of this remaining fraction is an area of active research.
About 89% of cosmic rays are simple protons or hydrogen nuclei, 10% are helium nuclei or alpha particles, and 1% are the nuclei of heavier elements. These nuclei constitute 99% of the cosmic rays. Solitary electrons (much like beta particles, although their ultimate source is unknown) constitute much of the remaining 1%.
The variety of particle energies reflects the wide variety of sources. The origins of these particles range from processes on the Sun (and presumably other stars as well), to as yet unknown physical mechanisms in the farthest reaches of the visible universe. Cosmic rays can have energies of over 1020 eV, far higher than the 1012 to 1013 eV that Terrestrial particle accelerators can produce.
This makes a huge difference to pions used in the CERN experiment.
Could this be a reason for too small nuclei?
John Finn:
Your post at August 27, 2011 at 6:04 pm had said;
“To be totally serious: while it may take a few decades for the ‘equilibrium’ temperature change to be fully realised, a significant decline in [ocean] temperatures will be evident within a few years. We’ve now had low solar activity for ~5 years.”
My post at August 28, 2011 at 12:16 am replied to that by providing data which shows
(a) direct measurements of ocean temperature
and
(b) measurements of sea level rise
both indicate a recent significant decline in ocean temperatures in the last 5 years.
And my post concluded by asking you, “Your point is?”
You have replied at August 28, 2011 at 2:03 am in a post that agrees the data I presented is correct then says;
“Yep – but that happens during La Nina. The link even points out the transition from El Nino to La Nina in 2010 which corresponds to the dip.”
[snip . . please try and keep things civil . . kb]
I would be grateful for a clarification of your answer to my question, please.
Richard
Henry@AnnaV
more fertilizer and waste water with food for the PP ending up in the seas makes perfect sense to me as to why NH seas are showing more PP growth.
petermue says:
August 28, 2011 at 7:18 am
Cosmic rays can have energies of over 10^20 eV, far higher than the 10^12 to 10^13 eV that Terrestrial particle accelerators can produce.
These cosmic rays are EXTREMELY rare [one per year per square kilometer] and make no difference.
John Finn:
Concerning anthropogenic emissions of CO2, at August 28, 2011 at 2:31 am you say,
“In any case, as I said in the earlier post, both atmosphere AND oceans are gaining CO2 … and I keep reading how CO2 is giving us a greener planet so I don’t see how else you can explain the increase.”
I am not surprised you fail to understand the issue. But your ignorance of the subject proves nothing.
The ocean surface layer is probably gaining CO2 but almost all the CO2 in the carbon cycle is in the deep ocean and nobody knows how that has changed. The most likely explanation for the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is the temperature change that preceded it and the lag of ~30 years is to be expected.
For a more full explanation of the subject read
Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005)
Richard
Leif Svalgaard :
August 28, 2011 at 7:17 am
I do not understand why you are so polemic about this to the point of creating the impression to the hoi polloi that you are all for CO2 AGW . True , Svensmark seems to be wallowing in the same morass the whole climatology business wallows, that of presuming correlations is causation and similarity of cycles, a la barycenter “studies”, imply causation.
Nevertheless, the hypothesis that cosmic rays can nucleate components of the high atmosphere and offer the seeds of clouds is an interesting one, and worthy of the study and the expense, so why so up in arms against the jubilation of the skeptics that for once somebody is measuring something and it goes in the direction hypothesized, even though more experiments are necessary to reach a firm conclusion, for or against.
Together with the ocean cycles and a number of other atmospheric oscillations the small percentage changes in the plot you linked can build up the chaotic jigsaw puzzle that is the climate expressed. (I wish Tsonis et al would include this in their chaotic model.) If albedo can be linked to the cosmic ray changes small percentages are enough to roughly explain the temperature anomaly variations , as 2% in albedo are about 2watts/m**2. Of course there is a long way to go, but why not let the children play?
Venter says:
August 28, 2011 at 5:30 am
You are wedded to your models which have not been backed by any empirical evidence
As I have pointed out repeatedly, the models make predictions and those have been failing, so the models have been verified [to fail] by empirical evidence and hence need improvement. This is what science is. Are you arguing against that?
and you are actively aiding and abetting dishonest and unethical behaviour.
It is hard to argue with such rabid belief, so I won’t.
