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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."
Before you people start screaming, "what do they expect us to do about cosmic rays??//?/?" Think. This isn't about "debunking" global warming, nor is it about fearmongering about it. It's about building more accurate climate models.
Move along.
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I for one refuse to comment on this subject until Michael Crichton tells me what is right!
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You know what I hate most about these articles? My own bias is plainly obvious to me.
When I read something that says global warming is wrong, I want to say yes! Brilliant! When something confirms it, I can't help but think 'alarmist fear-mongering can't-think-for-themeselves idiots.' But at the same time I know those thoughts are ridiculous, and that I don't really have the understanding of all the parameters to make an intelligent decision.
I guess that's what happens when you politicize a scientific topic. Or maybe I'm just an optimist.
No reputible sources are disputing global warming and that humans are the cause.
RTFA. From the article:
After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005. In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.
Those 5 sentences say soooo much that so many people would like to ignore. 1) That there is a very major factor involved in cloud formation that, if anything, the IPCC is paying less attention to. 2) That the "peer reviewed" journals are indeed rejecting valid research that contradicts the herd mentality of human-induced global warming. 3) Contrary to what some people would like to believe, not all real scientists agree with the IPCC version of global warming. 4) These three things combined really DO undermine a heck of a lot of what the IPCC and their ilk is campaigning behind.
Just to nitpick, but Galileo Galilei wasn't the first nor the only one to describe heliocentrism - Nicolas Copernic was the forethinker of that system, and Galileo Galilei main discoveries (Saturn's rings, Jupiter's satellites, physics of the pendulum etc.) weren't in the line at his trial. Actually, most of the learned scholars of the time knew for a fact that heliocentrism gave far more accurate mathematicals results to build sailing tables.
Galileo Galilei faced troubles because he wrote that helliocentrism was the physical TRUTH. He would have escaped any trial (and was offered a plea bargain as a matter of fact) had he accepted to write that heliocentrism was a mere hypothesis. But he refused and the rest is history. As to know why he was so stubborn, we now know there was a mix of self-pride, and insurance he received from high profile individuals among the Catholic Church that the Pope was considering adopting a progressive doctrine. That turned out to be deceptive. Basically, he was caught in the middle of a political fight, and sided with the wrong persons.
Well, the difference between, say, Christianity and FSM, is one is a system of belief based on a man being revived from the dead, turning water into wine, becoming flesh and blood out of biscuits and wine thousands of years later, that all of one man's ancestors are born in sin, etc. The other one is just made-up bullcrap.
The "we are headed towards an ice age" meme was due to the belief in cyclic weather, basically that the global temperature could be predicted by a Fourier series. You can always fit any measured data to a Fourier series, but here at least some of the coefficients had astronomical explanations.
Global warming was also a concern 30 years ago, as the mechanisms were well known. There were actually people warning about global warming a 100 years ago. However, only recently computers have become fast enough, and measurements accurate enough, that you can actually quantify the risk.
Interestingly enough, cyclic weather has until recently[1] been used to dismiss global warming, claiming that it was not man made but predicted by the coefficients in the Fourier series. Which does apparently conflict with the series predicting an ice age, but not really, as the series consist of overlapping cycles, and you can be on the way up on one of the short cycles, and on the way down one of the longer.
[1] You still see references to it by laypeople on the net, but it is no longer used that way by scientists.
Yah, and every day every physics department in the world recieves letters from nutters who think they've discovered the ultimate theory of everything in their basement.
So sure is it logically possible this guy is right and the rest of the scientific establishment wrong? Sure, though there are some quite compelling reasons not to think cosmic rays explain climate change. It's also logically possible that Xenu really did bring 50 billion aliens to earth on DC-10s and kill them with hydrogen bombs. Do you think we should plan for the future based on mainstream science or the threat from the thetans?
The question is how likely is this guy to be right. Now if you happen to be a climate scientists you should evaluate that based only on the merits of the idea, i.e., the evidence for it. If you don't read climate science papers and keep up with the subject it is just idiotic for you to evaluate the merits of his theory. Instead you have to compare the credibility of the vast vast majority of the scientific establishment and a few dissenters. There isn't much of a contest here.
Let's put the issue a little bit more concretely. Suppose some guy comes up to you with a proposal to mine gold based on a new process for leaching it from rocks other companies are ignoring. He wants you to invest money in his company but when you consult experts in chemistry, mining and geology they all tell you he is a complete quack and his idea is completely bogus. Would you invest?
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Here's a thought: if someone presents a seemingly valid hypothesis and you aren't expert enough to assert if it is false or not, you either attempt to gain more knowledge or you reserve judgment. I know the appeal to authority thing is always in vogue, but that is not the rational reaction. Science is always wrecking accepted viewpoints. Very often those "few dissenters" prove the established majority wrong. You shouldn't dismiss arguments solely on the basis of current popularity. Climate change is still very much a science undergoing constant changes and revisions. It is very possible that many of our current theories are false. I'm not saying he's right or anything, but that is horrible, horrible argument you're making.
You always, always, evaluate the merits of the theory. If you can't and are incapable of making that judgement, then you shouldn't.
No, Galileo is proof that a lone nutter with enough theories can fluke it occasionally. After all, most of Galileo's crank theories have been quietly forgotten, and what Galileo got into trouble with the authorities for wasn't so much for resurrecting the (then) long discredited heliocentric theory, but rather for suggesting that anybody who disagreed (up to and including the Pope) was a simpleton.
So what we really need to learn from Galileo is that just because a theory is espoused by a lone nutter doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong.
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"The measurements are not accurate..."
Agreed, and that is why NASA should drop the "man on Mars" crap and refocus on our own biosphere.
"...enough --- that is one reason why global warming proponents have to *declare* that the debate is decided, rather than let the evidence speak for itself."
This is a totally assinine assumption on your part, "not accurate" != "not usefull".
As for "evidence speaking for itself" please refer to figure SPM-2(PDF warning) in the 2007 IPCC SPM.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
From the blog:
At RealClimate, we've often criticised press releases that we felt gave misleading impressions of the underlying work and lead to confused, and sometimes erroneous, headlines, but this example is by far the most blatant The most blatant press release - probably since the last ice age? It's as though Svensmark and co. want to enhance the field of solar-terrestrial research's bad reputation for agenda-driven science. In case the writers didn't know - environmentalists are also widely regarded as having a bad reputation for agenda-driven science, hence the title "the cult of global warming". They may be right, but blogs like this don't help.