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Study Says Cosmic Rays Do Not Explain Global Warming
flock2000 writes "A new study conducted by Norweigan researchers finds (again) that changes in cosmic rays most likely do not contribute to climate change. Previously, other researchers have claimed to have found a link between cosmic rays and surface temperatures."
I blame the cows. Farting around the country side doing nuttin' but to make us sweaty and fat.
So, even if this is not the mechanism, it changes very little. We're still in solar minimum, instead of a peak that was originally predicted for 2006. Not surprisingly, the global climate is also in a cooling trend.
Talk about inconvenient...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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Correlation is not causa... wait... huh?
Anyway I think the fortune cookie logic here is, as usual, misapplied.
FTA
They're not saying "A happens with B, therefore A causes B." They're saying "A does not happen with B."
I guess the converse is possibly true, that lack of correlation does not indicate lack of causation per se. Didn't read if there was a possibility of a non-correlating causation, or maybe if I did, I don't have enough of a background in atmospheric science to realize it.
People who are saying the global climate is changing are given more ammo for their argument, not less.... The fact that you use now yearly snow in Nevada as a jab against Al Gore shows your ignorance, and your bias. The fact that Vegas now sees snow every year actually strengthens the argument about global climate change, not weaken it...
Hey if we ignore the problem, maybe it will go away! After all, humans can never be blamed for ANYTHING, right!
I guess the converse is possibly true, that lack of correlation does not indicate lack of causation per se.
Well, yes, actually, absence of correlation implies the absence of causation. At least via the method you are examining for correlation. Correlation is not causation, but it is a prerequisite of causation. If you did a study where people smoked a cigarette and then were screened for lung cancer, you would find no correlation and thus correctly conclude that smoking a cigarette does not cause lung cancer. But there's still a relationship between them, as you could perform a study and find a strong correlation between a long term history of cigarette smoking and lung cancer, which when combined with further biological evidence would cause one to conclude that long-term smoking habits cause cancer.
Similarly, this absence-of-correlation would strongly imply that cosmic rays do not directly impact cloud formation. There might be some other round-about way in which it impacts them, I dunno sea bass absorb the rays which gives them gas which drifts up into the atmosphere and seeds clouds. But you'd have to find a correlation between that mechanism and clouds formation.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Volcano's and things alike emit more C02 gas then the entire human race."
Don't bother to repeat things that trivial Google searches can discredit.
"The Earth heats up on a cycle. It just so happens that in this point in time were on the warming part."
If only some sort of research and statistical modeling technique could be applied to data to analyze situations with greater accuracy than "warming up" and "cooling down", enabling us to compare expected behavior with measured behavior and determine the factors that cause observed phenomena!
Perhaps you can help me with something I genuinely don't understand. Why is it that there is such a passionate movement for wanting more pollution, more shitty water, more shitty air, more shitty soil? Even if you don't agree with the science that shows global warming is manmade, why not work to clean up the environment anyway? I don't understand what motivates you.
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Some real nice attempts at "Argument from Authority" there.
So far it seems that the scientific consensus is that warming is real and likely to be contributed towards by human activity.
My favorite of your quotes is, "Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined." ...". And that's that. Anyone who's afraid to say "I was wrong" isn't a good scientist, or a scientist at all.
No real scientist needs to figure out how to do that. They would just say, "Ya know? I looked at the data again, existing and new, and I've changed my evaluation because of the following points:
All I see in those quotes are buzzwords and alarmist phrasing targeted at grabbing headlines. There may be just as much of that on the other side as well, but you'll need to do better than a list of quotes to convince anyone, or me anyway.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
why not work to clean up the environment anyway? I don't understand what motivates you.
aggregation of personal wealth and power at the expense of and detriment to everyone else.
What are you rambling about? Religion?
Any idiot can follow, but it takes real guts to lead. My favorite quote was:
"It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming." - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
And in the scientific community, you cannot one day be for something and then the next day be against it without being labeled either wishy-washy or someone who doesn't fact check first (which leads to a serious credibility problem).
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Name this passionate movement. No one said that making "things more shitty" is good. All that's being said is that increased CO2 is not necessarily a bad thing and that CO2 is not a pollutant.
Plants (and therefore most life by weight) don't seem to view C02 as a "shitty pollution". Actual, precisely the opposite.
Azural - instrumentals
You're a fucking genius. In the entire history of climatology, no scientist has ever considered the possibility that the sun impacts climate. I wonder why that is, but no matter, clearly you are their intellectual superior.
Oh, wait, they've considered that, and solar variation explains at most 30% of the observed temperature change. Guess you aren't a genius after all. Sorry about that!
The enemies of Democracy are
So what?
Half these quotes are nonsense themselves that merely display the non-science related biases of the person speaking (e.g. Delgado Domingos).
