Note: I’m going to leave this as a sticky “top post” for a day or so. new stories appear below.
Nigel Calder asks us to republish this post for maximum exposure. He writes:
Today the Royal Astronomical Society in London publishes (online) Henrik Svensmark’s latest paper entitled “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth”. After years of effort Svensmark shows how the variable frequency of stellar explosions not far from our planet has ruled over the changing fortunes of living things throughout the past half billion years. Appearing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, it’s a giant of a paper, with 22 figures, 30 equations and about 15,000 words. See the RAS press release at http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive
By taking me back to when I reported the victory of the pioneers of plate tectonics in their battle against the most eminent geophysicists of the day, it makes me feel 40 years younger. Shredding the textbooks, Tuzo Wilson, Dan McKenzie and Jason Morgan merrily explained earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain-building, and even the varying depth of the ocean, simply by the drift of fragments of the lithosphere in various directions around the globe.
In Svensmark’s new paper an equally concise theory, that cosmic rays from exploded stars cool the world by increasing the cloud cover, leads to amazing explanations, not least for why evolution sometimes was rampant and sometimes faltered. In both senses of the word, this is a stellar revision of the story of life.
Here are the main results:
- The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.
- The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.
- Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..
- As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times.
Presented with due caution as well as with consideration for the feelings of experts in several fields of research, a story unfolds in which everything meshes like well-made clockwork. Anyone who wishes to pooh-pooh any piece of it by saying “correlation is not necessarily causality” should offer some other mega-theory that says why several mutually supportive coincidences arise between events in our galactic neighbourhood and living conditions on the Earth.
An amusing point is that Svensmark stands the currently popular carbon dioxide story on its head. Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around.
By implication, supernovae also determine the amount of oxygen available for animals like you and me to breathe. So the inherently simple cosmic-ray/cloud hypothesis now has far-reaching consequences, which I’ve tried to sum up in this diagram.
By way of explanation
The text of “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth” is available via ftp://ftp2.space.dtu.dk/pub/Svensmark/MNRAS_Svensmark2012.pdf The paper is highly technical, as befits a professional journal, so to non-expert eyes even the illustrations may be a little puzzling. So I’ve enlisted the aid of Liz Calder to explain the way one of the most striking graphs, Svensmark’s Figure 20, was put together. That graph shows how, over the past 440 million years, the changing rates of supernova explosions relatively close to the Earth have strongly influenced the biodiversity of marine invertebrate animals, from trilobites of ancient times to lobsters of today. Svensmark’s published caption ends: “Evidently marine biodiversity is largely explained by a combination of sea-level and astrophysical activity.” To follow his argument you need to see how Figure 20 draws on information in Figure 19. That tells of the total diversity of the sea creatures in the fossil record, fluctuating between times of rapid evolution and times of recession.
The count is by genera, which are groups of similar animals. Here it’s shown freehand by Liz in Sketch A. Sketch B is from another part of Figure 19, telling how the long-term global sea-level changed during the same period. The broad correspondence isn’t surprising because a high sea-level floods continental margins and gives the marine invertebrates more extensive and varied habitats. But it obviously isn’t the whole story. For a start, there’s a conspicuous spike in diversity about 270 million years ago that contradicts the declining sea-level. Svensmark knew that there was a strong peak in the supernova rate around that time. So he looked to see what would happen to the wiggles over the whole 440 million years if he “normalized” the biodiversity to remove the influence of sea-level. That simple operation is shown in Sketch C, where the 270-million-year spike becomes broader and taller. Sketch D shows Svensmark’s reckoning of the changing rates of nearby supernovae during the same period. Let me stress that these are all freehand sketches to explain the operations, not to convey the data. In the published paper, the graphs as in C and D are drawn precisely and superimposed for comparison.
There are many fascinating particulars that I might use to illustrate the significance of Svensmark’s findings. To choose the Gorgon’s story that follows is not entirely arbitrary, because this brings in another of those top results, about supernovae and bio-productivity.
