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 2011Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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Leif Svalgaard says:
August 24, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Paul Linsay says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:21 pm
“originally developed in 1911 for “studying cloud formation and optical phenomena in moist air”.
Leif: “And the CERN result is no more than a repeat of that.”
Oh, they had a particle accelerator in 1911 then?
Northern California Bureaucrat says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:41 am
“With apologies to Mr. Spock…
Only human arrogance would assume the warming must be caused by man.”
———————————————
THIS is arrogant:
“The review would include a consideration of the long-term goal to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.”
From the press release after Copenhagen.
http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/pr_cop15_20091219.pdf
I remembered hearing this statement and couldn’t believe that the “world leaders” agreed to control the rise in Earths temperature. This is what the “Climate Scientists” have done to our leadership, filling their heads with the idea that we can pass laws that will control the exact temperature of the Earth; and all without Bush’s weather machine that steered Katrina over New Orleans.
Slacko says:
August 29, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Oh, they had a particle accelerator in 1911 then?
Cosmic rays provide high energy particles for free. Originally the decay of strongly radioactive elements was studied with this [alpha and beta rays]. No need for an ‘Oh’, just listen and learn.
Slacko,
I don’t think Leif has ever said the method was the same. He’s simply saying the result isn’t really different. Calm down. We all know they didn’t have the same equipment.
SethP.
“This is what the “Climate Scientists” have done to our leadership, filling their heads with the idea that we can pass laws that will control the exact temperature of the Earth; and all without Bush’s weather machine that steered Katrina over New Orleans.”
Why do you want to blame scientists for politicians being politicians? I’d assume you think guns kill people as well? See what I did there? I took your comments, pigeonholed you and turned them against you. It’s not fun to have someone pick at you is it?
KyleS. says:
August 29, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Why do you want to blame scientists for politicians being politicians? I’d assume you think guns kill people as well? See what I did there? I took your comments, pigeonholed you and turned them against you. It’s not fun to have someone pick at you is it?
———————————————————–
I did not say scientists. I said “Climate scientists” and the quotes were for a reason. The major players are indeed advocates that these politicians regularly cite and use for policy formation. Politicians alone don’t come up with these reports.
I’m just showing the absurdity of the claim that we can agree to control the earths temperature within a couple of degrees.
It’s all fun in these blogs because here at least people are making an effort to get as much information as they can on the issue. Out in the wild the vast majority of people become hysterical and think if you want to discuss it you must also want to be able to pollute as much as you want. They don’t get that by discussing the AGW issue, you are not advocating returning to the 70’s where you could dump whatever you wanted in the river.
I don’t know why you have to “pigeonhole” me but I don’t mind because I remain largely ignorant on all the facets of climate an learn more every day. I also learn that things I always took for granted that were understood (cloud formation) I now know are a little more complicated than people assume.
I don’t think guns kill people, but I do know people will try to convince you to pull the trigger sometimes.
And it’s also not fun when my taxes are raised.
myrrh
to quote from the link that you gave with that ‘study”
The basic physics for the present study is rooted in the high precision measurements documenting the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as fully described in the IPCC AR4 report, and in the comprehensive HITRAN database (Rothman et al. 2009) of atmospheric absorption data. The radiative transfer calculations involve well-understood physics that is applied to the global energy balance of the Earth, which is maintained by radiative processes only, since the global net energy transports must equal zero. This demonstrates the nature of the terrestrial greenhouse effect as being sustained by the non-condensing GHGs, with magnification of the greenhouse effect by water vapor and cloud feedbacks, and leaves no doubt that increasing GHGs cause global warming.
Henry@myrrh
“the science is settled”
you believe that?
If people don’t even understand the principle of the GHG effect, how can the science be settled?
try reading my blog, and let me know if you have any questions
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Myrrh says:
August 29, 2011 at 8:39 pm
“Re CO2 is the thermostat” – how exactly? I’m no clearer on it after reading this: CO2: The Thermostat that Controls Earth’s Temperature
By Andrew Lacis — October 2010 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/lacis_01/
I can understand, within my limitations, that the Cern experiment shows a connection to clouds, but how does CO2 regulate clouds?
And how by being in drier higher colder regions without clouds?
The Lacis article isn’t very clear but my understanding of the situation is as follows.
As CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere the average height at which energy is emitted to space increases. That is, more energy is absorbed by CO2 in the higher, drier and colder regions of the atmosphere and is then emitted from those regions.
Now we get to the key point which is this:
Because more CO2 means more energy is emitted from colder layers of the atmosphere – the rate of emission drops. This is a consequence of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, i.e. E = sigma x T^4 (energy is a function of temperature).
Now we have an imbalance where the earth is receiving more incoming energy from the sun than it is losing outgoing LW energy from the surface and atmosphere. This will cause the surface and lower atmosphere to warm (until incoming/outgoing equilibrium is reached).
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and it’s suggested, therefore, that CO2 in the upper troposphere, in particular, acts as sort of control knob for H2O. Turn up the knob – the amosphere warms – and there is a feedback effect as water vapour concentration increases.
John Finn:
You made an assertion that was false. I pointed out it is false. You changed the subject.
At August 29, 2011 at 4:07 pm you again try to claim you said other than you did.
Write whatever you want. Your behaviour is clear to all.
Richard
HenryP says:
August 29, 2011 at 11:38 pm
myrrh
to quote from the link that you gave with that ‘study”
The basic physics for the present study is rooted in the high precision measurements documenting the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as fully described in the IPCC AR4 report, and in the comprehensive HITRAN database (Rothman et al. 2009) of atmospheric absorption data. The radiative transfer calculations involve well-understood physics that is applied to the global energy balance of the Earth, which is maintained by radiative processes only, since the global net energy transports must equal zero. This demonstrates the nature of the terrestrial greenhouse effect as being sustained by the non-condensing GHGs, with magnification of the greenhouse effect by water vapor and cloud feedbacks, and leaves no doubt that increasing GHGs cause global warming.
Henry@myrrh
“the science is settled”
you believe that?
If people don’t even understand the principle of the GHG effect, how can the science be settled?
try reading my blog, and let me know if you have any questions
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Henry, thank you for your blog link, I’ve quickly read that page and will return to it later today. I’ve already spent quite some time looking at various aspects of the claim so I’m under no illusion that it has any basis in our reality. Not being a scientist or with a ready ability to use the maths language, I’ve had to go back to basic concepts and I’ve noticed a concerted effort on the part of unknowns, which I’ve called AGWScience Fiction Inc., to change these basics by manipulating properties and processes; the shift of emphasis, the law taken out of context, the giving of properties of one thing to another, and as in that extract, the simple expedient of taking out properties and processes altogether – such as the role of water vapour taking away the heat generated by the Sun, claiming it’s only role is in ‘warming’ and then making a totally erroneous claim that without the water vapour the Earth would be much colder, when it’s established that without water vapour taking away the heat to higher altitudes or colder regions where it condenses out, the Earth would be 67°C. Think deserts. And in emphasis that carbon dioxide is a non-condensing gas missing out that water and carbon dioxide have such a strong affinity for each other that all ‘pure’ rain is carbonic acid..
So it’s the particular mechanism of the claim that carbon dioxide is a thermostat that has intrigued me here. A thermostat stops and starts a process, turning on heat to compensate for falling temperature and turning off heat when a particular temperature is reached.
John Finn says:
August 30, 2011 at 1:14 am
Myrrh says:
August 29, 2011 at 8:39 pm
“Re CO2 is the thermostat” – how exactly? I’m no clearer on it after reading this: CO2: The Thermostat that Controls Earth’s Temperature
By Andrew Lacis — October 2010 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/lacis_01/
I can understand, within my limitations, that the Cern experiment shows a connection to clouds, but how does CO2 regulate clouds?
And how by being in drier higher colder regions without clouds?
The Lacis article isn’t very clear but my understanding of the situation is as follows.
As CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere the average height at which energy is emitted to space increases. That is, more energy is absorbed by CO2 in the higher, drier and colder regions of the atmosphere and is then emitted from those regions.
Carbon dioxide’s heat capacity is even less than that of oxygen and nitrogen, it releases whatever heat it gets the practically the same instant it gets it, what heat is it getting at higher colder drier regions? Heat rises, won’t whatever heat it gets just dissipate into these higher colder regions which remaining colder are apparently not affected by whatever its contribution is at these heights?
