That there is a gag in place is not in dispute. The question is why?
The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN’s proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.
CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment.
“I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them,” reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?
Because, Heuer says, “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.”
True, as far as it goes, but it’s hard to imagine any scientist in any field getting gagged by higher-ups if their science backs up the global warming narrative. What we have seen, though, is scientists pushing the global warming thesis despite the faults in their models and the holes in their own data, and overall encouragement across many disciplines to push the AGW line whether it’s directly relevant or not.
Cosmic rays’ impact on earth’s atmosphere and climate is very poorly understood and research is extremely difficult to carry out. To my knowledge, no climate model has ever taken them into account at all, and their impact may be very significant (or not; we don’t really know) even though some research suggests that cosmic rays can trigger cloud formation. It’s important research, and free inquiry about it and its implications is vital as well. CERN should not muzzle its scientists, whatever opinions they form based on the research. Science shouldn’t be held to CERN’s evident politically correct strictures.
(hat tip CR)
Word: conspiracy.
Could I suggest something a little less sinister? Not conspiracy, but politics. More precisely budget politics. CERN relies on massive funding from EU members, almost all of which are facing tight, if not austere, budgets. Why shouldn’t Heuer avoiding antagonizing the climate-change enthusiasts, especially Greens, at a time of budget cutting? In his position, mightn’t you?
Most likely, all the data will be made available and the contending parties in the AGW debate can hash it out.
Indeed. Let’s take it one step further. Why would CERN take any chance on presenting data that might hurt its funding bodies ability to extort money from the productive sectors of society thru wealth redistribution via carbon taxation? I would say they have a vested interest in not interpreting the results of their own collected data. It makse me wonder why they would bother to collect it in the first place.
Chipper, let me just point out that re: “Not conspiracy, but politics. ” conspiracy vs. politics is a distinction without a difference.
The avoidance of solar / cosmic radiation has been a glaring weakness in those farcical models for years.
So we’ll just have to wait until the actual papers come out?
Politics plus science equals political science, the art of persuading others to do your bidding. Natural science requires an open quest for understanding, and most of all, open questioning, the opposite of politics.
When you look beneath most government-funded science, you find politics.
Cosmic Rays and Climate
By: Nir J. Shaviv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv
http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate
Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate
Authors: Svensmark, Henrik
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark
Abstract
During the last solar cycle Earth’s cloud cover underwent a modulation more closely in phase with the galactic cosmic ray flux than with other solar activity parameters. Further it is found that Earth’s temperature follows more closely decade variations in galactic cosmic ray flux and solar cycle length, than other solar activity parameters. The main conclusion is that the average state of the heliosphere affects Earth’s climate.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1998PhRvL..81.5027S&db_key=AST&high=4235b0d9e629583
I’m betting the results are an epic fail, OR they point to/reinforce the epic fail of its sister GW theories. Either way, CERN would look like a bunch of…skeptics. OMG!
“True, as far as it goes, but it’s hard to imagine any scientist in any field getting gagged by higher-ups if their science backs up the global warming narrative.”
I don’t see this as huge a problem because the raw data is made available. Other scientistst can interpret it. The big problem with agw so far is hiding the raw data and deliberate misleading conclusions. So raw data and no conclusions is actually a step forward.
It’s odd and suspicious to have a gag like this and will encourage those who doubt agw – but I can sort of sympathize with them for not wanting politics to interfere with science. I think that is a legitimate concern. It is unfortunate that this is so but it neverless is a reality.
Limbaugh was right when he said the Four Corrupt Corners Of Liberalism were Science, Academia, Politics and the Media.
There’s theory and then there’s data.
19-of-19 scientific groups went on-record as predicting a massive Arctic ice-melt this summer … the link below has both their predictions … and daily satellite updates.
Yet the sun is quiet, so galactic cosmic ray levels are high … we *should* be seeing cooling this year … if the cosmic ray theory is correct.
