Monday, February 12, 2007

Clouds and Cosmic Rays… oh, and Denmark (of course)

We can’t seem to get out of the Danish trajectory here.

Cosmic raysNotice of the Dane’ experiments on the factors in global warning can be seen at M. Simon’s post Monday morning post, which concerns global warming - specifically the generation of clouds.

Wait! I see your eyes glazing over, but it’s-not-what-you-think-it-is. Honest Injun! (yeah, it is politically incorrect, but a handy term nonetheless. Find a Sioux to sue me. Or maybe one of the Mattaponi to be offended. Which they won’t be as long as you spell the name right. Meanwhile…)

Mr. Simon quotes a Timesonline discussion of the rôle the sun plays and how its actions affect cosmic rays, which in turn affect the above-mentioned clouds...or sometimes, the lack of them. No recycled pc pap here:

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. 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.

You’ll have to go over to Mr. Simon’s website to see how the Danes figured it out.

Way cool - or not, depending on the lazy sun.

[end of post]

17 comments:

High Power Rocketry said...

: )

Reliapundit said...

denmark rules!

btw: tab first posted on this 1/6/06.

u really ought to read us regularly.

you'll be glad you did.

and you'll be more current on the news!

hi-hi

Reliapundit said...

tab is

the astute bloggers.

at blogspot.

pastorius posts there too.

M. Simon said...

I'm always late to the show.

However, my publicity machine works better.

BTW how about a link to tab.

I'll give you a plug.

M. Simon said...

Dymphna,

Thanks for the link!!

Bless you all,

Simon

M. Simon said...

The Astute Bloggers or tab

X said...

Ever read New Scientist? I did, until last week, when the IPCC "summary for policy makers" was released... it seems that the "scientist" working for the UN have moderated their message a little and consequently become heretics in the eyes of the new green faith. New Religion's cover story was "Why things are going to be far worse than we've been told" or words to that effect. They've also refused to cover the cloud effect story except n the most derogatory terms.

So much for science...

Engineer-Poet said...

Something I could not help but notice is that M. Simon's "scientific reference" isn't to a peer-reviewed journal, but a link to a newspaper.

That newspaper allows comments, and in those comments some astute reader has posted a link to the refutation:  Taking Cosmic Rays for a spin (at Real Climate).

Here's a response to the first comment on the RC thread:

"[Response: a) there is no trend in cosmic rays and so it's explanative power for the trend is zero. b) read the rest of the material.... It gets worse. - gavin]"

Anonymous said...

While I don't know much about this, I have learned that the sun's intensity is gradually on the increase and that much more helium is being generated than previously known.

Profitsbeard said...

The "Global Warming" (political/media fed) panic is essentially a (conscious?) method of distracting humanity from a far more serious and fatally-imminent threat to our Civilization- Resurgent Islamic Imperialism.

Diffusing the energies needed for this real fight with battling something that may or may not turn out to be true (human causation of a planetary climate change leading to "disaster") and which might or might not occur for a century, or more.

Long after we're all dead and/or our children are dhimmified into serfdom by the real danger: the militant and intolerant Religion-that-may-not-be-criticized for fear of being called "bigoted" and "racist".

I'd rather risk the loss of some shorelines and slightly warmer winters than tempt a global theocratic terroristic tyranny.

If Sharia Law comes, it won't matter what the temperature is. It'll be hell.

Engineer-Poet said...

Two points:
1. It would be rather strange for our parent star to suddenly develop a very long period variability at exactly the same time that continental drift creates the conditions for glaciation forced by variations in Earth's spin axis and obliquity.  It's almost like someone made up the idea as a way to get people to ignore the atmosphere....

2. Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with fighting global theocratic tyranny.  The promoters of that tyranny make their money by pulling carbon out of the ground and putting it in the air.  The Islamists know that GHG controls threaten their whole gig:  "But the issue was complicated by Saudi Arabia's insistence that the aid include compensation to oil-producing countries for any fall in revenues that may result from the reduction in the use of carbon fuels."

Anything which restrains the emission of CO2 will depress the market for oil.  That hurts the Islamists directly.  Those of you who are denying this - and that appears to include everyone else posting in this thread - are saying, in effect, "It's my God-given right as an American to burn as much gas as I want, and the fact that half the pump price* winds up building madrassas to train terrorists is no affair of mine."

If you really want to prevent Islam from taking over the world, stop making excuses for giving your money to it.

* At $56 per 42-gallon barrel, a gallon of crude makes the seller about $1.33.

X said...

Well, it didn't just suddenly develop, and if you were keeping up with the research instead of pooh-poohing it you'd know this. This new theory fits the existing data much better than previous theories regarding the milankovich cycles, orbital periods and the like. Orbital changes alone are not significant enough to produce the observed effects. Further, this activity also happens to coincide rather more neatly with existing data than anything to do with CO2 - which, as you should well be aware, often trails temperature changes rather than leads them.

CO2 emissions have bugger all to do with fighting islamic fascism and you know it. Yes, as long as we keep buying their oil we'll be funding them, but the answer to that isn't to be found in policies that will destroy western economies just when our economies need to remain strong in order to fight off that very fascist threat. What do you think would happen if the US, or other major economies were to be run in to the ground as the green/left agw advocates seem to be demanding? Islam would still be there. It wouldn't just go away. All that would happen is that our ability to effectively defend ourselves would be removed. You americans might be safe for a while, but over here, with our economies in tatters, we'd be vulnerable to horse-mounted bowmen.

