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Scientific Experiment By Top Laboratory Shows that Cosmic Rays Affect Cloud Formation, Which In Turn Affects Climate
Image Courtesy of CERN (Click for clearer image)
One of the world's most prestigious science labs - CERN - has found that cosmic rays affect cloud formation.
By way of background, the news magazine for the prestigious science journal Nature noted yesterday:
The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.
Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.
The Director of CERN's cosmic ray experiment (Jasper Kirby) now says that experiments show that cosmic rays significantly enhance the production of the particles which initiate the cloud-formation process. Specifically, cosmic rays allow the minute amounts of sulfuric acid and ammonia in the atmosphere to stabilize, and then - when the clusters grow to 20 molecules or more - become the structure around which moisture can condense so that clouds begin to form.
A press release from CERN states:
The CLOUD results show that trace vapours assumed until now to account for aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can explain only a tiny fraction of the observed atmospheric aerosol production. The results also show that ionisation from cosmic rays significantly enhances aerosol formation.
A new scientific paper published today by the CERN team in Nature summarizes the results. And here is a chart graphically conveying the results of the experiment:
While the CERN findings are very important, they are not the first experimental results to confirm the affect of cosmic rays on cloud formation.
A team of Danish scientists from Aarhus University and the National Space Institute published results in May showing the same basic mechanism:
[Danish scientists] have directly demonstrated in a new experiment that cosmic radiation can create small floating particles – so-called aerosols – in the atmosphere. By doing so, they substantiate the connection between the Sun’s magnetic activity and the Earth’s climate.
With the new results just published in the recognised journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists have succeeded for the first time in directly observing that the electrically charged particles coming from space and hitting the atmosphere at high speed contribute to creating the aerosols that are the prerequisites for cloud formation.
The more cloud cover occurring around the world, the lower the global temperature – and vice versa when there are fewer clouds. The number of particles from space vary from year to year – partly controlled by solar activity. An understanding of the impact of cosmic particles – consisting of electrons, protons and other charged particles – on cloud formation and thereby the number of clouds, is therefore very important as regards climate models.
With the researchers’ new knowledge, it is now clear that here is a correlation between the Sun’s varying activity and the formation of aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere.
***
In a climate chamber at Aarhus University, scientists have created conditions similar to the atmosphere at the height where low clouds are formed. By irradiating this artificial atmosphere with fast electrons from ASTRID – Denmark’s largest particle accelerator – they have also created conditions that resemble natural ones on this point.
Simply by comparing situations in the climate chamber with and without electron radiation, the researchers can directly see that increased radiation leads to more aerosols.
In the atmosphere, these aerosols grow into actual cloud nuclei in the course of hours or days, and water vapour concentrates on these, thus forming the small droplets the clouds consist of.
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Dear Fyrebird,
Unlike Real Climate, CERN actually conducted recent experiments that indicate cosmic rays affect cloud production. More clouds, cooler earth. Now we need to figure out how this affects the climate models, which, obviously, are now out of date or simply wrong.
Funny how it used to be global warming, now it's climate change. One of the coldest summers ever here in Vancouver
Check out the history.... Here is a start, do your own digging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
BTW, you understand that GW results in greater extremes in weather, not just a monotonically increasing avg. temp
Actually, there is nice discussion ongoing there at present...
It is a nice result, but it looks like that this isn't any form of game changer...It just provides better inputs to the models is my take.
Well, speaking only for myself, I'd like better inputs to the models. A bit better science and less 'fix it by taking all their money and going back to the stone-age because they are such despicable (wealthy) people' works fine with me.
>It just provides better inputs to the models is my take
It still doesn't change the fact that it's not science when you sit in an air-conditioned room using computers to make unfalsifiable predcitions about what the weather will be 100 years after you're dead.
Dr. Acula, agreed. And don't worry about Flaky. He is a graduate of the Alinsky school of AGW Science:
1. Admit Nothing.
2. Deny everything.
3. Counterattack.
Want to get under his skin? Ask him what are his professional qualifications. Lets see if he can remember.
Like I said, go post your ideas at realclimate, or a more friendly place WUWT. As I said, don't be insulting, scientists tend to frown on that stuff..