As it turns out, this year’s Arctic ice-melt is absolutely massive … the melting rate observed so far is larger than all but 4-of-19 groups predict.
SCORE for 2011: AGW Consensus 1, Cosmic Ray Theory 0
No wonder the US Navy has joined the climate-change believers. It’s because the US Navy is duty-bound to place science ahead of politics.
Icelights: Your Burning Questions About Ice & Climate
Heading towards the summer minimum ice extent
URL: http://nsidc.org/icelights/
Yeah, biggest melt-off in fifty years. FIFTY YEARS. Which is nothing, historically speaking.
We get it — you’re a True Believer in Global Socialism, er, “Warming”. Apparently because you believe that by playing the useful idiot you’ll be given special privileges — perhaps access to the stores run for the nomenklatura?
It’s amazing to watch the AGW fanatics change yardsticks as the old ones stop supporting their fantasy. Global average temperature USED to be their yardstick — but it hasn’t increased in over a decade. Now it’s ice extent. In a few years, when whatever cycle has reduced the ice extent starts shifting, they’ll discard that one, as well.
19-of-19 scientific groups went on-record as predicting a massive Arctic ice-melt this summer … the link below has both their predictions … and daily satellite updates.
They do that every year! Broken clock is right twice a day or something like that.
Yet the sun is quiet, so galactic cosmic ray levels are high … we *should* be seeing cooling this year … if the cosmic ray theory is correct.
You haven’t been following the science much. The rapid melts of this year, as well as 2007 are as much to do with trade winds blowing warmer air up to the arctic as they are with global temps. Lets put it this way. Due to El Nino, last year was one of the warmist on record. Yet the ice is melting faster this year, which is a fair amount cooler than last.
And you haven’t completed the science that you quote. ENSO is caused by ocean temperature accumulation and depletion.
Complete the cycle.
The Arctic sea ice melt is not massive. It’s fairly normal. There will NOT be open water at the north pole as there has been in 1958, 1913 and numerous other times in history. In fact, there is nothing in this year’s sea ice melt outside of natural variability.
That’s really rich, coming from you.
With respect, it’s not clear that you quite get it, Rob.
Alternative mechanisms to CO2-driven AGW, like cosmic rays and aerosols, predict cooling … and that these mechanisms are real, no-one doubts.
But what we see is accelerating warming.
This substantially increases the likelihood that James Hansen’s analysis is correct—AGW is stronger than the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios.
That is why American conservatism needs a solid “Plan B” to cover the event that AGW not only is real, but is in fact (like the Japan’s reactor melt-downs) far more severe than was originally appreciated.
Peculiar brands of conservatism that insist upon willful lack-of-foresight and ignorance as “purity tests” are … well … doomed to extinction in the long run … because “Mother Nature can’t be fooled” … isn’t that correct?
So, what kind of physicist are you again? It is just that, while not a physicist myself, I did major in physics in college, and I can’t remember a single one of my professors supporting an argument he was making by ignoring its obvious statistical shortcomings and then appealing to authority to finish the argument off.
physicist:
Arctic != “Global Climate”
Arctic melt in the summer is relatively normal, and if your baseline measurements are from 1979, you are on thin ice so to speak in correlating carbon emissions with the warming. You also clearly misrepresent the the theories of alternative forcings, which don’t necessarily “predict” cooling. Rather, they explain warming!
You fail to explain how on the one hand, we have studies that blame Asian pollution for the lack of “accelerated warming” while using predictions of arctic ice melt in the summer to say that the accelerated warming is happening.
“Icelights” is set-up to answer your question.
Predictions count for a lot in science … note (below) that skeptics did not make any.
In the end, Mother Nature decides, and so far in 2011, she is ramping-up the melting.
Conservatives need a climate-change “Plan B” that accords better with Nature’s “Plan A.”
