Finally. Cosmic Ray Theory of Climate Change Dead.
In the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s”, the protagonists try to maintain the fiction that the corpse of a dead gangster is in fact quite alive, and the life of the party. It’s been that way for climate deniers trying to maintain the fiction that cosmic rays have something to do with obviously human caused climate change.
But that thing has been stinking up the room lately. Think anyone will notice?
LONDON – Changes in solar activity, sunspots and cosmic rays, and their effects on clouds have contributed no more than 10 percent to global warming, according to two British scientists.The findings, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, reconfirm the basic science that increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing most climate change. They also reexamine the alternative case made by climate deniers: that it is the Sun’s changing activity and not us that is causing the Earth to heat up. –
By comparing the small oscillations in cosmic ray rate and temperature with the overall trends in both since 1955, Sloan and Wolfendale found that less than 14 percent of the global warming seen during this period could have been caused by solar activity.
To check their findings they reviewed their own previous studies and all the other work they could find on the subject, to see whether they could find other evidence of a link between solar activity and increasing global temperatures.
Their findings indicated that, overall, the contribution of changing solar activity, either directly or through cosmic rays, was even less and cannot have contributed more than 10 percent to global warming in the 20th century.
For climate skeptics trying to find an alternative explanation for the global warming that’s occurred over the past century, the sun and galactic cosmic rays have become a popular hypothesis. However, several recent scientific papers have effectively put the final nail in the cosmic rays-global warming coffin.
Galactic cosmic rays are high energy particles originating from outside our solar system. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Institute is the main proponent of the hypothesis linking them to globalclimate change. The hypothesis goes like this:
1) Cosmic rays may be able to seed cloud formation.
2) If so, fewer cosmic rays reaching Earth means less cloud formation.
3) Fewer clouds reflecting sunlight means more solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and thus warming.
The sun’s magnetic field deflects galactic cosmic rays, so if the sun is in a phase of high activity with a strong magnetic field, fewer cosmic rays will reach Earth. Hence if this hypothesis is correct, galactic cosmic rays will act to amplify the solar influence on the global climate, whether it be a cooling effect from low solar activity or warming from high solar activity.
This is a relatively new and interesting hypothesis, so it’s become popular amongst climate contrarians as an alternative explanation to human-caused global warming. However, it’s also been the subject of extensive scientific research over the past few years, and the hypothesis simply has not held up to scrutiny.
First, there’s the obvious fact that cosmic rays cannot explain the recent global warming because solar activity and the amount of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface have remained flat on average over the past 60 years. The sun and cosmic rays could only be causing global warming if there were a long-term upward trend in solar activity and downward trend in cosmic rays reaching Earth. In fact, the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth has increased since 1990, and reached record levels in 2009 (one of the hottest years on record).
Annual average cosmic ray counts per minute (blue – note that numbers decrease going up the left vertical axis, because lower cosmic rays should mean higher temperatures) from the Neutron Monitor Database vs. annual average global surface temperature (red, right vertical axis) from NOAA.
A paper published in the journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics this August noted,
“Recent measurements of the cosmic ray intensity show that … even if cosmic rays enhanced cloud production, there would be a small global cooling, not warming.”
Two of the authors of that paper (Sloan & Wolfendale) have also just published another cosmic ray research paper in Environmental Research Letters, finding that the contribution of solar activity and galactic cosmic rays (combined) to global warming is “less than 10% of the warming seen in the twentieth century.”
Sloan & Wolfendale also examine the influence of cosmic rays on the climate over the past billion years in another new paper published in the journal New Astronomy. They find that changes in the galactic cosmic ray intensity are too small to account for significant climate changes on Earth. This was also the conclusion of a paper published this May in The Astrophysical Journal.
In another paper just recently published in Environmental Research Letters, Rasmus Benestad of The Norwegian Meteorological Institute compares measured changes in the amount of cosmic rays reaching Earth to changes in temperature, precipitation, and barometric pressure measurements. Benestad finds no statistical evidence that cosmic rays can explain the recent global warming.
Thus every step in the galactic cosmic ray-climate hypothesis is fraught with problems. Evidence suggests that cosmic rays are not effective at seeding clouds. Solar activity has been flat, and even slightly downwards over the past few decades. Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth has been flat, even slightly upwards over the past few decades. 2009, which saw a record number of cosmic rays reaching Earth (meaning it should have been cold), was the 5th-hottest year on record at the time.
This failed hypothesis offers a stark contrast to the overwhelming consensus that our greenhouse gas emissions are driving warming. The latter is supported by solid, well-understood fundamental physics. We know that increasing the greenhouse effect causes more energy to be trapped on Earth, and that energy has to go somewhere. The observed pattern of warming is precisely what we expect to see from an increased greenhouse effect, for example with the ‘fingerprint‘ of a cooling upper atmosphere due to more heat being trapped in the lower atmosphere.
