Nir Shaviv on the CLOUD experiment, worth a read

All one has to do to confirm the sun is the primary driver of the climate is look at all the historic records going back hundreds and in some cases, many thousands of years. As for CO2, the historical record shows little impact on climate from changing levels.
So what gives? Politics, bias, narrow thinking, wishful thinking, or a mix thereof.

Though Judith Curry has not yet made her official CLOUD post, there is a video of Shaviv’s talk at the ACS meeting: http: //judithcurry.com/2011/08/29/acs-webinar-on-climate-change-part-ii/. Scroll down.
Shaviv’s work will draw attention to the work of Svensmark and Kirkby. The importance of these three scientists is found mainly in the fact that each of them practices entirely within the confines of scientific method. The contrast with the practice of Warmista is stark.

Of course, Dr. Shaviv leaves out one important statement from the lead author everyone seems afaid to accept: “[The paper] actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step.”
Rather than just copying what is very well explained elsewhere, try looking at:
http://skepticalscience.com/ConCERN-Trolling-on-Cosmic-Rays-Clouds-and-Climate-Change.html
The explanation includes numerous journaled papers and reviews explaining why GCR have some influence on cloud behavior (a potential mechanism for cloud formation but does not indicate GCRs significantly promote cloud formation in the real world), but they are not responsible for significant climate change now or in the geologic past.

I wonder if there are any other energetic modulators to climate?
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n8/full/ncomms1462.html
and
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/artificial-rain-laser/

@Sensor operator says: September 1, 2011 at 9:35 am
I think Dr. Shaviv is not afraid.
septicalscience.con is a hack science site, why would any one click on a link with a lie in its name ?

Those who dislike my colorful backgrounds and numerous gadgets should start with a super-minimalistic template here:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/08/nir-shaviv-cloud-is-clearing.html?m=1

Thank you, Luboš! You just moved up my list of bookmarks, it seems to work for your site in general, what a difference… now I am going to read that entry 🙂

Sensor Operator,
Have you read the book Chilling Stars, if not then you should.
The links you give are just BS modeling papers. Until further actual experiments are performed, the GCR to clouds hypothesis remains a plausible hypothesis. The initial CERN results SUPPORT the theory that GCRs induce ionization that can form particles. Although the link to seeding clouds (small particles to bigger ones) has NOT been tested, the basis for the theory appears to be on very solid ground – rather than struck out it has got to first base (using a sporting analogy). The initial results ARE encouraging and your disingenuous attempts to downplay the GCR hypothesis simply reflect the pre-conceived opinions of yourself and others that nothing affects climate in meaningful way except CO2. Intelligent people will accept that it is much much more likely that a great many things can and do affect climate and that GCRs are just another of many untested possible variables. Possibilities that NEED to be investigated experimentally rather than “modeled”! As an engineer, I know all to well how useless models are in the face of complex systems. If we understood everything we would not need scale models, experimental mock ups, extensive prototyping and test pilots to test commercial versions.
You and your ilk are so narrow minded that you cannot see the woods for the trees. You are blinkered by your religion. I doubt we will fully solve the climate conundrum in my lifetime or my childrens lifetime. Over the next 100 years, I expect we will still be improving our knowledge or will have long given up trying to solve such an impossibly complex system. Time will tell if GCRs, like CO2, turn out to be a blind alley or a minor side street on our long journey of scientific discovery.

Sensor operator says:
September 1, 2011 at 9:35 am
You might have an argument if the Milky Way was not a multi-armed spiral, but an elliptical instead.
You might have an argument if the Sun exhibited no variation, but it does.
You might have an argument if the CLOUD experiment failed to rise empirically, but it did.
Your steady-state Galaxy, Sun and Planet are not available to grow the runaway CO2 tracegas theory into a Godzilla tipping point. Global tracegas warming is not going to get us going in the 21st Century, and is not going to give rise to any skyscraping advances in knowlege and technology.

