An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Feb 11th 2007 | 5:00 am
#1
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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.
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.
Feb 12th 2007 | 12:01 pm
#2
Guest
Posts: n/a
Re: An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
On 11 Feb 2007 10:00:25 -0800, "Earl Evleth" <[email protected]>
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>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.
Not at all. The prediction is CLIMATE CHANGE. This means some parts
get dryer, some wetter, some colder, some hotter. There is plenty of
work to do to refine the precise predictions, but we are not likely to
overturn the whole theory at this point.
If you think it impossible that a general increase in heat could cause
cooling consider how a propane fridge works in an RV. A flame cools
your ice cream.
If you deflect ocean currents, heat is removed from different placed
and plopped in others.
Another common misconception is more snow implies colder weather.
Antarctica is effectively a desert. It is plenty cold enough for
snow, but the air is too dry. So ironically if the air becomes warmer
and wetter you get MORE snow.
The interactions of air, ocean currents, water vapour is very complex.
You can't necessarily predict what will happen with rules of thumb a
child could understand.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green, http://mindprod.com
Priorities: Prevent global climate destabilisation. End both wars. Prepare for oil shortages.
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>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.
Not at all. The prediction is CLIMATE CHANGE. This means some parts
get dryer, some wetter, some colder, some hotter. There is plenty of
work to do to refine the precise predictions, but we are not likely to
overturn the whole theory at this point.
If you think it impossible that a general increase in heat could cause
cooling consider how a propane fridge works in an RV. A flame cools
your ice cream.
If you deflect ocean currents, heat is removed from different placed
and plopped in others.
Another common misconception is more snow implies colder weather.
Antarctica is effectively a desert. It is plenty cold enough for
snow, but the air is too dry. So ironically if the air becomes warmer
and wetter you get MORE snow.
The interactions of air, ocean currents, water vapour is very complex.
You can't necessarily predict what will happen with rules of thumb a
child could understand.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green, http://mindprod.com
Priorities: Prevent global climate destabilisation. End both wars. Prepare for oil shortages.
