Cosmic Rays and Global Warming

Overly Critical Guy writes "The former editor of New Scientist has written an article in the TimesOnline suggesting that cosmic rays may affect global climate. The author criticizes the UN's recent global warming report, noting several underreported trends it doesn't account for, such as increasing sea-ice in the Southern Ocean. He describes an experiment by Henrik Svensmark showing a relation between atmospheric cloudiness and atomic particles coming in from exploded stars. In the basement of the Danish National Space Center in 2005, Svensmark's team showed that electrons from cosmic rays caused cloud condensation. Svensmark's scenario apparently predicts several unexplained temperature trends from the warmer trend of the 20th century to the temporary drop in the 1970s, attributed to changes in the sun's magnetic field affecting the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere."

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Study Climate Change on your Laptop

[HoneyBeeSpace]

If you'd like to do some of the experiments discussed in the article yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 and/or turn the sun down by a few percent (to measure solar effects) all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.