Screw glow-ball worming, you are killing the fantasies of Art Bell contrail conspiracy theorists everywhere with this scientific crazy-talk about clouds.

This article is fraught with errors and misleading statements. Here are just a few of the key mistakes:

1. Yes, cloud chambers prove that cosmic rays can generate clouds -- IF you have supersaturated air AND you suddenly cut the pressure in half in a fraction of a second. In the real world, where you seldom have supersaturated air and you don't cut the pressure so much so fast, cosmic rays still contribute to cloud formation -- but at a much, much lower rate. Cloud chambers prove that cosmic rays can generate clouds in the same way that nuclear bombs prove that uranium can explode -- it doesn't happen much in natural conditions. The "millions of cloud chamber experiments" prove absolutely nothing about the role of cosmic rays in the real atmosphere.

2. The CLOUD experiment doesn't in any way support the thesis. It represents a good-faith effort to explore a hypothesis. It could serve just as well to blow it out of the water. We won't know for a while. Until then, it neither supports nor undermines the hypothesis offered here.

3. Cherry-picking scientific results is a standard means by which frauds and charlatans mislead the public. There are thousands of scientific papers published every year. Picking out a couple of these to support some weirdo hypothesis is an easy way to fool those who don't review the broad spectrum of scientific papers published. You could just as easily prove that Mr. Bush is an al-Qaeda operative by cherry-picking quotes from him and stitching them together in the appropriate form.

Frob,

Nice of you to discount the evidence of 100 million years of correlation of cosmic rays to climate.

Which has so far as I know not been disputed.

However, if you have evidence to the contrary I'd be glad to look at it.

In the mean time look out for charlatans.

BTW are you disputing the ionization chamber data? esp 1940 to 1970? Some evidence would be helpful there as well.

Do you remember what Einstein said about proving him wrong? It only takes one.

Every thing I refrenced has been published in reputable physics journals.

The Svensmark data is important, not the work of a crank. So important and so in agreement with 90 years of cloud chamber experiments that CERN is willing to devote part of the output of one of its particle accelerators to confirmation.

It also confirms the 100 million year correlation of cosmic rays with climate change. So far as I know that correlation is not disputed. However, if you have evidence to the contrary.....

First of all, the results of the CLOUD experiment should be discounted because the name is so contrived as to be silly.

Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets?!?

We don't want to promote that sort of thing.

Second of all, of course 100 million years of data should be discounted. The entire edifice of global warming research is based on and entirely dependant on the fact that despite earth's billions of years of existance, weather has only been around for about 1,000 years (and really meaningful weather only a few decades). Any evidence of weather prior to about 1000 CE is purely fanciful.

Since all our "politically correct" global warming data has been generated over the past 100 yrs. any long term data becomes redundant in the minds of the believers.

Basic fact is the earth has warmed and cooled in many long repeated cycles, the earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age. Short sighted "science" about 50 yrs ago was predicting the impending next ice age would be upon us by now.

Since all our "politically correct" global warming data has been generated over the past 100 yrs. any long term data becomes redundant in the minds of the believers.

Basic fact is the earth has warmed and cooled in many long repeated cycles, the earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age. Short sighted "science" about 50 yrs ago was predicting the impending next ice age would be upon us by now.

This is very frustrating. I have written about the cosmic ray hypothesis on my website as well (http://www.globalwarming-factorfiction.com).

There are quite a few researchers out there that are studying this phenomenen but they are not getting credit for their efforts by the "establishment". I don't understand cloud formation well enough to say that this is the only way that clouds are formed or even if this is a significant cause but, as I understand it, neither does anyone else. If this is a major influencer than our climate models have to take this into account. We would need to have the models reflect the solar activity and make corrections.

I repeat my often said mantra - we need to do more research and understand these things better in order to truly come to the conclusions that Mr. Gore is preaching.

The classic Amateur Scientist project collection, now available on CD, has plans for making two different cloud chambers. One of them used a pickle jar, so anyone with enough curiousity can get a look at these effects.

" Cherry-picking scientific results is a standard means by which frauds and charlatans mislead the public"
Excellent to have that on the record, since Steve McIntyre has numerous hard examples of same from the AGW crowd on his ClimateAudit blog.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled proxies. Al Gore can say it faster than you...

