CERN Finds “Significant” Cosmic Ray Cloud Effect
Best known for its studies of the fundamental constituents of matter, the CERN particle-physics laboratory in Geneva is now also being used to study the climate. Researchers in the CLOUD collaboration have released the first results from their experiment designed to mimic conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere. By firing beams of particles from the lab’s Proton Synchrotron accelerator into a gas-filled chamber, they have discovered that cosmic rays could have a role to play in climate by enhancing the production of potentially cloud-seeding aerosols. —Physics World, 24 August 2011
If Henrik Svensmark is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal.–Terry Sloan, BBC News 3 April 2008
Henrik Svensmark welcomes the new results, claiming that they confirm research carried out by his own group, including a study published earlier this year showing how an electron beam enhanced production of clusters inside a cloud chamber. He acknowledges that the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation will not be proved until aerosols that are large enough to act as condensation surfaces are studied in the lab, but believes that his group has already found strong evidence for the link in the form of significant negative correlations between cloud cover and solar storms. Physics World, 24 August 2011
CERN’s CLOUD experiment is designed to study the formation of clouds and the idea that Cosmic Rays may have an influence. The take-home message from this research is that we just don’t understand clouds in anything other than hand-waving terms. We also understand the effects of aerosols even less. The other things to come out of it are that trace constituencies in the atmosphere seem to have a big effect on cloud formation, and that Cosmic rays also have an effect, a “significant” one according to CERN. –David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 25 August 2011
I have asked the CERN colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters. –Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, Welt Online 15 July 2011
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. –-Nigel Calder, 24 August 2011
Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature. Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice. –Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 23 Feb 2007
How is a BBC link from 2008 a reaction to the Cloud experiment that has only just reported?
Louise said:
August 25, 2011 at 11:25 am
> How is a BBC link from 2008 a reaction to the Cloud experiment
> that has only just reported?
It was not a reaction, it was a “preaction” 😉
I thought the response in skepticalscience was illuminating. I do not at all ‘get’ how this very theoretical explanation of GW can be considered better than the very convincing manmade c02 explanation!
James;
missing ‘sarc’ there?
Here’s a dupe of my comment on the Forbes page:
@James Baldwin Hall
You wrote : “very convincing manmade c02 explanation!”
Either this is tongue in cheek, or you really do need to get informed.
Firstly, it is CO2 & not c02. The expression is a chemical formula.
Cabon Di-Oxide, meaning one atom of Carbon joined onto Two
atoms of Oxygen. The expression does not mean “carbon atom #02”,
or whatever your expression might signify.
This is NOT an esoteric debate over some fine points of science,
even though thats how it mean seem to you, if you stumbled on
the raging controversy in these pages. Yes there are debates, and
even arguments on fine points and nuances. There are also claims
of downright fraud and disinformation. Some explanations are pitched
at an easier to understand level.
Please do take the time to watch the two videos…….
The View from Galileo’s Window – the Sun, the CO2 Monster, and Earth’s Climate.
by Solar Physicist, Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard.
and ……
Real Facts about Climate Change
by Prof. R. Lindzen of M.I.T.
They can be found on Video Wall #1
at the website linked to the name “Axel” above.
Please watch those videos and tell your friends.
Thank You 🙂
The lack of positive reaction outside the immediate ‘climosphere’ is puzzling. Normally UK Telegraph, Fox News, and blogs like NRO and EUReferendum would take positive note of such a huge development. Are they participating in the blackout, or have they just missed the significance?
The timing couldn’t be worse……With Hurricane Irene bearing down on New York, you know what will dominate the climate change arena for the next few weeks don’t you? A perfect distraction for the warmists – they’ll stick with the religious hubris whilst the real science (CERN/CLOUD) will be ignored.
What century are we living in??!
For your Scandinavian readers: A Norwegian article / En norsk artikkel:
http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2011/august/296200
As I have commented elsewhere, many commentators seem to have forgotten or just ignored, that these results just announced from CERN are not the end result of the research, but just the initial findings.
CLOUD is a multi year long experiment.
When completed, we will have an unbroken line from the incoming cosmic rays to the rain that is falling mainly on the Spanish plain (and elsewhere as well, for the pedantic).
What happens when the Solar Wind goes limp for too long?
i.e. – does a wall of Cosmic Rays come crashing into Earth?
Polistra said
“The lack of positive reaction outside the immediate ‘climosphere’ is puzzling. Normally UK Telegraph, Fox News, and blogs like NRO and EUReferendum would take positive note of such a huge development. Are they participating in the blackout, or have they just missed the significance?”
I cannot speak for Fox News etc. but neither the Online nor Print editions of today’s UK Telegraph
carry theCERN story. Its walltowall coverage of Libya plus yesterday’s release of the annual national schools examination results. Also it is the start of the Bank Holiday week end. However the 0nline pm edition just might have something
You must remember Prof Mike Lockwood is the one who said a couple of years ago that the quiet Sun would, if significant, show cooling, & it hasn’t happened. He just forgot to look at all four Global temperature metrics which, as Prof Jones testifies to, shows no significanat warming since 1995, & the last 10 years have flatlined pretty much. Besides I look upon it like switching your central heating on because you’re cold, but you don’t get warm straight away, it takes around an hour to reallt start feeling cozy, the Sun does the same trickonly on a rathr bigger scale, & vice-versa! Don’t forget William Herschell & his corn price predictions he was so good at just by counting Sunspots!
