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Scientists Say Cosmic Rays May Cause Global Warming
Saint Aardvark writes "Researchers in Israel and Germany suggest that variations in cosmic radiation as the sun orbits the galactic core may be responsible for changes in the Earth's climate -- including more than half of the change in the 20th century. A PDF of their article is available from GSA Today or read the abstract for their Physical Review Letters article."
I really wish these researchers would stop trying to distract the world from the real problem and maybe put their brains to good use-- say finding a solution to the problem at hand. Cosmic rays, blah. The fact of the matter is we have four billion people on the earth that breathe, fart and drive cars that put out enough noxious gas to kill you in you in a closed garage in mere minutes. Time to take all these useless research papers and recycle them, and start putting forth a serious effort towards using renewable energy sources.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Those damn Republicans always helping big corporations spew out cosmic radiation and causing global warming....
...oh, wait a minute....never mind.
I just don't cosmic ray variation would account for more than half of the 20th century's climatic change. The variation just wouldn't be that great given the fact that the solar system simply hasn't moved very far in 100 years.
I'm just waiting for the antiscience republicans to jump on this. "See? Here's a study that says that cosmic rays cause climate change. Not greenhouse gases! See we were right to censor the EPA's report that global warming was primarly caused through human activity. Now let's continue with our report on how nicotine is not addictive, and creation science in our schools".
Save the planet. Recycle an environmentalist.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think we started getting bombarded with the cosmic rays shortly after Dick Cheney completed a trade mission to the Galactic Core.
Haliburton is to blame, somehow.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...the HTML version of the article can be found here.
" See we were right to censor the EPA's report that global warming was primarly caused through human activity."
There was no censorship. A publisher using some self-restraint and standards in what they choose to publish is not censorship in any way. Since the EPA sections which were removed were bad, crackpot science, it is a good thing that the publisher of the report exercized a little editorial discretion.
"I'm just waiting for the antiscience republicans to jump on this."
How about the pro-science Republicans? They should not be the only ones to see that the global warming theories are excellent examples of bad science: ill-concocted explanations of causality in which connections are pulled out of thin air.
" Time to take all these useless research papers and recycle them, and start putting forth a serious effort towards using renewable energy sources."
There is no reason to stop using petroleum. It might be renewable (due to recent evidence of fields that replenish themselves). It is a lot cheaper than solar, a lot cleaner than nuclear, does not require rivers to be dammed. Unlike cold fusion and fuel cells, it does not require magic and pixies in order to work.
It's this kind of fascist "global warming" (if it exists) "*must* be caused by evil American corporations and consumers and I will not listen to anything that suggests otherwise" kind of thinking that has really turned me against environmentalists. That closed minded "I am right and you are wrong and we'll do this my way or I'll have you shot" attitude tells me more about the weakness of their arguement than anything else. If Global Warming truly is occuring and is caused by man, then how can researching all angles of this issue (including solar influences) be bad? It can't. That's why these envirowhackos want to shout down everyone that may disagree with them. Thay don't want *any* proof that hurts their "cause."
And that, my friends, is Fascism.
BC
"I really wish these researchers would stop trying to distract the world from the real problem and maybe put their brains to good use-- say finding a solution to the problem at hand. Cosmic rays, blah. The fact of the matter is we have four billion people on the earth that breathe, fart and drive cars that put out enough noxious gas to kill you in you in a closed garage in mere minutes. "
Um. Can't stop the problem if you don't understand the nature of it. So finding out if it is 'cosmic rays' or not will be more beneficial than finding a cure for flatulence.
"Derp de derp."
Even for a joke comment that's pretty lame.
You are dismissing their research out of hand based on skimming a brief news report but it's the Republicans that are anti-science.
Just yesterday night I was watching this show on the Science channel about the Stars.
They showed the interview of guy who went to space in Apollo mission. He talked about his experience with Cosmic rays. He was telling that if he closed his eyes, he could see fast flashes of light moving across. They didn't know what it was. Later they found out that it was Cosmic rays (high energy particles from a supernova explosion). When they looked at their helmets under magnification, they saw trails where the cosmic ray particles had passed. They said those cosmic ray nuclei were so powerful that they could pass through the spaceship unhindered. He was saying that if he had stayed in that environment for a long period of time, his brain probably would be fried.
I don't know how exactly our atmosphere stops such high energy particles but I am glad it does !!
....pundits (seemingly mostly conservative talk-show hosts) willingness to use misdirection to distract people."...
If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, he gets to the facts of the matter (and avoids the misdirection used by those who make up global warming "theories").
Watt has been out of office for years. He held the EPA post shortly after "global cooling" was the current, also unsupported, theory.
The cycle is turning onward. Come 2007 or so, the current theory will be "global cooling", and the culprit will again be American business (doing the same things they did to cause "global warming").
