Remember this story from July 20th? The essentials are, that a science team was working on a paper using CERN data that seemed to show a link between cosmic rays and the formation of clouds in earth’s atmosphere. This would be a key finding; cloud cover has a massive impact on temperatures on the earth’s surface. CERN, for its part, was pre-emptively trying to keep scientists from opining about the data, in effect muzzling a science story as it unfolded. That’s a big science no-no.
Well, now the paper has been published in Nature. And it’s big.
The first results from the lab’s CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets”) experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth’s clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.
This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a “heliocentric” rather than “anthropogenic” approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
CERN’s director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer warned his scientists “to present the results clearly but not interpret them”. Readers can judge whether CLOUD’s lead physicist Jasper Kirkby has followed his boss’s warning.
“Ion-induced nucleation will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere.”
Kirkby is quoted in the accompanying CERN press release:
“We’ve found that cosmic rays significantly enhance the formation of aerosol particles in the mid troposphere and above. These aerosols can eventually grow into the seeds for clouds. However, we’ve found that the vapours previously thought to account for all aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can only account for a small fraction of the observations – even with the enhancement of cosmic rays.”
And then, there’s this.
Climate models will have to be revised, confirms CERN in supporting literature (pdf):
“[I]t is clear that the treatment of aerosol formation in climate models will need to be substantially revised, since all models assume that nucleation is caused by these vapours [sulphuric acid and ammonia] and water alone.
It may be too strong to say that this finding rubbishes previous climate models that didn’t take cosmic ray effects into account. But not by a whole lot, since the models don’t account for cosmic rays. One thing is for sure: Humanity cannot do a thing about cosmic rays or their influence on the atmosphere.
Bryan, it’s a shame that the sole definite assertion in your post … is also exactly wrong … specifically in the sense that cosmic ray cycles have been uniform since 1953 … while anthropogenic sulphate emissions (from coal-burning) have ramped-up enormously.
It will be a few years before we know whether this means AGW is more severe or less severe than previously thought. Soberly, if it turns out we *have* to keep coal-induced sulphates high, to mitigate the warming effects of CO2 … then humanity is really getting itself into trouble.
Meanwhile, the Arctic Ocean is wide open for commercial shipping, earlier and wider than ever before in nautical history. Furthermore, all of the Soviet Union’s high arctic archipelagos have melted entirely free of the pack-ice … ice-free Soviet Barent and Kara seas have not been seen before.
This whole situation is mighty serious … observed levels of climate change are substantial and accelerating … in no respect are these latest experimental findings reassuring.
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Daily Updated Sea Ice Maps
URL: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
So…what can we do about cosmic rays? You never quite get around to proving how I’m wrong. Asserting it doesn’t do the job.
What can humans do about cosmic radiation?
Simple: reduce the levels of sulphur and nitrogen compounds upon which these rays act.
Duh.
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Cosmic ray flux has cycled stably since 1953
URL: http://www.realclimate.org/images/cr2011.jpg
Oh, Jesus Christ. Like there are no naturally occurring nitrates and sulfates?
Oh, and btw, you got the effect backward. This is a mechanism for cooling. If you want to cool the earth, you’d have to, according to your theory, stop scrubbing SO2 out of power plant flue, and try to maximize the SO2 and NH3 and other stinkies put into the atmosphere.
Don’t you duh me. That doesn’t do anything about cosmic rays, which is what I said in the post. With nitrogen making up 78% of the earth’s atmosphere and SO2 being a constant trace component, you have a lot of work ahead of you.
The folks who kid themselves that the CERN results are good news, are folks who ain’t been payin’ attention.
Fortunately, NASA *has* been payin’ attention.
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Aerosols: Tiny Particles, Big Impact
URL: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/
You are certainly no physicist, at least not a nuclear physicist. A cosmic ray has no way of selectively ionizing sulfur or nitrogen *compounds*. It will ionize the first atom it strikes, which will be elemental nitrogen (about 70-75% of the time – this is where we get carbon-14 for radiocarbon dating) or elemental oxygen (10-15% of the time) or water vapor. The chance of it hitting a man-made compound is vanishingly small. So the ions that are produced are from natural gasses and vapors that man has nothing to do with.
Your comment sounds plausible. Physicist’s implication that cosmic rays need human-caused pollutants to act sounds ludicrous.
To Physicist i would go to the colledge where you got your degree get your money back.Let me see if I can help your education out.A volcano put out more sulphate in one eruption than all of our coalfire powerplant put their in a whole year.And a volcano puts it up their a lot quicker,It is just like CO2 when it comes naturally doesnt matter what you think your going to do,It isnt going to happen
It depends on which energy band of cosmic rays we’re talking about. But that’s too much like physics, isn’t it?
Are you going to attempt to defend the reluctance of the AGW crowd to follow basic scientific methodology and release the original data and the computer programs used to process them?
No matter if they had a good reason for not releasing the data, “No data, no science”.
Any scientist who uses the AGW papers in his research is irresponsible. They are little more than popularization of a hypothesis. A nice way to say “rubbish”.
You would know this if you took even Introduction to General Science.
Climate research funding, Phillep, has been running, by one estimate, 37,000 to 1 in favor of “proving” AGW. Even if that’s off by a huge factor, it still points to funding nonsense and makes your point absurd. After all, how can you do the research if starved of funding?
As a consequence of this enormous funding discrepancy, it seems reasonable to presume, those not convinced of AGW have had to content themselves with pointing out the numerous discrepancies and shortcomings of the AGW model.