What I don't get is what skeptics hope to prove by making quotes like that. Where are the peer-reviewed papers by all these guys? Oh, you mean they are just blowing hot air instead of doing the science? Perhaps they're too lazy, or maybe they are so brilliant that they can see through it all. However this brilliant minority seems to produce very little in the way of concrete science related to THIS subject (climatology) as opposed to the overwhelming, prodigious amount of science produced by the vast majority of climatologists of which a very large proportion has similar conclusions.
Forget the soundbites, show me the science!
There will still be cold winters and warm summers no matter whether the mean global temperature is rising or falling. The variation from year to year swamps the slow, gradual rise in temperatures.
Think of the stock market. After one or two days of going up, we don't suddenly say the bear market is over. Once again, it's long-term change we're looking for, and you're noticing short-term change.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I really don't understand what motivates you to lie and construct straw man arguments. Is intellectual honesty and integrity so difficult?
A disbelief in anthropogenic planetary warming is not an implied argument for the destruction of the environment.
"Exactly when did you stop beating your wife?"
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
> It's not a passionate movement for more pollution... It's a passionate movement against
> government social experimentation/intervention under the guise of science.
I realize that you and the broader movement for denying human-caused global are not pro-pollution, but those are the bedfellows you're lying down with. The net result of your movement is more pollution and more environmental degradation. I just keep hoping that well-intentioned people would be willing to table the academic questions about what's causing global warming until we've achieved the goals I think we mostly agree on; to stop crapping up our planet.
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Both sides have their crackpots and their extremes lead to undesirable results. But we shouldn't just accept the claims of global warming promoters just because we might like the end result. Flawed science is still flawed even if the result may be something that makes us feel good.
The truth is other than a few isolated cases and in some third world countries the planet is pretty nice. The third world just lacks the will and infrastructure to keep it clean. I've experienced the pollution in India, the smog, in China, and flooding in the Philippines because trash clogs the drainage. These are not global warming problems.
I've seen television campaigns in the Philippines saying that the flooding is cause more powerful storms do to global warming so it's something they can't do anything about. While the truth is if they stopped littering in the streets the drainage wouldn't get clogged and the streets wouldn't be flooded.
These are social/cultural problems. Fixing them will not affect global warming one way or the other but they will improve peoples lives.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
OK Dr.Itoh, what is the "truth"? Where is YOUR peer-reviewed paper showing some actual research?
Well, maybe you can be forgiven, since you are actually a bio-med engineer (Google it yourself you lazy sods).
By the way, Itoh was a "reviewer" not a "contributor". And just so that you know, the scientists on the IPCC were chosen by their respective governments, so of course, there's no change of bias there...
So, therefore, a rise in carbon dioxide cannot cause a temperature rise? Sounds like a non sequitur to me.
It seems to me that whatever happened in the past, if we dramatically increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it will cause temperatures in increase, because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That's simple enough to follow, isn't it?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You don't even need to look as far as politics. Just look at some of the moderations around here and you'll see a clear agenda behind some of them. If that can drive us at this level there's no telling where things will go when there is money and real power behind the same kind of thinking that gets totally valid posts modded down as over rated.
Seeing some facts being shot down around here because they're not in line with someone elses way of thinking has made me a cynic about geekdom in general. All of the mouths yammering on about truth via scientific reasoning are completely drowned out by those who feel the need to push their ideas on other regardless of the truth being 6 inches from their faces.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Yeah, I did took chemistry courses for the first 2 years of my physics degree, so I know what carbon dioxide is. I also typo-ed "actually" as "actual".
Broadly speaking, I'm skeptical about fragile natural balances, given the continuously changing climate of Earth, stretching as far back as we can measure it.
I'm skeptical that this particular climate is somehow miraculously the best of all, given that it's by mere chance we are alive at this point.
And humanity is the most adaptable of all creatures, living in the frozen tundra, and in the Sahara, and everywhere in between. So I'm not particularly worried.
We need more objective science, and less scare-mongering.
Azural - instrumentals
it indicates that the connection between CO2 and Global average temperature may be correlational and not causational. Effect does not, under normal circumstances, preceed cause.
I don't pretend to know the Truth about global warming, but I am damn sure that most of the people claiming they do, are talking out of their collective asses.
We have not been directly recording global temperatures for long enough to draw any conclusions about global cycles that extend into the centuries and millennia. Hence the use of indirect measurements such as polar ice cores and other approaches. The problem is that indicrect measures are not as accurrate as direct measures, and are all dependent upon the validity of the models they are based on.
All models are wrong, but some are useful. That's the first think I learned in my statistics courses when we discussed modeling. All the evidence I've seen shows that the models that have been developed to explain our direct measurements of the environment have very poor predictive value when trying to predict wheather paterns we've already seen, and yet the acolytes of the Holy Church of Human Caused Global Warming (now climate change because global temperatures haven't changed in the last couple of years) seem to simply ignore this.
