Cosmic Rays

Sure, “climate change” proponents have experienced many bumps along the way—a major scientific scandal that included doctored data, peer review shenanigans, climate models that do not comport with reality, and the purposeful exclusion of data that do not conform with the researchers (IPCC) notion of the politically correct result. But if you were to believe Al Gore, the vast majority of Left-leaning media, the President, and millions of true believers, anthropogenic global warming (AGW, a.k.a. “climate change”) is caused predominantly by human endeavors, with CO2 being the primary suspect.

Forget that no one—no one!—has been able to indicate precisely what percentage of climate change is due to human activity, the true believers still argue that humans provide a “substantial” component of climate change. But is it 2 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent or more? Even the IPCC doesn’t have the temerity to propose a hard, scientifically verifiable number.

Is there a number at all? Sure, there’s little debate that humans, a part of the ecosystem, contribute to changes in climate, but the contribution is probably quite small. So small, in fact, that draconian measures proposed by true believers would wreck an already weakened global economy while at the same time doing almost nothing to affect the climate.

Why not? It’s the science, stupid.

This month a major scientific paper has been published by scientists at CERN, one of the World’s most respected scientific laboratories, in the prestigious journal, Nature. Lawrence Solomon reports that “The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.”

I’ve discussed the impact of the Sun and it’s affects on climate in the Blog over the years, and the sun-based climate change theory is not new, but irrefutable proof is. Solomon provides some interesting (and for those of us who respect real science, not the nonsense that Al Gore spews) disturbing background:

The hypothesis that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate has been Enemy No. 1 to the global warming establishment ever since it was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute, at a 1996 scientific conference in the U.K. Within one day, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bert Bolin, denounced the theory, saying, “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible.” He then set about discrediting the theory, any journalist that gave the theory cre dence, and most of all the Danes presenting the theory — they soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials.

The mobilization to rally the press against the Danes worked brilliantly, with one notable exception. Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets.”

But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had — not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.

“The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century,” Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.

The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.

The findings indicate that cosmic rays—a product of the Sun’s magnetic field—are the dominant catalyst of cloud formation. To quote from a supplement of the paper: “cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules that can then grow and seed clouds in the real atmosphere.”

But even CERN is susceptible to political pressure and pressure from the EU (CERN’s sponsor) on CERN's management was unrelenting. Again Solomon comments:

Weeks ago, CERN formerly decided to muzzle Mr. Kirby and other members of his team to avoid “the highly political arena of the climate change debate,” telling them “to present the results clearly but not interpret them” and to downplay the results by “mak[ing] clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” The CERN study and press release is written in bureaucratese and the version of Mr. Kirkby’s study that appears in the print edition of Nature censored the most eye-popping graph — only those who know where to look in an online supplement (see bottom of article for .pdf link) will see the striking potency of cosmic rays in creating the conditions for seeding clouds.

If this sounds like the efforts of the church against the findings of Galileo, maybe that's because its a near perfect analogy. “Climate change” has become a religion for many, and when their beliefs are attacked, they respond viciously. That’s why those of us in the Center who might question the hysterical claims of the AGW hypothesis are termed “deniers.”

Oh, well, let’s see if the IPCC or Al Gore, or any other true believer can "deny" the CERN’s findings. But then again, they won’t have to, because CERN's findings will never be seen beyond a small group of readers. The main stream media will make sure of that.