New paper: Clouds blown by the solar wind

Re: “I would also sit with rapt attention if EU had any explanations for anything, but they do not”
“Professionals generally avoid the risk inherent in real critical thinking and cannot properly be called critical thinkers. They are simply ideologically disciplined thinkers. Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions; applying and refining a personally developed worldview; and calling for action that advances a personally created agenda. An approach that backs away from any of these three components lacks the critical spirit … Ideologically disciplined thinkers, especially the more gung-ho ones, often give the appearance of being critical thinkers as they go around deftly applying the official ideology and confidently reporting their judgments. The fact that professionals are usually more well-informed than nonprofessionals contributes to the illusion that they are critical thinkers.” (p41, Disciplined Minds, Jeff Schmidt)
“Because they internalize both the paradigms and their employers’ priorities and values, scientists, at least in their own eyes, are completely nonpartisan in their work: They don’t “get political.” They don’t think about, let alone challenge, the ideology built into their techniques. Contrary to popular images of scientists as challengers of established beliefs (like Galileo or Einstein), the vast majority of scientists never seek to test their paradigms and do not participate in paradigm disputes. They don’t waste their employers’ coin by getting caught up in efforts to overthrow existing worldviews or to establish new ones. Instead, they tend to treat the accepted models of reality as reality itself.” (p82)
From a Jeff Schmidt interview at http://www.julesnyquist.com/articles/article/1430100/16489.htm …
“MR: When you first thought of writing this book, you were in graduate school, right?
JS: Yes, that’s right. I got interested [in the] topic when I was going to professional training myself, getting a PhD in physics at the University of California, Irvine. It seemed like the best of my fellow graduate students were either dropping out or being kicked out. And by ‘best,’ those were the most concerned about other people and seemed less self-centered, less narrowly-focused, most friendly people … they seemed to be handicapped in the competition. They seemed to be at a disadvantage not only because their attention was divided, but because their concerns about big picture issues like justice and the social role of the profession and so on, caused them to stop and think and question, whereas their unquestioning gung-ho classmates just plowed right through with nothing to hold them back. As I mentioned, there’s about a 50% drop-out rate for students entering University programs in all fields; and what I found was that this weeding out is not politically neutral. To put it bluntly, the programs favor ass-kissers.”
Does any of this sound familiar?
“At the end of the week the entire physics faculty gathers in a closed meeting to decide the fate of the students. Strange as it may seem, in most physics departments a student’s score on the test is only one factor in the faculty’s decision as to whether or not that student has passed the test. Students are not usually told their scores: this gives faculty members the option of deciding that a student has failed the test even if that student has outscored someone they are going to pass. In arriving at their personal opinions on whether to pass or fail a student, individual faculty members consider anything and everything carried away from informal discussions with the student and with others around the department.
A faculty member who talks informally with a student in the hallway or at the weekly after-colloquium reception inevitably comes away with a feeling about whether or not that student ‘thinks like a physicist.’ The student’s political outlook can easily make a difference in the faculty member’s assessment. For example, in the usual informal discussion of an issue in the news, the student who rails against technical incompetence and confines his thoughts to the search for technical solutions within the given political framework builds a much more credible image as a professional physicist than does the student who emphasizes the need to alter the political framework as part of the solution. Indeed, the latter approach falls outside the work assignments given to professional physicists in industry and academe and so represents thinking unlike a physicist’s.” (p134)
The question which the public never seems to quite ask is what the meaning of scientific consensus is when students who might disagree with it are simply purged from the programs?

lsvalgaard says: –
Thank you, Dr Svalgaard
1) yes, I’ve come to ‘understand’ that a central issue between EU and conventional astrophysics circles around the relationship between magnetic fields and electrical currents, and whether the former can exist in absence of the latter, sort of ‘cart vs horse’ issue…
I appreciate your clear explanation of the ‘conventional position’ regards acceleration of particles from the sun, as it potentially forms a basis whereby I can examine the postulates of the EU writings I come across: – Do they actually directly address this element and bring forward ‘falsifiable’ theory to offer cogent alternative explanations!? (albeit that as I understand it, the EU folk are still in process of designing scalable laboratory experiments to address this. Funding such, is another hurdle for them, though should they achieve funding doesn’t indicate anything regards ‘results’, of course. I suppose we’ll see, eventually, either way – many of the leading proponents seem very sober and serious about tackling these basic solar physics questions)
2) I saw after your kind and direct answers to Bob Weber preceding my earlier comment and somewhat regretted my comments about your ‘attitude’ in your responses to some others, in my posting. – I realize that there are longstanding debates around solar issues here, as it impacts our earthly weather most specifically, and that there must be a lot of ‘history’ between those of strong opinions with some degree of scientific background and yourself. Unfortunately I couldn’t ‘map’ the positions of the various posters here, and also see that some folk are very confrontational with you without bringing forward much of substance.
I’ve experienced the same in the past in other forums, politics, history, and ID most specifically. It can be very frustrating, dealing with the committed and vociferous ‘misinformed’…
All the Best to you in the New Year
David S.
ps: – If you’ve not come across the work of Professor Gerald Pollack at U of Washington with water as a dipole factoring into cloud and thunderstorm formation, I believe you might find it intriguing – it certainly seems to add a significant possible element to our understanding of what drives weather, with possibly many implications for electrical energy circulation throughout the atmosphere. And there seems to be some exciting data coming to the table regards solar hydrogen in the ‘wind’ possibly interacting with O2 erupting off the ionosphere at the thermopause – Starwater, if you will, and a partial explanation of the seemingly ubiquitous presence of H2O where never before expected in our solar system, and well beyond. Exciting times of discovery, IMHO.

