[lit-ideas] Re: experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:50:35 EST
Just a thought --
"Global warming" seems to me a misnomer for what may be going on -- a term
scientists used several years ago w/out having the information we have today.
I don't have a good substitute term (I'll be meditating on that during my
bath soak), but what *seems* to be going on is erratic weather on the face of
the planet. Places usually inundated with rain are bone-dry from drought,
places normally very warm are suddenly very cold at an unlikely time of year,
deserts are covered with snow, mountain streams are drying up.... there seem
to be extremes and fairly substantial irregularities in the weather in many
places. Almost as though the planet was changing its climatic face.
But then, after my lavender salt soak, I may disagree with myself.
Julie Krueger
where it was unprecedented shorts weather in the middle of December, to be
followed by 2 feet of snow and ice, and sustained below-freezing for 3 weeks
now.
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] experiment that hints
we are wrong on climate change Date: 2/11/2007 1:45:09 P.M. Central Standard
Time From: _mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx) To:
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
What do you think about this? Consider the fifth and sixth paragraphs,
as well as the central experiment below. -EY
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece
February 11, 2007
An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
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 on 0870 165 8585
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