I tuned in at the very end of the program “One Planet” on BBC World Service this morning and heard that they had interviewed Prof. Kirkby about CLOUD. I wish I could hear what was said!!
IanM
Alan the Brit,
It was Mike Lockwood that went to the press just prior to a major U.N. meeting and announced the final “nail in the coffin” for solar/climate connections. Remember? Of course it was just coincidence he made that proclamation on that particular day.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jul/11/climatechange.climatechange1
The Royal Society is not political, no not at all……and as we all know when things stopped working out so well for the snow-will-be-a-thing-of-the-past solar deniers, Lockwood had an epiphany and suddenly the sun does affect climate, but only in northern Europe. Yes, we’re so blessed to have such honest, objective and apolitical scientists as Mike Lockwood who never make knee jerk statements.
Enter Nir Shaviv, but remember, only CO2 is qualified to allow for lag effects; the ubiquitous heat “in the pipeline” scientists (Hansen, Trenberth et al) know will come back to haunt us any decade now..
http://landshape.org/enm/using-the-oceans-as-a-calorimeter-to-quantify-the-solar-radiative-forcing-the-background/
No OHC increase in the upper 700m since 2003….well the heat must be sinking to the bottom undetected, or somewhere.
Lack of surface warming for the past decade….blame the Chinese, except that Hansen already proclaimed it was coal that would surely cause the earth to burn up. Anyway, blame something.
No tropical tropospheric “hot spot”……nobody ever said that was a “fingerprint” of AGW, well except for IPCC, Santer 05 and countless others. 400% error in climate models is indicative of erroneous observational data, obviously. But hey, this is climate “science” and unfalsifiable hypotheses are the latest tools available so use them often.
Hydrological modeling……
Ocean currents……
Antarctic warming…
Katrina was a sure signal for AGW overwhelming natural variation and was only the beginning of what surely would be even worse hurricane disasters, just ask Trenberth. Oh and that Chris Landsea? How did such a denier get access to IPCC? When hurricanes didn’t make landfall for over 1000 days, the longest stretch since the 1860’s, that too is confirmation of AGW. But now Irene will most assuredly renew our confidence in the unequivocal truth that man caused it.
Am I missing some? There are so many to keep track of. Isn’t it great though that no matter what happens, it is consistent with AGW?
Jeff Alberts says:
August 25, 2011 at 7:55 am
charles nelson says:
August 25, 2011 at 4:47 am
flows and bows of angel hair
icecream castles in the air
and feathered canyons everywhere…..
I think Joni ‘really’ understood clouds.
I’m more inclined to think it was the acid.
+++++++++++++++
Thanks for being so astute. I had a good laugh. 🙂
The people at CERN do real science, and blog ‘scientists’ interpret it in curious ways. If the tentative results in the study are too difficult to understand, CERN has thoughtfully provided a press briefing that speaks directly to what their results mean regarding climate change.
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/downloads/CLOUD_SI_press-briefing_29JUL11.pdf
“[The paper] actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step.”
— Jasper Kirkby, Lead Author on the CLOUD publication in “Nature”.
Peter Stone:
Your quote from Jasper Kirkby is a good ‘holding action’ but no more than that.
Advocates of the AGW-hypothesis have proclaimed a false certainty about cause of the recent global warming, and the CLOUD experiment demonstrates the falseness of the proclaimed certainty in a manner the public and politicians can understand.
And, importantly, the CLOUD experiment demonstrates that nothing should be done in response to the AGW-scare at least until completion of the series of experiments at CERNE.
The following comments explain the above facts.
The advocates of the AGW-hypothesis have asserted the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ by proclaiming;
“Of course anthropogenic emissions must have caused the recent warming; what else could have caused it?”
The proper answer to that question is,
“Nobody knows the true cause of the recent warming which is probably the same natural cause as previous similar warmings”,
but that answer has always been met with a storm of abuse.
Now the answer can be
“Nobody knows the true cause of the recent warming which is probably the same natural cause as previous similar warmings and is likely to be changes in cloud cover as suggested by Svensmark and supported by empirical evidence”.
Also, advocates of the AGW-hypothesis have proclaimed the laboratory studies which show the radiative properties of greenhouse gases (GHG) as though those properties were evidence that changes to atmospheric CO2 concentration must induce global temperature change.
Now there are laboratory studies which show variations in GCR flux have cloud nucleation effects that are at least as likely to affect global temperature as variations in atmospheric GHG concentrations.
As you suggest, the implications of the CLOUD experiment are yet to be determined. And the completion of the studies at CERNE may prove or disprove the Svensmark Hypothesis.
