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
Peter Stone says:
“I trust them to weigh scientific evidence more than I trust blog scientists.”
Well then, you have a very naive view of how money and organizations interact.
And:
“I remember that Climate Gate was supposed to prove that there was a vast global conspiracy of lying scientists who faked data.”
Verbatim quote from the “Harry_read_me” file that was leaked along with the Climategate emails:
That is proof of a global conspiracy of lying scientists, who completely fabricated thirteen years of non-existent temperature data in order to further their agenda. More evidence of your credulous naiveté. Really, cultivate a little skepticism. They lie for money. Are you surprised?
peter stone:
I am assuming you have a brain and are capable of using it. On that assumption, I ask you to try to think instead of trusting those whom you choose to accept as authorities.
You said you wanted “transition to alternative energy sources”. Since you claim to be ignorant of the effects of what you suggest, I will spell it out for you.
The use of fossil fuels has done more to benefit human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture.
Most of us would not be here if it were not for the use of fossil fuels because all human activity is enabled by energy supply and limited by material science.
Energy supply enables the growing of crops, the making of tools and their use to mine for minerals, and to build, and to provide goods, and to provide services.
Material Science limits what can be done with the energy. A steel plough share is better than a wooden one. Ability to etch silica permits the making of acceptably reliable computers. And so on.
People die without energy and the ability to use it. They die because they lack food, or housing, or clothing to protect from the elements, or heating to survive cold, or cooling to survive heat, or medical provisions, or transport to move goods and services from where they are produced to where they are needed.
And people who lack energy are poor so they die from pollution, too.
For example, traffic pollution has been dramatically reduced by adoption of fossil fuels. On average each day in 1855 more than 50 tons of horse excrement was removed from only one street, Oxford Street in London. The mess, smell, insects and disease were awful everywhere. By 1900 every ceiling of every room in Britain had sticky paper hanging from it to catch the flies. Old buildings still have scrapers by their doors to remove some of the pollution from shoes before entering
Affluence reduces pollution. Rich people can afford sewers, toilets, clean drinking water and clean air. Poor people have more important things they must spend all they have to get. So, people with wealth can afford to reduce pollution but others cannot. Pollution in North America and Europe was greater in 1900 than in 2000 despite much larger populations in 2000. And the pollution now experienced every day by billions who do not have the wealth of Americans and Europeans includes cooking in a mud hut using wood and dung as fuel when they cannot afford a chimney.
The use of fossil fuels has provided that affluence for the developed world. The developing world needs the affluence provided by the development which is only possible at present by using fossil fuels.
We gained our wealth and our population by means of that use.
The energy supply increased immensely when the greater energy intensity in fossil fuels became available by use of the steam engine. Animal power, wind power and solar power were abandoned because the laws of physics do not allow them to provide as much energy as can be easily obtained from using fossil fuels.
The greater energy supply enabled more people to live and the human population exploded. Our population has now reached about 6.6 billion and it is still rising. All estimates are that the human population will peak at about 9 billion people near the middle of this century.
That additional more than 2 billion people in the next few decades needs additional energy supply to survive. The only methods to provide that additional energy supply at present are nuclear power and fossil fuels. And the use of nuclear power is limited because some activities are difficult to achieve by getting energy from the end of a wire.
If you doubt this then ask a farmer what his production would be if he had to replace his tractor with a horse or a Sinclair C5.
So, holding the use of fossil fuels at its present level would kill at least 2 billion people, mostly children. And reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions, possibly billions.
That is not an opinion. It is not a prediction. It is not a projection. It is a certain and undeniable fact. Holding the use of fossil fuels at their present levels would kill billions of people, mostly children. Reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions or billions.
Improving energy efficiency will not solve that because it has been known since the nineteenth century that improved energy efficiency increases energy use: as many subsequent studies have confirmed.
Climate has always changed everywhere and always will: this has been known since the Bronze Age when it was pointed out to Pharaoh by Joseph (the one with the Technicolour Dreamcoat). Joseph told Pharaoh to prepare for the bad times when in the good times, and all sensible governments have adopted that policy throughout the thousands of years since then.
That tried and tested policy is sensible because people merely complain at taxes in the good times, but they will revolt if they are short of food in the bad times.
But you want to move from the tried and tested climate policy that has stood the test of time since the Bronze Age, and to replace it with quasi-religious political madness which – if not stopped – will pale into insignificance the combined activities of Ghengis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot.