This just contributes to the realization that we really don't know a whole hell of a lot about how the climate on earth functions. There is no way in hell we can say for sure what the cause of global warming is or if it even matters (in the grand scheme of things, since temperature cycles have been occuring for billions of years). This of course doesn't excuse civilization from being held accountable for our affects on the climate, but people and politicians (not sure they're really people) really should stop having such narrow points of view.
Cosmic Rays or not, we know that carbon monoxide is destroying the ozone, which is contributing. we know that huge glaciers are melting off the icecap, at the rates of inches a day - which is much more than most people realize. We know that the water levels are rising to the point that venice is now risking submersion, and Italy is building huge mobile walls to save it. The ocean level is rising. It's not a coming problem - it's a problem that has been identified for decades and ignored.
Regardless of if Cosmic Rays are a contributing factor, it's very hard to argue that reducing CFC's, cutting down on emissions (or changing fuel types), moving to cleaner fuel sources for power (such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro), and in general making sustainability part of our core values wouldn't extremely slow the problem.
There still needs to be research to see if we can fix the damage we have already caused, or if there are any other factors we need to address.
That said, the study of if cosmic rays effect global warming or not strikes me as pointless. It's not exactly a problem we can address. It seems that, true or not, it will end up just being a scapegoat.
It's not that research is bad. It's that people are constantly making excuses for the known causes, and demanding more research while their icecaps melt and their cities submerge. It's pretty clear that our current methods are both unsustainable (it's not if oil runs out, it's when) and destructive (we have factual data about what damage carbon monoxide is causing, for just one example) - So why aren't we fixing it?
It was more fun telling people that it's the cow farts (and belches) responsible for global warming...
Idjiots.
Evr'yone knows that Kosimac rays don't cause global warming. Heat causes global warming!
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
That closed minded "I am right and you are wrong and we'll do this my way or I'll have you shot" attitude tells me more about the weakness of their arguement than anything else.
Actually, since very few environmentalists are also card-carrying members of the NRA, I doubt that many of them would phrase things quite like that. :)
"Cosmic rays [...] increase the number of charged particles in our atmosphere. There is some evidence that these may encourage low-level clouds to form, which cool the Earth."
First they take an unproven theory, that high-charged particles create low-level clouds, then they put another theory on top of it, that the fluctuations in high-charged particle concentrations, and the (unproven) low-level clouding, and that ALWAYS results in climatic cooling.
To construct this theory three techniques were used: "temperature, as inferred from ancient sediment records, carbon dioxide, as inferred from fossilized sea shells and cosmic rays, as inferred from meteorites."
"All three techniques are open to interpretation. Plus, geologists consider one of the 'cool' periods in the mathematical reconstruction to be a warm period, Olsen points out."
Cosmic rays resulting in a cloudier earth would be a far more appropriate Tag-line for the Article - since the mathematical model of temperature is at least in one part highly doubtful. Ah yeah and I won't even comment on the lurid slashdot headline which inspired all the trolls here.
Even if some of the global warming taking place today can be blamed on cosmic rays (or better the absence of them), so what? Should we just close our eyes, telling ourselves "hey its fate. its cosmic. I am just a puny earthling and I can do nothing about it." and lay waste to our planet with a clean conscience? hell, why not blame Canada?
Yes we do live in a complex environment. Blaming just one parameter for the fucked up outcome, although it probably didn't change much in the last billion years or so and not taking into account the new parameters (read: human influence) sounds pretty stupid to me.
So yes, I do think these theories are pretty interesting, the more of the process we understand the better, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to act stupid or ruthless.
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
These "people" as you call them, have nothing to gain as opposed to fossil fuel addicted industries eg. the automobile industrie.
You should look up the definition of facism
fascism
a- A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b- A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
I'm shore something called cosmic rays make a much better explanation for something called global warming.
Do you actually believe there is no such thing as global warming?
Everybody knows American corporations or any corporation for that matter, respect human rights and invironment isues when trying to make a buck.
These so called "researching angles" are only meant to distract our atention to the real issue, which is -what is being done about Global Warming.
Where are the crazed closed minded environmentalists in this article? I don't doubt they exist (crazed fanatics linger around every controversial topic), but I don't see how it relates to the story.
There were two scientists quoted from the article who were skeptical of the claim, and one who thought it was interesting. Given that this is one study, and the predicted results don't completely correlate to actual data the responses sound fairly run-of-the-mill for a new scientific claim.
AccountKiller
Perhaps you are browsing at too high a threshold to see the post he was replying to?
We're not even 100% certain there is a global warming problem. There are geological records that indicates the Earth regularly goes through not only major ice ages and warmer periods, but also mini ice ages and warm periods as the global temperature oscillates. As it happens, we're in the middle of a warm period... Remember our weather data only goes back 100 years of so, plus some anecdotal evidence...