Svensmark and Kirkby will be proven right as more and more data comes in from their experiments and you’ll be proven wrong.
They have already been proven wrong, because the cosmic ray variations the past 60 years do not match the temperature variation, so what more is needed? Another 60 years of no correlation?
This is just the beginning.
Your Faith is strong, I see.
Jim Masterson says:
August 28, 2011 at 5:29 am
The time increments vary from about one month to about one hour.
The latest models have time increments of 5 minutes.
anna v says:
August 28, 2011 at 8:11 am
I do not understand why you are so polemic about this to the point of creating the impression to the hoi polloi that you are all for CO2 AGW .
I have repeatedly stated that AGW in nonsense [in the sense of being a major influence]. People find it convenient to ignore that. What can I say? When people are stating their faith, they become blind.
True , Svensmark seems to be wallowing in the same morass the whole climatology business wallows, that of presuming correlations is causation and similarity of cycles, a la barycenter “studies”, imply causation.
Indeed.
Nevertheless, the hypothesis that cosmic rays can nucleate components of the high atmosphere and offer the seeds of clouds is an interesting one, and worthy of the study and the expense
True, and the experiments may bring new knowledge about formation of clouds. However, the cosmic ray hypothesis has already been falsified [in the sense that it is not a major driver] because the long-term cosmic ray variations do not match the temperature.
so why so up in arms against the jubilation of the skeptics that for once somebody is measuring something and it goes in the direction hypothesized, even though more experiments are necessary to reach a firm conclusion, for or against.
See just above.
but why not let the children play?
They will do that regardless. However, combating AGW with an equally flimsy [and already falsified] hypothesis is not productive, and that needs to be pointed out. The frenzy has already reached religious proportions and reflects badly on the skeptical viewpoint.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2011 at 9:20 am
However, combating AGW with an equally flimsy [and already falsified] hypothesis is not productive, and that needs to be pointed out.
Certainly the hypothesis that cosmic ray cloud formation is the major/only driver of temperature variations cannot be true. But that it may be a component in the build up of the climate variations we have recorded the past one and a half century cannot be excluded without more data.
From the plot in your link that shows 15% variations in cosmic rays during the sun cycles, one could envisage beat build ups in conjunction with PDO, ENSO and the rest of the alphabet soup, in a dynamical chaotic model output. One then would not be able to say which is the major driver, but the effect will be there, and it is necessary to validate the physics of the cosmic ray mechanism, which is being done with this Cloud experiment.
“I have repeatedly stated that AGW in nonsense [in the sense of being a major influence].”
Glad to hear you say that.
“However, the cosmic ray hypothesis has already been falsified [in the sense that it is not a major driver] because the long-term cosmic ray variations do not match the temperature.”
The cosmic ray records don’t go back to the Maunder, or even to the Dalton, except via proxies, which do show correlation. We are about to learn what the response to a couple of low cycles is. I would hope you can keep an open mind on this.
Leif Svalgaard says:
“They have already been proven wrong, because the cosmic ray variations the past 60 years do not match the temperature variation, so what more is needed? Another 60 years of no correlation?”
So what do you think about Spencer’s recend claim that detrended GCR flux matches changes in satellite data of global radiative flux?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/05/indirect-solar-forcing-of-climate-by-galactic-cosmic-rays-an-observational-estimate/
CERN CLOUD has made two video’s with Kirkby & some explanation and animations about the results now publised in nature.
Short 3 minute version http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1370582 (also on youtube)
Bit longer version http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1364842 (after 9 minutes there is an exellent animation about the 3 results found, 1 cr helpes to seed cloudformation both in low and hingclouds. 2 for lowclouds to orm they need help from ammoniamolocules in air 3 cloudformation goes better in nature then the previous known substances can account for, probably there are more catalisators like organic molecules)
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2011 at 8:06 am
petermue says:
August 28, 2011 at 7:18 am
Cosmic rays can have energies of over 10^20 eV, far higher than the 10^12 to 10^13 eV that Terrestrial particle accelerators can produce.
These cosmic rays are EXTREMELY rare [one per year per square kilometer] and make no difference.
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Thanks Leif.
But what about the different compositions between pions as used in CERN and CR as we know them arriving at Earth (protons, alpha particles, electrons)?
Could this have influenced the result of the experiment?