How long is “nautical history” in the Arctic? A century, maybe? Do we know the state of Arctic packs, say, when Greenland was green, back before the Little Ice Age? Or for longer, climatologically relevant periods?
In any case, the very recent melting of the Arctic ice pack (which is not much different than similar melting in the 1930s) has occurred when no increase in “global temperatures” have been observed (during the last decade and a half,) as even AGW advocates admit. So it can’t even be tied to “global warming,” if that term is even operative any longer, “climate change” being the new default hedge phrase Even if it had, it would say precisely nothing about the cause of such warming, just as it says precisely nothing about the cause of the ice melting itself.
Tying such an isolated phenomenon to anthropogenic CO2 is a lovely example of two variable thinking: consider any two simultaneously occurring variables (in this case, melting sea ice and increased CO2,) and it’s easy to make a false presumption about causation. That is the point of this article. The climate models upon which AGW alarmism have been based, the ones that didn’t predict the last 15 years of no warming, the ones that didn’t “predict” (in arrears) the cooling that took place in the 1960s (“hide the decline” ring a bell?) the models upon which the entire AGW alarmist case is based, have not taken into account what is now acknowledged as a major influence on global climate. Whether that is by design, by neglect, or due to simple ignorance, the fact is these models are junk. Which presumably is why they have repeatedly failed to pan out against actual data from the field. Critics have noted for years that those same models have not included a number of other factors influencing climate. I guess the grant money didn’t pay for that kind of investigation. And it’s hard for the U.N., GE and Solomon Brothers to cash in on cosmic rays.
To respond to this revelation about cosmic rayswith some anecdote about sea ice…is that science? I mean, you being a physicist and all?
Ice on water is a two phase mixture. All the ice melts, and there is still no temperature change. All the water freezes, and there is still no temperature change. Only after all the ice melts can the temperature increase, or only after the water freezes can the temperature decrease.
Anyone who points to some of or even a lot of the ice melting as evidence of temperature change has some fundamental problems.
Aside from that, the Navier Stokes equations, which describe the movement of fluids with changes in temperature and density, are non-linear and chaotic. That means that long term prediction is not possible. Even without cosmic rays, the aspects of global warming that predicted future warming for more than 7 to 10 days in advance, were a hoax. The chaotic nature of the N-S equations was revealed by Edward Lorenz in 1993, among the first wave of chaos physics discovered.
Badly put, DonM.
Modern technologies from commercial aircraft, to synthetic biology, to separative transport, to combustion theory, all are based either directly on Navier-Stokes equations, or on dynamical processes that are similarly turbulent and/or chaotic.
And yet computers are playing a steadily larger role in science-and-engineering (relative to experiment) … not a smaller role.
The reason is simple: predictive computational models even of turbulent processes can be made accurate. See for example the review by Johnson, Tinoco and Yu, Thirty years of development and application of CFD at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Seattle (here “CFD” means “computational fluid dynamics”).
Are nonlinear flows easy to understand? No.
Are large-scale computer models required? Yes.
Can the resulting understanding be made reliable? Definitely.
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Thirty years of development and application of CFD at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Seattle
URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045793005000125
Well put
Actually, galactic cosmic ray cycles haven’t been uniform. Recently published data in the Astrophysical Journal as well as current cosmic ray data publicly available on web show that galactic cosmic ray intensities at or below 1 GeV/nuc reached a record high during the recent extended solar minimum. The solar minimum was expected to turn around in 2008, but it extended such that galactic cosmic ray intensities reached maximum in 2009-2010, exceeding the levels of the previous solar minimum in 1997-1998 by as much as 26%. Heliospheric conditions such as much lower (compared to the 97-98 solar minimum) solar wind dynamic pressure and interplanetary magnetic field strength contributed to the increased access of GCRs to 1 AU. Probably the extended solar minimum also allowed GCRs more time to reach equilibrium against heliospheric conditions.
At higher energies, where the solar modulated GCR intensities approach the GCR LISM intensities, the % increase from the previous solar minimum are likely to be less.
Cosmic rays may be fairly constant, but their incidence on our upper atmosphere is highly correlated with solar wind. Less solar wind –> more ray incidence –> more cloud formation –> shifting of the planetary albedo towards greater reflectivity –> cooling.
It’s not that hard.
A Geologist
I am always amazed that people who profess to be scientists refuse to look at the geologic record to see the climate is not static. Man has been around for what, maybe 2.5 million years and only really for 3000 years where it can be said it has had global effect. The planet is over 4.5 billion years old. We are still in an ice age. The ice age is ending and the temps are rising. This has happen innumerable times in the geologic record. Take the time to look. Man did not cause these changes in climate because he was not there. We also think the sun is constant and unchanging. I doubt if this is the case. Please consider that very, very small changes in the suns output has a profound effect on the climate. One volcanic eruption puts more sulphur compounds and CO2 in the atmosphere than hundreds of coal fired power plants do. There are constant eruptions all over the planet. There planet itself is what controls not man. I encourage everyone concerned about climate change to look at the geologic record and understand that man is like a flea on an elephant’s ass when it comes to the climate and the planet.
Ice in water is a two phase mixture. The ice has to completely melt before there is a temperature rise. The ice can completely freeze before there is a temperature decrease.
Anyone who points to ice extent as evidence of warming has some fundamental lack in their understanding of physics.
It is my understanding that the South Pole is expanding on the other side. But maybe the person who wrote that article was lying.
We don’t have to blame humans for every that goes wrong….