There is overwhelming evidence supporting human-caused global warming, which is why it’s supported by a 97 percent expert consensus. Science progresses through constant testing of new ideas. Those that fail to withstand scrutiny, like a significant galactic cosmic ray climate influence, fall by the wayside. Those that hold up to our growing scientific understanding eventually convince the naturally skeptical scientific community and become the expert consensus view.
38 thoughts on “Finally. Cosmic Ray Theory of Climate Change Dead.”
Two points. First it is generally impossible for any single paper to open or close a scientific question (exceptions notwithstanding). We would have to wait for Shaviv or Svensmark to reply, at the very least.
Secondly the fact that the cosmic ray theory can be falsified, whilst there is no conceivable observation that could falsify CAGW, should provide food for thought for those championing a better use of science in the policy arena.
Your use of of the word ‘falsified’ is rather curious, not to say arcane.
The notion that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are fundamental drivers of climate is one that has stood the test of time; and which is supported by evidence across a range of disciplines going back many decades. By contrast, other theories, like the cosmic ray theory above, have not stood the test of time, and are supported by little or no evidence at all.
There was nothing wrong with theorising per se, but theories unsupported by evidence should not inform policy-making – although they apparently do, in an inconsistent and haphazard way, in places like Australia (Abbott) and Canada (Harper). Electorates deserve better than that. Much better.
Yet everything you do mention which is testable against reality is instantly recognizable as coming from a well-known set of political talking points, long since examined by scientists and refuted.
I have to wonder how many trolls like you are paid astroturfers running a bunch of sock puppets from behind personality-management applications, and how many are just useful idiots.
Sorry to hear you are into conspiracy theorism. Condolescences.
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Some of the comment traffic on web-sites like this is likely driven by paid astroturfers. But then it is greatly amplified by hordes of volunteer “useful idiots”.
It’s rather like the cosmic ray hypothesis. Solar forcing amplified by a cosmic ray multiplier vs. paid astroturfing amplified by a “useful idiot” multiplier.
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Apologies for having caused widespread mental illness.
Can we cut the scrap now and concentrate on identifying which bit of AGW can be falsified (in theory) like Svensmark’s ideas can? Whilst we await ideas on how to falsify CAGW…
Obviously aspects such as the properties of ghgs fall in the category. Likewise for CO2 being well mixed. Not sure about climate sensitivity, or the idea forcings act independently.
Ps THIS MESSAGE SPONSORED BY CLIMATE SPECTRE’S BLOMURDKOCHFELD
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Astro-turfing is now a $1.8billion business.
It has risen from almost nothing in the last decade.
No-one even denies it. They are registered companies who declare their results and pay taxes.
According to Nancy Clark from Precision Communications, grass-roots specialists charge $25 to $75 for each constituent they convince to send a letter to a politician.
Paid online commentators in China are paid fifty cents for each online post that is not removed by moderators,leading to the nickname of the “50-cent party.” The New York Times reported that a business selling fake online book reviews charged $999 for 50 reviews and made $28,000 a month shortly after opening.
According to The Financial Times, astroturfing is “common place” in American politics, but was “revolutionary” in Europe, when it was exposed that the anti-privacy “think-tank” the European Privacy Association was actually sponsored by technology companies.
In 2008, an expert on Chinese affairs, Rebecca MacKinnon, estimated the country employed 280,000 in a government-sponsored astroturfing operation to post pro-China propaganda and drown out voices of dissent.
Another technique is the use of sockpuppets, where a single person creates multiple identities online to give the appearance of grassroots support. Sockpuppets may post positive reviews about a product, attack participants that criticize the organization, or post negative reviews and comments about competitors, under fake identities
Astroturfing businesses may pay staff based on the number of posts they make that are not flagged by moderators. Persona management software may be used so that each paid poster can manage five to seventy convincing online personas without confusing them with one another.
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Thank you, Leslie Graham.
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He’s not a scientist. He does not understand physics or statistics. How do you expect him to understand papers about AGW and cosmic rays? Worse, he pretends to know, despite his obvious shortcomings. Give him a timed test. He’s not even worth discussion since he lacks comprehension. His game is rhetoric, baiting, semantics, and debate.
“…there is no conceivable observation that could falsify CAGW…”
An astonishing claim. (I won’t quibble with your term “observation”, though of course scientific theories require more than that.)
That there is a greenhouse effect is a falsifiable theory.
That the longwave radiation escaping the troposphere has a carbon dioxide signature (or lacks one, if you prefer) is a falsifiable theory.
That the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased, and that that should increase the greenhouse effect, is a falsifiable theory.
That the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a fossil fuel isotopic signature is a falsifiable theory.
I could go on, obviously.
If you could disprove the greenhouse effect, to pick the most obvious example, the theory that man is causing global warming by burning fossil fuels that block longwave radiation escaping to space falls to pieces – but there are a great many falsifiable theories that the “anthropogenic global warming” theory relies on.
Okay, here’s my challenge to you. Your claim, apparently, is that the “CAGW” theory is unfalsifiable. There is a flaw, if I interpret it correctly, in the logical structure of the theory – it is perhaps a tautology? If that’s what you mean, please clarify what you think the logical flaw is, and then we can have a real discussion about it.
“First it is generally impossible for any single paper to open or close a scientific question (exceptions notwithstanding). We would have to wait for Shaviv or Svensmark to reply, at the very least.”
Your point is well taken; but it looks as though you are not aware of the extent of research in this area, since a great many papers have addressed the issue at this point. The Sloan and Wolfendale paper is hardly the first even of their own on this subject, but theirs are part of what is now a fairly extensive corpus of research, and they are hardly the only ones to cast serious doubt on the “CRGW” theory; here’s a representative sampling:
Pierce and Adams (2009)
Kazil et al. (2006)
Kristjansson et al. (2008)
Calogovic et al. (2010)
Kulmala et al. (2010)
Laken et al. (2013)
Krissansen-Totton & Davies (2013)
Almeida et al. (2013)
Laut (2003)
Norris et al. (2007)
Feng & Bailer-Jones (2013)
“no conceivable observation that could falsify CAGW” – if you increased the concentration of CO2 in a container and the infra red absorption went down would falsify CAGW. There, that wasn’t too difficult.
Conceiving of observations that would falsify mainstream climate science is very easy; the difficulty lies in making the observations in a universe that insists on behaving as though mainstream climate science is for the most part correct.
I repeat – there is no way to disprove CAGW. I am not talking about mainstream climate science. I am talking about the catastrophic predictions associated to increases in GHGs.
Please somebody outline an observation or sets of observations that would disprove the notion that things could go badly in 30 or 40 years’ time.
You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about this CAGW business omno.
So I did a search on google scholar for CAGW.
There’s some stuff about a lobby group called Citizens Against Government Waste, but otherwise – not much. It seems this mysterious theory of CAGW is something you think is really really important, yet no one else ever talks about it.
Perhaps you’re barking up the wrong tree.
1. you don’t falsify a theory. You falsify a hypothesis.
2. If you’d like to derrive an actual scientific hypothesis from your CAGW theory, you could then measure against it and your hypothesis would be falsifiable. You could then adapt your theory to fit your new found knowledge.
3. Wondering about uncertainty, future potential catastrophes and what to do about them is the realm of risk analysis (an omnologist really should know this), which most here would like to think is best when informed by science. So when science says ‘yes we have empirical evidence of past catastrophic impacts from climate changes’ then probably, yes, the boys and girls across the hall in the risk analysis department should take this seriously. As should you.
Happy to help clear this up for you.
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That’s like saying “please outline an observation that would disprove the notion that the sun’s going to set tonight”. Is there technically any way of doing that other than waiting? Of course not. You’re playing silly word games.
A less utterly meaningless thing to say would be “there is no way to empirically falsify our understanding of the climate which predicts dangerous weather changes in 30 to 40 years time”. I’d be interested to see what specific examples you could provide in defense of that…
Oh yeah. You sure do.
That’s the standard denial industry tactic.
Just make something up andrepeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat… regardless of how many times you are shown to be talking rubbish.
In fact that’s the measure of a true denier – how well he will stand his ground in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Now that climate change is simply obvious the denial has become hysterical.
Your demand seems to have made a rapid shift from “disprove CAGW” to disprove ‘CAGW within 30 or 40 years’ – a bit moving of your il-defined goalposts there.
In any case, I take it you’re now admitting (or at least not disputing as part of this particular argument) that mainstream climate science is correct that warming will continue for the next 30 or 40 years and beyond, unless we cut CO2 emissions sharply or change our behaviour in some other significant way (geoengineering of one sort or another, for instance). It’s that the effects of that warming would be pretty bad for us on balance you dispute. Have I got that right?
Well, the list of likely impacts is rather long but for starters:
– we could try severely reducing water supply to some test humans, livestock and agricultural crops to simulate a future of more frequent and more intense droughts and the reduction of fresh water currently supplied by mountain glaciers and snowpack. If none of the humans, livestock or crops suffered any ill effects, that would certainly give us cause to question whether warming reducing fresh water supplies is anything to worry about.
– we could wait for a big but by no means unprecedentedly intense tropical storm to hit New York and New Jersey and if it turned out that large enough storm surges to flood the New York subway and damage enormous numbers of communities along the Jersey Shore were enjoyable for all concerned, the idea that continued sea level rise would be bad would take a beating. Here. People in Bangladesh whose agriculture is threatened by salt water infiltration as well as storm surges might not be reassured.
– riverine floods would also provide an excellent chance to make observations in support of the idea that more intense rainfall events are in fact nothing to worry about.
I’m pretty sure there isn’t space here to list all the predictable consequences of warming that it would be quite easy in principle to cast strong doubts on the potential disastrousness of if they were, in fact, not potentially disastrous. Go read the latest IPCC report if you want more.
2. I had to repeat my point as too many people thought I was disputing what I am not disputing
3. I agree that the risk associated to climate change of any sort need be managed according to science (but not just according to science – risk management is not a subset of science)
This is very different from what is routinely trafficked by the usual suspects (SkS for example), where CAGW is presented as a scientific certainty. It isn’t, because CAGW is not ‘scientific’. It is a matter of risk management.
This is very different from what is routinely trafficked by the usual suspects (SkS for example), where CAGW is presented as a scientific certainty. It isn’t, because CAGW is not ‘scientific’. It is a matter of risk management.
I think you misconstrue the intent of SkS. That you do so and so pointedly is another marker for your intention to stir rather than debate.
Anthropogenic climate change is a matter of physics with likely outcome magnitude a function of atmospheric carbon budgeting. Physics, with some help from paleoclimatology and yes models (of various types), informs us how bad it can get if our current economic-political systems can not be changed fast enough for adequate mitigation, in other words catastrophes involving the biosphere, our life support system, will be inescapable. In particular this will add to the pressure imposed by us now mining the biosphere. That is consuming the capital rather than living off the interest in a sustainable way. Increasing pollution too is having dire consequences.
The catastrophic label was added by the denial and delaying faction to confuse and have a straw man to throw in the path of scientific debate. In other words ‘a squirrel’.
CAGW, along with ‘religion’ is cast about freely by those who suck from the teats of the fossil fuel PR bandwagon and the vacuous who repeat the mantra on blogs.
That increasing atmospheric GHG content of the atmosphere will increase the warming effect is beyond dispute. How catastrophic things become depends upon the extent and speed of political action or inaction and socio-economic changes.
It was that point that the Philippine representative in Warsaw was trying to make. But of course that flew over your head in your rush to denigrate, yet again.
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You are not using the language of risk management. You have certainties, and since you believe in those certainties you have a set of actions that you want to see implemented (same, I suspect, for Mr Sano).
IOW you don’t want to manage a risk, even if science informs us that we have a risk, not a certainty. I am fine with that, if and only if you realize your solution will be wrong, unless you and SkS and many others have the power of foretelling.
It’s like being told a rocket might be incoming between 8 and 9 AM, and then deciding in advance to shoot at 8.15AM. It will only work if the timing is perfectly right. In all other circumstances, it will be a catastrophic choice.
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“It’s like being told a rocket might be incoming between 8 and 9 AM, and then deciding in advance to shoot at 8.15AM. It will only work if the timing is perfectly right. In all other circumstances, it will be a catastrophic choice.”
Actually, it’s not like that. That may in fact be the least accurate simile I’ve ever heard. The problematic CO2 is not going to descend on the earth like a meteor impact at some unknowable time in the future. It’s being emitted continuously as a result of our powering industrial civilisation with fossil fuels. Which we’re therefore going to have to stop doing sooner or later and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s sooner or later as long as we don’t wait until it’s too late. Split second timing such as is required to intercept missile attacks just isn’t a factor. (Could we have better trolls who understand obvious things like that without having them explained to them? Even trolls who take simple things like that on board once they’re explained to them would be an improvement over much of what we have now.)
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Jon – you didn’t get the memo on this troll thingy. And you don’t know what risk management means. The two things might be related. Now go paranoid with somebody else.
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“You are not using the language of risk management”
~omnologos
Neither are you.
He is however explaining what a great big oaf you are being.
“This is very different from what is routinely trafficked by the usual suspects (SkS for example), where CAGW is presented as a scientific certainty. It isn’t, because CAGW is not ‘scientific’.”
~omnologos
Be a good chap and find all these articles at SkS that refer to CAGW. Only I asked google to find such, and she said there’s not any. Which doesn’t sound much like routine traffic to me.
Anyway… If you’d care to stop bleating about CAGW for a moment and instead do some listening… (it’s a wonder you ever got to be an omnologist, with all the talking but the very little listening that you ever do.)
Given that it’s 101 years since the Titanic went down, let’s do a quick run through of risk navigation 101. (The Titanic disaster was a seminal event for developing strategies for dealing with risk and uncertainty.)
Imagine you’re captain of a boat. Captain Omno. Captain of a very fast, “unsinkable”, modern boat with lots of passengers, but not enough life rafts. You’ve got places to be. Transatlantic records to set. You know the sort of thing. You’re ploughing ahead, full steam and taking the northern short cut.
An incoming radio message from another ship warns that the northern short cut is becoming icy.
It’s a risk, but the odds against hitting ice big enough to do catastrophic harm are still in your favour you reckon. You’re in charge of a very modern boat with the best modern engineering. You’ve got things to do and places to be.
But here’s where it gets interesting…
Because it’s dark and you can’t see far ahead, your information isn’t perfect. The catch is that you may not know about a big bit of ice until it’s too late to do anything about it.
You’re Captain Omno. What do you do?
(p.s. the rest of us already know the answer)
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I see correlation on that graph up until about 1994, where there is a breakout.
But I think someone’s already examined a particular section of the paleorecord, where there was either a wave of intense cosmic ray activity or a stark lack of such, and it didn’t seem to do anything to the temperature.
As we have seen so many time,s mere contrary evidence doesn’t kill off dearly-held positions. It could force a layer of conspiracy on top of them, which might serve to warn off first-time readers to some extent.
You will never convince a denier to change his mind using logic, reason or evidence because their postion was not formed using logic, reason or evidence in the first place.
It makes no difference how much more obvious AGW has become in the last 30 years nor how much the mountains of evidence have built up to the point were it is simply undeniable – they simply don’t think the way normal people do.
To them it’s a political stance and it just so happens that all those feckless tree-hugging dirty hippies that they have been indoctrinated to hate since birth have been proved right beyond all reasonable doubt.
They will NEVER accept that.
Too true. I butt heads with people like that all the time. Would you believe some of them have the gall to invoke Carl Sagan… the man who worked out the model of the greenhouse atmosphere of Venus?
Very good analysis P. S. of CR – I say this sincerely and honestly – as a skeptic, but …
“Changes in solar activity, sunspots and cosmic rays, and their effects on clouds have contributed no more than 10 percent…”
The sun, is not only the CR – and not even mainly: CR.
I look forward to as well – a precise analysis for the length of the day, change the length of an average 11 year solar cycle, the effects of indirect and second-order (including ozone – stratosphere, QBO), delayed in time, “regulating” Earth’s energy storage systems in the atmosphere (wind) and the ocean (circulation) …
Why I wait?
omnologos in his first comments mentioned N. Shaviv.
Lockwood (http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/466/2114/303.full):
“If … … 65 per cent of the observed warming were due to solar effects [contra N. Scafetta paper] … … plus the feedback would need to supply 0.65×5.15=3.35 W m−2. In this case, the feedback must supply 3.35−0.23=3.12 W m−2, which means that they need to explain an amplification of the solar input by a factor of 13.5.”
13.5 … – Impossible? But in the past …
N. Shaviv: “According to the IPCC (AR4), the solar irradiance is responsible for a net radiative forcing increase between the Maunder Minimum and today of 0.12 W/m 2 (0.06 to 0.60 at 90% confidence). We know however that the Maunder minimum was about 1°C colder …” “This requires a global sensitivity of 1.0/0.12°C/(W/m 2 ).” For doubling the CO 2 we obtain, in this way – for such “… plus the feedback … “- up to 31 degrees C warming …
Weng, 2012 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00376-012-1238-1): “The atmospheric amplifying mechanism indicates that the solar impacts on climate should NOT BE SIMPLY ESTIMATED by the magnitude of the change in the solar radiation over solar cycles when it is compared with other external radiative forcings that do not influence the climate in the same way as the sun does.”
(http://www.clim-past.net/7/339/2011/cp-7-339-2011.pdf) Varma (2011):
“Since the reduction in TSI is only 0.15%, the global cooling effect is small and ADDITIONAL FEEDBACKS are required to induce a significant change in the westerlies.”
“… we propose that the role of the sun in modifying Southern Hemisphere tropospheric circulation patterns has probably been UNDERESTIMATED in model simulations of past climate change.”
(http://www.leif.org/EOS/2010JC006264.pdf) Sejrup (2010):
“The observed ocean temperature response is LARGER than expected based on simple thermodynamic considerations, indicating that there is dynamical response of the high‐latitude ocean to the Sun. […]”
(http://www.wsl.ch/info/mitarbeitende//frank/publications_EN/Raspopov_etal_PPP_2008.pdf) Raspopov ( 2008, coauthors: Esper, Frank et al.):
“The climate response to long-term solar activity variations (from 10s to 1000s years) manifests itself in different climatic parameters, such as temperature, precipitation and atmospheric and oceanic circulation.”
(http://atmospheres.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/index.php?section=136) NASA:
“Based on SIM observations Cahalan et al. [2010] demonstrate REMARKABLE different climate responses (stratosphere, troposphere, ocean mixed layer) to SORCE-based and proxy-based SSI variations. The OUT-OF-PHASE SSI variations also have implications to re-examine the connection of the Sun and stratosphere, troposphere, biosphere, ocean, and Earth’s climate.”
“Even though TSI and SSI at UV wavelengths have been observed to vary during solar cycles, how the Sun varies (both TSI and whole spectrum SSI) and how solar variations influence the Earth’s climate over long time scales REMAIN UNRESOLVED.”
(http://www.citeulike.org/group/1174/article/969558) Bard and Frank, 2006.:
“Overall, the role of solar activity in climate changes — such as the Quaternary glaciations or the present global warming — remains unproven and most probably represents a SECOND-ORDER EFFECT.”
… because ALWAYS (ie also in the past), we obtain for example the (how actual) conclusions:
“…no consistent correlation emerges between spectral maxima in records of storminess and solar irradiation. We conclude that solar activity changes are unlikely to be a primary forcing mechanism of millennial-scale variability in storminess.”
