Bishop Hill WSJ on Svensmark
Sep 7, 2011 Climate: solar Anne Jolis has written an very nice, level-headed review of Svensmark and the CLOUD experiment.
But a few physicists weren't worrying about Al Gore in the 1990s. They were theorizing about another possible factor in climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space, or "cosmic rays," whose atmospheric levels appear to rise and fall with the weakness or strength of solar winds that deflect them from the earth. These shifts might significantly impact the type and quantity of clouds covering the earth, providing a clue to one of the least-understood but most important questions about climate. Heavenly bodies might be driving long-term weather trends.
The theory has now moved from the corners of climate skepticism to the center of the physical-science universe: CERN, also known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research. At the Franco-Swiss home of the world's most powerful particle accelerator, scientists have been shooting simulated cosmic rays into a cloud chamber to isolate and measure their contribution to cloud formation. CERN's researchers reported last month that in the conditions they've observed so far, these rays appear to be enhancing the formation rates of pre-cloud seeds by up to a factor of 10. Current climate models do not consider any impact of cosmic rays on clouds.
Reader Comments (46)
O/T Vic Forbes' Carbon Sense Coalition site has been hacked and taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist group.
See how Kirkby plays the 'blame Mother Nature' card at the end, hoping it will get him out of jail:
It's good that he's now talking about the inspiration Svensmark was to the work originally.
The piece in The Economist was excellent too. Very reasonable and even handed.
The last few weeks have certainly been earth shattering with a tectonic movement in terms of press coverage. But this is surely just a precursor. It isn't necessary to believe that Svensmark/CERN disproves manmade warming. It's only necessary to conclude that it was important scientific work, to start to ask the question: "Why was it repressed?"
Add to that the scandal of super-fast rebuttals, editors under pressure to tow the warmist line and the huge problems the evidence against manmade GW has in getting published, and it's a pretty conclusive case that there has been a conspiracy to repress work contrary to manmade GW. And, I can't see how the press can miss this.
Which then leads onto the question: is all the pro "science" up to scratch? Has pro "science" been given an easy ride. Has there been an unquestioning attitude to pro-work which has allowed poor quality ideas to be accepted as given.
We all know the answers to these questions. Now with the publication of CERN is seems pretty inevitable that the journalists will start asking them.
I was going to say the big question is: "if there's enough material for them to work on". But you only have to look back through the archive of WUWT, or climate audit, or here, to find a huge wealth of potential stories.
Does anyone pay attention to Piers Corbyn? His latest at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfsbKrtVTcU suggests that Svensmark is focussing in the wrong direction. He says that charged particles from the sun are more important.
He also claims to have predicted formation of Hurricane Irene 80 days in advance, and to published real-time corrections to the path predictions of the official forecasters.
As JBS (My Friend Mr Leakey) Haldane said :"Theories have four stages of acceptance.
i) this is worthless nonsense;
ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view,
iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
iv) I always said so."
We seem to be at the join between ii) and iii).
Ian,
Some scientists might be at ii) and iii), but the media is at i) to ii) because they take their lead from advocates who are, and always will be, at i).
'Which then leads onto the question: is all the pro "science" up to scratch? Has pro "science" been given an easy ride. Has there been an unquestioning attitude to pro-work which has allowed poor quality ideas to be accepted as given'
Good science would not need a 'rapid rebuttal unit. Good science would not need declarations of adherence to The One True Way. Good science would not need 'to keep things out of the peer-reviewed literature'. Good science would not need to magic Hokey Sticks from thin air.
Politicians have rapid response units - think Alastair Campbell. Religions have Credos, fraudsters manipulate the literature and illusionists deceive the public.
The common theme among all those dishonourable actions is to reduce scrutiny and encourage conformity. That is why to be a climate sceptic is a badge to wear with pride.
"O/T Vic Forbes' Carbon Sense Coalition site has been hacked and taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist group.
Sep 7, 2011 at 7:22 AM | Unregistered CommenterJohn in France"
That sounds like the attack on a DNS that took place on Sunday night. Requests were just rererouted, the sites themselves were unaffected.