If the completion of the CERNE studies prove Svensmark is right then the AGW-hypothesis is proved wrong (either in part or in whole) so there is no reason for harmful economic actions based on the AGW-hypothesis. In the interim, the Precautionary Principle says the harmful economic actions should not be adopted unless an until the CERNE studies prove Svensmark is wrong.
Richard
Richard,
I just posted what the lead author said about his own paper: that the paper “actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate”. I got the impression a lot of people jumped to unsubstantiated conclusions that this was a seminal paper that somehow debunked human-induce climate change. Hoping that this will debunk the state of modern climate science is fine, but hope is not part of the scientific method.
Kirby is doing legitimate, peer-reviewed science, and publishing in reputable and prestigious international science journals. So that’s cool; I prefer that to blog science. But Kirby himself says the findings show us nothing about climate, and it will be five to ten years of additional research to further under what – if any – impact aerosols have on nucleation. The IPCC itself recognized that further knowledge about cloud mechanics is needed, but it is widely thought in the climate science community that cosmic radiation, at best, might have marginal and limited influences on climate. Do you suggest we wait five to ten years, hoping that this research debunks human-induced climate change, before we do anything to reduce our carbon footprint and transition to alternative energy sources? I don’t agree with that. Risk management involves considering the weight of evidence, making reasoned judgments of the magnitude of risk based on the weight of evidence, and acting accordingly. Transitioning to alternative energy also has beneficial national security implications.
As for your assertion that climate scientists have stated with absolute certainty that humans are responsible for climate change, your assertion does not comport with the facts. The science organizations of the world have said no such thing. Science is probabilistic; it doesn’t provide 100% bullet proof guarantees. That would be inconsistent with the scientific method. The word’s national science academies, the IPCC, and other reputable science bodies have concluded that the earth is warming, and that it is “very likely” that human activity is the major cause of recent warming.
***********************************************************************************************************
”A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems”. Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.
-Source: U.S. National Academies of Science, 2011
“Science has made enormous progress toward understanding climate change. As a result, there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that Earth is warming. Strong evidence also indicates that recent warming is largely caused by human activities, especially the release of greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels……While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations.”
-Source: U.S. National Academies of Science, 2010
Last week I was asked what the main indicators of recent global warming were showing, so I ggrabbed a few graphs and concluded that not much was warming. Yes, I confess to using a cherry-picked starting date 15 years ago, but then it has not really warmed in that 15 years, has it?
So, here’s an incomplete memory jogger, just material that was recent and easy to access, some from WUWT, thank you, Anthony. It’s for an Australian audience, hence the first few words.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Email%20to%20Tex..docx
bushbunny says:
August 25, 2011 at 4:55 am
Of course the BBC will not promote this important climate influence because it is only CO2 that they have invested a large percentage of their superannuation scheme in carbon credits.
==========================
Is this verifiable, or just speculation?
peter stone:
At August 27, 2011 at 3:56 am you ask me:
“Do you suggest we wait five to ten years, hoping that this research debunks human-induced climate change, before we do anything to reduce our carbon footprint and transition to alternative energy sources?”
Yes, of course I do because I am not stupid.
You admit the AGW-hypothesis is dubious.
There are no available alternative energy sources that could significantly displace fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
Any attempt to “reduce our carbon footprint” would cost $billions with resulting great loss of human life. A wait of five to ten years is nothing when compared to the horrific consequences of the actions which you propose should be implemented now merely in case the AGW-hypothesis tuns out to be right despite everything that says it is wrong; e.g. the missing ‘hot spot’, the ‘missing heat’, the missing ‘committed warming’, etc.
Richard
When Heuer said, “That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate”, he made it clear that he recognises that AGW is a political movement. Was he hinting that he, like so many scientists, wants it revealed for the scam it is? He should stand firm, raise his middle digit to those who pressured him, and let the CLOUD scientists speak their mind.
Lots of news articles on this experiment. Here’s another:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/25/cern_cloud_cosmic_ray_first_results
“You admit the AGW-hypothesis is dubious.”
The statements issued by the U.S. National Academies of Science accurately reflect what I think the state of modern climate science is. I trust them to weigh scientific evidence more than I trust blog scientists.
While you have asserted that the global climate science community has jumped to unsubstantiated and unsupported dubious claims, that is exactly what I’ve seen posters do on this website regarding the CLOUD paper. They’ve treated it as some sort of seminal paper debunking human induced climate change. When in fact, the lead author of the paper and the CLOUD press release made it a point to state this paper says nothing about a linkage between cosmic rays and climate.
CLOUD press release:
“This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate. However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed.”
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/downloads/CLOUD_SI_press-briefing_29JUL11.pdf
You may continue to hope that research debunks human induced climate change. That’s fine. I remember that Climate Gate was supposed to prove that there was a vast global conspiracy of lying scientists who faked data. Personally, I don’t put much weight on hope, I generally defer to experts and prestigious science organizations in the field. Blog science and Blog opinion is not something I put a lot of weight in.