" It's that people are constantly making excuses for the known causes, and demanding more research while their icecaps melt and their cities submerge."
That's just bad science. The cause is not known.
" (it's not if oil runs out, it's when)"
So, it runs out in 800,000 AD. So what is the big deal? In real terms, using it is "sustainable".
The sun's gonna go nova some year too. I guess it is not "sustainable" for you either. Time to build an Ark? Better put you on "B".
"You are confusing nuclear winter with global warming"
The nuclear winter's tales were all the rage during the Reagan administration. The global cooling theories of climate change were all the rage earlier, during the mid 1970s.
This sounds soo farfetched and, of course, is a perfect excuse to put up against Kyoto conference. Lovely, awesome Star Trek jargon making your point and numbing people's brains in passive accondesendance... "The bell curve" anyone?
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
our problem.
Even if global warming is natural - either through cosmic rays or volcanoes or cow flatulance, it is irrelevant to the problem at hand. We should always strive to not contribute (read: accelerate) the problem, and we should even work against it in some respects.
Global warming whether natural or man-made is a concern for all of us. We KNOW it is happening and we know WHY and HOW. We can't yet acertain WHO is repsonble and to what extent. We are still figuring that out. But we also do know that our involvement in the equation is at least not trivial. We should at the very least seek to minimize that.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Actually, venice was built on poor ground and is sinking into the ground.
And that ozone depletion is still a threat.
The ozone layer is there to protect us from this cosmic radiation (or cosmic rays as they call them in the articl, I wonder if there're any cosmic freds or cosmic mikes?). When we release toxic chemicals into the atmosphere we deplete the ozone layer. That makes it possible for this cosmic radiation to get through our atmosphere. This leads to global warming, and the increased cancer that seems to mildly correlate over the past half century to one century. Don't let whoevers agenda this is fool you. Global warming is still a great threat!
All I was trying to get across in my post is that, as a species, we're doing a pretty darn good job of fucking the planet up the ass. Global warming might very well be caused by cosmic rays, but the fact is that using solar and wind power (among other renewable and alternative fuel sources) is a much better thing for the air quality overall. That's not being an "envirowhacko", that's common fucking sense.
That being said, my opinion is that we cna have a more apparent impact by researching ways to clean up our own act instead of worring about cosmic rays. That's only my opinion, and you can have yours. You don't have to call me unwarranted names or label me a fascist because I have one.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
so Venice has been sinking for decades? But in the 1970s, "scientists" feared global COOLING, an impending ice age. Did global cooling (at the time), cause the ice caps to melt and flood Vencie?
cpeterso
Cosmic Rays or not, we know that carbon monoxide is destroying the ozone
You really might look these things up first. Carbon monoxide is partially responsible for smog. But please show me some reference to a peer reviewed study of carbon monoxide's role in the depletion of stratospheric ozone. Perhaps you were thinking of chlorine monoxide a biproduct of CFC/ozone reactions.
which is contributing.
Contributing to what? Skin cancer? Now, I think you must have been referring to the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
Regardless of if Cosmic Rays are a contributing factor, it's very hard to argue that reducing CFC's, cutting down on emissions (or changing fuel types), moving to cleaner fuel sources for power (such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro), and in general making sustainability part of our core values wouldn't extremely slow the problem.
If you would lose the "extremely" then your argument would be more effective. Consider that if the problem is mostly due to cosmic ray fluxes or variances in solar power, then all those remedies which you have listed would be of little consequence.
That said, the study of if cosmic rays effect global warming or not strikes me as pointless. It's not exactly a problem we can address. It seems that, true or not, it will end up just being a scapegoat.
Sigh... You ignorant clod. You clearly mean well, but your clear lack of education and poor rhetorical style only diminish your cause. Frankly the environmental movement would be much better served without your help. Go get an education or something.
The tropospheric weather sure has.
We know exactly how much of the sun's heat those increased CO2 levels trap, and the prediction fits the observation. Cosmic rays are not generally thermal, in that most of their output is scintillation which back-scatters out of the atmosphere.
Shaviv and Veizer's theory is unconvincing.
for me to poop on!
You have a lot more confidence in what a lot of greens (who ignore other science at their whim) are screaming than I do. I will concur that we know that it is happening, but we hardly know WHY and HOW. Hell, these same greens were screaming that we were creating another ice age back in the 1970's, so I fail to see how they have much credibility. Not only do we know now WHY and HOW definitively, we also can't say what our relative contribution is (because we lack those things).
What needs to happen is OBJECTIVE research into the causes of global warming, rather than rushed-to conclusions based on partial models. Hell, we only have really good meteorological data correlated with climate data for about 200 years (and I'm being extremely generous there), which is a mere blip on the radar "globally", certainly not sufficient to say we "know" anything conclusively.