M. Simon,

This is my view on your original posting:

What's the big picture?
In the context of global warming (GW), this issue is interesting because it raises the question that cosmic rays are primarily responsible for the GW we are experiencing now, instead of C-O2 emissions.

In order for this to be a plausible explanation, the following points have to be established:

a) It must be possible for cosmic rays to seed cloud production.

b) There has to be evidence that cosmic rays have actually had this effect, in the real atmosphere.

c) There has to be evidence that this effect has been effective over the period of time of interest: the last 100 years.

If any of these points fails to be established, then the argument that the cloud-forming capabilities of cosmic-rays can serve as an explanation for GW fails.

a) Can cosmic rays seed clouds?
- Your write-up mentions the work of Wilson, the Danish National Space Center, and the CLOUD project at CERN. All of this in-lab work, not atmospheric work.
- You also quote some explanatory work from Shaviv.
- I note that some climate scientists think that the seeds formed in these processes are too tiny to be responsible for forming real clouds.
- Conclusion: I will sidestep that discussion by just stipulating that that I find it plausible that processes involving cosmic rays can, in principle, seed clouds.

b) Have cosmic rays actually seeded clouds in the past?
- Papers by Shaviv argue for correlations between cosmic-ray fluxes (CRFs) and temperature proxies. The inference is that these are linked by cloud creation. The paper with the evidence in it is Shaviv & Veizer (2003).
- However, some scientists (Rahmstorf, and 10 others. (2004)) have had problems believing in these correlations. They have severely criticized the methodology by which they were calculated. Their conclusion: "Two main conclusions result from our analysis of [Shaviv and Veizer, 2003]. The first is that the correlation of cosmic ray flux (CRF) and climate over the past 520 m.y. appears to not hold up under scrutiny. Even if we accept the questionable assumption that meteorite clusters give information on CRF variations, we find that the evidence for a link between CRF and climate amounts to little more than a similarity in the average periods of the CRF variations and a heavily smoothed temperature reconstruction. Phase agreement is poor. The authors applied several adjustments to the data to artificially enhance the correlation. We thus find that the existence of a correlation has not been convincingly demonstrated." (http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_etal_eos_2004.html).
- Shaviv responded in an article in which he gave explanations as to why his methodology is correct, but I wasn't able to follow them. Unfortunately, I can no longer access this article, for reasons unknown.
- Conclusion: There is still some controversy about whether the correlations between CRF and climate changes in the past are meaningful. I take no strong position on this.

c) Has this been effective over the last 100 years?
- The article of Shaviv's that most fully discusses the evidence, Shaviv & Veizer (2003), states, with respect to their own evidence, "As a final qualification, we emphasize that our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion year time scales."
- The folks at RealClimate (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=42) have pointed out that a major embarrassment to the CRF theory is that, whereas global average temperature has been marching up pretty steadily since the 1970s, the corresponding trend for CRFs (that they should be decreasing) has not shown up. If the effect is taking place but the cause is not, is the cause a cause?
- Conclusion: The CRF theory fails to be an explanation of recent GW.

Final thought: One of the points that Shaviv makes a few times (and which you have quoted) is the idea that "C-O2 is an amplifying mechanism and not the driver." I hate to disappoint you, but with respect to the historical timeframe, that is exactly the conventional wisdom: In the past, the amount of C-O2 in the atmosphere has been responsive to, not driving, temperature change; but it has had an amplifying effect because the greenhouse effect means that it serves as a positive feedback for warming. This is exactly the conventional explanation for why temperature increase has led C-O2 increase over the millennia.

The problem at present is that human beings are doing what nothing else has been able to do before: Inject large amounts of C-O2 into the atmosphere without the stimulus of increased temperature. How much? Over 33% in the last 100 years. And this will have an impact on the temperature - according to basic atmospheric physics.

Hugh,

- Long term data are not inherently considered redundant. They suggests that certain factors could be implicated. However, when we have modern measurements, we can measure and calculate that these proposed factors do not change enough to cause the observed change in global average temperature.

- The warming and cooling of the Earth in previous times has been on timescales of 100,000s of years. The changes we see now, in the last 100 years, are happening about 6 times as fast as observed in paleotemperature data.