Icelights: Your Burning Questions About Ice & Climate
URL: http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/06/16/summer-predictions-for-arctic-sea-ice/
And Icelights is peer reviewed?
Seriously, if you dig into your own research is melt doesn’t really correlate much with temperature.
“While there has been a rapid retreat of sea ice in
the western Bering Sea, most of the western Arctic had
been cooler than normal. A strong positive phase of the
Arctic Oscillation (AO) characterized unusually low sea
level pressures in much of the Arctic Ocean and drew
warm air into the eastern Arctic.”
Regardless of the science, even the most rabid believers in AGW concede that the most draconian regulations will not prevent global warming IF their hypothesis about the human cause is correct.
So what should said worriers be calling for? Clearly if anyone is really concerned about human welfare, they should be strong advocates for unbridled capitalism, so that we can get as wealthy as possible and as knowledgeable as possible, as soon as possible.
We cannot possibly know what perils there are for the human race in the future. Global warming could very well be beneficial for us as a species. Being poorer and less knowledgeable is never the wise option.
I want to be richer and smarter Mr Physicist, how about you?
Yeah … unleash TEPCO now! … just ask any citizen of central Japan.
Yah know … there are good reasons why America’s deeply conservative founders rejected simplistic ideologies, and instead embraced compromise, checks, and balances.
Minamata disease
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
Ok – I get it – you vote for poorer and more stupid. You don’t mind if I move in the other direction I hope.
As an aside, capitalism does not guarantee a perfect outcome every time – only the best outcome in most cases and surely the fastest correction after the inevitable mistakes, ignorance and malfeasance. None of this applies to crony capitalism, which is nothing more than criminal behavior more related to socialism and other forms of statism.
A further aside is that this decision by CERN is not consistent with growing knowledge and improving explanations, which improve the human condition.
They set themselves up as authorities who know best. Yet they are very content to feast at the public trough. How noble of our superiors.
The worst environmental disasters in history have been in socialist countries. Chernobyl, anyone?
Exactly mr TV presenter. Warming may be good and the Antarctic may not melt.
I’m not being ironic, AGW has gone from hypothesis to theory,
to fact, without the due scientific process..
AGW massive fraud at every level must be seen and told about by the media.
However the media has turned from its heroic Watergate investigative reporting
of the coverup (lesser the actual crime) to another mode of operation.
Has something changed or was it just the topic.
So physicist says the ice is melting because it’s warmer, yet the peer reviewed research in his reference begs to differ.
Seems it’s losing ice, but it’s also *cooler* than normal, at least in the Western Arctic.
“While there has been a rapid retreat of sea ice in
the western Bering Sea, most of the western Arctic had
been cooler than normal. A strong positive phase of the
Arctic Oscillation (AO) characterized unusually low sea
level pressures in much of the Arctic Ocean and drew
warm air into the eastern Arctic.”
1. The Navier Stokes equations describe air flow with changes in temperature and density. They are non-linear, and chaotic. Small changes in initial conditions lead to large changes in long term output. Long term prediction is NOT POSSIBLE. This has been known about weather/climate since 1963 and the groundbreaking work of Edward Lorenz.
2. Warm temperatures are associated with good things. More water vapor in the air leads to reduced desert, greater food growth, and general prosperity. Warmth is good. There is not a lot of corn grown under a mile of ice.
Let’s check on the ice in a another two months. It’s true that 2011 has seen rapid melt so far. But most of that lead is from ice melting _early_ in places where ice _always melts completely_, e.g. Hudson Bay. The interesting ice is in the main Arctic basin, and that ice seems to be holding up pretty well so far, which you would expect because it has been steadily thickening since 2007. My guess is that 2011 ice melt slows dramatically in a few weeks.
Regarding Hansen’s scenarios…hogwash. CO2 contribution has tracked his scenario A and temperature is cooler than his scenario C (which assumed significant reductions in emission rates). The real world is far less sensitive to CO2 than the models are.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/what-is-hansens-excuse-for-june/
James
James, it’s *already* too late this to be any kind of “normal” year in the Arctic.