Is there a correlation between lightening strikes and the levels of cosmic rays entering low Earth atmosphere?
Large buildings, like the Empire State, might have strike trackers and allow us to know the rate of lightening strikes. An ionized trail could possibly form a track for an electrical discharge.

The study gives a mechanism that could explain the Maunder and Dalton etc minimums. Quiet sun = more GCRs = more clouds = more reflection of sunlight back into space = cooling.

M.A.Vukcevic says:
September 1, 2011 at 11:54 am
“There are apparently numerous correlations from the solar ‘barycentre properties’”
Right. That is also why GCR activity increases and decrease as to the extent that old sol is agitated by solar system bodies tugging it out of round, thus increases and decreases in the size of the hypothetical solar oort cloud. The understanding here is that GCR activity accounts for condensation nuclei for cloud formation as do other atmospheric ions. The total needs to be accounted for to quantify cloud coverage on a standard day, or any other day.
The problems are in hypothesis ownership. We are constantly arguing over minutia rather than focused on the big picture. Most of what we scientifically study in global climate is hypothetical. Correlations are devised and discovered, however it is the entirety that is not understood and what follows are hypothesis of correlation.
CERN used a controlled lab to reproduce the Svensmark hypotheses. Many other hypothesis are historical in data collection: example tree rings; however that particular historical data is grossly biased and incomplete. Then there is surface temperatures that are scattered about and UHI. In a short drive to the grocery store I observe the temperatures change by 10 degrees! Who decided what to use???? Thus the history has to be set in a context that supports the hypotheses and vice verse without all the biases.
So with the big picture in mind, we have ocean currents, ocean temperatures, earth tilt and orbit, oort extent, solar wind, total solar radiance, solar system barycenter, volcanic activity, continental drift, atmosphere density and its components, and etc., any GCR increase or decrease in our ever changing climate system has an affect, be it small. Continue to grow with new understandings and keep the word hypothesis in context of what is believed.

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 1, 2011 at 12:42 pm
And there never will be a perfect correlation with anything with so many factors affecting the climate.
Let the physics experimentors keep right on experimenting and sorting it out, and let the Astrophysicists keep right on finding out what’s really out there.
Meanwhile, it’s time to chew on recent discoveries. It doesn’t cost anything.
We still don’t know the why of what’s gone on in the Sun to produce what we are currently seeing, and, like the climate, we may never really know.
Why did the Sun do that? Why didn’t it keep on with the big cycles?

Let me roll up my sleeves and tighten up my pull ups.
Some vital data has recently surfaced that Earth has been bombarded by cosmic particles in ‘hotspots’ around the globe.
It is difficult without a longer study to determine if this is a cyclic trend or random.
If we assume that there is a correlation with increases in cosmic particles as a by-product of a lessening solar magnetic field and/or event anomalies, what difference does it make if the solar wind varies or not ‘dragging’ out to Earth?
I would think our concern or focus should be the returning magnetic flux from the outer boundaries of the heliosphere.
If we assume that outgoing solar winds alone dictate trends in cosmic particles, then how does that justify ‘hotspot’ activity?
Having said all this, to assume their isn’t ‘any significant trend’ in increases of cosmic spallation, at a geophysical level, maybe a bit archaic and/or premature.

Leif, if we asked Shaviv why he does not agree with you on cosmic ray intensity what do you feel his argument would be? and why do you feel he is incorrect? I assume you know his argument (but perhaps not?)
Thanks