The great dying at the end of the Permian
Out of breath, poor gorgon? Gasping for some supernovae? Named after scary creatures of Greek myth, the Gorgonopsia of the Late Permian Period included this fossil species Sauroctonus progressus, 3 metres long. Like many of its therapsid cousins, near relatives of our own ancestors, it died out during the Permo-Triassic Event. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgonopsia
Luckiest among our ancestors was a mammal-like reptile, or therapsid, that scraped through the Permo-Triassic Event, the worst catastrophe in the history of animal life. The climax was 251 million years ago at the end of the Permian Period. Nearly all animal species in the sea went extinct, along with most on land. The event ended the era of “old life”, the Palaeozoic, and ushered in the Mesozoic Era, when our ancestors would become small mammals trying to keep clear of the dinosaurs. So what put to death our previously flourishing Gorgon-faced cousins of the Late Permian? According to Henrik Svensmark, the Galaxy let the reptiles down.
Forget old suggestions (by myself included) that the impact of a comet or asteroid was to blame, like the one that did for the dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic. The greatest dying was less sudden than that. Similarly the impressive evidence for an eruption 250 million years ago – a flood basalt event that smothered Siberia with noxious volcanic rocks covering an area half the size of Australia – tells of only a belated regional coup de grâce. It’s more to the point that oxygen was in short supply – geologists speak of a “superanoxic ocean”. And there was far more carbon dioxide in the air than there is now.
“Well there you go,” some people will say. “We told you CO2 is bad for you.” That, of course, overlooks the fact that the notorious gas keeps us alive. The recenty increased CO2 shares with the plant breeders the credit for feeding the growing human population. Plants and photosynthetic microbes covet CO2 to grow. So in the late Permian its high concentration was a symptom of a big shortfall in life’s productivity, due to few supernovae, ice-free conditions, and a lack of weather to circulate the nutrients. And as photosynthesis is also badly needed to turn H2O into O2, the doomed animals were left gasping for oxygen, with little more than half of what we’re lucky to breathe today.
When Svensmark comments briefly on the Permo-Triassic Event in his new paper, “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth,” he does so in the context of the finding that high rates of nearby supernovae promote life’s productivity by chilling the planet, and so improving the circulation of nutrients needed by the photosynthetic organisms.
Here’s a sketch (above) from Figure 22 in the paper, simplified to make it easier to read. Heavy carbon, 13C, is an indicator of how much photosynthesis was going on. Plumb in the middle is a downward pointing green dagger that marks the Permo-Triassic Event. And in the local supernova rate (black curve) Svensmark notes that the Late Permian saw the largest fall in the local supernova rate seen in the past 500 million years. This was when the Solar System had left the hyperactive Norma Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy behind it and entered the quiet space beyond. “Fatal consequences would ensue for marine life,” Svensmark writes, “if a rapid warming led to nutrient exhaustion … occurring too quickly for species to adapt.”
One size doesn’t fit all, and a fuller story of Late Permian biodiversity becomes subtler and even more persuasive. About 6 million years before the culminating mass extinction of 251 million years ago, a lesser one occurred at the end of the Guadalupian stage. This earlier extinction was linked with a brief resurgence in the supernova rate and a global cooling that interrupted the mid-Permian warming. In contrast with the end of the Permian, bio-productivity was high. The chief victims of this die-off were warm-water creatures including gigantic bivalves and rugose corals.
Why it’s tagged as “astrobiology”
So what, you may wonder, is the most life-enhancing supernova rate? Without wanting to sound like Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, it’s probably not very far from the average rate for the past few hundred million years, nor very different from what we have now. Biodiversity and bio-productivity are both generous at present.
Svensmark has commented (not in the paper itself) on a closely related question – where’s the best place to live in the Galaxy?
“Too many supernovae can threaten life with extinction. Although they came before the time range of the present paper, very severe episodes called Snowball Earth have been blamed on bursts of rapid star formation. I’ve tagged the paper as ‘Astrobiology’ because we may be very lucky in our location in the Galaxy. Other regions may be inhospitable for advanced forms of life because of too many supernovae or too few.”