It has taken 20 long years to test an idea that the Sun and background cosmic radiation plays a part in changing Earth's climate.
In comparison it took only 3 years to test and give credence to Einstein's obscure theory of general relativity.
The truth is that climate scientists didn't want Svenmark's theory to be tested and perhaps been given credence. In fearing the truth these climate scientists saught to marginalise, criticise and attack the person in order to retain a hypothesis that proposed that humanity was sinning against the planet. Their narrative, their behaviour turned a doctrine into dogma.
AGW is an unproven hypothesis. CAGW is a faith. Svenmark's theory now has a legitimacy that both AGW and CAGW lack.
DDB
At the moment it does not really matter what flavour the charged particles have: it is sufficient that they are extra-terrestrial. Not being man-made removes the urgency to investigate them when you are actually only trying to impose your own personal Utopia on mankind (in its own best interest).
I agree with Mike Haseler. The question that needs to be plugged away at is "why was it repressed?"
Added to that, of course, is the related question that non-scientists should be asking, "how can anything that helps mankind's understanding of the workings of his home planet be 'a very bad career move'? Who are these people?"
"Current climate models do not consider any impact of cosmic rays on clouds."
No, they only model the current hypothesis of CO2 + positive feedback. The result is that they have run their course with the declaration of a 'settled' outcome. Why put more money in when the answer is declared so 'robust'? It is time that governments reconsidered funding: they have their answer. It is time to either turn off the tap or re-direct.
It's no massive conspiracy, it's human nature. Given the right circumstances most people would make hay whilst the sun warmed us. It's much easier these days also because all one has to do is play the media right and hey presto you have fame and fortune. This one got completely out of control, so much so that when it's busted real scientists are going to have a job getting funded.
Dead Dog. Last I heard PC and one of his predictions - was we were about to have the most dreadful spring we could have. Of course that was wrong, maybe he got his seasons mixed.
I have yet to find any statistics that back up the ludicrous '90% certain that man done it' IPCC statement. I conclude it is a new branch of statistics akin to Rev Toms, Offof the top of ones head statistics.
Mike Jackson, you are paging me: ""...how can anything that helps mankind's understanding of the workings of his home planet be 'a very bad career move'? Who are these people?"
I ask.
Cordially,
Non-Scientist.
Some very interesting points come up in that article.
One is that Mr Kirkby is bending over backwards to avoid any answer which might possibly turn out to be 'political'.
The other is that Mr Svensmark, in an extremely polite fashion, indicates the financial constraints on these experiments - leaving us to draw our own conclusions, seeing that we know that who controls the funding controls the science.
See here:
"Mr. Svensmark declines entirely to guess why CERN took so long, noting only that "more generally in the climate community that is so sensitive, sometimes science goes into the background."
and here:
"Mr. Svensmark <snip> guesses that CERN's initial results "could have been achieved eight to 10 years ago, if the project had been approved and financed."
Was the CERN experiment designed in such a way as to limit possible CAGW heresy, could it have gone further on the same funding?
I've seen a couple of cynical remarks regarding stopping the experiment too soon, and something about ammonia, but it's really a bit over my head, I would appreciate a link to any layman's type guide to this if it exists.
Some of the comments here have prompted me to open my copy of The Chilling Stars by Svensmark and Calder to read again what Calder says about Kirkby getting the project off the ground. (If you don't have a copy of the book, get one. Its a good read).
Svensmark and Calder report the timeline as:
1997 Kirkby becomes interested in the work after a lecture by Calder at CERN. Over next 2 years Kirkby assembles team of 50 scientists.
2000 April the team puts out the formal proposal to two leading atmospheric scientists for review:
2001 CERN committee wonders whether a particle physics lab should be doing atmospheric research and defers a decision on CLOUD
2001 A European Geophysical Society meeting provides encouragement
2001 The project is not going ahead because of the huge costs/effort with the Large Hadron Collider - new experiments barred for a time. Kirkby tries to get it going in the USA without success.