For example, we see on the satellite photos that Canada’s far-north Banks Island has already melted free … back in the mid-20th century this never happened at all in most years.
See for example T. H. Manning (who was known as “The Lone Wolf of the Arctic”) fantastic true-live adventure saga Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Circumnavigate Banks Island by Canoe in 1952.
Trapped by mid-summer ice, Prof. Manning and his hapless graduate student Andrew Macpherson had to abandon their canoe and hike-out 200 miles across then-unexplored central Banks Island … it now appears that their adventure will never be repeated … because the summer ice is now gone.
Uhhh … maybe I should mention that my son and I are huge kayak fans!
Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt
to Circumnavigate Banks Island by Canoe in 1952
Arctic Institute of North America
URL: http://arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/view/3874
Depends on “normal”. If you mean the 30-year average, I agree. If you mean the most recent decade…I suggest we wait and see.
The story from the 50′s is interesting, but unsurprising, as the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s were cool-ish and ice expanded. If I had the time, I bet I could counter with low-ice stories from the 20′s and 30′s.
Again, I think you are reading too much into the few-weeks-early demise of ice that is doomed every year. Currently, 2011 is tracking 2007 in JAXA and other measures, but the composition is quite different, and I think 2011 total will remain well above 2007 (and likely other years too).
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/how-far-to-the-record/
The crux is ice thickness. PIOMASS claims the ice is thin. PIPS and Cryostat say it’s been getting thicker. Time will tell.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/cryosat-agrees-with-pips/
Personally, I wish Goddard were a bit less edgy. But his edginess doesn’t make him wrong. I think he’s right that 2011 ice may be healthier than many are suggesting.
James asserts:
July 9 Update: The ice models that Goddard quoted turned out to be wrong, and the US Navy has taken them off line.
Somehow, Goddard has not got around to commenting on this.
That’s what comes of picking the odd-looking cherries … often those cherries are bad.
Cryosat Agrees With PIPS… Ooops, Never MindURL: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/cryosat-agrees-with-pips/#comment-69217
This is a diversion. The science is settled dontcha know.
We have just scratched the surface of understanding the complexities of the human body. How is it that we completely understand AGW when the world and and the universe it occupies is infinitely more complex?
3. Average temperatures are an artifact of the method used to gather the data and estimate that average. Average temperatures are meaningless.
4. The most important greenhouse gas is water. There is more water in the air than carbon dioxide. Changes in water vapor are an important feedback loop that acts more quickly than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide concentration increases normally follow any historically imputed increase in warming. That is because CO2 dissolves in cold water, and releases from warm water. Warming first, and CO2 follows.
5. Even if changes in weather changes forced people to move, we have amazing ability to move people around quickly, using motor vehicles, ships, planes, bicycles, and draft animals. Resolving local problems that way would be far less obtrusive than government (spit) coercion (spit) applied against productive worksers (spit) in support of an ludicrous theory.
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Possible-Little-Ice-Age-for-Ireland-could-last-11-years-as-sun-cools-125108849.html
A Physicist says: “No wonder the US Navy has joined the climate-change believers. It’s because the US Navy is duty-bound to place science ahead of politics.”
No large organization in or out of government is immune from politics, especially in an area as fraught with controversy as AGW. Because the proponents have so strongly pulled political levers to prevail over doubters, my working assumption is that AGW is malarkey. I may be wrong, but anyone who so strongly relies on political coercion risks that sort of reaction.
His argument is really nothing more than an appeal to authority. Very common rhetorical tactic in the AGW debate, second only to ad hominem
Dr. Otto Rossler won’t go away. There are new scientific players who have joined the concerns raised by Rossler, including apparently Dr. Brian Greene, regarding the fundamental inability of Hawking radiation to successfully mitigate the risk of black hole creation, establishment and the existential risk such poses to life on earth.