‘Truth’ is, as we have seen over the last 30 years, very subjective. And flying over it is not traversing it. Furthermore, the ‘observed effects of climate change’ are not accelerating, nor are they unprecedented, as evidenced by the flatline of global temperature for the last 15 years, even as the release of ‘manmade’ CO2 has accelerated with the development of China and India.
I certainly don’t, and haven’t, put much faith in NASA for the last 20 years. They’ve gone from firing our imaginations and dreams with space travel to chastising and alarming us for our alleged affects on the planet. Greenpeace with a Congressional budget is still Greenpeace.
“a physicist” is not actually a physicist, but a college student lefty troll.
I will give an adult comment: One of the biggest problems with AGW and the “urgency” to massively modify human habits to “reverse” AGW is that it has always suffered from very incomplete data. This incompleteness is really at the crux of the issue, not whether AGW or natural warming are “real” or a “hoax.” It is reckless and destructive to disrupt the world economy and people’s lives based on insufficient data.
Maybe “AP” can get this analogy. His check engine light comes on. He goes down to Auto Zone and gets the code read. It’s the O2 sensor. It’s right there on the code reader. So he replaces the O2 sensor. Car still has the check engine light. So he goes to a different auto parts store. They read the code, and again, it’s the O2 sensor. Now we have a consensus of code readers! So he buys another O2 sensor, replaces the first one, and the check engine light is still on. Six auto part stores later, he gets frustrated and takes it to the mechanic.
He tells the mechanic that it’s got to be the O2 sensor, because six out of six code readers said so. That’s not just a consensus, that’s an unanimous consensus! So the mechanic jacks it up, looks around a a little, and says “I found your problem”. It’s a spot on the O2 sensor wire that rubbed and shorted out.
The moral of the story is that a consensus of experts can be wrong, because a presumption is built into the question. I’m sure this will sail right over our physicist’s head, but every grease monkey out there understands it completely.
Good analogy! But don’t hold your breath waiting for the zealot to understand.
Consensus is an argument for fools. 600 or so years ago there was consensus that the earth was flat. And that the sun revolved around the earth. If you disagreed you’d be burned at the stake. Consensus just means you’re part of the herd. Nothing more.
It is for your own good; they do this.
Yep. Key bit from one of the articles that “physicist” links to above, which he apparently, for some reason, considers a refutation of this post:
“The details of aerosol indirect effects are only partially understood, as most instruments cannot measure aerosols within clouds. Climatologists consider the role of clouds to be the largest single uncertainty in climate prediction. Less than a third of the models participating in the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included indirect aerosol effects, even in a very limited way, and those considered only sulfate aerosols.”
URL: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/
Climate models will have to be revised, confirms CERN in supporting literature
Racists. What part of “the science has been settled” don’t they understand?
It’s obvious “a physicist” is not actually a physicist, but a failed college student lefty troll.
It is a good experiment, and let’s follow the data. Cloud seeding is a difficult area to study, and nucleation of droplets by cosmic rays competes with other processes. Good.
FOR THE RECORD,
I’ve been following this story on the climate blogs, and it’s a little premature to be saying that this is the final nail in the coffin of AWG. It’s one little popsicle stick in a growing structure, but by itself isn’t really a game changer, at least yet. There are more shoes to drop still.
It’s inconsistent to be skeptical of the theories proffered by the alarmists, and then pounce on a shred of an alternative theory. Better to take note, sit tight, and let this develop. This will continue to unfold over a period of years. The weight of the evidence is against high climate sensitivity, but the weight of the evidence is gathered grain by grain.
What is a game changer is an examination of the “scientific papers” and the refusal of the “researchers” to adequately release their work.
Those papers are garbage.
Breaking news: The pro-science folks at RealClimate just *love* the CERN research.
Gee … maybe that’s `cuz they aren’t scared of understanding it.
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This is a great example of doing science and making progress
URL: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/
Or else they are unable to understand science.
Any referral to RealClimate is an automatic PLONK.
Yeah! `Cuz those NASA/EPA guys are morons!
Unlike talk-radio pundits, ideology-first politicians, and corporate shills!
Now *those* guys really appreciate science!
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Aerosol-Cloud Interactions
URL: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=5724
As a matter of fact Hansen is missing a few tappets and head gasket. Or haven’t you noticed?
WOW, you finally get the point. While those people are extremely intelligent they are mostly idealistic and unrealistic morons. I am glad you finally understand.
Yeah, like those NASA guys who put their temperature readers next to heating duct exhausts. Or the NASA guy in the news last week who said space aliens might destroy us because of global warming. Those guys are awesome!
Watch out. Your “tell” is showing. No one on this site is likely to be fooled by you again. Maybe you should change your moniker.
Can we please start banning the people who aren’t going to argue an issue on its own merits? Saying that something is ok because someone else did, or saying you’re right because you can find an ‘expert’ who shares your opinion proves absolutely nothing.
Yes, NASA did so well that it’s now out of business. And the EPA’s agenda is self-serving – manufacture a problem that doesn’t exist in order to exact huge amounts of money and power from the citizens to enforce goals that aren’t necessary, even though the end result will be to drive all of the businesses from our country.
In case you ain’t noticed, the links I’ve been providing actually apply physical theory to analyze experimental data.
For many centuries, this practice has bothered politicians of every persuasion.
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This is a great example of doing science and making progress
URL: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/
I checked out your realclimate link. I added a post. I’ll be curious to see if they’re willing to publish it (it’s awaiting “moderation”).
