Sun Causes Climate Change Shock. Cartoon by Josh If Michael Crichton had lived to write a follow-up to State of Fear, the plotline might well have gone like this: at a top secret, state of the art laboratory in Switzerland, scientists finally discover the true cause of "global warming".
It's the sun, stupid. More specifically – as the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark has long postulated – it's the result of cosmic rays which act as a seed for cloud formation. The scientists working on the project are naturally euphoric: this is a major breakthrough which will not only overturn decades of misguided conjecture on so-called Man Made Global Warming but will spare the global economy trillions of dollars which might otherwise have been squandered on utterly pointless efforts to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Except of course in the real world the second part wouldn't happen. So if it's so great, why aren't we hearing more about it? I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. Some reactions to the CLOUD experiment. Probing the cosmic-ray–climate link.
Best known for its studies of the fundamental constituents of matter, the CERN particle-physics laboratory in Geneva is now also being used to study the climate.
Researchers in the CLOUD collaboration have released the first results from their experiment designed to mimic conditions in the Earth's atmosphere. By firing beams of particles from the lab's Proton Synchrotron accelerator into a gas-filled chamber, they have discovered that cosmic rays could have a role to play in climate by enhancing the production of potentially cloud-seeding aerosols. Describing their findings in this week's Nature, the team has also found that our current understanding of the chemistry of these aerosols is inadequate and that manmade pollution could have a larger role in their formation than previously thought.
Cloud2.jpg (JPEG Image, 842x595 pixels) 'No Sun link' to climate change. Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.
The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature. The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity. But UK scientists found there has been no significant link between cosmic rays and cloudiness in the last 20 years. Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the University of Lancaster team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none. This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.
Wrong path. “No, you mustn’t say what it means!” « Calder's Updates. Climate Change: News and Comments CERN chief forbids “interpretation” of CLOUD results Although still very busy with other work, I keep looking out for results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva, which is testing Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that cosmic rays help to make clouds.
They are due for publication this summer. All I have just now is a startling remark by Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, in an interview by Welt Online a few days ago. Here is a tidied-up Google Translate version of the relevant exchange. CERN experiment confirms cosmic ray action « Calder's Updates. Climate Change – News and Comments The global warmists’ dam breaks A graph they'd prefer you not to notice.
Tucked away near the end of online supplementary material, and omitted from the printed CLOUD paper in Nature, it clearly shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules (“particles”) that in the real atmosphere can grow and seed clouds. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03.45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. It also tended to remove molecular clusters made in the neutral environment (n) but some of these accumulated at a low rate. Clouded research. Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician.
CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment. High performance access to file storage The chief of the world's leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment.
The CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets") experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN's proton synchrotron to examine nucleation. CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment. "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them," reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Because, Heuer says, "That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. 12m muons pass through your body every 24 hours The unusual "gagging order" could have been issued because the results of CLOUD are really, really boring, muses Calder.
But how much? According to Calder: