Rik Gheysens says: in Tips and Notes
The latest results of the CLOUD experiment in CERN are published: http://science.orf.at/stories/1717291/. It’s a German article with the following statements of Jasper Kirkby (head of the CLOUD experiment):
At the present time we can not say whether cosmic rays affect the climate. What we have investigated so far, is the production of condensation nuclei for cloud droplets, namely those arising from gases: The technical term is “gas-to-particle conversion”. They make up about half of condensation nuclei in the atmosphere. The remaining germs come from soot and dust.
Which gases are involved in this process?
We first looked at sulfuric acid and ammonia. The results of the first tests were: the cosmic rays enhance the formation of condensation nuclei from gases by a factor of ten. But that alone is not enough to significantly affect the formation of clouds. According to our previous experiments, there must be other gases or vapors that enhance this process. Presumably organic substances.
Which substances?
The results are currently under review in a journal. Unfortunately, I can not say more about it. Only this: The results are very interesting. During the year some results will be published.
Suppose you demonstrate that cosmic rays affect the formation of clouds actually at a greater extent. What would that mean?
I believe that these experiments are significant in two respects. Firstly, because they would show a new natural source of climate change. And secondly, because it would change the understanding of anthropogenic climate change. We are well informed about greenhouse gases. But we know too little about aerosols. Also airborne particles that pass through our industry in the atmosphere.
You have a cooling effect with certainty. But we have no idea how big this effect is. It might be small, but also very large. Maybe it is so large that it compensates for the effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere. We do not know.
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An experiment? Why didn’t they just create a model, run the model, then present the output as facts?
Anybody know? Anybody? Bueller? Ferris Bueller?
I have to give them credit for saying “We do not know.” when it would have been so easy to say “More research is needed.” – GrantSpeak for “Send more money.”
I knew it, the science is settled! /s
They clearly haven’t the foggiest.
tadchem do you expect scientists to do research without money? Or maybe you just prefer no scientific research?
As I have long suspected, “climate science” doesn’t really even know the sign of the human effect, if any, ie whether positive or negative, heating or cooling, net.
Would be amusing if “black carbon”, aka “soot”, turns out to be a cooling agent, serving as a CCN.
“Consensus, settled science” is indeed clueless, but worse, willfully so. Climatology isn’t even out of its diapers (nappies) yet. That doesn’t stop the pompous buffoons from proclaiming certitude.
We are well informed about greenhouse gases.I/i>
Bahahaha! Yeah, right.
These are serious researchers. Not the “Science is settled” or “Create a model and present the results as truth” kind of guys.
They are very careful and conservative when it comes to experiments and analysis that may undermine AGW.
“You have a cooling effect with certainty. But we have no idea how big this effect is. It might be small, but also very large. Maybe it is so large that it compensates for the effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere. We do not know.”
“We do not know.” Hurrah!
I am right now in Canada on my way to Alaska–it is very cold and rainy–as it has been in Alaska for the last few summers. This “report” is one way to jump ship–they have to be able to explain why the weather is not cooperating and this would be a good way, “You have a cooling effect with certainty. But we have no idea how big this effect is. It might be small, but also very large.”
What do you bet that the “cooling effect” turns out to be large?
Will the skeptics get any credit? For sanity in science?
On a related note:
Kitaba, Ikuko, et al. 2013 Midlatitude cooling caused by geomagnetic field minimum during polarity reversal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, 1215-1220.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/4/1215.full
MikeToo says:
May 29, 2013 at 8:24 am
They are very careful and conservative when it comes to experiments and analysis that may undermine AGW.
Indeed they are and …..
HR says:
May 29, 2013 at 8:10 am
tadchem do you expect scientists to do research without money? Or maybe you just prefer no scientific research?
That is why they are cautious. Say the incorrect thing or sound enthusiastic about the wrong area and funding might suddenly become difficult.
green!
They really are living in the dark ages this CERN bunch. everybody know that climate models predict everything and anything…at least that’s how it seems.
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus”
–Mark Twain.
CERN can’t run without funding, but Watts, McKitrick & McIntyre have done good science with little or no funding.
Mann has done execrable “science” with obscene levels of funding.
An increase of nucleation by a factor of ten is in the right direction for Svensmark but they refuse to tell us the rest of the story. Instead they are stonewalling about the “results under review” and babble about cooling by factory smoke. Recall that Muller gave us full details of the papers they had submitted before these were even peer reviewed. The results that CERN is holding back are said to be “very interesting.” I bet there is a struggle going on to stop reporting politically incorrect results and the workers are being warned about consequences if they don’t knuckle under and say what they are told to say. If, as, and when these results are released we will know how these negotiations went. Unless we can get info from someone on the inside that we can trust I am inclined to be skeptical about anything they release from now on.
Some people may be interested in the lecture that Jasper Kirkby gave in 2011 which explains how cosmic rays could be a cause of climate change.
Arno Arrak says:
May 29, 2013 at 8:45 am
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SOP now seems to be to publish a paper the obvious implication of which is to slaughter sacred cows, then add a nonsensical but obligatory obeisance at the end stating the need for urgent “climate action”,or at least more funding of computer modeling.
That’s probably the best that can be hoped for. Worst case is suppression & punishment, public humiliation & banishment to academic Siberia.
Never mind cosmic rays. I think they are just coincidentally correlated with cloudiness changes.
Better to check the relationship between Jetstream zonality and meridionality, the effect of that on the length of the lines of air mass mixing around the globe and then in turn the effect on global cloudiness and albedo.
CERN physicists : “climate scientists” = Einstein : nematodes
Jasper Kirkby (head of the CLOUD experiment) states at the end “we do not know.” Honesty in a climate related field of science is sooo long overdue. I respect the man for that and wish him and his organization the best in their endeavors in real science!
Free men will be guilty until proven innocent in one world governance; the truth will come out sooner or later and hopefully someday science will be able to rebound. Politicians and movements who supported all this blunder and pillage in the name of saving the plant through corruption I hope will never recover in my lifetime.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684
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.
Stephen Wilde says:
May 29, 2013 at 8:56 am
That’s not what the geologic record shows. It shows a strong correlation–that’s what got Svenmark interested in the concept in the first place.