And argh, I wanted to post it here for posterity, but I stupidly navigated away from the page and there’s no way to see it now unless they -do- post it. Oh well. I’ll try to reconstruct.
It had to do with the strawmen in the article, such as claiming anyone against the AGW scam is saying “cosmic rays are the dominant driver of climate change”. We don’t have to prove that. We already know that A) the AGW cult can’t produce a single predictive model that, when applied to historical data, accurately predicts more recent results, and B) actually makes a decent showing at taking *clouds* into account.
All we have to prove is that the AGW crowd doesn’t have a clue what it’s talking about. They’re the ones who want trillions of dollars of the economy redirected to circle around their “solutions” to the problem. It’s convenient for them to demand that -we- are responsible for proving a negative, but guess what? We don’t have to. This “bombshell” (I’m surprised they’re not demanding for a “smoking gun”, the liberal’s favorite minimum standard for any contrary evidence to be considered), isn’t, and we don’t need one, it’s just another big slab of evidence on top of the existing mountain that the guys being pointed to amidst some truly lovely Gregorian chanting of “the science is settled” have also misgauged the effect of cosmic rays by over an order of magnitude (that’s just -on top- of everything else they can’t get right), and frankly, they don’t have a clue. They certainly don’t have what their utterly hubristic claims amount to, which is basically that they possess divine wisdom. Because they say so.
For all we know, AP might be a dog at the other end of a dialup line. Or Harry Read Me. Or some goombah undergrad.
Point of fact is: if they are running an experiment, doing it carefully, there will be measurements of a direct process, not proxy data. This has an advantage, in that the modelers will be able to refine their models, maybe even build new segments, based on something everyone can agree with — the CLOUD data. None of that troublous HARRY_READ_ME confusion.
Believe me, after the East Anglia fiasco, those guys at CERN are going to be like coffee’d up, anal retentive CPAs with their records. Good.
And NASA hasn’t been exactly careful of their data, either. No wonder CERN has such a tight sphincter.
A Physicist is actually Dr. John Sidles, PhD of the University of Washington Medical School.
One really must understand a couple of things about John-boy. First is that if God Himself came down and explained to Johnny he’d been wrong all along and the Earth was just fine, thank you very much, Johnny Onenote here would argue the point. And probably reference the pope.
The second thing is that John actually has done good, important research in his field unfortunately, like many with advanced degrees he thinks that makes him an expert in everything. He’s not, but he’s too proud to admit it.
Pat
His love of eccentrically-patterned bowties does not conflict with your description.
It’s a curious and universal quirk of human nature that those who consider their enlightened opinions the most free from ideology are also those most likely to adduce “expert” positions instead of develop and argue their own. This is the hallmark of the authoritarian.
Authoritarians use an incrementing scale of force techniques to see that their opinions prevail. They start with mockery, move on to vilification, next resort to censorship, and finally move to criminalization.
How telling and obvious (except to Dr. Sidles) that all the authorities he rains down upon those with a different view come from ideologically uniform sources.
“The essence of the classical Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”
- Bertrand Russell
Patrick, I’m sure you know that I prefer to post under my own name, and generally do so. But on forums that tolerate personal abuse, that’s unwise. My wife, my son, and I all have been publicly accosted by ideology-first nutjobs (for far-left and far-right) her in consequence of School Board service, him in consequence of USMC service, me in consequence of scientific views.
It’s very sad, and very imprudent too (IMHO), that the editors of a so-called “conservative” site like PJM/Tatler tolerate (and even encourage) abusive posts on their forum. It’s worse that those same editors have embraced an ugly policy of selectively “outing” readers, with the deliberate intent (IMHO) of exposing them to higher levels of public abuse.
So why post at all? The lesser reason is that my own strongest political instincts are substantially conservative. The greater reason is a dislike of being chased-out by PJM/Tatler‘s peculiar brand of editorially-sponsored abuse … abuse that (falsely) calls itself “conservatism.”
The suppression of debate by abuse is not how *real* conservatism works, or how American-style democracy works either … and that is why for committed educators, Marines, and scientists alike “The bended knee is not a tradition of our service.”
Gee, John. I post under my real name and don’t find it difficult. It’s curious that people who post anonymously are the most disrespectful and derogatory, probably because their anonymity makes them think they’ll get away with it. If you want some respect:
1. Stop posting anonymously.
2. Stop the drive-by commentary and start addressing rebuttal points to your own posts like a scientist would do.
3. Stop blaming others for the problems you initiate by posting anonymously in order to demand that only you know what you’re talking about.
No thanks Howard …IMHO it’s better to stick with climate-change science … and tolerate abuse.
Top US Navy Admirals like Greenert, Titley, and Borman are sticking with the science … this course seems wisest to me too.
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Navy Releases Roadmap for Global Climate Change
URL: http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=53562
Glad we cleared that up. You have publicly declared you prefer to maintain your poor standard of netiquette and blame others for the consequences of your actions. Oh, and here we go with Admiral Titley again. One note samba for sure.
This is what I find sad about modern liberals. Their definition of freedom is: “I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want, with whomever I want. Anybody who naysays me is mean-spirited, racist, intolerant, ad nauseum.”
Obviously, you prefer to stick to your interpretation of science because you are unable to discourse with others in any effective manner. That’s why you hide at the Ivory Tower, because if anybody takes exception, you get to give them an F and end the discussion. Must be hard when you try venturing out. Maybe you should try giving others respect if you want it in return. Outside your Ivory Tower, you’ll have to deal with matriculated adults who have knowledge, experience, and expertise beyond what you allow inside the Ivory Tower.