Not only that, you say you are unwilling to wait “five or ten years” to see if your quasi-religious political madness has any validity.
Shame on you.
Richard
Wait five years and see if anyone dares to cite their opinions as trustworthy about anything.
“Wait five years and see if anyone dares to cite their opinions as trustworthy about anythingion.”
Speculation and guesswork doesn’t cut it. Which is one reason blog opinion and blog science doesn’t carry much weight with me. I trust the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and National Research Council to reach reasoned conclusions, based on multiple lines of evidence, and taking into account the weight of evidence.
I’ve been hearing for many years that the established scientific consensus on climate change is on the verge of being debunked. Wasn’t there a lot of breathless speculation, and premature celebration on this website that the “Climategate” was going to show once an for all that Climate science was corrupted by a vast global cabal of lying scientists who fake data and perpetrated a hoax on the world?
Jaspar Kirby is certainly doing reputable science, and is publishing in prestigious peer reviewed science journals. I don’t think anyone on this comment threat is publishing reputable science, although providing opinion and speculation can be fun…and sometimes hilarious.
But Jaspar Kirby himself, and the CLOUD News Release both warned against jumping the shark..they went to pains to state the research hasn’t shown anything about climate, its just a first step. I think their research could be valuable in aerosol research, and to what extent – if any – cosmic radiation plays in cloud formation. Some of the aerosals might be of anthropogenic origin, we’ll just have to wait and see.
As for speculation that this research debunks the state of climate science or cosmic radiation can be cited as a major force driving climate either in the present or in the geologic past, there is no evidence to support that. And this topic has been studied by many people other than Jaspar Kirby. Much remains to be learned about climate, and cloud mechanics in particular. But while much remains to be learned, the basic and core understandings of recent climate change are pretty well established.
Don’t take my word for it:
***************************************************************************************
“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
Seeing as there has been little trend of any kind in cosmic ray fluctuations for the last few decades (recent times), it would be false to purport that cosmic rays have been influencing climate recently.
Cosmic rays may have some influence on climate – whether or not, and to what magnitude is yet to be determined – but they can’t be responsible for global warming for the last few decades, unless they somehow magically force changes by maintaining a stable flux.
Yes, it has.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995/trend
At the time of the Jones quote the trend was likewise positive, but it failed statistical significance tests, which is what Jones was talking about. I’ve plotted above with the CRU data Jones was basing his comments on. The trend from 1995 is now statistically significant and still positive (warming).
We expect warming from CO2 emissions. That’s just physics. At the very most, the CERN experiments may demonstrate a climatic role for galactic cosmic rays, but it’s not going to change mainstream understanding of anthropogenic greenhouse warming from industrial emission much. For example, if you ‘cherry pick’ since 1995, then there has been an upward trend in GCR, the opposite of what we should be seeing if GCR is responsible for global warming. Beware of wishful thinking.
barry,
You’re cherry-picking. Look at the temperature rise following the LIA: click
You’re only fooling yourself – the hallmark of the climate alarmist crowd. There is no recent rapid warming.
Smokey, that has nothing to do with the discussion. The LIA was cooler than today, as we know. We’re talking about attribution of temperature rises in the last few decades when there was no trend in galactic cosmic ray flux. Wherever possible, I always try to constrain data to satellite period measurements, particularly at skeptical websites, because skeptics appear to consider satellite-derived measurements more reliable than anything else. 30 years is not a cherry-pick, but a constraint imposed by using satellite data. GCRs may well influence climate, but the globe has warmed in the last 30 years with no significant change in GCR flux. It is illogical, then, to posit CERN’s tentative results are going to “overturn” AGW. Such overconfidence is merely wishful thinking.
Barry;
At August 27, 2011 at 8:34 pm you assert;
“Seeing as there has been little trend of any kind in cosmic ray fluctuations for the last few decades (recent times), it would be false to purport that cosmic rays have been influencing climate recently.
Cosmic rays may have some influence on climate – whether or not, and to what magnitude is yet to be determined – but they can’t be responsible for global warming for the last few decades, unless they somehow magically force changes by maintaining a stable flux.”
You are plain wrong on both counts.
In the reality we have this.
