An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

The Times ^ | 2/11/07 | Nigel Calder

[Valin]

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

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.

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.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

The Chilling Stars is published by Icon. It is available for £9.89 including postage from The Sunday Times Books First

[centurion316]

You are hereby notified of an official bust by the double-posting police - xcamel as the arresting officer.

You will go to your corner and sit there until you promise to be a good boy. I missed the original post, so I thank you for your serious offense. I also thank xcamel, there's a very nice picture over there at the original post.

[Tarpon]

To the best of our knowledge the sun is the only star that can grow vegetables.

[oh8eleven]

When I was a kid, we got "The Weekly Reader" in school
I remember the WR and the IGY too. (Wow, are we old   :>)

[EQAndyBuzz]

"I've got a computer model that shows conclusively that the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders will come to my place next Saturday for a weekend of cheap meaningless sex."

That's funny because my model showed a 10% chance of them showing up at my place. Well, now I know what happened to the other 90%.

[Monkey Face]

"(Wow, are we old :>)"

LOL!

Speak for yourself! The photos on my homepage are artistically done in B&W for more impact! :o]

[Valin]

The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975

http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

---

Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original is available here.

A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here. — D.D.



There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
(snip)

[Monkey Face]

Thanks! I'm assuming that "weather changes" also include the hurricanes in the southeast. I have a sister in FL and she said when the worst of the hurricanes hit and re-hit FL (after Katrina hit NO) the orchard farmers left the fruit on the ground to rot so they could claim damages for it, instead of gathering it up and using it for juice or other products that don't require fresh fruit.

If the weather changes so drastically, this Land Of Plenty could be forced to re-think farming practices.

Since the world is and always has been cyclical, I don't foresee Global Warming as a threat...most likely, Global Cooling will replace it.

[oh8eleven]

I stand corrected. I hope you have a wonderful 29th birthday this year!

[Monkey Face]

LOL!

Thanks! But it will be 39th! I figure if Jack Benny can do it, I can, too!

[navyguy]

ping for later

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Who wrote the headline and who is he including in "we?"

Got a mouse in your pocket, Kemosabe?

[Robert A Cook PE]

We REALLY need a "global warming" topic bar at the top of the site.

There's too many of these creeping by that aren't getting noticed, but need to be archived.

[Bob Mc]

"Does anyone besides me see the power of stupid people (MSM) in large groups? "

Remember your history? Remember how the leading experts all claimed the world was flat? That the earth was the center of the universe? That Y2K was going to doom us all?

Nothing has changed. GW is just the latest idiotic fad with today's jet set, nothing more.

[Vision Thing]

Yup, the global-warming alarmists are trying to Nifong the theory that the Sun affects climate change.

[Robert A Cook PE]

From the other thread, this graph (if properly posted!) shows that global warming HAS STOPPED!

The temperature rose (.8 degrees C, about 1 degree F) up to 1998. Then "global warming" has stopped: The temperature SINCE 1998 has NOT increased, but instead has remained "steady".

ALL of the hype is based on PROJECTED "temperatures per decade" and CONTINUED warming trends (if not flat-out increased "trends" when the actual temperatures show that global warming HAPPENED, (the earth went up by one degree) ... and then simply STOPPED.

(I could make the equal projection that the latest years indicate we are entering the precipitous FALL into the next 6 centuries of the coming Ice Age, but I'll let the Muslims find out they have conquered a European glacier by themselves....

Would be interested in seeing the temperature curve from those "American weather satellites" if anybody knows where it is.



http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/msusci.html

lower tropospheric temps chart

This chart shows the monthly temperature changes for the lower troposphere - Earth's atmosphere from the surface to 8 km, or 5 miles up. The temperature in this region is more strongly influenced by oceanic activity, particularly the "El Niño" and "La Niña" phenomena, which originate as changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulations in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The overall trend in the tropospheric data is now +0.08 deg. C/decade (through 2004). Click on the charts to get the numerical data.

[okie01]

how can you say there is a consensus on this issue when at least 10% of the scientist disagree, and I say: not to mention another suspected considerable number who are afraid to disagree!

Moreover -- and more importantly -- the observable facts and basic common sense agree with the 10%.

1. The sun is quite obviously the most important single factor in regulating earth's climate.

2. Past warming cycles have been observed and proven to be caused by the sun's variance -- not by SUVs.

Given those two axiomatic truths how can so-called "global warming" be caused by man and be anything other than perfectly normal!?

[prjohnsonjr]

How did that place ever get named Greenland?

[oh8eleven]

I knew we were the same age.

[MtnClimber]

Hmmmm...now that is a really inconvenient truth.

[Natural Law]

The real test is if people are willing to put their own money where their mouths are. Instead of tax dollars why don't they develop a business plan and see if they can use the 90% number to raise some venture capital. Better yet, why don't they see if they can get global warming insurance (check the ads for the companies offering astroid insurance).