The issues related to science and politics are confused here. There is a strong desire on the part of many people to use the CERN results to push back hard on the political forces that are using poor science to drive policy, regulations, taxation, and finally bury the free market. Yet again, the pure science forces are ignoring the political battle. You can’t separate these two aspects, even if you’d like, because you won’t be doing science for long if the economy collapses.
Generally speaking, war and starvation are bad for free thought.
Get out of the ivory tower, and get your hands dirty. You will have to pick a side at some point, or you will be placed in one camp or another by others. Don’t forget you are a human, living in a civilized society. I doubt you are growing all your own food and supplying all your own water and electricity.
If you want to avoid a very bad outcome, it is time face the forces seeking total control. Lend a credible voice to oppose power-mad governments. Provide practical alternative visions of the future. Find ways to show the public what authentic experts recommend. If you actually believe windmills and PV will work, fully scaled to supply a significant portion of the population, maybe start by explaining to us how that approach could be practical. I certainly don’t believe it. Otherwise, we need to articulate a better way.
Einstein knew we needed a Manhattan project to survive WW II. He worked to help make it happen. After we won the war, he and others had the luxury of having some second thoughts about the result. We face another threat to freedom and even survival. We haven’t earned the right to sit back and assess the results.

I still want to see the actual numbers on cloud formation.
The CLOUD experiment has confirmed that there is an effect, but we don’t know if it is minimal or climate-driving.
The problem is that climate science does not want to know what the answer is. They would be perfectly happy if all further experiments were quashed. I and you, however, should want to know what the answer is.

I want to add a postcript on my diatribe about CERN and large research effort, as also space exploration:
When we look at the works of humans, what remains is the pyramids, the parthenons, the taj mahals , the medieval cathedrals. Building all these required a tremendous collaborative effort and a large percentage of the GDP of the time. Why? It seems that in humans there is a collective urge to create monuments in the glory of the deity of the time.
We do not glorify deities, but we do have knowledge and technology as a goal. Our collective collaborative efforts are the modern cathedrals, this time glorifying knowledge and the mind.

Leif,
I suspect there is an apples and oranges issue here. You are talking about total CR flux. But the CRs of interest in the solar moderated climate model are only the high energy ones – above 15 GeV – which are capable of penetrating and causing ionisation in the lower atmosphere. The Earth’s magnetic field has a huge impact on the total CR flux, but it has its predominant impact on the low energy flux (below 15GeV), and these CRs don’t penetrate to the lower atmosphere anyway and therefore couldn’t seed clouds.
As Shaviv himself says “On the time scale of tens of thousands of years, Earth’s magnetic field varies and with it the flux of cosmic rays which can penetrate the atmosphere. Because however the magnetic field can only prevent the penetration of cosmic rays which are anyway severely attenuated by the atmosphere, changing the magnetic field, and even altogether switching it off is not expected to give rise to significant climate effects.” He goes on to quantify the size of the expected effect – small but observable – looks for an effect of this size in the observational data – and finds it. So he hasn’t ignored the effect of variation in the Earth’s magnetic field as you seem to think.
C_14 levels provide a measure of TOTAL CR flux. But most of the C_14 is produced by low energy CRs very high in the atmosphere – above the altitude where cloud seeding effects are expected. So C_14 levels are not directly measuring the CR flux of interest. In fact they have an inverse relationship! Low energy CRs come mostly from the sun. High energy CRs come mostly from outside the solar system. When solar activity is high the number of low energy CRs from the sun (and therefore the total CR flux) goes UP. However the solar wind is more active which means that the number of high energy CRs reaching us from outside the solar system goes DOWN!
C_14 levels are not used by Shaviv to directly measure the flux of high energy CRs of interest. They can however be used after adjustment for the much slower variation in the earth’s magnetic field, to infer solar activity levels, and this is the use Shaviv makes of them. His preferred instrument for deducing high energy CR levels is evidence from the rate of degradation of iron meteorites.

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 2, 2011 at 6:06 am
“The overall conclusion, built on a series of independent statistical tests, is that no clear cosmic ray signal associated with Forbush decrease events is found in highly susceptible marine low clouds over the southern hemisphere oceans. […] For the ongoing global warming, however, the role of galactic cosmic rays would be expected to be negligible, considering the fact that the cosmic ray flux has not changed over the last few decades – apart from the 11-year cycle”.
Yes but the flux (via sunspot proxy) for past 50 years has been at the highest sustained level in the 400-year history of sunspot counts. There’s huge heat sink called the global ocean that can keep on storing additional energy over that entire 50 year cycle. This should be intuitive to the author who wrote the above paragraph because every dumbass knows that when you put a flame under a pot of water it doesn’t start boiling instantly but, as long as the flame remains, it will continue to get warmer until it does start to boil. GCRs would presumably work the same way – turn up the heat and leave it on the higher setting for 50 years and climate slowly but surely gets warmer. Like duh.