Now we get to the key point which is this:
Because more CO2 means more energy is emitted from colder layers of the atmosphere – the rate of emission drops. This is a consequence of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, i.e. E = sigma x T^4 (energy is a function of temperature).
Now we have an imbalance where the earth is receiving more incoming energy from the sun than it is losing outgoing LW energy from the surface and atmosphere. This will cause the surface and lower atmosphere to warm (until incoming/outgoing equilibrium is reached).
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and it’s suggested, therefore, that CO2 in the upper troposphere, in particular, acts as sort of control knob for H2O. Turn up the knob – the amosphere warms – and there is a feedback effect as water vapour concentration increases.
Nope, still don’t understand it. How is the CO2 the control knob when you’ve just said the Sun is? It’s the Sun heating the surface which speeds up evaporation which rises taking away the heat, the water water cycle already deals with this ‘imbalance’. How can the CO2 in the colder drier heights affect the water vapour concentration when water is below this, and anyway, given enough stuff to cling to will be condensing out into cold rain or ice, so cooling the Earth?
“Overreliance on expert judgment motivates shortcuts in reasoning and hidden biases” — Dr. Judith Curry
John Finn says:
August 30, 2011 at 1:14 am
“– and there is a feedback effect as water vapour concentration increases.”
And there is the nut of it. If the feedback is in fact negative the whole house of cards falls. But we have that man behind the curtain pulling levers and making fearsome sounds. The Wizard of Oz.
Thanks from me too Leif, for not letting that confirmation bias creep in. Did the sit back and watch this go by thing. Glad I did..
Why the hemispheric preference for cosmic rays on earth?
Could it be they have found two different wind streams coming at the heliosphere nose. Fritsch et al and Linsky & Readfield and also Melott et al are suggesting the same. The latter group involved in spiral arm rotation and transits.
This might muk up the interstellar fields and gases in the very local interstellar neighborhood vincinity, causing a hemispheric anomally here on Earth, with respect to cosmic rays distribution..
One of the Voyagers in the Northern hemispheric nose is still able to detect cosmic rays? The Southern hemispheric Voyager cannot? Or was that something else?
New f. Bl Lab in training just like the old one. Never had two so much alike before..lucky me..
Theo Goodwin said:
I knew it was a lie! They fly space probes to distant planets and park them in orbit by human-manipulated remote control! Because no model could predict the orbital dynamics, trajectory, lift-off window and fuel consumption required to automate the process in any way….
But seriously, models are used all the time to make predictions, and those predictions become applications – think engineering. They are never 100% correct all the time (neither is satellite navigation programming), but they don’t have to be to be useful.
How many cosmic ray detectors are there in about the area of the South Atlantic Anomaly? Always more questions than answers.. Where Earth’s magnetic fields are weakest, are there more points of entry?
Henry@myrrh
What can I say. Been there. Done that. I know exactly where you are. Bewildered. Could not figure out that the professors did not even know how the warming and cooling of a gas works. I looked at everything. In the end I decided that I would only trust my own measurements and observations.
My conclusion: There is some warming that was natural (more sunshine and/or less clouds) but that has now come to an end and it is beginning to cool naturally.
There is some additional warming that is coming from extra vegetation which in turn is coming from the introduction of man who wanted that and them bringing more carbon dioxide in the air which acts as a fertilizer and accelerator for more vegetation growth on earth.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
now, what shall we do? I suggest you have beer or raise your glass of wine and drink on H2O and CO2
becxause without the water and the carbon dioxide it would not be there….
I was taught that if you say anything bad about your father (water) and your mother (carbon dioxide) you are being an idiot, because the question might arise then,
who are you?
Carla says:
August 30, 2011 at 6:54 am
Why the hemispheric preference for cosmic rays on earth?
There isn’t.
Carla says:
August 30, 2011 at 6:57 am
How many cosmic ray detectors are there in about the area of the South Atlantic Anomaly?
A very nice one called Hermanus.
The “Gore Lemmings” are crying very acidi tears right now…..
Myrrh says:
August 30, 2011 at 5:06 am
Nope, still don’t understand it. How is the CO2 the control knob when you’ve just said the Sun is?
I never said the sun was the control knob. I’ll try once more
The earth is heated by energy from the sun. The surface warms and emits energy towards space. If incoming energy = outgoing energy then we have a stable climate, i.e temperature stays roughly constant.