A central intended purpose of these CERN experiments is to produce black holes.
The “safety science” claimed by CERN entirely depends upon the presumed theoretical ability of Hawking radiation to prevent the black holes intended to be created by CERN from becoming established and thus triggering an extinction level event in our little galactic neighborhood as the black hole grows voraciously in its establishment.
CERN argues their black holes will fly far far away into some other unfortunate bastard’s galactic neighborhood. Bureaucratic morality at its finest; Hegelians to the end. Hopefully their morally driven disassociation disorder will not be noticed by more technologically sophisticated species and interpreted as an intergalactic act of war.
Rossler won a court order for a scientific review. CERN bureaucrats continue to ignore it.
If I may paraphrase the Instapundit, our Solar System’s in the very best of hands.
As for AGW, any controversy which provocatively conjoins the memes of CERN, planetary safety, science controversy and existential planetary risk, and projects same into the mass media commons of public discourse brings an unpredictable quality of public attention to CERN operations. That highly-charged and passionate lay-interest in the controversies of AGW and climate change would become attached to CERN is a threat to the institutional orthodoxy and sycophants who feed on CERN funding and affiliation. There is already profound politicization and emotion tied to the AGW and climate debates. Should the Hawking radiation controversy infiltrate and capture the imagination of the lay public via the gateway of learning provided by the AGW/Climate controversy, the political implications become considerably more volatile. At the very least CERN bureaucrats have demonstrated a proclivity regarding the AGW controversy that lends credence to a collateral distrust that they would behave unfaithfully regarding weaknesses or flaws in Hawking radiation theory used by their “safety scientists” to predict a certainty of safety regarding the intended man-made production of unknown numbers of black holes.
Personally, I pray CERN-ites have it right. However, within these same traditions of orthodoxy in university and bureaucratic science we have the competing traditions of “scientism” that Karl Popper and his cohorts of the Mont Pelerin Society found so profoundly disturbing and deeply threatening to the classical traditions of academic integrity and scientific inquiry. The bureaucracy that gave birth to and presently animates CERN appears considerably more Hegelian than scientific. The stench of victorian “scientism” seems to be there in their attempt to bootstrap Hawking radiation into the equivalent of an empirically proven certainty of safety regarding the harmlessness of their man-made black hole factory.
Those younger may not appreciate the nature or history of Hegelian-based bureaucracy. The Hegelians gave us the “proven science” of Phrenology, the pretentions of Eugenics, Race, Phrenology-based racial policy and the grand utopian construct of “progressive man perfected under socialism,” which to them was the science of human social organization they mostly believed was best represented in the sociobiology of the ant. For more scholarly information on the history and practice of Democide, may I commend those interested to the work of Dr. Rudy Rummel. In particular, Rummel documented 20th Century governments were the most murderous of historical record; and not only of each other, but of their respective citizens by a factor of six.
Scientism is a dangerous thing. Historically, it kills on behalf of “reason” and “Science” via the actions of elites secure in the certainty they have been properly scientific in their usurpation of the lives, property and/or liberty belonging to others.
And why would CERN be so obsessed with controlling its proximity to AGW and controversies around it? It could be they are running scared? Otherwise oblivious and content in its massively-funded transnational bureaucratic cocoon, maybe they already face the creeping ennui that they have made a mess of it. Maybe so; maybe not.
Nothing lubricates magical thinking like promiscuous access to lots of somebody else’s money. Our Congress, unfortunately, has become a near-perfect example of such promiscuity.
CERN has it’s accomplishments, but I suspect its the postmodern Beltway that’s won the dubious honor of being the very first man-made black hole.