Is global climate change a concern? YES!
Has it been shown that it is definitely happening? Not in my opinion!
Is it the fault of humanity? Quite frankly, we can't know becuase the models are so bad!
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The bigger problem is that no matter what, "climate change" is a fact of life that we have yet to deal with. It is upon us for whatever reason.
Personally, I do not believe it is all human-caused and therefore cannot be stopped or deterred by any human action. I might be wrong, but it seems an awful lot like someone observing that each morning when they awaken the sun rises and therefore believes that it is their awakening that causes the sun to rise. Somewhat arrogant, perhaps?
The problem is that we have not built things in the last 100 years or so to account for even the possibility that the climate might be variable. Reluctantly we have begun to acknowledge that it might not be a good idea to build fragile structires in the path of hurricanes. We have yet to begin to acknowledge there might be a risk to building certain types of structures in areas frequented by tornados. The thought that sea levels might change is even further from anyone's mind.
The reality is that the climate has been remarkably calm and forgiving for the last 400 years or so. Much further back than we have detailed history of. What was the climate like in 1200 AD? How about 150 AD? 2500 BC? Sorry, but all we can do is guess from some very indistinct records. We have some evidence in ice cores, some historical documents and some biological evidence. As to where the sea levels were 4500 years ago we have no idea. Clearly, there have been changes because we know, for example, that the British Isles were connected to mainland Europe some time in the past.
Humans have been around for perhaps 4.5 million years, in one form or another. The Earth's climate has a history of hundreds of millions of years before that and again, we have only the faintest idea of what it was like.
Assuming the climate is going to be the same tomorrow as it was today is a reasonable expectation. Things do not change on that scale very quickly. However, assuming the climate will be the same in 100 years as it was 100 years ago is provably false over periods of time where we have pretty decent records. George Washington dragged heavy sledges across the frozen Delaware River which is impossible today because the river doesn't freeze.
Trying to terraform the Earth to keep the climate the same way it was before is a pointless and futile exercise. Beliving that humans can control the climate is an arrogant statement that is provably false. The climate is going to change and there is nothing we can do to change that fact. If you build your house at the beachfront, do not be surprised when the water level rises.
All kinds of stuff gets dumped in the environment that we could do without.
Questioning the validity of the models used to support the "Humans are the primary cause of global warmig", or even the "global warming is happening" movements, doesn't in any way mean that someone is in favor of environmental pollution. Separate the two in you mind and you'll be able to follow the discussion a lot better
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I can't speak for leereyno, but my skepticism means I'm not sure that there is anything we can do to effect climate change.
If climate change is real, but it isn't driven by human activity, then human activity probably can't be used to counter it. If CO2 emissions are not the cause of global warming, then reducing CO2 emissions will not stop it. Don't you see how important a distinction that is?
It would mean that we are wasting time, money, and resources chasing a red herring, instead of figuring out what we need to do adapt to the environmental conditions that are coming. I don't know that my skepticism is well placed, but the shrill screaming of those on the other side when I ask questions, makes me think I might be right. It also makes me continue to ask questions since the screaming is almost never a helpful answer.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I realize that you and the broader movement for denying human-caused global are not pro-pollution, but those are the bedfellows you're lying down with.
So what if there are polluters that want to pollute more? We already have lots of environmental regulations in place to reduce pollution, and those won't go away just because we don't believe in global warming. CO2 is not pollution. What the hell do you think all those plants and trees are surviving on?
The net result of your movement is more pollution and more environmental degradation.
And I could just as easily say that the net result of your movement will be the tanking of the world economy.
Think of global warming as moving your Normal Distribution Curve of all weather up 2 or 3 degrees (A shift to the right on the X axes).
Think of the current weather as a point along that curve. You can still get record colds in a period of global warming they are just slightly less probable then they were before. I don't think global warming has moved the chart a full standard deviation yet. So for the most case you can expect cold weather but more often then not the weather will be above the historical average.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Don't confuse evidence with effect because then you misconstrue science. As a measure of global warming scientists have used qualitative measurements like average temperature as a gauge or baseline. In science you need qualitative arguments. You can't say "the earth is getting warmer" without basing it on something qualitative. The raise in temperature is also not absolute but relative. For example, the average temperature from year to year are being compared to another not to the absolute temperature. What the data shows isn't just that the earth is getting warmer (that has happened before), but that the rate of climate change is much faster than in any previous period in the last several million years.
This has nothing to do with the temperature of the earth in general. No one is using a thermometer in cities and averaging them out. What they using are polar snowfall thickness, air pocket analysis, vegetation studies, etc.
Again, temperature is relative and being used for comparison. Temperatures are not absolute. In this vein, a change of few degrees by comparison changed the Sahara a few hundred thousand years ago from a tropical forest into the desert.