(http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n12/full/ngeo1619.html, Sorrel et al., 2012)
There is no effort going on. Most if not all are stuck at the 3-year-old reasoning level ‘if he disagrees with me and I cannot find any way to reply, he must be evil’. Yeah, right.
Two points. First it is generally impossible for any single paper to open or close a scientific question (exceptions notwithstanding). We would have to wait for Shaviv or Svensmark to reply, at the very least.
Secondly the fact that the cosmic ray theory can be falsified, whilst there is no conceivable observation that could falsify CAGW, should provide food for thought for those championing a better use of science in the policy arena.
Your use of of the word ‘falsified’ is rather curious, not to say arcane.
The notion that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are fundamental drivers of climate is one that has stood the test of time; and which is supported by evidence across a range of disciplines going back many decades. By contrast, other theories, like the cosmic ray theory above, have not stood the test of time, and are supported by little or no evidence at all.
There was nothing wrong with theorising per se, but theories unsupported by evidence should not inform policy-making – although they apparently do, in an inconsistent and haphazard way, in places like Australia (Abbott) and Canada (Harper). Electorates deserve better than that. Much better.
Philip64 – if I mention CAGW the answer cannot be ‘ghgs are fundamental drivers of climate’ because I have not questioned the role of ghgs.
Yet everything you do mention which is testable against reality is instantly recognizable as coming from a well-known set of political talking points, long since examined by scientists and refuted.
I have to wonder how many trolls like you are paid astroturfers running a bunch of sock puppets from behind personality-management applications, and how many are just useful idiots.
Sorry to hear you are into conspiracy theorism. Condolescences.
Some of the comment traffic on web-sites like this is likely driven by paid astroturfers. But then it is greatly amplified by hordes of volunteer “useful idiots”.
It’s rather like the cosmic ray hypothesis. Solar forcing amplified by a cosmic ray multiplier vs. paid astroturfing amplified by a “useful idiot” multiplier.
Apologies for having caused widespread mental illness.
Can we cut the scrap now and concentrate on identifying which bit of AGW can be falsified (in theory) like Svensmark’s ideas can? Whilst we await ideas on how to falsify CAGW…
Obviously aspects such as the properties of ghgs fall in the category. Likewise for CO2 being well mixed. Not sure about climate sensitivity, or the idea forcings act independently.
Ps THIS MESSAGE SPONSORED BY CLIMATE SPECTRE’S BLOMURDKOCHFELD
Astro-turfing is now a $1.8billion business.
It has risen from almost nothing in the last decade.
No-one even denies it. They are registered companies who declare their results and pay taxes.
According to Nancy Clark from Precision Communications, grass-roots specialists charge $25 to $75 for each constituent they convince to send a letter to a politician.
Paid online commentators in China are paid fifty cents for each online post that is not removed by moderators,leading to the nickname of the “50-cent party.” The New York Times reported that a business selling fake online book reviews charged $999 for 50 reviews and made $28,000 a month shortly after opening.
According to The Financial Times, astroturfing is “common place” in American politics, but was “revolutionary” in Europe, when it was exposed that the anti-privacy “think-tank” the European Privacy Association was actually sponsored by technology companies.
In 2008, an expert on Chinese affairs, Rebecca MacKinnon, estimated the country employed 280,000 in a government-sponsored astroturfing operation to post pro-China propaganda and drown out voices of dissent.
Another technique is the use of sockpuppets, where a single person creates multiple identities online to give the appearance of grassroots support. Sockpuppets may post positive reviews about a product, attack participants that criticize the organization, or post negative reviews and comments about competitors, under fake identities
Astroturfing businesses may pay staff based on the number of posts they make that are not flagged by moderators. Persona management software may be used so that each paid poster can manage five to seventy convincing online personas without confusing them with one another.
Thank you, Leslie Graham.
He’s not a scientist. He does not understand physics or statistics. How do you expect him to understand papers about AGW and cosmic rays? Worse, he pretends to know, despite his obvious shortcomings. Give him a timed test. He’s not even worth discussion since he lacks comprehension. His game is rhetoric, baiting, semantics, and debate.
omnologos wrote:
“…there is no conceivable observation that could falsify CAGW…”
An astonishing claim. (I won’t quibble with your term “observation”, though of course scientific theories require more than that.)
That there is a greenhouse effect is a falsifiable theory.
That the longwave radiation escaping the troposphere has a carbon dioxide signature (or lacks one, if you prefer) is a falsifiable theory.
That the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased, and that that should increase the greenhouse effect, is a falsifiable theory.
That the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a fossil fuel isotopic signature is a falsifiable theory.
I could go on, obviously.
If you could disprove the greenhouse effect, to pick the most obvious example, the theory that man is causing global warming by burning fossil fuels that block longwave radiation escaping to space falls to pieces – but there are a great many falsifiable theories that the “anthropogenic global warming” theory relies on.