And while you’re at it John-Boy stop insisting only YOU are the real conservative. You may be, you may not be. I have my own opinion.
Patrick
Upon checking, Patrick, I find that you’re one of PJM/Tatler’s official “contributors”.
What’s your personal opinion on PJM/Tatler’s management policy of selectively “outing” posters? Does this PJM/Tatler “outing” policy unilaterally expose posters (and their families) to personal risk? What guidance have you as a contributor received in this regard from PJM/Tatler’s management? For what reason is PJM/Tatler’s “outing” policy nowhere stated in PJM/Tatler’s guidelines, or anywhere on the web site?
These are sober, responsible questions, that very likely you and your PJM/Tatler colleagues have asked yourselves (or should have).
Do you have sober, responsible answers?
Johnny you’re just NOW figuring out I’m a contributor here? And why the quotes around “contributor?” It’s what I am, a free-lance journalist trying to make a living.
As for why you got outed, I’m entirely too busy to go track down Charlie Martin’s (who like me posts under his own name, regardless of professional consequences) Fukashima pieces where you were continually inflammatory — but you know precisely why that happened.
As for whatever “policy” the editors may or may not have, I don’t know. I’m not one of the editors. I’m a contractor.
That being said. Those of us who put our personal reputations and even lives on the line (and yes, over the years I’ve had death threats over columns I’ve written) in order to stand up for what we believe have little for cowards except defiance, contempt and slight regard.
Sir, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy on the Web. If you don’t want your name out there, then don’t post, it’s really quite simple.
Once you hit submit, your comment no longer belongs to you but is the property of PJM to do with as they wish, the law is quite settled on that.
No one here has abused you, sir. In fact, the editors have shown remarkable forbearance in not banning you for your trollery.
Science: a model makes a prediction which fails to materialize => fix the model and retry.
Politics: a model makes a prediction which fails to materialize => fix the data and call everyone who noticed “raaaaacist”.
“Climate science” has always seemed closer to the politics paradigm than the science one. Maybe it should just be called “climate politics.”
One big difference. People who question global warming assumptions aren’t usually called racists. They are called anti science deniers, equavalent to holacaust deniers, and young earth creationists. A real scientist engages critics, and sees whether their facts might be correct. A pseudoscientist, like the AGW people, cites authority, not facts, and either ignores the critics, or calls them names.
It is good to have results like these publicized. Perhaps we can start weaning the AGW proponents off of their pre-Copernican (man is the center/cause of everything) mindset.
The science is saddled.
“Meanwhile, the Arctic Ocean is wide open for commercial shipping, earlier and wider than ever before in nautical history.”
False. The St. Roche, a wooden ship, travelled through the Arctic in the 40s, and there are many records in the 1800s from British explorers and whalers of years when the Arctic was lacking in ice. Further, recent research has shown that the Arctic has had 50% less ice than it does today for several thousand of the last ten thousand years.
As for the cosmic rays, while just a first step, the study does in the very least send the climate scientists back to their models for revision. Climate science is a highly uncertain field and the talk of the science being settled and there being a consensus is frankly quite stupid.
With respect, yah need to brush-up on your nautical history, Chip!
The first single-year Arctic ocean passage, without help from icebreakers, didn’t happen until 2002. Nowadays, only nine years later, open-water Arctic passage is routine … that’s how fast AGW is accelerating.
Norway’s Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center NERSC has posted a very nice, very complete PDF summary of the history of (what the Russians call) the Northern Sea Route, that I commend to your attention.
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History of the Northern Sea Route
URL: http://www.nersc.no/sites/www.nersc.no/files/fulltext-3.pdf
@chip: “quite stupid”
Fitting final words on “A physicist.”
realclimate.org folks were clued into these “surprising results” at a climate conference this spring held at Downing College, University of Cambridge. They were interested and ready.
The “ready response” is led by federally funded NASA GISS scientist Gavin Schmidt, et al, who mans realclimate.org. How many hours does he spend online policing environmental journalists reception to real science news? Framing the reception. It is a job, but it lobbying isn’t that federal pay is all about – it is seriously unethical – as Governor Scott Walker well knows. It is partisanship, pure and simple.
It calls for another investigation into emails like the one underway by the Institute for Justice in Virginia, into scientist Michael Mann’s affairs.
Maybe President Perry needs to appoint MITs Richard Lindzen to be his science advisor and clean this excrement up?
Meanwhile, “snork” (at #8B) is correct with his “FOR THE RECORD,” note. The weight of the evidence is against high climate evidence. But a complete alternative naturally driven theory of climate is a long way down the road.
Complete cosmic ray measurements, complex cloud nucleation characterization has to be done, only to begin with. But producing the experiments with the CERN results was delayed by about a dozen years because of politicized AGW funding. I feel for the frustrations sometimes vented here. But piece by piece, orthodoxy is being overturned.
It took an self-funded army of Lilliputians to bring this gigantically funded Gulliver to his knees. It will take more to keep him from getting up.
It appears the witch-hunt found … zero witches.
Meanwhile, according to the good folks at Maritime Executive, the 160,000-ton Soviet mega-tanker Vladimir Tikhonov has put to sea with an enormous cargo of high-grade oil products—the Vladimir Tikhonov is the largest vessel ever to navigate the now-wide-open Arctic passage … with many more to come.
Folks, these plain-as-day practical realities are why hard-nosed conservative business organizations, and hard-core wildlife conservancies, and hard-core military strategists, all are on-board as recognizing that AGW is real, serious, and accelerating.