You haven't been paying close attention to NOAA. Or the warnings issued by the EPA. That's just within this government. Italy is concerned about Venice sinking into the sea that they are building sea barriers. They realize however Venice faces both rising sea levels and Venice was built on soft clay.
As a human you can change the temperature of your indoor surroundings or clothing. Many things in nature are triggered by temperature. Deciduous trees shed leaves and grow them back based on temperature. Some animals mate based on temperature (crocodile gender is determined by the egg nest's temperature). The world is bigger than your personal comfort level.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Precisely. One thing that the climate change deniers keep misconstruing is that the earth has always gone in climate cycles so therefore humans are not responsible. Climate change advocates have always said that the rate of change we have seen is faster than any period in the history of the earth and it started right around the Industrial Revolution. A coincidence too large to ignore.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The idea of a scientific consensus concerns me to no end. Science is about proving theories wrong, you can't prove a theory correct you can only demonstrate that a given theory is better than another theory. If everybody agrees then nobody is out trying to prove the current theory wrong, and that is simply not science, its belief.
Just to stop any confusion the term Global Warming doesn't mean it's always warmer but that it's a trend over years and it actually even means that there will be more extremes in temperature.
Youre missing one major thing AC...unlike 'God', we have this thing called empirical evidence. The 'Faith' he was talking about is faith that the scientists know what they are talking about...something that *can* be tested and proved/disproved. With religious faith, its simply beleiving something that cannot be proven, simply based upon human wishes, hopes, dreams, tradition, magic and superstition.
*Please* use your brain AC.
The seas have been rising 1.7mm/yr for the last several hundred years. They are up over 3 1/2 meters since the 17th century. Holland still has not flooded, even though they built dykes to dry-out and farm the Zuderzee over 400 years ago. If we can't match 17th century public works with 21 century science and equipment, then we deserve our fate...
Those who follow the rantings of a politically motivated activists seeking social justice need to wise up about what social justice really means.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
"The problem is you seem to be avoiding the simple point that global temperatures HAVE been rising. I'm sorry, but it's a recorded fact. "
That link is lying. It claims to have global temperatures back to the 1860s, but we didn't really have the equipment nescessary to measure global temperatures until the 1978 when we began using satellites to measure temperature.
Before that we only had local temperature measurements. And such measurements have proven to be pretty useless due to local temperature shifts because of change in population (and as a result energy usage). Especially as we are talking about an overall change in temperature that is less than one degree.
That's why I'm against people who criticize the war on terror. By pushing for close overview of the government's actions, they are aligning themselves with those who wish to terrorize and hurt others.
Respecting human rights isn't a bad idea, but we need to make everyone safe first and catch the bad guys.
I've been hearing since elementary school telling me that by 2000 most of florida's coast would be under water. That lack of predictive accuracy made me a skeptic.
I am not sure about this but the highest informed sea level rise I have seen is about 0.5 m by 2050.
Note that all of the modelled sea level rises do not include 'non linear' effects, simply because we don't know enough to predict them. So there are real possibilities that sea level rise will be much greater if effects like water lubricating glaciers underneath turn out to be significant.
However, that doesn't make them ready for prime time (ie making global policy decisions, shooting our energy infrastructure in the foot, etc.)
I disagree.
There are two possibilities for whether climate change is real or not. Real and Not Real. The largest scientific effort undertaken by humanity to date says that Real inequivical, and is 90% certain to be caused by our carbon emissions.
Note that the IPCC only accepts as fact things that have unanimous support amoung thousands of member scientists.
There are two possibilities for how we might conduct ourselves in the coming years. We fix it or don't fix it.
The cost of fixing it is important but most studies show that it will be some small fraction of economic growth
So that gives us four possible outcomes
Fix it and its not real - not a disaster slowed economic growth, recoverable, skeptics say I told you so
Fix it and its real - not a disaster slowed economic growth, recoverable
Don't fix it and its not real Skeptics proven correct, unaffected economic growth, we fight over the remaining fossil fuels in an increasingly polluted world (by things other than CO2 because it has been proven not to effect climate), before moving to renewables anyway.
Don't fix it and its real Disaster mass extinction , political unrest, starvation.
The choice is easy, unless you are involved in coal or oil, or just have ideological hatred of the thought of rich people having to do anything that might benefit more than just themselves.
There is a real life, complex example of CO2 causing increased temperatures. It is the planet Venus. It has an atmosphere of 97% CO2 and has an average surface temperature considerably hotter than Mercury despite orbiting further from the Sun.
So there is clearly a causational link between CO2 and temperature.
Until I read this comment I was inclined to agree with your side on this issue. But the moral quality of this post is making me seriously reconsider. Listen, the other side may be wrong, but I'd rather be wrong with them than take the chance of being wrong with you.