2001 - 2004 Project on ice
2005 proposed again to CERN and get agreement to go ahead.
Based on the above the delay appears to be about 4 - 5 years only, with the main delay the period from 2001 - 2004.
In the meantime Svensmark tests his ideas with "the box in the basement", promoting the project from 2000 and finally getting it going shortly before Christmas 2004. If you think science is not dangerous, read the book to find out what happens when you put 40,000 volts across a 2 m box...
cosmic rays = cosmic radiation = electromagnetic radiation = NO particles except the elusive photon.
Or did I not pay attention in my fissix class? the teacher DID have big boobies.
Cosmic rays are mainly protons with some electrons, alpha particles and a small proportion of the nuclei of heavier elements.
From the WSJ article:
And concludes that:
A little while ago, Richard Betts referenced Pierce & Adams (2009) which states:
I recently came across Sloan & Wolfendale (2011) which states:
After re-reading Jolis' article, there's no doubt that she's implying that there is potential for CR to have significant climatological effects. Yet this seems unlikely. On this point, I think, Richard emailed Kirkby, but as yet has had no reply (?).
This appears to be an example of political bias in a science story in the MSM, would you not agree?
Mike
Sorry - Sloan & Wolfendale full pdf available here - just click the download PDF option top right.
S & W conclude:
WRT this modelling thing that everyone seems to have a problem with... it's not much of an argument. Models are tools for building understanding, much as hammers are tools for building houses. If you elect to knock nails in with your fists, you won't get very far and people will laugh at you.
thanks cosmic
so how would the sun (that's photons only ?) deflect protons and electrons ? and heavier particles.
BBD: You are naughty! Models, for sure are an attempt to replicate reality, but they have no relationship to hammers, or any other tool for that matter. In science only observations count, models are the result of someone's, maybe lots of someones, ideas about how the science works, their output, is the result of the input given by these someones, and reflects only that. For sure they may have gotten all the inputs right and the output may be right, but you'd still have to go back to observations to prove the models.
If you hammer a nail in the wall it's either in the wall or it isn't, by observation, the cornerstone of science and scientific advancement.
I've notice a growing enthusiasm for modelling among the climate science community, but I'm afraid I'm staying firmly in the camp of the physicists, observation is all, modelling is an attempt to replace observation with guesses.
tutut
It's the sun's magnetic field that does the deflecting. See here for details.
geronimo
I'm not arguing this stuff with you tonight. However, you will find this book highly informative and instructive. If you read it.
tutut,
As BBD says.
The sun's output isn't entirely photons, there's also the solar wind consisting of protons and electrons. The solar wind is the reason for aurora and comets' tails pointing away from the sun at all times.
You must have been seriously distracted during those fizzix lessons.
The WSJ has the largest US daily circulation, over 2million/day. That it is prepared to print articles such as this must be a huge annoyance to the 'faithful'. Their best champion, the NYT, has less than 1million/day.
And here, similar with the Daily Mail, >2m/d, cf Guardian with <300k/d.
She was a model , my physics teacher.didn't discuss CR tho. That Svensmark paper looks interesting?
Probably what everyone is talking about.
The models used with respect to obtaining earth's "temperature" are a bit dodgy, to say the least.
But that does not stop the warmist community, everybody, to make fancy models interpreting that dodgy temperature.
The Sloan & Wolfendale paper, they "look" at graphs ?
Hv they been studying under Dr BV one wonders.
tutut
Do you mean this BV?
If so, I think they might be a bit old for that ;-)
Eg Wolfendale
Great name though, isn't it? Although I prefer Hawksmoor, or possibly Oliphant. No. Hawksmoor, definately.
WSJ and Forbes seem strongly sceptical. And hedge funds including that of the legendary Jim Chanos have been shorting green stocks.
This is very interesting since the big money may be quietly sailing in a different direction from the political classes. Could be an interesting conflict coming in those rarefied strata of society.
I want to thank BBD for hanging around ad gamely putting up with the occasional abuse.
Linking to Paul Edwards science history "A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming," is particularly welcome for me! It fills a niche for my library in science history and geosciences.
That said for all the praise heaped on the book (see link), and all the weight BBD might put in the point, how does the use of sophisticated models and multi-million dollar runs, how does their performance square against naive predictions, like simply linear ones? (We could be talking GCMs or macroeconomics or weather here, of course.) Poorly, per dollar of unit of high power brain. And why is that?
Looking at the index, man crucial subjects like carbon cycle modeling are absent - the BIG enchilada. As is CO2 sensitivity. "Evidence" for global warming is apparently restricted to just two early pages. And while water vapor is discussed on 3 pages, "water vapor feedback," which is essential to establish the unlisted EGE hypothesis, is only on one.
Somehow, going by the reviews excerpted, I'm expecting a big Hockey Stick Believers love fest. And only recognized orthodox problems and limitations of models mentioned.
Meanwhile, let me respond with a book of my own to recommend. "The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction," by David Orrell, an Oxford trained PhD mathematician Ironically, this AGW-Believer also disses the future of weather prediction - which GCMs are just elaborations thereof.
He lists multiple reasons: complexity cannot be reduced to equations, underlying systems are emergent, 'tuning' does not generate useful predictions, and simple models are often enough more useful. The future for these models is dim, he says, because of a fundamental problem (which NOAAs Dr. Susan solomon has been known to deny, eg., on the launch of AR4 in the Boulder Daily Camera: "We've got better models..."): more data is often counter-productive because the numbers of unknown parameters explodes.
So, BBD, rehearse and rehash away. Before the Colorado Springs, Colorado skeptics group, I gave a talk on AGW and the failure of models to model reality. I think the best purchase was in the fact that through nearly 20 years of models and four IPCC reports, the models have ALWAYS over-predicted warming - from 15C degrees, to what? Down to only three of four times what's been measured linear rate?
That's piss poor, my friend. However Herculean the labors.
In the acknowledgements, Edwards amits to getting spoon fed about climate models by none other than the Great [snip] alarmist scientist (it simply HAS to be said of He who is never falsified decently, like a normal scientist lacking His grandiosity), just feted at NCAR in Boulder two weeks ago by his sychophants - the late Stephen Schneider of Stanford University.
The usual suspects are there, like Ben Santer, Naomi Oreskes, and Spencer Weart. Kevin Trenberth, Tom Wigley, and Sir John Houghten. No William Gray, no John Christy or Spencer - only Richard Lindzen to uphold the AGW-critics front.
Orson
Glad the Vast Machine link was useful.
Well no, not really. AOGCMs are not the same thing as the models used for short-term meteorological forecasting. AOGCMs model the global climate system over long periods (eg. 100 years), not regional weather systems in high resolution over very short periods (a few days). Which is about the limit of their predictive horizon. So Orell is correct to say that weather forecasting is unlikely to improve significantly in terms of reach.
Also, this had me puzzled:
Observations since the start of the satellite era:
HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, RSS. 1979 – present; common 1981 – 2010 baseline; trend.
Decadal trend (degrees C):
GISTEMP 0.16
HADCRUT 0.15
UAH 0.14
RSS 0.14
The projected trend derived from the multi-model mean (reference in AR4) is 0.2C/decade.
This is not an error of 'three to four times' the 'measured linear rate'.
Unless I have misunderstood your last paragraph, you appear to be mistaken in what you say.
And there remains the matter of 0.5C of warming since 1979 for which nobody can find a suitable forcing. Except of course the labouriously calculated, endlessly checked RTEs showing that RF from increased CO2 would account very well for the accumulation of energy within the climate system.
The models capture the trend reasonably well. If warming resumes and the rate of warming increases, as is near-universally assumed, then the observed trend and the mean of modelled projections are likely to converge.
BBD says:
" If warming resumes and the rate of warming increases, as is near-universally assumed, then the observed trend and the mean of modelled projections are likely to converge."
Can you remind us which of the climate models forecast the plateau in global temperatures which we have been experiencing for around 10 years? They would have had to have made the forecast around the years 1998 - 2000 for it to be a forecast, of course.
BBD:
You state the warming rates per decade for various temperature datasets over the period since 1979.
Please can you clarify:
1. Whether those rates per decade are regression of the whole time epriod (inlcuding the last decades plateau) or the maximum rate (probably the period 1979 to about 1998).
2. If the latter, can you also confirm is the 1998 data included or excluded in the calculation, since it is clearly anomalous and should not be considered part of the background trend.
Thanks!
ThinkingScientist
The trends are calculated from annual least squares. No, 1998 is not removed. If I started selectively removing data when calculating trends, where might it end?
BTW, the values I give are also those provided by GISS, Hadley, UAH and RSS. There is no debate or disagreement that I am aware of here. Except that which you (spuriously?) seek to introduce.
As every modeller will happily tell you, the projected trends are... projected trends. Everybody agrees there will be cool decades that fall below the average projected rate of warming. Nobody finds this problematic except those seeking (spuriously?) to undermine the underlying science.
Hi BBD,
Sorry, was in a meetin.
You haven't answered the first part of my question so let me restate, perhaps a little more clearly:
1. Are those rates per decade regression of the whole time period ie 1979 - 2010 or are they the maximum rate, regressed from say the 1979 to about 1998?
Regarding your statement:
"As every modeller will happily tell you, the projected trends are... projected trends. Everybody agrees there will be cool decades that fall below the average projected rate of warming"
Can you point me to a modeller (or the IPCC) where anyone prior to or up to 2001 made any such statement concerning the possibility of decadel cool periods in a publication, report or paper?
ThinkingScientist
The regression is for the full time series, eg 1979 - present.
This textbook from 1996 is a good indication that the idea of decadal variability overprinting the anthropogenic signal was hardly novel, even then.
Thanks BBD, I might even see if I can find a copy of that! I love this:
"On decadal time scales, climate change may result not only from man-made causes, but also from natural processes. This book brings together theoretical conceptions of the physical mechanisms of climate change with observational evidence of these changes. The following key topics are included: Observed Climatic Variability, Predictability of the Atmosphere and Oceans from Days to Decades, and Mechanisms for Decadal to Centennial Climate Variability."
Could even be science.
Got any references from climate modellers though?
Should have added:
Got any predcitions for the plateau of the last 10 years from, say 2001 or just prior? After all, I seem to recall that the consensus said that all know natural forcings were accounted for in the models therefore only AGW could account for the changes. Ergo, the models should have predicted the current plateau
ThinkingScientist
The problem here is that this is not relevant. The understanding that natural variation can and will overprint the CO2 signal on decadal scales had filtered down to textbooks by the mid-1990s. I think it's safe to assume that modellers and climatologists generally were aware of it.
The purpose of the model ensembles is to explore multi-decadal periods, not to predict when natural variations in the real Earth climate system might occur.
So no, there's no reason to expect the models to 'predict' the current plateau.
What will you think if warming resumes, I wonder?
Remember BBD, the premise here is that all natural forcings are accounted for in the climate models and they are modelling the climate. Lets say you are making a model run in 2001, accounting for all known natural effects, with humps and bumps up and down (which apparently they can match with hindcast). Why did no models predict a plateau, surely it must be the easiest of predictions for a climate model which accounts for all natural forcings to predict the first 10 years into the future?
Unless of course the models don't account for all natural forcings. In which case you cannot then also conclude "its got to be CO2" to explain just 18 years of warming (which is what I think Phil Jones stated as was the case, pretty much the same as observed in the early part of the 20th Century and in previous centuries).
And if warming resumes, does that prove CO2 is the cause? Not at all - unless you believe that there has never been warming in the past due to natural forcings. To pose the argument that warming = CO2 forcing is patently absurd. Unless of course you are trying to avoid having a null hypothesis.
ThinkingScientist
I've answered your point above. Obstinacy is not debate.