lsvalgaard says:
December 26, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Chris Reeve says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:59 pm
Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions;
None of which are relevant for science.
– – – – – –
Dr. Svalgaard: – I must demure. My nephew is now out of Stanford and other post-grad work at MIT, and working (at very impressive pay) for the Defence Industry, sharing (w/o details) that some of the breakthroughs with which he is involved have major implications for social control by the Establishment. How can he divorce his career and research decisions, as a scientist, from the social, political and moral assumptions. Not judging, just asking?
Doesn’t your statement imply that simply by achieving a certain level of peer acceptance ‘as a scientist’ one is exempt from the strictures that maintain the social compact? {And here I must agree with Chris Reeve in regards the often utter lack of education and training in the Humanities among many scientists} I don’t buy it, if so – because it sounds all-too-much like that hackneyed quote: – “I was only following orders”…etc. (not invoking ‘Godwin’s Law’, mark you 😉 )
My post- studies were interdisciplinary – and I’ve certainly come to believe that compartmentalization in science has potential to lead to presently unimaginable horrors, not for ‘others’, but for ourselves, our families and loved ones. Science is not ‘an end unto itself’ – in my opinion. It is an exploration of the mystery of our existence wherein the ‘scientist’ has responsibility to represent, via his talent and skill in the ‘scientific method’, the interests and curiosity of collective humanity. To me, this cannot proceed without the individual scientist integrating his social, political and moral assumptions within the course of his research, especially as we advance in our abilities to self-immolate. These aspects of ‘humanity’ are integral to what it means to be a scientist, the responsibility unavoidable.
In the alternative, the rest of society would have the full right to deny access to tools to those scientists who do not feel this representative responsibility. Would you feel comfortable being so examined before being funded or let near work in your discipline?
I’m quite certain you would not. Nor do I believe for an instant that you do not fully engage your perspective over social, political and moral assumptions each and every day in your work. Those scientists who do not are in my opinion like reckless children who have broken into their parents’ gun cabinet (and likely insane; socio or psychopathic) – they need to be disarmed.
As to those scientists, and we see them all too evident and frequently within the CAGW community, whose temperament and immature and untrained thinking processes allow them to project their social, political, and moral assumptions on to others, compromising their scientific integrity to achieve those ends in the process? They can battle it out with those scientists with clearer balance and recognition of their own inherent biases who do not deviate from their principal mandate to honestly present data and research postulates: – While scientific debate is still allowed, they’ll be sorted out soon enough, or sooner or later.

The book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich describes “social morality and scientific pursuit” becoming dangerously entwined.
Social morality should learn from scientific pursuit, but should never be its master. The consequences are often devastating when it does.

Please excuse my poor typing.

Dr. Svalgaard, if you don’t mind a few more questions…
Why is the escape velocity temperature for “lighter” electrons so much higher than the “heavier” protons? Are there any times when temperatures are lower than 1.5 million K when protons would leave the sun in higher proportions than electrons (if the temperature isn’t high enough for electrons to escape)? Do the satellites measure electron speeds, proton speeds, and relative proportions separately?
Moving on, from wikipedia:
“A Van Allen radiation belt is one of at least two layers of energetic charged particles (plasma) that is held in place around the planet Earth by the planet’s magnetic field. The belts extend from an altitude of about 1,000 to 60,000 kilometers above the surface in which region radiation levels vary. Most of the particles that form the belts are thought to come from solar wind and other particles by cosmic rays.[1] The belts are named after their discoverer, James Van Allen, and are located in the inner region of the Earth’s magnetosphere. The belts contain energetic electrons that form the outer belt and a combination of protons and electrons that form the inner belt.”
Question: Why do the Van Allen belts exist and persist? What are the mechanisms? Isn’t there charge separation between the negative electrons in the outer belt and the positive protons in the inner belt, and if so, why isn’t that considered a type of “double layer”? Wouldn’t the ever-present solar wind continually load-up the belts with electrons and protons into ever higher densities? What do these electrons and protons do, and where do they go as the layer densities build-up?
Further, you said:
“Once the solar wind has escaped it doesn’t really slow down until it meets the interstellar medium [some 110 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth] at which point the velocity indeed will slow to 0 km/sec.”
If the electrons and protons slow down to 0 km/sec, wouldn’t they build-up at the heliospheric boundary, in a similar fashion as they apparently do in the Van Allen belts, along with neutral hydrogen atoms? If so, how do they behave when they build-up at the heliospheric boundary?
As you were saying here,
“The IEF is purely a local effect created when the solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field: positive charges are deflected one way around the Earth, and negative charges are deflected the other way. The resulting electric current neutralizes/closes by flowing through the ionosphere giving rise to aurorae and associated magnetic disturbances.”
Is it not conceivable that there exists a heliospheric magnetosphere like the earth’s magnetosphere? If so, wouldn’t the electrons and protons deflect into opposite directions around the heliosphere like they do around the earth, and wouldn’t that result in an electric current around the heliosphere, and if so, wouldn’t it neutralize/close at the sun’s poles? If not, where and how?