———————————————–
Climate-Change Scientist Cleared in Closing of U.S. Data-Altering Inquiry
URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-22/climate-change-scientist-cleared-in-u-s-data-altering-inquiry.html
So much for looking at the actual data. Yes, it’s “accelerating”… to ZERO increase in temperatures in 15 years, up from more than zero in the few years before that. Um…
Nevermmind. Forget I said that (I have confidence you can do that). Just keep repeating your line, and eventually, everyone will come to believe it… which is obviously the real goal, here (whether it’s actually true or not is, best I can tell, irrelevant).
Arctic ice volume for 2001 already at record low … as melting continues
URL: http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20110816_Figure5.png
Everyone knowsthe AGW “science” hog wash, but all the right people believe it and many are making very comfortable living on the scam. Some are making themselves extremely wealthy.
And for the Professor who is so certain…there is one question which completely destroys the entire scam….
WHAT IS THE EXACT PERFECT TEMPERATURE OF THE PLANET? AND WHEN DID THIS OCCUR?
If little Professor has an ounce of integrity he will concede that he has no idea and that nobody knows or has a way to determine. For all these gullible morons know the Earth may have been in a period of relatively low temperatures and is simply adjusting to normal. More likely there is not a “normal” as the interaction of the Planet with the Universe and other factors is too interdependent and much too complex to come to a “normal” temperature.
But not to be too hard on the little Professor, as he is just one of the gullible chicken littles, he in no way compares with the real criminals like Albert Gore who should be in the jail cell next to Bernie Madoff for the billions he scammed off of gullible morons like the Professor with his carbon credit scam.
LogicalUS, the folks in the Netherlands have a real simple definition of a world that’s “not too hot.”
So it’s simple, eh?
Namely, a world where the Netherlands is not underwater.
Yah know, maybe the folks living in NYC, Washington DC, Miami, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, etc. feel the same way.
As for me, definitely I prefer a world where my grandchildren don’t need scuba gear to visit the Lincoln Memorial.
So it’s common-sense, eh? … & that’s how the common-sense Dutch see it.
————————————————–
How the Second Delta Committee Set the Agenda for Climate Change Adaptation:
A Dutch Case Study on Framing Strategies for Policy Change
URL: http://www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/paper_details.asp?paperid=2456
Can’t even lie worth a crap.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Click the link below, Sharpshooter … which is straight from the site you provided!
The point is, the present *area* of the Arctic ice ties the historic low of 2007, and moreover the present *thickness* of the Arctic ice is less than ever before … so the *volume* of 2011 Arctic ice (which largely determines the 2012 ice conditions) is breaking all record lows by a very substantial margin.
Sharpshooter, the folks who “can’t even lie worth a crap” sure ain’t the satellite scientists, ship owners, airline pilots, submarine commanders, and Arctic locals … all of whom can see perfectly well, with their own eyes, that Arctic melting is accelerating …
Nossir, the folks who “can’t even lie worth a crap” are the Big Carbon propagandists … who just can’t keep up with the pace that Mother Nature is dishing out the truth.
——————————–
Ice area ties record lows
URL: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png
In other “nyaaahhh!” news, a Florida jury says they don’t think Casey Anthony killed her child, thus she didn’t.
I don’t see the “censorship” here. Scientists are not being “muzzled” — they talk to other scientists and publish their papers. It’s published in “Nature” for God’s sake! What scientists working for a certain institution were not allowed to do is talk directly TO THE MEDIA — which is hardly an anti-science stance, the media being very prone to distorting science, and talking directly to the media (as opposed to going through the peer-review process) being a sure sign of “crank” scientists.
Our sun is driven into out out energetic stars by the gravitational pulls of the four gas giant planets. It wobbles over million miles off center. The more it’s inertia is radically changed…it erupts with more sunspots…which increase the solar wind and UV radiation…more solar wind and fewr cosmic rays create clouds and the earth and oceans warm. This all reverses with lower sunspots, which are at historic lows today…the Earth and oceans cool as has the PDO. Expect the next 20-30 years to be colder and if sunspot cycle 25 doesn’t occur..a mini ice age.
In the last 100 years the magnetic N pole has moved 1000 km northward. It was on the Canadian land mass and now it is the arctic ocean. Might it have moved the ozone hole more over the arctic sea and allowed more radiation to reach the surface? I asked Lindzen this question and he said probably not. The ice variation, he thought was due to the wind stresses.
This is HUGE. Think of the difference in temperature that occurs when a cloud crosses the sun on a nice day. When it’s hot out, it suddenly becomes much cooler for a little bit. Multiply that by a million, and you’ve got a significant difference globally.
Of course, as a software developer who has taken the time to read some of the code in the climate models that was leaked as part of “climategate”, I’ve known for some time that they already WERE taking many things into account. Some things that the programmers knew about and some “adjustments” that were simply hard-coded with no explanation, and some that they bitched in the comments were things that they were ordered to do without explanations from their superiors.
Seriously, science is supposed to be a process where you follow the data to wherever it leads you. Certainly that’s how it works in software development anyway; any other way that ignored the data in order to find a predetermined outcome would get you fired in short order. There are so many people so emotionally invested in global warming/climate change/whatever that I’ve begun to fear that real science can’t even be done in that field anymore. And that’s a damn shame. After reading that code, I can’t trust anything that any of those clowns put out, and what if they actually put out something important some day that’s actually the truth? We’d be screwed then.