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 1, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Hoser says:
September 1, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Get out of the ivory tower, and get your hands dirty.
Like Jim Hansen………….
There’s your classic “I’m too important to do that” argument.
I see the same attitude with business people and politicians who can’t face the opposition in a true public arena. At least Hansen goes out and speaks to actual live humans. His message is wrong, but he’s busy convincing people of his position. He uses his credentials to lend weight to his arguments. Others with similar credentials need to step up.
If we want to counter the Left, we have to talk to people, that is, live humans. People want to have a chance to look you in the eye and hear your voice. Can you do that? Too uncomfortable? Well, that’s not the case with all of us. More of the opposition to Hansen need to get out in the real world and talk about what science really is, how climate hysteria is not science, and what we should be doing to keep people working, and improve the living conditions for more of us. Right now we are going in the wrong direction based on falsehoods.
At times, we must fulfill a duty to our fellow citizens in other ways besides just doing our regular jobs. There are serious issues affecting us, as I described previously. We may not have time to wait for pure science to solve problems, or for Nature to teach lessons. When government interferes, it affects all of us. When a company takes a risk, it only affects the shareholders and employees. We need to get government out of the science business, and stop corrupting the process to justify its designs for acquiring more power. There is a global effort to take control. We all need to oppose them now. The average person can’t do it without our help.
Even if all you do is speak to a group of undergraduates, you are helping.

Dave Springer says:
September 2, 2011 at 9:36 am
John Marshall says:
September 2, 2011 at 1:23 am
“1 degree C increase with doubling of CO2.
Still the mantra. So please explain how, during the Ordovician period with CO2 atmospheric content of 8000ppmv, we had an ice age? And a severe and prolonged one at that.”
The Ordovician is a sole exception to the rule. Given it was 500 million years ago there is not precisely measurable alignment between evidence of glaciation and evidence of atmospheric CO2. I posted an article on another thread in the past couple of weeks where further research showed a mistaken alignment of a 50,000 years and the CO2 level was indeed very low at the beginning of Ordovican ice age and the gradual build-up of CO2 led to its ending.
The story about CO2 level not aligning with past ice ages is pure urban legend based on exactly one ice age that appeared to be an exception to the rule and new evidence indicates it was mistaken dating of the geologic column rather than an exception to the rule.
The Ordovician is not a sole exception, it is one of many “exceptions” to an absurdly fictitious rule. Here are some more:
Marinoan ice age, 670-630 mYa, atmospheric CO2 >10,000ppm
Sturtian ice age 750-700 mYa, atmospheric CO2 >10,000ppm
Huronian ice age, about 2 billion years ago, CO2 probably >20%
Co2 exerts no effect whatsoever on global temperature. What is your problem with this obvious fact?

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 1, 2011 at 11:36 am
“The fact is that it is not established, and in particular, the variation of cosmic rays the past 60 years is not at all like that of climate.”
But, its integral is.

And, here is Svensmark’s paper “Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate”. See Figure 3b.

