Cosmic Ray was first proposed about 30 years ago, but mechanism was really only solidified about 10 years ago. Svensmark is the leading proponent now, and is leading the CLOUD09 project at CERN. It was critiqued as “doesn’t agree with data” but that is increasingly being shown untrue. There is a “delay” of 7-30 days after cosmic ray initiates the nucleation which is only now being realized which made the correlation with data difficult to see. Svensmark et al recently showed that to be true, though. The CLOUD09 experiment will go a very long way toward advancing it.
Roy Spencer’s hypothesis published in last 2-3 years. He is pretty much out in front on that one. It is a very strong positive feedback for solar irradiance. I would not be surprised if his proposal fits in to reinforce the process proposed in this article, but that will be up to him and these researchers to hash out.
The process mentioned in this article, stratophere/ocean combo, is brand new.
Bottom line, though, is that the “no way for solar irradiance to be amplified that we know of” the fool climate models insist on up to now is clearly inaccurate. That means that in the future, the GCMs are going to have to pay much more attention to these “inadequate” changes in the Sun to remain credible. (This finally vindicates Lassen and others who consistently maintain the strong correlation of Earth’s temperature with sunspots/ solar cycles for decades and even centuries demonstrates a stronger than “understood” influence of the Sun.)
Thanks for your insights. I suppose what I can gather from all this is that a career herding cats might be less frustrating than trying to figure out what drives the earth’s climate? And speaking of cat herders, how much of this fur ball can be attributed to the PC and AGW crowd?