It is the outgoing energy at the TOA (Top of the Atmosphere ) which is key.
If CO2 is added to the atmosphere the average height at which energy is emitted to space (at TOA) is reduced – because it is emitting from a COLDER region. Hence Incoming energy > Outgoing energy, i.e. there is an imbalance which results in warming.
It’s the Sun heating the surface which speeds up evaporation which rises taking away the heat, the water water cycle already deals with this ‘imbalance’.
No – evaporation (and convection) only transports energy to a higher level. It is only by radiation that energy is emitted from the climate system.
How can the CO2 in the colder drier heights affect the water vapour concentration when water is below this,
CO2 (and ther ghgs) radiate both UP and DOWN.
and anyway, given enough stuff to cling to will be condensing out into cold rain or ice, so cooling the Earth?
Earth’s climate system includes surface and troposphere. Heat is not lost from the system but is distributed across layers of the atmosphere by radiation exchange.
The important concepts you need to grasp are (1) it is only by radiation that the ‘climate system’ cools (2) With no CO2 there would be consideraby less water vapour int he atmosphere.
Further Reading: Have a look at Jack Barrett’s web-site. Jack, a sceptic and long-time scientist, has been arguing against the IPCC’s extreme scenarios since the early 1990s, but he does recognise that the basic ghg theory is sound. This is from http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page19.htm
Note it concurs with much of what I’ve been saying.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 30, 2011 at 2:05 am
John Finn:
You made an assertion that was false. I pointed out it is false. You changed the subject.
You provided 2 links which supposedly supported your argument. Neither did. I didn’t change the subject. I have consistently maintained that your links didn’t show what you intended.
At August 29, 2011 at 4:07 pm you again try to claim you said other than you did.
See above.
Write whatever you want. Your behaviour is clear to all.
It ‘s not me that keeps being brought to order by moderators – not just on WUWT either.
John Finn,
(my emphasis)
I think you meant to say “increased.” Jack Barrett gets it right.
barry says:
August 30, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Barry
You are right I’ve written it incorrectly. I meant to say that the “intensity of energy emitted is reduced”. Because energy is emitted from a higher region – it’s emitted from a colder region so the energy intensity drops by S-B Law, i.e.
E = sigma x T^4
This means more energy is incoming than outgoing so the surface and lower atmosphere will warm. As Barrett says
John Finn says:
August 30, 2011 at 12:42 pm
CO2 (and ther ghgs) radiate both UP and DOWN.
Down?
How can something radiate from cold to warm?
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 27, 2011 at 9:11 am
“If such quantification had been made, it could have been incorporated into models, but would then run up against the fact that the cosmic ray activity has not shown any significant trend the past 60 years.”
If a trend is what you expect to see in cosmic ray activity, then it’s probably no surprise you don’t find it. The trend will be manifest in the effect, not necessarily in the cause. Surely you are not ignorant of the concept of hysteresis, yet you’ve made the same errant statement more than once in this thread.
And if Svensmark had produced the quantification you speak of, it would have been suppressed and ridiculed by the AGWa Team. Even as it was, funding was severely delayed — as has been noted earlier in this thread, not to mention Calder’s account. So you have little reason to imagine that such quantification would likely have been incorporated into any of the models that were tailored to back the demonisation of carbon.
Slacko says:
August 31, 2011 at 11:35 am
If a trend is what you expect to see in cosmic ray activity, then it’s probably no surprise you don’t find it. The trend will be manifest in the effect, not necessarily in the cause. Surely you are not ignorant of the concept of hysteresis, yet you’ve made the same errant statement more than once in this thread.
Apart from from nonsensical statement about the effect, but not in the cause, Svensmark does not operate with any hysteresis.
So you have little reason to imagine that such quantification would likely have been incorporated into any of the models that were tailored to back the demonisation of carbon.
I have all the reason in the world to believe it would, as the regular change in TSI [solar activity] is already incorporated. You have no valid reason to believe that the models were tailored to anything.
KyleS. says:
August 29, 2011 at 10:24 pm
“Slacko, I don’t think Leif has ever said the method was the same. He’s simply saying the result isn’t really different.”
Thanks, I see now that he did use the word “result.” That went right by me as I was reminded of Nigel Calder’s story about the warmists who said “No particle accelerator? That won’t do! Wait for CLOUD.”