Cini Castagnoli, G.; Cane, D.; Taricco, C.; Bhandari, N. ‘GCR flux reconstruction during the last three centuries validated by the Ti-44 in meteorites and Be-10 in ice’, EGS – AGU – EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 – 11 April 2003, abstract #5271
It can be read at
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA…..5271C
And it says;
“In a previous work we deduced that during prolonged minima of solar activity since 1700 the galactic cosmic rays (GCR) flux was much higher (˜2 times) respect to what we can infer from GCR modulation deduced solely by the Sunspot Number series. This flux was higher respect to what we observe in the last decades by Neutron Monitor or balloon and spacecraft-borne detectors and confirmed by the three fresh-fall meteorites that we have measured during solar cycle 22. Recently we have deduced the GCR annual mean spectra for the last 300 years, starting from the open solar magnetic flux proposed by Solanki et al.. Utilizing the GCR flux we have calculated the 44Ti (T1/2 = 59.2 y) activity in meteorites taking into account the cross sections for its production from the main target element Fe and Ni. We compare the calculated activity with our measurements of the cosmogenic 44Ti in different chondrites fell in the period 1810-1997. The results are in close agreement both in phase and amplitude. The same procedure has been adopted for calculating the production rate of 10Be in atmosphere. Normalizing to the concentration in ice in the solar cycles 20 and 21 we obtain a good agreement with the 10Be profile in Dye3 core. These results demonstrate that our inference of the GCR flux in the past 300 years is reliable.”
In other words, a variety of methods all show GCR activity fell in the period 1810-1997 and by about double the change indicated by sunspot number.
As for “the last few decades (recent times)”, there has been no statistically discernible global warming for ~15 years and global temperature has probably fallen over the last decade.
And clouds reflect solar heat. A mere 2% increase to cloud cover would more than compensate for the maximum possible predicted warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air. Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid 1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. (The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq metre).
Reality just refuses to obey what ‘warmists’ assert.
We now have this reality about GCRs and about clouds, and we already had
missing ‘hot spot’,
‘missing heat’,
missing ‘committed warming’,
steady rise in atmospheric CO2 but a halt to global warming since ~1995.
All this reality is ignored and/or excused by ‘warmers’ who seem to want to believe
The World Is Coming To An End.
Richard
re: BBC’s Lockwood quote/comment & Pete in Cumbria UK says: August 25, 2011 at 6:27 am
For anyone interested, here’s Svensmark & Friis-Christensen’s 2007 reply (it’s short easy reading) to the Lockwood & Frohlich paper which claimed that the link between solar activity and climate came to an end about 20 years ago… It’s well worth taking a look at – and it compares the cosmic ray changes from the 1950’s to 2005 to trophosperic and ocean temperature anomalies. It also includes a graph of cosmic rays vs. trophosperic temp. anomaly after removal of El Nino, volcanic aerosols, North Atlantic Oscillation, and a lineral trend of 0.14K/decade which results in a pretty darned close match. No idea if my attempt to copy and format a little table that’s included in the paper will work, but I’ll give it a shot (just to be kind & whet the appetite for those too lazy to click thru the link -grin-).
………………………..1960-1975……1975-1990……since 1990
CR (%)/decade…-1.44 ± 0.78…..3.80 ± 1.92…..-0.48 ± 0.75
Tropos. (K/dec.)..-0.13 ± 0.03…..0.32 ± 0.05……0.13 ± 0.02
Ocean (K/dec.)…-0.07 ± 0.02……0.05 ± 0.03….-0.10 ± 0.02
Table 1. The accompanying Table shows the variation in
trends for the three periods 1960-1975 1975-1990, and since
1990. The trends in ocean temperatures changed sign to
match the variations in solar activity. For the troposphere
the temperature trend changed sign in 1975, and since 1990
its magnitude has been greatly reduced. Note the cosmic ray
variation (CR) has been inverted.
I’ve no idea if Lockwood/Frohlich responded to the respose or not. Anyhow, here’s the link:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:3tD8s9aBewMJ:icecap.us/images/uploads/SvensmarkPaper.pdf+Influence+of+Solar+Activity+On+Tropospheric+Temperatures+Svensmark+2002&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgl0fzr-9aY88uxxRqfWiXwv2yuPmFP7e_Xa3TJzUn_yqNm7RqQ6ERkbADa1Uc9BFdaEKQLeb585woFR6e8OrpZjD-hRWx4SKONJI0xyhq6x1JcqWhRytl0w-THGlQT-f9au10O&sig=AHIEtbST_pvs9OD-MSNTOQOtFSEzo8mngQ
Magnus says:
August 25, 2011 at 7:34 pm
For your Scandinavian readers: A Norwegian article / En norsk artikkel:
http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2011/august/296200
Den er bra, men desverre vil man ikke finne noe om det fra NRK, yr.no eller andre. Jeg har funnet at Norge er en av de mest fordomsfull land i verden når det gjelder til globaloppvarming myten. Det er så mye propaganda og feil informasjon om klimaet.