Interesting conversation up there. A Physicist sounds more like a cargo-cult physicist in the same way that Paul Ehrlich was a cargo-cult biologist. I flew over the polar ice cap in March of last year. Nothing but white starting about Hudson Bay. With the massive amount of freezing we had last winter, coupled with the intense heat this summer, it is natural that we’d have a record melt. This man isn’t a scientist at all. I notice that he didn’t answer the question asking exactly what kind of physicist he was (or I missed his answer–but then admitting uncertainty about a data-set makes me more of a scientist than he is, doesn’t it?).
Though often frustrating, these kinds of gag orders can be infinitely more helpful than people give them credit for. Consider the case of the last “discovery” by FermiLab just a few weeks ago. An anomalous reading that occurred within the current predicted range for a new sub-atomic particle was announce much before it was confirmed. Upon further analysis, it was discovered that the reading was just that… an anomaly.
This kind of gag order also prevents scientists from mistakenly claiming corellative data proven without further study. Not only jumping the gun, but making mistaken connections between results. I fully approve, though it is unfortunate that it is necessary, of keeping scientists mouths shut until there is actually something to report on. Don’t report results until you have something significant!
Contrary to James’ assertions above that “2011 [Arctic] ice may be healthier than many are suggesting”, it turns out that those measurements and codes were wrong, and the US Navy has taken them off line.
Meanwhile, NOAA has set up a North Pole web camera. Things are looking mighty mushy up there … I wouldn’t let my dog go out on ice that thin and rotten.
Soberingly, it appears the scientists’ consensus prediction was right … we’re heading for [another] record-breaking Arctic melt year.
North Pole Web Camera
URL: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa2.jpg
Regarding PIPS accuracy…interesting, though it’s unclear from the note if the specific problem invalidates the entire projection.
Regarding the North Pole camera, looks like a surface pond to me. And even if it were open water, it doesn’t necessarily mean that much:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/
Regarding “assertion”…I think you are attributing to me a more strident tone than I feel or am trying to convey. Hence the use of “may” and comments like “time will tell”. To me this is an entirely empirical exercise. My point is simply that we should let the melt season unfold and see what happens before slitting our wrists in despair. There is reason to believe that the situation is less dire than it first appears.
BTW…this is James again. Didn’t mean to be “anonymous”.
Wow, “physicist”, are you saying we’ll have open water at the North Pole for the first time since 1958? That’s wonderful! Maybe some US subs can surface there and restage that famous photo. The more things change the more they stay the same. Wake me when wheat crops in Greenland become a going concern, as in Viking times.
Of course science is getting politicized! When most science is funded by leftists in government you end up with left-leaning scientists writing left-leaning proposals. The perfect example is the research to determine how average penis size affects societies in the world. Instead of building cars, jets, or submarine mining robots we’re talking to people about Mr. Winky. More and more sociologists and psycologists are trying to manipulate man, for the greater good of course, instead of believing that a 600 HP car is good for jobs and sales. Frack for gas. Make all grantors sign off and install a measure of how good their choices are..useful products per dollar. Is “weenies measured” a useful product? I’m sure we’ll have arguments.
Well, I would guess the point to discuss here is the word “interprete”. I am pretty sure with “not to interprete” the results, he wanted to say that they should not make a strong statement in respect of the overall importance of this effect but to give the results to the meterology community and this community should interpret the results in a global context.
Of course CERN does not want to be involved in the battles of this discussion since it is not the research line of CERN.
The main physicists involved in the measurements are certainly from high energy physics which are familiar with measurements on accelerator experiments. To translate the results in global effects, is out of their reach and, if you do not want to be involved in the political battles, should not be given.
CERN is simply acting as as a service centre other research fields in this issue.
To give a more common example: If you want to build a hotel, you may contact a company to estimate the value of land on which you want to build it. The company will deliver you an estimation but will not “interpret” this estimation in the sense of “You have to build this hotel!”. This is the issue of the future hotel owner. Here, the meteorology community is the hotel owner and CERN the company giving an estimation for one of many different aspects. The interpretation is the job of the meteorologists.