Astronomers searching for life elsewhere speak of a Goldilocks Zone in planetary systems. A planet fit for life should be neither too near to nor too far from the parent star. We’re there in the Solar System, sure enough. We may also be in a similar Goldilocks Zone of the Milky Way, and other galaxies with too many or too few supernovae may be unfit for life. Add to that the huge planetary collision that created the Earth’s disproportionately large Moon and provided the orbital stability and active geology on which life relies, and you may suspect that, astronomically at least, Dr Pangloss was right — “Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”
Don’t fret about the diehards
If this blog has sometimes seemed too cocky about the Svensmark hypothesis, it’s because I’ve known what was in the pipeline, from theories, observations and experiments, long before publication. Since 1996 the hypothesis has brought new successes year by year and has resisted umpteen attempts to falsify it.
New additions at the level of microphysics include a previously unknown reaction of sulphuric acid, as in a recent preprint. On a vastly different scale, Svensmark’s present supernova paper gives us better knowledge of the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy.
A mark of a good hypothesis is that it looks better and better as time passes. With the triumph of plate tectonics, diehard opponents were left redfaced and blustering. In 1960 you’d not get a job in an American geology department if you believed in continental drift, but by 1970 you’d not get the job if you didn’t. That’s what a paradigm shift means in practice and it will happen sometime soon with cosmic rays in climate physics.
Plate tectonics was never much of a political issue, except in the Communist bloc. There, the immobility of continents was doctrinally imposed by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. An analagous diehard doctrine in climate physics went global two decades ago, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was conceived to insist that natural causes of climate change are minor compared with human impacts.
Don’t fret about the diehards. The glory of empirical science is this: no matter how many years, decades, or sometimes centuries it may take, in the end the story will come out right.
===============================================================
For those who would doubt our cosmic connections, Svenmark’s work and Calder’s article reminds me to remind you of this well known quote:
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. – Carl Sagan
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I wonder if Lief Svalgaard has noticed some of the implications of this, specifically about the sun? Leif seems skeptical that changes in the suns activity cause changes in the climate (admittedly with some reason). There are only two options (that I know of ) for major changes in the climate due to cosmic rays, changes of the sun, or changes outside the sun. This suggests that it is not the suns fault, but other suns, ones that go supernova. There are two ways to increase cosmic rays, have the sun go quiet and let more in, or simply greatly increase the amount of incoming cosmic rays so that it doesn’t matter what the suns activity is, you will get more cosmic rays. Leif suggests that the sun cannot do enough to modulate cosmic rays in any noticeable way (enough to change the climate), this suggests that he may be right, that the major driver is the amount of cosmic rays themselves.
However…there is a problem of scale here. Svensmark is talking of a scale of tens or hundreds of millions of years, and very major changes in climate (enough to cause major extinction events), and Svalgaard is usually talking about scales of only years or at most decades, and much more minor changes in climate (or lack thereof). It could very well be that the earth has strong enough thermostats to ride out minor variations in the sun, but not strong enough to ride out major variations in cosmic ray production which may simply overwhelm the thermostats and result in major climactic changes.
Alternately, the changes in biodiversity could be not caused by climate changes, but by the radiation directly. In that case, it may not be that the rays effect clouds effect biodiversity, but the rays effect the life directly (or through some mechanism Svenmark is unaware of). He appears to have shown a correlation between supernovas and biodiversity, I am just not sure that he has proven the mechanism behind that.
One thing seems certain, Svensmark has so far shown that, in the laboratory, cosmic rays should produce clouds. Whether that translates to clouds out here is another question. He has also shown that supernova explosions produce biodiversity (assuming all his measurements, such as for sea level, are correct). Whether that is because of cosmic rays effect on climate, or some other effect on biodiversity, is at issue. It is thus quite possible that cosmic rays effect clouds, which then effect biodiversity. Thus, since he has experimental evidence to back him up to a point, if you say his conclusions are wrong, he at least has some experimental evidence, and you (whoever you are) don’t.