Patrick
Richard Courtney.
According to UAH satellite temperature record, the globe has warmed by 0.13C per decade since 1995.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1995/plot/uah/from:1995/trend
Phil Jones’ comment is out of date, BTW. From a few months ago, the HadCRU temperature trend since 1995 is statistically significant. And it’s positive.
The study you cited doesn’t go beyond 1997. You seem interested, like Smokey, on referring to a completely different time period (last few centuries instead of last few decades). But we don’t need to reach into the dim dark proxy record when we have much more accurate satellite information. GCR starts anti-correlating with global temps in the 90s – GCR lags temps in the early 90s – and from ~1994, GCRs increase – which should bring global cooling. Global temps rise instead. For the last 30 years, there has been little trend in GCR flux while global temps have risen.
References:
Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature, Lockwood &, Frohlich 2007
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/lockwood2007.pdf
Cosmic Rays and Global Warming, Sloan &.Wolfendale 2007
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0706/0706.4294v1.pdf
And,
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Laut2003.pdf
Following is a study examining trends in cloud formation and GCR. They conclude:
Cosmic rays, cloud condensation nuclei and clouds – a reassessment using MODIS data,
Kristjansson et al 2008
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/7373/2008/acp-8-7373-2008.pdf
None of these papers discount the possibility that GCR has an influence on climate, but they all suggest that GCR has not driven recent warming.
I am a skeptic. To me these papers do not represent ‘nails in the coffin’ to the GCR theory of climate change. They are tentative conclusions, all suggesting more work needs to be done to determine what role, if any, GCR plays in cloud formation and climate.
Unfortunately, true skepticism is as rare as hen’s teeth in the climate blogosphere, and particularly so amongst critics. CERN’s recent results are indeterminate WRT GCR and climate. CERN makes this very clear in the study, in the press briefing… but there appear to be people with some kind of axe to grind that ignore these clear statements and contrive a false conclusion.
Regarding your reference: it has never been cited in the literature. How did you come across it? I’m curious.
barry,
You say skeptics limit themselves to the satellite record. I am a skeptic, and I provided a chart going back to the early 1800’s. As I pointed out, you’re cherry-picking.
Also, I never mentioned the CLOUD experiment. I simply commented: “Look at the temperature rise since the LIA.” The chart I posted shows that there has been no unusual warming, therefore the default position must be that “carbon” has had little to no effect on temperatures.
The CLOUD experiment failed to falsify Svensmark’s hypothesis. Some folks have a problem with that, because it ruins their narrative.
Finally, anyone who says “the GCR theory of climate change” doesn’t understand the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. There is no “theory” of climate change, GCR or otherwise.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 27, 2011 at 11:11 am
Bullseye!
This should belong to common sense …
Peter Stone;
I am a “skeptic”, but definitely not the way “believers” think! (For some reason they have problems to understand this …)
What I really am skeptical about, is the effect of the man-made impact on climate. Regarding the impact of carbon dioxide, a few percent of some parts of a million, is of course an enormous amount … Not! Especially when it is surpassed by the water molecule, both in effect and volume. The latter has in practice been regarded as harmless … (For example, IPCC: cloud formation is too complicated to include in a computer model, so we can ignore this … Yep, they did …! Exclusion of obvious facts in an analysis is No No! Eq. cherry-picking. Knowledge of secondary school level!)
The reference value of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels measured at one (active) volcano (Mauna Loa)? Someone must be joking! All volcanoes regardless of their status (active, dormant or “dead”) are emitting carbon dioxide. Due to “measuring contamination” it gives at best an indication of when the volcano explodes … Has anyone compared this with other emitted gases at the same location? Sulfur dioxide, etc.? (Knowledge of secondary school level!)