- The issue of "global cooling" was a concern in the popular press (TIME, Newsweek, Science News), not in the climate-science community, whose judgement at the time was "too soon to tell". This is not the case for global warming. All the major scientific societies in the world have stated their opinion that it's real and due to the burning of fossil fuels. That's rather unusual - but I guess they felt that the non-scientist population was gettng rolled on this issue.

Alright Have cosmic rays actually seeded clouds in the past?
Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. link These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity.
"Since the time of the pharaohs, the water levels of the Nile were accurately measured, since they were critically important for agriculture and the preservation of temples in Egypt," she said. "These records are highly accurate and were obtained directly, making them a rare and unique resource for climatologists to peer back in time."
A similarly accurate record exists for auroral activity during the same time period in northern Europe and the Far East. People there routinely and carefully observed and recorded auroral activity, because auroras were believed to portend future disasters, such as droughts and the deaths of kings.
The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
So what causes these cyclical links between solar variability and the Nile? The authors suggest that variations in the sun's ultraviolet energy cause adjustments in a climate pattern called the Northern Annular Mode, which affects climate in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter. At sea level, this mode becomes the North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale seesaw in atmospheric mass that affects how air circulates over the Atlantic Ocean. During periods of high solar activity, the North Atlantic Oscillation's influence extends to the Indian Ocean. These adjustments may affect the distribution of air temperatures, which subsequently influence air circulation and rainfall at the Nile River's sources in eastern equatorial Africa. When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.
I didn't know what the Northern Annular Mode was so I googled it.
So not only does Solar Flux affect cloud formation, in the high latitudes surrounding the polar regions, it even drives the weather in a more general sense, with mixing of tropospheric and stratospheric wind currents.
have the CRF been only valid over multi million year time scales?
No. There is evidence for a physical linkage between the geomagnetic index aa (GI-AA)and streamflow in the Mississippi River Basin for the period 1878�2004.link
Have the average temperatures been marching up rather steadily since 1970?
Not in this century. With the exception of 2005 there has been a downward trend in the average global temperature, 2006 being the lowest since the turn of the century.

Papertiger,

Thanks for your substantive response to my critique on the cosmic ray flux (CRF) proposal as an explanation for global warming (GW). I am currently studying the articles you've pointed to, and the papers cited therein, and am preparing an evaluation accordingly.

I should have it ready sometime tomorrow.

Wow. I really can look at clouds from both sides now. Far out.

Neal, here is the source paper by Ruzmaikin, Feynman, and Yung.
Good luck.

I mean that sincerely. I have been intentionally rude to you and it is undeserved. For my part, over a year I have been arguing against people who tell me that I am a fool for even suggesting that humankind isn't a plague on the planet. Over and over, I see in the media that the argument is done, the science is incontrovertable, and that no further discussion will be countenanced, when in my mind the discussion has only just begun.
So when I encounter people like yourself, arguing for the position that humans are destroying the planet, even when you are in good faith, I conflate you with the herridans and media driven bully pulpit, I have been fighting against for so long.
To your credit you have accepted my short temper with grace.
I appreciate that.

Papertiger,

I'm still working on it. But I won't be through with it tonight; either Friday night or Saturday.

Papertiger,

For my part, I appreciate your message. It is unfortunately the case that there is so much controversy over this issue that there is often a conflation of the scientific questions and the political issues; so it often happens that people have a definite image of whom they're arguing with, even when they haven't begun the discussion!

So I appreciate your being willing to take a "time out" to relax your view of the discussion.

I am pretty much through with the papers, but am too drained from the week to deal with it tonight. More tomorrow...

NEAL - Come on, brother. It shouldn't be this hard.
There are only three possiblities: Win, lose, or draw.
But let me leave you with this. In the event (and all probability) that we end with some measure of ambiguity, then it isn't a sin to adhere to original principles, and judge mankind as innocent until proven guilty.
That our existence isn't a plague on Earth.

Papertiger,

With regard to the question of finding an explanation for today's global warming in cosmic-ray fluxes (CRF):

To recap, I expressed the main questions as:
a) Can cosmic rays seed clouds?, to which I stipulated to the answer, Very plausibly, Yes.
b) Have cosmic rays actually seeded clouds in the past?, to which my conclusion was: There is still some controversy over this point; I take no strong position.
c) Has this been effective over the last 100 years?, to which my conclusion was: Based upon the CRF records, No.