I would *love* to see what comes of it....
'fraid you might get your ass handed to you on a platter?
Dear Flaky,
why do you want to hand someone their ass on a platter? Why not post the 20 or so peer reviewed that you claim to have authored? That would be more persuasive. Just a suggestion.
The climatologists also aren't taking into account the Landscheidt cycles (disruptions in the hydromagnetic dynamo caused by the sun being perturbed by the planets): http://landscheidt.wordpress.com/
I also think they don't understand autotrophic bacteria at all.
They won't admit that CO2 is a negligible greenhouse gas. They can't explain why the Oligocene had buttloads (like 20-30x) more CO2 but was about the same temperature as today.
Clearly they need more funding to help us control the weather 100 years from now.
Here, let me show you REAL weather manipulation:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVanCVunm0k, and ongoing.
Now, what are all those GWEN towers for?
Alright, why don't you write a paper outlining this and submit it to an online journal. Or get some feedback from climate change site, pro or con..
You are clearly wasting your insights into GW and AGW here at the Hedge...
Go post this at RealClimate. They are a pretty friendly bunch as long as you don't insult people...
Science is dead...long live science.
Regardless of what you believe, global warming or not, our ability to use objective information to agree on important issues as a society is...gone. Regardless, things will progress as they will...and we shall see.
Who Has Seen the Wind?By Christina Rossetti 1830–1894 Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through.Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by.
Did you know that there is a fare chance (>50%) that in the water you drank today there was at least one water molecule that was pissed by Adolf Hitler?
Just imagine the consequences if the clouds formed from that water! Ah, Science is great!
True, but what brings me comfort is that for every molecule of Hitler's water I've ingested, I've cycled at least one of Bridget Bardot's, Jessica Alba's, Simran Kaur Mundi and Jessica Simpson's.
I shall not entertain further thoughts along these lines..
The Sun is THE driver of Earth's climate. Period. Every sentient being on the planet knows this.
The Earth's climate responds to changes in the Sun, including distance from the Earth to the Sun. This has been known for 200 years. Look up Milankovitch Cycles.
The Sun is not the reason for current climate change. There are currently no changes taking place on the Sun that align well with changes in atmospheric CO2 levels and overall planetary heating. CO2 gas is known to be a heat trap, and our use of fossil fuels has injected a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, this is easily measured. There is no other source for the stuff that scientists have been able to identify, and it doesn't go away very quickly. We're stuck with it for a long time. Whatever it is going to to, it will now do. It will probably trap heat, and warm the planet like it did the last time there was a lot of CO2 in the air -- back when the world was essentially ice-free and the seas were 300 feet higher than today.
So that's the deal. Debate it all you like, it won't make any difference on the ground. But hey, if that floats your boat, gives you some solace, have at it.
CO2 is a heat trap??? WTF!
CO2 is a heavier than air gas, look up, you will not see any CO2 in the invisible atmosphere,
Why? because it all moves to ground level @ 8ft max.
Plants dig it, you know plants, them thangs that keep us and cows alive.
Where did you go to school, Harvard ?
Criminal human hater,granola munching half wit.
Kochsucker.
And your "heavier than air" factoid would be the reason they have never detected any at Mauna Loa, 3397 m above sea level.
Science is a bitch, eh?
I am about 99.99995% sure that everytime science has been sure of something they were proven wrong in the following century. I don't have a problem with people wanting to change things but fiercly oppose squashing free thinking and debate.
Still Kicking, you are assuming that the AGWers are scientists, when in fact they are cultists. The notion that the science is settled is abhorrent to modern science, since the very foundation of the scientific method is based on falsifying a hypothesis, instead of assuming it is true, and calling anyone who disagrees a denier. BTW, note to the AGW religionists, drop the Denier label, it is childish, stupid and inflammatory.
For the first 10,000 years of modern human achievement, there was no science at all. Modern science with instruments and publication review is maybe 100 years old. Of that period, the most recent 30 years has seen radical advancements and improvements in methodology, instrumentation, computational power, and statistical rigor. There are entirely new areas of data analysis that weren't even possible before the modern electronic computer was invented. I know, because I was part of that revolution and wrote some of that software.