—–
Climate change is real and has always been so, since the climate occurred 3-3.5 billion years ago. (This is why a 30-year period should be considered as cherry-picking!) Ice cores from Vostok show that climate is cyclical and therefore repetitive. It also shows that we are in a phase where we have a natural increase of temperature. The lag of about 800 years of the level of carbon dioxide relative temperature change, is not to forget … All this is often ignored …
—–
Trust for authority? EPA stated (against common sense) that carbon dioxide is dangerous … (Where do you think most of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from …?) Confused it with carbon monoxide? What’s next …? (Knowledge at primary school level!)
“Science hock Made Enormous Progress towards 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. …”
All roads lead to Rome! Oops sorry, my mistake! Correction: to CRU’s manipulated data …
—–
About satellites, one have to realize what they actually measures, before comparing with the temperatures measured at the (often artificially heated) locations at ground level (like airports and urban locations) … (Knowledge of secondary school level!)
Correction to my post August 28, 2011 at 1:46 pm.
The things I mentioned about volcanoes, is not knowledge at secondary school level!
Correct is primary school level … (Sorry!)
barry:
I am always willing to have sensible discussion. If I wanted my own opinions, interpretations and views then I would talk to a mirror. So, I enjoy discussion with those who disagree with me, and I am very grateful when such discussion shows I am wrong because then I learn.
Knowing the facts I have provided in the previous paragraph you (and everyone else) will understand that I am giving you all the reply warranted by your post at August 28, 2011 at 7:18 am. My reply is as follows.
Answer the points I made (I sincerely doubt you know enough to discuss any of them).
Consider the data both you and I have cited and its stipulated error bars.
Discuss the contents of the references I provided and refute them if you can, but do not make irrelevant comments concerning how many pals have cited them.
Irrelevant waffle with the clear intent of side-tracking discussion deserve contempt and not a considered answer.
You are deluded if you really believe what you have written
Richard
Smokey,
I posted about the last few decades and you ignored that when you replied. If you had dealt with my points and time period substantively, instead of creating your own set of goalposts and arguing post-hoc that I was ‘cherry-picking’, I might be inclined to move on to what you want to focus on.
And that is also why I didn’t pick up on your point. I’m interested in discussing the topic of this thread, which is about how the latest results from CERN are being interpreted in the popular and semi-popular literature.
If Svensmark’s hypothesis is that GCRs affect climate, then yes, CERN’s results certainly don’t refute that. As I’ve said. If Svensmark’s hypothesis is that GCRs are responsible for all the warming of the past century, then he is very probably wrong, as the references I linked for Richard indicate, and as the trendlessness of GCRs over the last 30 years strongly recommends. CERN’s recent results don’t speak to that conclusion.
The latest results from CERN are being hailed, like every result that has a whiff of contra-mainstream on AGW, as the Big Truth that will undermine AGW (and as the Big Truth that the powers that be are trying to cover up). Look upthread if you doubt me. This is the ‘narrative’ I’m talking about. It’s hardly a skeptical one.
Now that AGW has been proven to be an out and out “concoction of a massive SCAM” does anyone agree that the main “players” in this preposterous attempt to “mislead the world” should be JAILED? The amount of human tragedy that has been caused due to this fake hypothesis is at the very least “criminal behaviour” and should be dealt with at length by people who are learned in the Faculty of Law, now that this eco-movement has moved out of the scientific arena!
First on the list should be “Maurice Strong”, followed by “Al Gore”, then work your way down the green ladder to the rest of the ring leaders like “Pachauri” just to name a few. Too bad this is just “wishful thinking”!
Thebiggreenlie @4:42 pm
Ya don’t suppose there’s a reason that Strong is hiding out in China, hmmm?
barry:
At August 28, 2011 at 4:02 pm you have the gall to claim you are not “cherry picking” data that promotes your (blatantly false case) and then you write:
“If Svensmark’s hypothesis is that GCRs affect climate, then yes, CERN’s results certainly don’t refute that. As I’ve said. If Svensmark’s hypothesis is that GCRs are responsible for all the warming of the past century, then he is very probably wrong, as the references I linked for Richard indicate, and as the trendlessness of GCRs over the last 30 years strongly recommends. CERN’s recent results don’t speak to that conclusion.”
No, the data is insufficient to indicate that GCRs are or are not “responsible for all the warming of the past century”. But, as I explained in my post addressed to you at August 27, 2011 at 11:49 pm, the GCRs could be “responsible for all the warming of the past century” .
The experiments at CERN will prove the possibility one way or the other.
Importanty, the fact that the ‘warmist’ assertion of
“It must be CO2 that caused recent warming because we cannot think of any other cause”
can now be laughed away.