Some fun for our friend “A physicist”-could galactic cosmic rays cause anthropogenic global warming” Could dying stars (ie, supernovae) produce global warming!
Check out wattsupwiththat for more detail. But Anthony Watts provides it as SATIRE. A likely false cause, that nonetheless might bear some critical relation to Svensmar’ks cosmoclimatological hypothesis.
So wait, let me get this straight. You’re saying that the giant ball of nuclear fire in the sky, hot enough to burn me from 93 million miles away, might have something to do with the weather? That just doesn’t make any sense…
Mike,
Iposted this as a reply to the Physisist but I think it is the real answer to what is going on with climate change.
A Geologist
I am always amazed that people who profess to be scientists refuse to look at the geologic record to see the climate is not static. Man has been around for what, maybe 2.5 million years and only really for 3000 years where it can be said it has had global effect. The planet is over 4.5 billion years old. We are still in an ice age. The ice age is ending and the temps are rising. This has happen innumerable times in the geologic record. Take the time to look. Man did not cause these changes in climate because he was not there. We also think the sun is constant and unchanging. I doubt if this is the case. Please consider that very, very small changes in the suns output has a profound effect on the climate. One volcanic eruption puts more sulphur compounds and CO2 in the atmosphere than hundreds of coal fired power plants do. There are constant eruptions all over the planet. There planet itself is what controls not man. I encourage everyone concerned about climate change to look at the geologic record and understand that man is like a flea on an elephant’s ass when it comes to the climate and the planet.
Someone should hire Charlie Sheen to do ads for orbital cosmic ray generator climate control machines – winning !
Love this part of the article, “Heuer warned his scientists ‘to present the results clearly but not interpret them’.”
No, we couldn’t have that, could we? No interpretation and limited commentary that way it won’t make it into the news cycle. In scientific terms, it’s too hard for the average American to understand and certainly not very accessible. How many people read Nature anyway?
On the other hand, if this data supported AGW, we’d see it interpreted every which way in the NYT and the big three networks because Heuer would be screaming it from the rooftops.
Deoxy, no-one who shares your opinion should have a responsible role in US strategic planning.
Notice the url (below) … although some American political factions cling to willful AGW ignorance … America’s rivals are not making that mistake.
And neither is the US Navy. Good!
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US Navy prepares for climate change
URL: http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2011-03/11/content_22108045.htm
All those smiley faces make your post look like they were written by a teenage girl.
The hole in the “military is preparing,” argument is very simple, the military plans for ANY contingency which might affect operations. The MSM simply doesn’t report on any contingency plan which doesn’t fit their meme.
For instance, remember a few years back when the MSM noted the Pentagon had war plans in the event we went to war with Isreal? And when they waxed apoplectic over Bush administration contingency plans in the event of war with Red China?
The military plans for everything. It’s their job, they even have a department in the DoD; “Plans and Training” it used to be called, no idea what it is under Obama, but the symbol is probably a man with his head firmly lodged in his third point of contact.
Just because the military is planning for it, don’t mean it’s gonna happen Johnboy.
Global warming deniers, put your money where your mouths are. Use all your savings to buy some beachfront property (and not up a coastal mountainside), either in cash or on an accelerated mortgage payoff schedule, and then dispense with Federally subsidized and provided flood insurance. Especially do this if your actuarial statistics give you another 30-40 years.
Perhaps. In fairness you and your ilk should park yourselves in front of advancing glaciers.
You’ll be perfectly safe. Those silly glaciers can’t keep denying reality forever.
You mean I should buy beachfront property like Al Gore?
In fact the ocean level has dropped a quarter of an inch. Not a lot, but measurable.
I will raise you one. I hope to stop the government from funding climatic research, much as they are forbidden from funding religion, and for the same reasons. That way, climate research has to come from people who are convinced that the science is good, and the output is useful.
Make your argument in the private market, or admit you are another communist hoping for government theft to support your inflated lifestyle.
We can’t because according to your High Priest, Albert Gore, from the 90s all the coastal land would be underwater by 2010?
Opps, that didn’t happen? Gee, not to worry, just change the teleprompter to 2020 and these gullible morons will send me another billion dollars or so.
Old Albert needs another lake yacht, you better go buy some more “carbon credits”.
“…Humanity cannot do a thing about cosmic rays or their influence on the atmosphere…”
That’s just not Fair!
We have be careful what we’re talking about when we speak of Arctic navigation. The Russkies have felt for many decades that Archangel and environs were worth developing as an important port, even though it’s bang on the Arctic Ocean (the White Sea part, I think). They put in those port facilities because every year the North-EAST passage becomes open to navigation for some months. Single exception: 1934, when adverse winds blew the pack ice into harbor.
Archangel, of course, is also the site of a particularly deadly outbreak of malaria in the 1920′s. About 25,000 cases, about 10,000 fatalities.
Re. the St. Roche: as I write this, it sits about a mile from me at the Maritime Museum in Vancouver. In the early 1940s it made 3 transits, two east-bound and one west-bound. Also, it became the first vessel to circumnavigate North America (via the Panama Canal).
Even earlier, in 1906 I think, Roald Amudsen went east-west in the Northwest Passage mainly by sail. If memory serves, he ended up at Nome.
LOL … *do* be precise,
The first single-year North-East passage *without* icebreaker assistance wasn’t till 2002 (previous attempts always got stuck in ice and/or had icebreaker assistance).
`Course, thanks to accelerating AGW, home-made boats of bamboo, rope, and duct-tape now make the passage easily. Nuclear ice-breakers no longer required.