The science of the last generation of workers is managed on a level that would delight the scientists of another age. It's not perfect, but it is vast, fast and far-reaching.
And it will not fall quite so easily as did the arguments for the flatness of the Earth. Nice try, but the golden age of science is now -- not 100 years ago -- and the windows being opened onto the world represent knowledge utterly unaccessable to humans before now. Scientists alive today know more about the Earth and it's processes than all the humans of history combined. Whatever they turn up in their digging around, pay attention. Never before has this work been done.
And if the news is bleak, be happy that we have some time still to make course corrections in how humans behave. Without modern science we would have stumbled blindly into the knives of global destruction. As it were, we might yet. But if we do, it will not be the fault of science.
I am about 99.99995% sure that everytime science has been sure of something they were proven wrong in the following century. I don't have a problem with people wanting to change things but fiercly oppose squashing free thinking and debate.
Hey, stop clouding the issue with the facts... a large percentage of ZH readers are not reality-friendly.
Please understand that this is important to the whole AGW discussion. The so called scientific consensus (a lie) on AGW rest on the assumption that this described proces of cloud formation is not important enough to be included in the climate models. Please also understand that the Danish scientist who first formulated the theory Henrik Svensmark has been threatend on his life multible times and finally collapsed from a heart attack in a TV-debate on the very same issue. He is just trying to do science and not marketing (vink vink) and fortunately this CERN project supports his theories.
Dear NetDamage.
AGW is a religion.
Science based ideas are falsifiable, whereas religious ones are not (thanks Karl Popper). That means even our most favourite scientific theories can be dumped in a bin if new evidence shows they are wrong or ‘falsifies them’. (See here for what qualifies as evidence). Religious people get strength through knowing that no matter what happens, their faith will not be shaken. There is nothing that can prove to them that God (or climate change) does not exist. Religious faith has many benefits, but it doesn’t belong in a scientific debate, and it’s a lousy way to decide most public policy.
Here are some typicaly examples of AGW non-science
These are religious answers; even if spoken by a certified professor. When a well qualified person says one of the above it tells us nothing about the role of carbon in the atmosphere but everything about how poor our universities are. All scientists should be trained to spot-the-difference, “faith or fact?”. They rarely are.
Remember, AGW is the politicial pretext to increase your energy taxes dramatically, for the benefit of a few insiders. That is why guys like the Flakmeister are peddling this fraud. He expects to take your money and make it his whilst guilting you out in the process.
In '78 or '79 a study was conducted by French astrophysicists (published in a peer reviewed journal) that examined the space charge density in the region our solar system was in, and the region we were headed towards. They found that the region we were headed towards had a TWENTY times greater charge density. I originally found this at whatreallyhappened.com, where it lead to a link to a Harvard abstract that cited the report.
AGW is a big Zionist lie, promoted to serve their extra-governmental control agenda of Cap and Trade. This was prety well revealed in the hack of documents from the IPCC.
What other big lies do the Zionists promote? The Holocaust?
Wow...
I can assure you that Tyler does not smile favourably on Holocaust deniers. I strongly suggest you take your hate elsewhere..
So, this is not surprising.... One would expect ionizing radiation to be associated with cloud formation. The cute thing is actually measuring it.... In the old days, there was a thingie called a "Cloud Chamber"
Now, the question is the variability of the cosmic ray flux significant vis a vis the observed rate of cloud formation.
For those interested:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/
Thanks GW. I have been maintaining for quite a few years now that the "elephant in the room" is the Sun. Some of us check www.spaceweather.com daily, and guess what? Sunspot minimum for quite a while now. Next up to bat is a potential ice age.
I guess I'll keep my gas hog Range Rover to keep belching out carbon as part of my efforts to stave off the coming ice age. Hold your applause.
>> "Sunspot minimum for quite a while now"
And that was coincident with RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURES... hmm... Or is it that when the sun wakes up, that's when we get the ice age?...
Global warming is a fraud. Paul Krugman is to economics what Al Gore is to natural sciences.
Are you parroting what Glen and Rush tell you?
GW is given, the debate is about AGW, and the nay side is in trouble and getting into more trouble by the day.