Dr. Svalgaard,
“The fact is that it is not established, and in particular, the variation of cosmic rays the past 60 years is not at all like that of climate.”
Camp and Tung and separately Lean, both have established a signature of the solar cycle on the climate in the satellite data of the last 30 years. Since the cosmic rays vary with the cycle, they might account for some of the variation that Camp and Tung assume to merely be due to the sun’s variation in radiative forcing. Their model independent estimate of climate sensitivity from the signature would be inflated if some of it should have been attributed to the hypothesized cosmic ray effect instead. It was never valid in a nonlinear system to assume the climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing was the same as that to solar variation.. A solar modulated cosmic ray effect would make the differences in their forcing more than just ozone generation and coupling vertically and horizontally to different parts of the climate system.
Uncertainty in aerosol forcing has been shown to account for how models disagreeing by a factor of 3 in climate sensitivity can still “agree” on the 20th century temperature variation. Doubtless, such juggling of the aerosol figures could also explain the temperature variation of the last 60 years on their own. The cosmic ray hypothesis could explain the recent warming by giving more credibility to solar variation as the cause of the little ice age and climate commitment from the thernal inertia of the ocean would explain why we are still warming, and aerosols could perfect the fit for the last 60 years. If it doesn’t seem pretty to you, you shouldn’t like the “agreement” of the models with the climate and each other either.

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2011 at 6:06 am
“The latitudinal dependence is not …”
IMO, Dr. Shaviv has answered this question satisfactorily.

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Some of them also think bald assertion and bluster form a foundation.

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2011 at 10:11 am
We have such a network: see Figure 1 of http://www.leif.org/EOS/Neutron-Monitor-Network.pdf
~
Thank you Dr. S.
Some of this is kinda depressing.
“”The status of neutron monitor operations in the past decade is summarized
in Fig. 1. There were fourteen neutron monitors operated by U.S. institutions at the
beginning of the decade (2001), all but one of which were supported by NSF. Since
then, four have closed, including the two longest-operating monitors in the world
(Climax and Mt. Washington). Of the ten monitors remaining, only two operate with
NSF support. The remainder continue to operate, for the time being, under
institutional support.
The present situation with U.S.-operated neutron monitors is not
sustainable. The small amount of available federal funding makes it difficult to attract
young researchers into the field,..””
Europeans seem to be keeping it up though. Ground based telescopes backing up the ground monitors sounded pretty cool. I didn’t see any in the South Atlantic, some in S. Africa and Peru.
~
M.A.Vukcevic says:
September 4, 2011 at 2:13 pm
Anthony & Dr. Svalgaard
Secular variations of the Earth’s magnetic field are not negligible on decadal scale (about order of an average magnetic storm ?), they are most prominent in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Further more they correlate well with long term temperature changes in the region. I would consider this to be effect of the ‘ocean currents – magnetic field’ bidirectional interaction rather then the impact of GCRs.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HmL.htm
~
Earth’s field is like a leaking sieve during even these slow coronal wind stream events Vuks. That dayside lays open during these coronal windsteam events and looks as though it may be the cause of the dented SAA where it rides nearest to Earth. Not to mention several specific weaker areas not just the poles.
Maybe we should say Earth’s magnetic field collects cosmic rays in its cosmic raydiation belts. Then are released by solar events. No no no they are just jumping around all over the place those pesky cosmic rays.
~
Hmmm Vuks, let me think about this for a while.
“”magnetic field’ bidirectional interaction “”

Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2011 at 6:03 pm
“Therefore it makes no sense to integrate over many decades or centuries.”
See?

Leif Svalgaard says: September 4, 2011 at 7:48 pm
A lot of derogatory remarks and other gibberish that loosely translates in to “Don’t write, quote or reference anything that contradicts my beliefs, I am the owner of all things solar. Anything not on my power-point slides is heresy and a sin against the keeper of Sol. It is my duty to ensure that the keeper of Sol has the last comment on anything solar.

Dr. Svalgaard,
“Note how the thin line is heading down and not up at the right hand part, providing direct evidence that Svensmark is wrong.”
The value and not the heading would seem to be what is relevant. The value is still in the warm range.
If the Svensmark hypothesis is correct, I suspect it is not the part of the climate system where the amplitude of the change in cosmic ray intensity is greatest at the poles that is the most relevant, but rather where most of the solar energy enters the climates system, i.e., at the tropics. The solar correlated variation in CSI near the equator is still on the order of 10% with the solar cycle.