Okay, here’s my challenge to you. Your claim, apparently, is that the “CAGW” theory is unfalsifiable. There is a flaw, if I interpret it correctly, in the logical structure of the theory – it is perhaps a tautology? If that’s what you mean, please clarify what you think the logical flaw is, and then we can have a real discussion about it.
omnologos wrote:
“First it is generally impossible for any single paper to open or close a scientific question (exceptions notwithstanding). We would have to wait for Shaviv or Svensmark to reply, at the very least.”
Your point is well taken; but it looks as though you are not aware of the extent of research in this area, since a great many papers have addressed the issue at this point. The Sloan and Wolfendale paper is hardly the first even of their own on this subject, but theirs are part of what is now a fairly extensive corpus of research, and they are hardly the only ones to cast serious doubt on the “CRGW” theory; here’s a representative sampling:
Pierce and Adams (2009)
Kazil et al. (2006)
Kristjansson et al. (2008)
Calogovic et al. (2010)
Kulmala et al. (2010)
Laken et al. (2013)
Krissansen-Totton & Davies (2013)
Almeida et al. (2013)
Laut (2003)
Norris et al. (2007)
Feng & Bailer-Jones (2013)
“no conceivable observation that could falsify CAGW” – if you increased the concentration of CO2 in a container and the infra red absorption went down would falsify CAGW. There, that wasn’t too difficult.
I’m surprised you didn’t use a more classic film clip, Peter:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQLQ1Rc_Js&w=420&h=315]
(It’s weird. WordPress allows iframes for embeds, but not the HTML for ordered lists. Very, very odd priorities.)
@omnologos
Conceiving of observations that would falsify mainstream climate science is very easy; the difficulty lies in making the observations in a universe that insists on behaving as though mainstream climate science is for the most part correct.
I repeat – there is no way to disprove CAGW. I am not talking about mainstream climate science. I am talking about the catastrophic predictions associated to increases in GHGs.
Please somebody outline an observation or sets of observations that would disprove the notion that things could go badly in 30 or 40 years’ time.
Perhaps you should take some ant-acid medication. 😉
you talking from experience?
You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about this CAGW business omno.
So I did a search on google scholar for CAGW.
There’s some stuff about a lobby group called Citizens Against Government Waste, but otherwise – not much. It seems this mysterious theory of CAGW is something you think is really really important, yet no one else ever talks about it.
Perhaps you’re barking up the wrong tree.
1. you don’t falsify a theory. You falsify a hypothesis.
2. If you’d like to derrive an actual scientific hypothesis from your CAGW theory, you could then measure against it and your hypothesis would be falsifiable. You could then adapt your theory to fit your new found knowledge.
3. Wondering about uncertainty, future potential catastrophes and what to do about them is the realm of risk analysis (an omnologist really should know this), which most here would like to think is best when informed by science. So when science says ‘yes we have empirical evidence of past catastrophic impacts from climate changes’ then probably, yes, the boys and girls across the hall in the risk analysis department should take this seriously. As should you.
Happy to help clear this up for you.
That’s like saying “please outline an observation that would disprove the notion that the sun’s going to set tonight”. Is there technically any way of doing that other than waiting? Of course not. You’re playing silly word games.
A less utterly meaningless thing to say would be “there is no way to empirically falsify our understanding of the climate which predicts dangerous weather changes in 30 to 40 years time”. I’d be interested to see what specific examples you could provide in defense of that…
“I repeat”
Oh yeah. You sure do.
That’s the standard denial industry tactic.
Just make something up andrepeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat… regardless of how many times you are shown to be talking rubbish.
In fact that’s the measure of a true denier – how well he will stand his ground in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Now that climate change is simply obvious the denial has become hysterical.
Your demand seems to have made a rapid shift from “disprove CAGW” to disprove ‘CAGW within 30 or 40 years’ – a bit moving of your il-defined goalposts there.
In any case, I take it you’re now admitting (or at least not disputing as part of this particular argument) that mainstream climate science is correct that warming will continue for the next 30 or 40 years and beyond, unless we cut CO2 emissions sharply or change our behaviour in some other significant way (geoengineering of one sort or another, for instance). It’s that the effects of that warming would be pretty bad for us on balance you dispute. Have I got that right?
Well, the list of likely impacts is rather long but for starters:
– we could try severely reducing water supply to some test humans, livestock and agricultural crops to simulate a future of more frequent and more intense droughts and the reduction of fresh water currently supplied by mountain glaciers and snowpack. If none of the humans, livestock or crops suffered any ill effects, that would certainly give us cause to question whether warming reducing fresh water supplies is anything to worry about.
– we could wait for a big but by no means unprecedentedly intense tropical storm to hit New York and New Jersey and if it turned out that large enough storm surges to flood the New York subway and damage enormous numbers of communities along the Jersey Shore were enjoyable for all concerned, the idea that continued sea level rise would be bad would take a beating. Here. People in Bangladesh whose agriculture is threatened by salt water infiltration as well as storm surges might not be reassured.
– riverine floods would also provide an excellent chance to make observations in support of the idea that more intense rainfall events are in fact nothing to worry about.