I agree that we ultimately need to get on to alternative technologies, but I find the idea of allying with the green left rediculous. They don't want a prosperous west able to defend itself and provide a decent living for people. They want to destroy it. They want a west that is in the dumps and ripe for their much-desired revolution. The demands to reduce industrial output and raise taxes to abominable levels to "fight" global warming should have demonstrated that already.

I dispute the claim that our CO2 output has anything more than a minimal effect on global temperatures. I dispute the claim that the current greeny obsession is in any way an effective means to fight islam, as every tennet of the green madness directly affects our combined ability to fight Islam, and I dispute the claim that removing the life-blood of our economy without anything to replace it will save us from anything.

Engineer-Poet said...

Just two problems with that paper:  it does not explain the last 2000 years of climate, and its predictions specifically contradict parts of the climate record.

The first graph of cosmic-ray flux (Figure 5, p. 24) has a resolution of a few million years.  Further, it shows a peak in the neighborhood of 55 million years ago.  This should have produced severe cooling by the model, but that coincided with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.  Strike one.

The second one is Figure 8, on page 42.  It shows heavy flux from about 1993-1998 (which should have produced cooling), a drop through about 2004, then a sharp rise in 2005.  Yet for some reason, Earth's warmest year on record was 1998, and the second-warmest was 2006.  Temperature signals have been rising steadily, not tracking the cosmic-ray flux.  Indeed, there's no trend in the cosmic-ray data.  Strike two.

"I dispute the claim that removing the life-blood of our economy without anything to replace it will save us from anything."

Where did "without anything to replace it" come from?  I've been doing quite a bit to find ways to do exactly that.

What's happening is that you are letting your political alignment determine what scientific evidence you'll accept.  Everyone does this to some degree (confirmation bias), but people today have both unprecedented access to data and the same old refusal to change their minds or even give provisional acceptance.  GoV readers see this in the political left's refusal to accept the truth about guns and Islam, but "the beam in your own eye" is your attitude about things like climate.  This is due in no small part to your need to be part of the group, and one of the group's characteristics is to accept the people who espouse "our" attitudes and expel the people who espouse "their" attitudes.  That's how they divide the world into themselves and others.

It's easy to find examples.  The Duke LaCrosse players are innocent, but many on the left refuse to believe that white boys can be anything but guilty (or can't say so, because they'd be ostracized).  It's absurd to claim that a cell barely visible to the naked eye is a human being, but many on the right either believe this or continue to say it because admitting otherwise would be socially unacceptable.

The explanation for this isn't factual.  It's psychological.  It's the power of the taboos which define the axis of "us vs. them".

I am more willing than most people to break those taboos.  I've expressed the opinion that Muslims are undesirable immigrants to a social group consisting mostly of leftists, and been attacked for it.  I'm not going to push this hard, but I'm going to make this point again, gently, as more incidents accumulate on the record.  I'm going to get at least some of them to take the idea seriously.  When the break comes, they'll be on the side of civilization and freedom.

Driving some big truck seems to be a big part of membership in some rightist social groups.  It defines the owner as "not one of them".  It also hurts the US balance of trade and value of the dollar, and feeds the machinery of jihad.  After 9/11, a rational right would have reversed course and defined the KSA and their oil-financed madrassas and programs of da'wa as the enemy.  Guzzling trucks and long commutes would have been "out", telecommuting and hybrids would have been "in".  But that would have meant behaving like "them", the green-promoters on the left.  The reality of patriotic sacrifice came up against counterproductive symbolism, and lost.

Getting back to climate change, you're half-right.  Taking action against burning coal has nothing to do with fighting jihad, because coal is a domestic product.  This is absolutely not true of oil, and increasingly not true about natural gas (imported from the ME as LNG).  On the other hand, taking action against all of these is a great way to get the left to do things which hurt the jihadis.

The political left has identified Muslims as "minorities" who can do no wrong, despite their opposition to everything the left says it's for (gay rights, women's rights, freedom of conscience, etc.).  You, on the right have an opportunity to do serious damage to the Islamist cause by co-opting the left's issue (I'm in between on most scales, which is why I'm not including myself here).

You have an opportunity to use the left's psychology to accomplish one of your goals.  Take it!

Engineer-Poet said...

Please provide cites for the assertions that the various warm and cold periods are "unexplainable", that it's dishonest to claim that the human contribution can be quantified, that the science is "nascent" (it's moving mighty fast) and that truth which "will out" is something at wide variance with the IPCC reports.

These are not matters of opinion.  They are matters of fact.  You can have opinions about them, but opinions which have no support from facts or contradict the facts are held only by the ignorant and espoused by frauds.

Brian Andersen said...

You ought to read a book by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven called "Fallen Angels" they predicted a lot of this a long time ago and how the world got totally screwed by the greens and the 'danes, mind you the 'danes in this book was mundanes and not the tough vikings.

Engineer-Poet said...

I am quite familiar with that book.  Unfortunately, the premise is as scientifically sound as Niven's hyperdrive.

Brian Andersen said...

There's nothing wrong with Nivens hyperdrive, don't troll. his claims are backed by many scientists,...