Yeah … arctic exploration ain’t what it used to be.
——————-
Homemade Russian boat in Nunavut on Arctic tour
“This is something out of Gilligan’s Island, for crying out loud”
URL: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2011/08/23/nunavut-russian-boat.html
Addendum: let’s hear a few rousing cheers for Henrik Svensmark. His goofy little $1.49-day box of some 4? years ago started the cosmic-ray revolution. He was doing real science — hypothesis, then physical experiment to test that hypothesis. And he did it literally on pocket-change. Really. There was as much carpenter as there was physicist in that experiment.
That box should be in a museum. I cannot even begin to guess how much money it might ultimately save us.
Good news everyone: Qwinn’s comment has appeared on RealClimate (as #56) … where it elicited a stimulating response. There’s a discussion of Svensmark’s work too.
It’s all pretty dry compared to Russia’s bamboo-and-duct-tape boats for open-water arctic exploration: “This is something out of Gilligan’s Island, for crying out loud!”
————————————————
72 Responses to “The CERN/CLOUD results…”
URL: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/comment-page-2/#comment-213722
The fact that radiation and cosmic rays induce nucleation of aerosol particles has been known for decades. Think: smog. Think: Wilson Cloud Chamber. I am a retired physicist who specialized in aerosol science since the mid-1960′s. You can Google me. It has been well known among the AGW skeptics that cloud formation and distribution are key weaknesses in the models. Those who do not understand what I am arguing here should not hide behind citing some report. See, for example, Hinds’s book Aerosol Science, or go back to Fuchs’s Mechanics of Aerosols, or the books by C.N.Davies or H.C. van de Hulst. It is frustrating to see all this prior knowledge ignored by computer coders who have fallen in love with their modeling.
Ironically, I recall the liberals’ deep skepticism of the complex models in THE REACTOR SAFETY STUDY by Norman Rasmussen’s group at MIT c. 1970, models demonstrating the likely relative safety of nuclear power.
Douglas, why not do the “Qwinn Experiment”?
Namely, post your scientific concerns on RealClimate.
The discussion there has the depth, rationality, and respect that you are asking for (as folks can verify for themselves, by reading the give-and-take).
Then report back to PJM/Tatler the reaction to your scientific point-of-view.
Perhaps these folks are more rational, polite, and competent than you think.
——————————————-
The CERN/CLOUD results are surprisingly interesting…
URL: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/#more-8614
Feeding the trolls is bad netiquete
Bruce, the gold standard of polite, respectful, math-and-science public forums are sites like TCS StackEchange and MathOverflow, and I commend these sites to your attention.
The discussion at RealClimate is reasonably fact-oriented and respectful, with multiple viewpoints represented, and I commend it to your attention also.
Similarly, on energy issues see The Oil Drum, and on war-related issues see Small Wars Journal.
It’s regrettable and disquieting that (to my knowledge) American conservatism presently has no forums that similarly respect America’s tradition of open, rational, polite, dissent-tolerant public discourse.
Instead, each “conservative” forum pushes its factional version of “the truth” (and no two forums agree upon that truth), supporting its faction’s “truth” via smears, abuse, slogans, and cherry-picking.
In the long run, that’s bad for conservatism.
Yes, because you liberals are just so sensitive and tolerant of dissent. Look, it was your side that decided to equate disagreement with AGW orthodoxy with Holocaust denial. It was your high priest Algore who just did the same thing with his fellow Democrat Bull Connor (yes, he was a Democrat, just like you). And really, Physicist, you people don’t really believe in this AGW stuff. If you did, why wouldn’t you actually do anything to reduce CO2 output? I mean personally. Al Gore has just himself to support, and yet with his multiple mansions and trips around the world he has a carbon footprint about 30 times that of the average American. He’s like a clean water activist who routinely sh!ts in mountain streams or a gun control activist with an assault rifle collection. It’s the same with every other AGW alarmist: Tom Friedman, Rajenda Pachauri, you, etc. You people are all “do as I say, not as I do.” Well, we’re not going to. Which is why you have lost this argument. Kyoto and Capn’Trade are dead. Copenhagen was a complete bust. You’re done. Now go away. Don’t go away mad (like Algore). Just go away.
To our “friend” A Physicist:
I guess you haven’t heard that the Old Pulteny “rowing to the pole” expedition had to be canceled because they got iced-in. Traversing the Northwest Passage is NOT “routine”, and all your whining and bi$$$ing won’t change the fact that the ice still rules – especially when it’s pushed into the islands by strong winds. I’ve looked at the ice in the NW Passage recently – that’s MY specialty, imagery analysis. It’s there, it’s thick enough only an icebreaker can get through, and it’s not going anywhere.
“AGW” was a one-trick pony that’s lost its cool. It was nothing but a means to get government to support an effort that had very little future without it, and no place to grow. Now it’s something to use to beat people over the head with, to impose government control over every aspect of life on earth. It’s a fraud. Anyone defending it is also a fraud.
Goodbye, fraud.
Yer dead-wrong on the facts, Mike.
I know `cuz I flew over the Northwest Passage this summer (Lufthansa Seattle-Munich) and verified with my own eyes that the route was open.
`Course, that’s what every satellite-flying nation on Earth sees too. And the maritime companies say the same. As do all the world’s navies. Duh.
Still it was totally cool that all folks on the plane could see with their own eyes, that the climatologists were telling the truth.
————————————–
Yes, the Arctic Passage routes are wide-open
URL: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
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