In response, you've brought forward two recent articles. Here's what I get from them:

1) Ruzmaikin, Feynman & Yung�s work suggesting a connection between 88-year cycles in the levels of the Nile and in records of the aurora in the northern hemisphere (in China?), during the period 622-1470 AD. A few things puzzle me about the paper: for the aurora information, they could only use summary data (events per decade): It would sure be nice to know something about the relative phase of these two cycles, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, the details of the data are hidden in earlier papers to which I couldn't obtain access. Because 88 years is a multiple of the 22-year solar cycle, they believe the Sun is involved. They suggest a solar-luminosity variation in the ultraviolet, for some reason. They try to find some reason why the 22-year cycle doesn't have these effects.
2) Charles A. Perry's article, which is actually not yet published, but can be obtained at: greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/pdf/Gamma Rays and Climate Perry, Charles[pdf] . His argument is kind of complex:
- He correlates geomagnetic index aa (GI-AA) to cosmic-ray flux (CRF) over periods when both are measurable, and then uses GI-AA as a proxy when CRF is not available. (GI-AA measurements go back to 1868.) The greater GI-AA, the less the CRF; if you think CRF gives rise to cloudiness, the greater GI-AA, the less the cloudiness.
- He also correlates GI-AA to total solar irradiance (TSI): the greater the GI-AA, the greater the TSI.
- Since TSI should increase the solar radiation, but CRF should decrease the absorbed sunlight (because of clouds), he sums the TSI with the GI-AA as a kind of �total effect�, to include both the effect of solar luminosity changes and the effect of increased albedo from extra cloudiness.
- When he correlates this new measure, TSI plus GI-AA, with Mississippi River flow, he sees a connection. However, there are some tricks: He has to stick in a 34-year lag-time (which he finds an explanation for); and has to change it to a 37-year lag starting about 1950. Is that flakey? Yes, kind of. Does that mean that it�s fraudulent? No, not necessarily. Something could have changed in 1950. It doesn�t look real good; but it�s hardly beyond imagining.

Broadly speaking, RFY and P speak to the question of the impact of solar varitions on climate. P argues specifically for a CRF/cloudiness interpretation, whereas RFY suggest an effect of luminosity � but on the basis of the presented evidence, I don�t see why a CRF interpretation would be ruled out, although it's not what the authors proposed. These papers strengthen the case for the "yes" position in point b): that CRF has had some effect in the past. (On which point I took no strong position.)

(By the way, I should point out that for neither of these papers have I been able to derive any benefit of the scholarly reaction. The Perry paper is very recent (in fact, I am not sure that it has technically been published). Likewise, for RFY I found no scholarly response. So my personal evaluations may need to be changed later if some professionals point out weaknesses or strengths that I didn't pick up on.)

So we are still left with point c): "Has this been effective over the last 100 years?" (The reason for mentioning the multi-million-year timescale earlier was because Shaviv & Veizer explicitly stated that their conclusions could NOT be drawn for shorter periods than that. Perry's paper applies to current times (as late as 2004), and it strongly suggests that CRF can have some influence on climate. But notice what he connects: a highly fluctuating effect (Mississippi River flow) with a highly fluctuating cause: TSI combined with GI-AA, as a kind of proxy for CRF. (A more explicit description of the CRF trends over time can be found here:
realclimate.org/index.php?p=42
in brief, there isn't any trend in the CRF, it's essentially cycled with period 11 years. So if you want to attribute GW to this cause, there's a problem: the cause isn't happening, but the effect is.

So this brings us back to your final point, that "With the exception of 2005 there has been a downward trend in the average global temperature, 2006 being the lowest since the turn of the century."
This is not a valid way to look at noisy data: One cannot isolate specific data points as being significant or insignificant. The problem with the climate is that this is a system with many internal dynamics and rhythms of its own, even without outside forcings to consider (like C-O2 or solar variations). Even when a steady influence of any form is applied, you have to expect a lot of up & down: It's like lifting a water bed, even when you apply steady lift, the water level is going to slosh around quite a bit. The typical approach taken for noisy data like this is to apply a smoothing. And when you do that, you get something like this: ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch03 [pdf]
Figure 3.1 on page 242 shows a clear upward trend, albeit with jags both up and down.