Dr. Svalgaard,
“The main point is still that there has been no trend at all in the GCR flux over the past 60 years:”
When I look at the graph I see a potential contribution to the mid-century cooling that isn’t present in the increasing CO2 trend. The cool phase of the PDO and the generous uncertainty in aerosol forcing allow the mid-century cooling, a plateau in solar activity, an increase in black carbon and CO2 forcing to all be accomodated in the models. The modelers generally agree that even if the forcing circa 2004 doesn’t increase at all, the climate is “committed” to another 1 degree C of warming over the next century. Had the oceans reached equilibrium with solar forcing at the beginning of the plateau in solar activity circa 1940? Or was there unrealized climate commitment even then? The models generally spin up from what the conditions are thought to have been in 1880, but what was the state of the oceans really after the centuries of “the little ice age”? Solar activity does not have to increase after 1940 in order to have contributed to the late century warming, it only had to remain at levels higher than the oceans had yet to reach equilibrium with, which the modelers (Wigley, et al, and Meehl et al) say would take over 1000 years.
There is a reason that the IPCC summary is very careful to keep solar grouped with volcanic and CO2 grouped with aerosols and black carbon:
“During the past 50 years, the sum of solar and volcanic forcings would likely have produced cooling. Observed patterns of warming and their changes are simulated only by models that include anthropogenic forcings.”
And that is because if you combined solar with aerosols and black carbon the models would also be able to simulate the observed patterns in warming. Volcanoes combined with CO2 would likely have produced cooling. Very likely, the uncertainly in aerosols which allow models ranging from 2 degrees C to 6 degrees C sensitivity to “match” the observed temperature pattern would also allow the models to match the pattern with changes in aerosol forcing alone. And these remarkable models could accomplish all that “matching” without getting ENSO, the PDO, the precipitation, the surface albedo feedback or the clouds right. I don’t think we can rule out variation in solar coupling to the climate being responsible for 30 to 60% or more of the recent warming even granting flat solar activity for the last half of the century. Which makes me skeptical of a 90% likelihood that nearly all the recent warming is due to GHGs. The say “most”, but don’t contradict the interpretation “nearly all”. It appears to me that the proponents of the anthropogenic GHG theory have been trying to obscure rather than clarify the issues with their careful word crafting, political maneuvering, personal attacks and refusal to consider the implications of the model diagnostic literature. My null hypothesis would be a 30-30-30 split between solar, natural variation (like the PDO), and CO2 (with black carbon) based upon our current understanding, with the PDO probably also attributed partly to solar variation in some kind of resonance with the ocean basins.
I like to rule out plausible competing hypotheses and to directly address possible contrary evidence before I declare the science “settled”. Those declaring the science settled have done neither.
The next couple decades promise to be exciting times for climate science. What do you think is the best proxy reconstruction of the high energy component of the GCR flux we can do covering both the MWP and the little ice age?

*****
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 4, 2011 at 6:03 pm
You have no idea. The climate system has a lot of memory: it takes thousands of years for a step change in forcing to penetrate to the bottom of the ocean, but half of the resulting change in temperature takes place in the first decade, so the effective time constant is short.
*****
Only half of the resulting changes in a decade? The diurnal “lag” is ~3 hrs. The seasonal lag is ~2.5 months. I’d bet the 50% change from a global forcing-change occurs in, at most, only a few yrs — the time-constant for aerosols from Pinatubo (which was nearly global) was only a yr or so. Yes, the deep ocean does have a long memory, but it’s a small, barely-recalled memory.
But I agree w/your point.

*****
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 6, 2011 at 10:27 am
Look at Figure 2 of http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL048623.pdf
*****
Thanks. I’ll study that. We’re really not that far apart to begin with.
I realize that an earth w/large continental ice-sheets present (unlike today) will have longer lag times, w/such large, relatively atmospheric & solar-interactive masses present.