Flaky, you claim the nay side of AGW in trouble? If this is trouble, lets have more of it....
69% Say It’s Likely Scientists Have Falsified Global Warming Research Wednesday, August 03, 2011 Email to a Friend ShareThis
The debate over global warming has intensified in recent weeks after a new NASA study was interpreted by skeptics to reveal that global warming is not man-made. While a majority of Americans nationwide continue to acknowledge significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community, most go even further to say some scientists falsify data to support their own beliefs.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely. Twenty-two percent (22%) don’t think it’s likely some scientists have falsified global warming data, including just six percent (6%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The number of adults who say it’s likely scientists have falsified data is up 10 points from December 2009.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) believe there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming, up five points from late 2009. One in four (25%) believes scientists agree on global warming. Another 18% aren’t sure.
Republicans and adults not affiliated with either major political party feel stronger than Democrats that some scientists have falsified data to support their global warming theories, but 51% of Democrats also agree.
Men are more likely than women to believe some scientists have put out false information on the issue.
Democrats are more likely to support immediate action on global warming compared to those from other party affiliations.
(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The national survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on July 29-30, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Hey, let's base science on public opinion:
A sample:
1) Do you agree with the theory of relativity? Under what circumstances should we uphold it?
2) Would you vote for a candidate endorsing the Casimir Effect?
3) Do you think that congress should retract the second law of thermodynamics?
4) Should congress support the quark-gluon-plasma initiative?
Heck, Flaky, when your AGW scientists decided to get political by fudging data, creating fraudulent computer models, suppressing or threatening dissenting scientists, and calling anyone who did not agree a denier, your AGW construct moved into the realm of politics and religion. Claiming that the science is settled on the basis of a false consensus and appeal to authority makes you little different from any religious movement claiming to know the ultimate truth. Popes make dogma, and so do AGW scientists. Fortunately for the majority, we have seen through your scam and now it is time for you to find another way to parasitize the body politic. This scam is over, and the politicians have already run away from it. Get over it.
Where is this much advertised Global Warming? I live in Canada, I could use a little Global Warming.
There was a string of warm winters in the nineties, but for the last 10 years we have had nothing but old fashioned winters with lots of snow and cold, cold, cold for months on end.
Even the Global Warming douchenozzles are embarrassed, they don't even talk about Global Warming anymore, now it's Climate Change.
What a racket. I want my damn Global Warming and I want it this winter.
Dear Diogenes
Pay no attention to the Flakmeister. Ever since the Chicago Carbon Exchange vaporized, his dreams of easy money are gone. It sucks to be him.
And BTW, if I lived in Canada, I would be in favor of AGW too.
I sincerely hope that this not the logic you employ in life...
Check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
if you want to know where Climate Change came from....
Thanks. I did not previously know "climate change" was spun up by one of W' spin doctors.
Urban Roman,
imagine, hiring a political hack to rebrand Global Warming to Climate Change because it is less threatening. And they call AGW science??? HAAAAAAA!
You are fool and each post you make magnifies that conclusion....
Note to myself from Flaky, When you know nothing about the subject and have nothing to say, attack the person (Alinsky's AWG rules of engagement).
I will give you this, you may be a mediocre scientist, a fraud and a liar, but you would make for a good community organizer.
You give credit to a "word doctor"? In other words, a professional bullshitter. I might have known.
He was fucking hired to spin the words.... get it? It was a calculated move based on publically sampled perception.
It sounded "nicer" than Global Warming... not as "dangerous"
BTW, dig a little bit and follow the money.....
Digging deeper, Flaky, who was hired to spin the AGW scam? Shall we start with the IPCC? How much money will Pauchari, the indian guy with the rat hairpiece, make from this scam? What about the worlds first wannabe Carbon Billionaire, Al Gore?
Al Gore is not a scientist, and does not claim to be.
But Al Gore invented the internet before deciding to save us from our own farts, did he not?
And yet he is (apparently) enough of an expert to advise our government on the issue.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9072304
Well not a scientist, he is emminently more qualified than James Inhofe....
And what about that Texas congress critter who said GW was wrong because God promised Noah he would never flood the earth again.....
Yeah, that's what I want for the basis of any public policy.....