Just as it's inappropriate to look at the variations over an hour for a perspective on a season, it's inappropriate to look at variations over a couple of years for a perspective on climate change. You have to let the noise settle out.

Papertiger,

I just posted my response. But, because of the links, it is being held for review.

M. Simon usually gets round to it in a couple of hours, I think.

Cheers.

Neal,

The blog software does not recognize the <url> tag. I converted your links to this form:

Here is how you make permalinks:

<a href="url">text to display</a>

replace url with:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/06/introduction-to-blogging.html
leave the quote marks

replace text to display
with
An Introduction To Blogging

An Introduction To Blogging

If you keep a cheat sheet (text file) up of your most commonly used forms (probably around 10 to 20) it is really easy.

===

If I made an error let me know.

Simon

Neal says,

- Since TSI should increase the solar radiation, but CRF should decrease the absorbed sunlight (because of clouds), he sums the TSI with the GI-AA as a kind of �total effect�, to include both the effect of solar luminosity changes and the effect of increased albedo from extra cloudiness.

But when TSI is up, solar magnetism is up. Therefor fewer clouds.

=========

Side note - I have been watching the Feynman lectures I posted about. I wish I had seen it 30 years ago. For the first time I understand quantuum electrodynamics.

Of course for most practical matters the old approximations and ways of thinking are fine. However, it is good to get a coherent explanation.

What the theory says is that there are no local events. There are only local results.

M. Simon,

- Thanks for editing the posting. However, I notice that the end result has some strange effects: What is this stuff: kind of �total effect�, that shows up both in my posting and your quote from it?

- wrt TSI and GI-AA: If the TSI, CRF and GI-AA were all in lock-step, you'd only need one of them. But in fact the connection between GI-AA and the others is not very strong: there's a lot of variance left over that is not associated with GI-AA. Maybe someone with a stronger background than I in dealing with correlations among statistical time series will have a better understanding. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, this paper is really really new: The copy I was able to access shows it as a preprint. So, although some of the skeptical blogs are promoting it, it hasn't received any response from the climate-science community so far, not even a mention. It could be that there are responses submitted to journals that are undergoing peer review - that could take six months, unfortunately.

- QED: If you're further interested, there's also a book Feynman wrote on the topic: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. It's probably at a level above that of the lecture, but not textbook-level intensity.

Neal,

I have no idea where the funny characters came from. I didn't touch anything except the urls.

Thanks for the book suggestion.

{Perry} strongly suggests that CRF can have some influence on climate. But notice what he connects: a highly fluctuating effect (Mississippi River flow) with a highly fluctuating cause: TSI combined with GI-AA...
But the Mississippi is the most regulated inland waterway on the planet. I find it incredible that you equate river flow in the Mississippi as somehow more nebulous then tree ring cores, bore hole temperatures, and ice core readings. This is delusional thinking.
in brief, there isn't any trend in the CRF a quick look at the page you referenced, sans the propaganda, reveals a graph showing the very trend you say isn't there.
This is not a valid way to look at noisy data {refering to the suface temperature record over the last 7 years}
This is a rare cognizant statement on your part. With the discrepancy between the surface temperature, which is an amalgum of thousands of remote thermometers, subject to the whim of parameters applied by hundreds of different people each with their own built in bias, and the satellite temperature which is highly reproducable, with built in redundancies and cross checks, it isn't sane to rely on the surface data at all.

Papertiger,

- No trend in the CRF: Just look at red curve: from the 1970s onward, it goes up, down, up, down, up, down - according to the 11-year cycle. There isn't even significant change in the top & bottom. It's cycling.

- Whereas if you look at the temperature graph from the 1970s, that curve is moving up.

- My comment about Perry's match between MRF and CRF was kind of a side point: It was an explanatory remark subsidiary to explaining why the million-year issue was not the main point in my earlier discussion. But it expresses my sense of discomfort with his having essentially slid two oscillating curves back and forth until they fit together - except it worked better if he cut one of them in half and got a separate fit for each half. Never mind: as I said, I don't have any strong reason to say that CRFs cannot affect climate.

But they don't seem to be behaving in any way that would lead to the observed temperature rise that we've been talking about: GW.