Is it a good idea to reduce dependance on oil, and emissions of greenhouse gasses? Sure! But not because the sky is falling (melting). Continuing to insist that the sky is falling, and that it is only because of our production of greenhouse gasses, does no good for the cause of reducing oil consumption, it just makes you look like a goof.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Preview and preview, and STILL I mistype. "Not only do we NOT KNOW WHY and HOW definitively...."
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
A PDF of their article is available from GAS,/b> Today
Or was is just me?
I found some other older articles discussing the report authors work on-line:
here,
here,
here,
and here.
Looks like they tried to debunk the CO2 theory first, and then they came up with the cosmic ray idea.
Slightly offtopic, but...
Whether fossil fuel emissions or cosmic rays or evil pixies are causing global warming, our cities are still enshrouded in horrible choking smog. Thus, I think we should ease up on the fossil fuels and pursue hyrdrogen or fusion or solar or whatever. If it has a positive effect on global warming, great. If not, at least we will be able to breathe clean air while we ponder how to defeat the cosmic rays / evil pixies.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Agreed. And I think the biggest culprit is our orbit. If you take a look at average tempuratures for the last couple million years, you'll see a long term cycle and a short term cycle. Combined, they result in a rollar coaster ride that correlates to ice ages and the like. We are indeed in a warming trend, as inicated by our distance from the sun.
But getting back to what I said before, we should endeaver to minimize our impact in all ways.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
are you serious about corporations respecting human rights and environment issues, or are you being facetious?!?!? Because I'm sure everyone knows they're second only to evil dictatorships in their abuses and ignorance of both issues. You've got Starbucks and a few others trying to make a difference, but everybody else just doesn't seem to care unless they'll be litigated for their actions.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
The subspace field necessary to propel a starship across vast interstellar distances is created by a combination of the specific configuration of the starship hull and the warp field coils located in the two warp drive nacelles.
These coils generate an intense, multilayered field surrounding the ship, and it is the manipulation of this field that produces a propulsive effect.
Each nacelle contains a number of warp field coils; when energized, the coils cause an energy shift that actually changes the geometry of space around the starship.
When the coils are fired sequentially, they create warp field layers that press upon each other and cumulatively reduce the apparent mass of the vehicle, allowing the ship to move faster than the speed of light.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
9,000 years ago, the place where my house sits was buried beneath 1,000 feet of ice. Before that, it was warm enough for dinosaurs (well, way before that). The point is the weather changes, and we are little more significant to it than the roaches.
These people are just seeking grant funding for another year. Hey, beats working for a living. cp
There is alot of uncertanty when it comes to what is happening with the sun and warming from radiation that might be from outside the solar system.
a ilyNews/m ars011207.html
u k98-7.1.h tml
/ pluto.war ming/
Earth isn't the only planet in our solar system to be warming up right now.
Mars is warming
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/D
Neptune's moon Triton is warming
http://www.astro.up.pt/nd/astro_news/98/
Pluto may be warming
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/08/19
And there is good evidence that the Sun's output is increasing
Research conducted by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford in the United Kingdom suggests that the magnetic flux from the Sun has more than doubled between 1901 and 2000. Solar magnetic flux is closely linked to sunspot activity and the amount of solar radiation, which is emitted. This increase could be responsible for global warming on the Earth and other Inner System planets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/358953.stm
Observations at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory since 1964 indicate that the magnetic field in the solar system has increased in strength by 40%. Historical evidence during the 20th century suggests that the magnetic field is 2.3 times stronger today than it was in 1901.
As I remember reading in some biology journal magazine, we may not be at the cusp of this warming trend either. So it is possible that no matter what we do, may not stop the increase in the temperatures. Interestingly enough, the late 1600s/early 1700s was considered to be a period of excessive cooling.. a mini iceage if you will.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
You are absolutely right. It could just be a natural geologic cycle. On the other hand couldn't we call the increase in the Earth's tempurate global warming no matter what the cause?
Also, it could very well be a problem even if it is a nutral one. People living in low lying areas will be uprooted. Fire-ants and killer bees will spread, etc.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
*sigh* it's easy to get facts confused, especially in such a sticky field as Global Warm/Cooling, but it's fatal to do it on /. ;->
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Actually the ionosphere and large radiation belts surrounding the earth stop (most) cosmic rays. They collide with charged particles there and get converted into other less energetic things. The piddly ozone layer would do NOTHING to slow down these rays, it simply blocks Ultraviolet radiation. Nothing man has done or could do (though some would argue HAARP might be able to cause problems) can dislodge that belt of protection (ionosphere, magnetic field) from around our planet.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
...Destroy the Sun!
I think it's funny that Israel and Germany are working together on this study...
Yaaaa-hoooo!!