The only caution is, grand theories that appear to explain everything, so that suddenly everything makes sense, are theories people like. If they like them too much, they may tend to…fudge, to make them true so they can keep their theory. A theory that explains everything up to the kitchen sink should have everything thrown at it including the kitchen sink, if it survives that, we have something there. The only provision being that we should stick to attacking it by means of the scientific method, calling out the inquisition may satisfy some, but in the end tell us nothing. In the past, some grand theories have survived, example, Newtonian Physics, others, not so much…
Based on the work of Svensmark, the EPA should concentrate their efforts to regulating plate tectonics and nearby supernovae. (Good luck with that)
rgbatduke says:
April 24, 2012 at 9:07 am
Your comment reads very well and makes a lot of sense to me. You end with:
I teach astronomy off and on, and have a bit of an idea of how things are dated and distances established, but I’m not sure I have a clear idea as to how one would determine near-Sun supernova rates 500 milllion years ago with any sort of precision.
This points I think to a critical necessity for the Svensmark hypothesis to hold. In his abstract he says about this:
Observations of open star clusters in the solar neighborhood are used to calculate local super-
nova (SN) rates for the past 510 million years (Myr). Peaks in the SN rates match passages
of the Sun through periods of locally increased cluster formation which could be caused by
spiral arms of the Galaxy. A statistical analysis indicates that the Solar System has experi-
enced many large short-term increases in the flux of Galactic cosmic rays (GCR) from nearby
supernovae.
I have glanced through the article and would think that in section 3 he presents the “hardest evidence” for some sort of precision, the deduction of the number of supernovae (SNs) with time intervals of 8 Myr over a period of 500 Myr. This is worked out with simulation models and statistical analysis in section 4.
Not being an astronomer I cannot follow how exactly he arrives at figure 2, but from his explanation I learn it has to do with the actual spreading of clusters around the solar system and their evolution and decay, and also with the spiral structure of the galaxy.
His data are from the WEBDA database. He compares with Dias et al. and Kharchenko et al. but conclude they don’t change the picture so he stays with WEBDA.
So the WEBDA data are the only real hard data he uses. The rest are calculations, statistics and modeling. So I can understand the comment of Steven Mosher as he says April 24, 2012 at 11:53 am:
Its estimated. And Its modeled. It’s not an observation. There are other “records” of the count. He looks at them, calls them “similar” and doesn’t test his calculations WRT the selection of records.
If Mann wrote this, people here would be hooting and hollaring.
So his calculations on the data from WEBDA are critical. I am curious what astronomers would say about them. That would be the real test I would think.
Along the line of a few other comments, I am not sure plate tectonics belongs in the discussion. The question here is cloud formation
Hey Anthony, Tallbloke’s Talkshop has a new post on the exact same paper as this post. Does this mean that WUWT can now be classified as “Transcendent Rant and way out there theory” as well?
Steven Mosher says:
April 24, 2012 at 11:53 am
If Mann would release his data, quit fighting state authorities, grow up and quit acting like a spoiled child, write a decent book, and tell us what he did with that money he got to study malaria and climate change, we just MIGHT consider him repentant enough for his work to be considered.
Until that happens, you’re probably right, Steven. And he would deserve it. Personally, it would take a string of merit-filled scientific articles before I’d cut him any slack and I’m not worried–I don’t think Mann has a single meritorious scientific paper in him.
John Coleman says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:00 pm
But it may at last broaden the examination of global warming.
This paper has very little [if anything] to do with global warming.
Jeremy says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Well, I tend to think of shockwaves as part of an explosion, but ok.
Since shock waves form for all types of supernovae, that answers your question.
That being stated Leif, can you offer any other explanation for open clusters being a worthwhile proxy for supernovae/GCRs ? It seems to me quite presumptuous to believe that open cluster formation can be used as a proxy for supernovae, much less historical GCR incoming to Earth.
star-forming regions often contain massive stars which go supernovae. ‘Historical’ does not apply as Svensmark’s paper is about time scales of hundreds of millions of years.
Legatus says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:15 pm
There are only two options (that I know of ) for major changes in the climate due to cosmic rays, changes of the sun, or changes outside the sun.
There is a third option: that cosmic rays have nothing to do with climate. [not on a time scale that matters for society].
Truthseeker says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Hmmmm… That’s kinda what they said about Einstein.
Now, what was your question?
So Cassius was wrong. The fault is in our stars, and not in ourselves, that our climate changes.
Steve Keohane says:
April 24, 2012 at 3:17 pm (Edit)
Svensmark is talking about millions of years … over which time 0.2 mm per year adds up. Here’s his Figure 19, which purports to show the correlation between sea level and biodiversity:
Over a million years, 0.2 mm/year is 200 metres …
w.