The assertion was always the same logical falacy as,
“It must be witches that caused recent crop failure because we cannot think of any other cause”,
and it had similar dear-inducing effect on some of the public. Now it can be pointed out that there is another possible cause of the warming so the fear-mongering can be defeated.
Indeed, the fact that GCRs may be another possible cause of the recent warming is the reason why ‘warmist’ trolls are swarming over WUWT and other rational blogs and are proclaiming their denialist message that GCRs have not caused the warming.
And, as you are doing here, the ‘warmist’ trolls ignore everything which refutes their assertions and ‘data mine’ the internet for anything which seems to support their assertions then post it here. That is not rational debate: it is a disruption of rational debate.
Lief is arguing about the GCR trends rationally in this thread. He disputes the ‘Svensmark Hypothesis’. Read his posts and you will see what proper dispute of the hypothesis looks like.
But you and other ‘warmists’ are attempting to prevent rational debate of the subject.
As my post to you at August 27, 2011 at 11:49 pm concluded:
“Reality just refuses to obey what ‘warmists’ assert.
We now have this reality about GCRs and about clouds, and we already had
missing ‘hot spot’,
‘missing heat’,
missing ‘committed warming’,
steady rise in atmospheric CO2 but a halt to global warming since ~1995.
All this reality is ignored and/or excused by ‘warmers’ who seem to want to believe
The World Is Coming To An End.”
Richard
I am puzzled by the posters here that appear to celebrate the results of this experiment as confirmation that Svenmark’s hypothesis that GRC affecting low cloud are the main ‘control’ of cloud albedo that has been the cause of most of the recently observed warming.
While these CLOUD results are preliminary, and the production of very small aerosol particle (2-3nm) has little implication for the formation of large cloud condensation nuclei, the experiment does report one crucial result which would seem to REFUTE Svenmark’s hypothesis.
The sentence in the abstract –
-”We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer.”-
Would seem to indicate that the specific detail of the Svenmark hypothesis – the GCR effect on low altitude clouds – is likely to be of negligible influence.
I would ask those who have claimed this research vindicates or validates the ideas of Svenmark WHAT in the results justifies that opinion ???
Richard,
I’ve been reading Lief’s comments in the other thread (not this one). Like me, he has said that there has been no trend in GCR for the last few decades. GCR *appears* to have had no affect on climate for the latter 20th century to present. Still, there is a possibility GCR affects climate. We shall see if it does and to what magnitude, hopefully sooner rather than later.
My contention here all along has been that many have leapt upon CERN’s latest results as ‘a nail in the coffin’ of AGW. It is not, and I think you will agree that this interpretation is far too extreme.
Regarding your comments about me being a “warmist” and other characterisations: name-calling is absolutely no way to conduct a decent discussion.
REPLY: “Leif” – Anthony
Latest article about this by Lawrence Solomon:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/26/lawrence-solomon-science-now-settled/
re: barry says: August 28, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Barry, I posted a link to a paper by Svensmark (@August 28, 2011 at 12:47 am ) that is a rebuttal to the Lockwood claims and also addresses the GCR changes over the past 60 years or so. Why haven’t you bothered to look at that? You keep repeating the same claims, when I posted a link that rather nicely rebutts much of those claims. Try giving that paper a read.
RD,
there are many comments here.I hadn’t got to yours before I commented, and then the conversation continued beneath.
I’m familiar with that paper. Svensmark discounts surface air temperatures and focuses on tropospheric and ocean temps, because they believe global surface air temps doesn’t respond to solar cycles. That is at odds with the literature I’m familiar with, but that is a small point.
The bigger and most damning point is that they remove the linear trend of 0.14K from the tropospheric temperature record (and some other ‘confusions’), whereupon there is a good fit to solar flux.
Svensmark’s analysis confirms little trend in solar flux/GCR since 1960 (see Fig 2), roughly what I’ve been saying (also Leif on the other thread). This is at odds with global temperature, which has risen significantly since then. Svensmark has to remove the temperature trend to get a good fit. My take on the paper is that he has just shown there is an ~11 year cycle in the tropospheric temperature record, which is what we expect, and is in agreement with similar analyses.
There are many papers besides the ones I mentioned above which find little trend in solar flux for the last 30 – 60 years. I will post links here upon request (just want to know if you are genuinely interested in broadening your reading before I do that).
Please check to see if my commentary matches the contents.