Three cheers for Svensmark!
I was hoping someone would look deeper into the role of GCR variability beyond solar activity. Nobody answered these posts a while back:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/24/easterbrook-on-the-magnitude-of-greenland-gisp2-ice-core-data/#comment-582103
I don’t see how a ‘quiet’ sun could be the only modulator of GCRs. It seems more likely the GCR flux is variable outside the control of the sun. Which also suggests the Milankovic cycles are not the whole story.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/01/time-magazine-and-global-warming/#comment-563725
The Sun plays a role, but a minor one if perhaps the GCR flux could increase 10-100x as our solar system passed through a higher density ‘current’ of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are known to be anisotropic, and that seems to be reflected in dramatically different cosmogenic isotope levels seen in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores of the same age.
Now I have a new chew toy. This is going to be fun.
W: “Also, there have been about 6,000 supernovae observed since 1885 … surely we should look at the ebb and flow of those w.r.t. climate before heading back half a billion years with models of models …”
But the vast majority of those 6000 are extragalactic and would not be able to inject significant energy into the solar system unless we were sufficiently unlucky to be looking down the throat of a GRB jet.
Perhaps a way to approach this would be to look for close supernovae remains in the recent past and start walking back over the course of the last few hundred thousand years. If this theory holds some water, one of the reasons the current Holocene ice age started is when the solar system got sufficiently close to star forming regions that created large stars that aged quickly and had close supernovae starting to cook off on a semi-regular basis. If they are a driver, going back a little ways will provide a foundation (or data) for applying the same technique farther back in time.
A pair of links: One is the supernovae remnant / cosmic ray link. The other describes MHD jets from a variety of objects which will also accelerate particles to relativistic velocities. Cheers –
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/cosmic_rays.html
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/38641/1/03-2684.pdf
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Thanks, Leif, that kinda makes sense … except it doesn’t. They are studying the cosmic rays in question, the ones that they are discussing, which are the ones I was discussing, by observing them with a satellite telescope … and if there’s only one cosmic ray of the kind you are talking about per square kilometre per century, there’s no way that’s what they are studying with a telescope, they’d only see one in several millennia. So they can’t be studying the ones you are talking about.
In any case, if there’s one supernova every thirty years, where is the signature in the temperature record? For Svensmark’s theory to hold, shouldn’t we see a big dip in temperature after each and every supernova?
w.
Further to the previous …
So no, Leif, I’m not talking about the high energy cosmic rays, nor was the article I cited before. I’m talking about galactic cosmic rays, and according to the quote, we have a theory about the origin of GCRs … but we’re short on evidence.
w.
And now I’ll be humming “When the moon is in the second house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars …” all day.
And you are all going to nag at me for it.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:53 pm
So they can’t be studying the ones you are talking about.
They are not studying the ones you were referring to in your quotes which were the ultra-high ones [look for ‘ultra’]
In any case, if there’s one supernova every thirty years, where is the signature in the temperature record? For Svensmark’s theory to hold, shouldn’t we see a big dip in temperature after each and every supernova?
No, because it takes millions of years for these cosmic rays to reach us having to travel through the tangled magnetic field of the Galaxy, so everything is completely washed out. This is what a map of the cosmic ray sky looks like: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/cosmic_rays.html
Yes, star forming regions often give birth to type-2 supernovae. But no such star-forming region is required for type-1a supernovae (right?). So why would star-forming open clusters be a good proxy for supernovae?
…and yes, by historical I meant earth history.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:59 pm
“The LAT’s energy range, however, is many orders of magnitude too low to enable scientists to decipher the origin ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, one of the great unsolved mysteries in astrophysics.
SOURCE: NOAA”
So no, Leif, I’m not talking about the high energy cosmic rays, nor was the article I cited before.
You are confused. Mentioning the 6000 supernovae observed shows that you were thinking about the extragalactic cosmic rays which would the ultra-high ones. I refer you again to http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/cosmic_rays.html that shows what a map of the cosmic ray sky looks like. LAT cannot look at the sources because we don’t know where they are.
Jeremy says:
April 24, 2012 at 6:03 pm
So why would star-forming open clusters be a good proxy for supernovae?
they are a proxy for a good fraction of supernovae, possibly enough for an estimate.
Recommended background reading:
Circa 2002, Jan Veizer showed us the data that he and Nir Shaviv had independently obtained before they agreed to publish together.
EOS and acolytes of the CAGW “Cause” (aka POS?) heaped criticism all over this paper, in a most unethical way.
I thought the paper was very worthwhile.
http://cfa.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q4/211/articles_optional/CelestialDriver.pdf
Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?
Nir J. Shaviv and Ján Veizer
GSA Today July 2003
ABSTRACT
Atmospheric levels of CO2 are commonly assumed to be a main driver of global climate. Independent empirical evidence suggests that the galactic cosmic ray flux (CRF) is linked to climate variability. Both drivers are presently discussed in the context of daily to millennial variations, although they should also operate over geological time scales. Here we analyze the reconstructed seawater paleotemperature record for the Phanerozoic (past 545 m.y.), and compare it with the variable CRF reaching Earth and with the reconstructed partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 (pCO2). We find that at least 66% of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy. Assuming that the entire residual variance in temperature is due solely to the CO2 greenhouse effect, we propose a tentative upper limit to the long-term “equilibrium” warming effect of CO2, one which is potentially lower than that based on general circulation models.
Steve. says:
April 24, 2012 at 8:16 am
“Please feel free to comment on the following, even if yourself refuse to publish this on your wonderful site. I can understand the flak you wish to avoid with this being promoted on your blog. But hey, it’s in the public domain. I’m thinking you might find the story interesting.
Planetary Defense: An Extraterrestrial Imperative”
http://larouchepac.com/node/21222
Thanks for that interesting link, Steve. I’ve sort of followed the Lyndon LaRouche saga over the last forty years or so, and I could never figure out why so many folks were out to get him. He seems to have crossed the line a few times, but the consequencews were far more savage than what someone else would have received. The punishment was far more severe than the crime warranted.
He ran for office [president, IIRC] and naturally lost because he was a fringe candidate. But he must have done something that never made the news, to have so many enemies in high places.
That aside, the LaRouche organization produces some very interesting science articles, as your link [which ties in with Svensmark’s hypothesis] shows. And they make clear that CAGW is pure politics.
Reading all these posts makes me feel as if I am in Star Trek heaven
Smokey says:
April 24, 2012 at 6:38 pm
I’ve sort of followed the Lyndon LaRouche saga over the last forty years or so, and I could never figure out why so many folks were out to get him.
Because what he says is shallow nonsense. An example from the link:
“When we look at another galaxy, what we see is the result of light being emitted from millions to trillions of seemingly discrete stars, yet we do not see a variety of redshifts: rather, we see one intrinsic redshift of the whole system. Since the galaxy as a whole possesses this intrinsic redshift, how does each individual star of that galaxy know to emit light of the same intrinsic redshift? Or, more simply, since each star is emitting its own light, how do they all act in harmony to a single effect?”
It apparently does not occur to him that the red shift depends not on the stars, but on the observer. And a single observer will see a single red shift. A different observer somewhere else [at a different distance to the galaxy] will see a different red shift. There is no mystery, nothing that requires that we change our worldview, etc.
I think the truth of this paper is not so much in what it says, as in what it infers: that there are far more variables affecting climate the most of the “climate scientists” are willing to admit, and we’re not at the point (yet, anyway) where we can truthfully say we know all the ways our climate are affected. This paper, which I haven’t read in total yet, is just another example that there are bits and pieces we still need to explain, and some of them could prove to be far greater than the effect of “doubling” the amount of a trace gas in our atmosphere. I hope heads DO explode. When you insist that you’re right, you know ALL the answers, and the “science is settled”, there is more than hubris being displayed.
Here’s the kind of thing that makes me skeptical of modeling the number of supernovas, from NatGeo:
Here’s another one …
Kind makes you think that the models underlying the predictions aren’t quite ready for prime-time … and if we can’t predict the number of supernovas in the last 1,500 years, half a billion years seems like a bridge too far.
w.