I’m pretty sure there isn’t space here to list all the predictable consequences of warming that it would be quite easy in principle to cast strong doubts on the potential disastrousness of if they were, in fact, not potentially disastrous. Go read the latest IPCC report if you want more.
1. The c in cagw is for catastrophic
2. I had to repeat my point as too many people thought I was disputing what I am not disputing
3. I agree that the risk associated to climate change of any sort need be managed according to science (but not just according to science – risk management is not a subset of science)
This is very different from what is routinely trafficked by the usual suspects (SkS for example), where CAGW is presented as a scientific certainty. It isn’t, because CAGW is not ‘scientific’. It is a matter of risk management.
I think you misconstrue the intent of SkS. That you do so and so pointedly is another marker for your intention to stir rather than debate.
Anthropogenic climate change is a matter of physics with likely outcome magnitude a function of atmospheric carbon budgeting. Physics, with some help from paleoclimatology and yes models (of various types), informs us how bad it can get if our current economic-political systems can not be changed fast enough for adequate mitigation, in other words catastrophes involving the biosphere, our life support system, will be inescapable. In particular this will add to the pressure imposed by us now mining the biosphere. That is consuming the capital rather than living off the interest in a sustainable way. Increasing pollution too is having dire consequences.
The catastrophic label was added by the denial and delaying faction to confuse and have a straw man to throw in the path of scientific debate. In other words ‘a squirrel’.
CAGW, along with ‘religion’ is cast about freely by those who suck from the teats of the fossil fuel PR bandwagon and the vacuous who repeat the mantra on blogs.
That increasing atmospheric GHG content of the atmosphere will increase the warming effect is beyond dispute. How catastrophic things become depends upon the extent and speed of political action or inaction and socio-economic changes.
It was that point that the Philippine representative in Warsaw was trying to make. But of course that flew over your head in your rush to denigrate, yet again.
You are not using the language of risk management. You have certainties, and since you believe in those certainties you have a set of actions that you want to see implemented (same, I suspect, for Mr Sano).
IOW you don’t want to manage a risk, even if science informs us that we have a risk, not a certainty. I am fine with that, if and only if you realize your solution will be wrong, unless you and SkS and many others have the power of foretelling.
It’s like being told a rocket might be incoming between 8 and 9 AM, and then deciding in advance to shoot at 8.15AM. It will only work if the timing is perfectly right. In all other circumstances, it will be a catastrophic choice.
“It’s like being told a rocket might be incoming between 8 and 9 AM, and then deciding in advance to shoot at 8.15AM. It will only work if the timing is perfectly right. In all other circumstances, it will be a catastrophic choice.”
Actually, it’s not like that. That may in fact be the least accurate simile I’ve ever heard. The problematic CO2 is not going to descend on the earth like a meteor impact at some unknowable time in the future. It’s being emitted continuously as a result of our powering industrial civilisation with fossil fuels. Which we’re therefore going to have to stop doing sooner or later and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s sooner or later as long as we don’t wait until it’s too late. Split second timing such as is required to intercept missile attacks just isn’t a factor. (Could we have better trolls who understand obvious things like that without having them explained to them? Even trolls who take simple things like that on board once they’re explained to them would be an improvement over much of what we have now.)
Jon – you didn’t get the memo on this troll thingy. And you don’t know what risk management means. The two things might be related. Now go paranoid with somebody else.
“You are not using the language of risk management”
~omnologos
Neither are you.
He is however explaining what a great big oaf you are being.
“This is very different from what is routinely trafficked by the usual suspects (SkS for example), where CAGW is presented as a scientific certainty. It isn’t, because CAGW is not ‘scientific’.”
~omnologos
Be a good chap and find all these articles at SkS that refer to CAGW. Only I asked google to find such, and she said there’s not any. Which doesn’t sound much like routine traffic to me.
Anyway… If you’d care to stop bleating about CAGW for a moment and instead do some listening… (it’s a wonder you ever got to be an omnologist, with all the talking but the very little listening that you ever do.)
Given that it’s 101 years since the Titanic went down, let’s do a quick run through of risk navigation 101. (The Titanic disaster was a seminal event for developing strategies for dealing with risk and uncertainty.)
Imagine you’re captain of a boat. Captain Omno. Captain of a very fast, “unsinkable”, modern boat with lots of passengers, but not enough life rafts. You’ve got places to be. Transatlantic records to set. You know the sort of thing. You’re ploughing ahead, full steam and taking the northern short cut.
An incoming radio message from another ship warns that the northern short cut is becoming icy.
It’s a risk, but the odds against hitting ice big enough to do catastrophic harm are still in your favour you reckon. You’re in charge of a very modern boat with the best modern engineering. You’ve got things to do and places to be.
But here’s where it gets interesting…
Because it’s dark and you can’t see far ahead, your information isn’t perfect. The catch is that you may not know about a big bit of ice until it’s too late to do anything about it.
You’re Captain Omno. What do you do?
(p.s. the rest of us already know the answer)
I see correlation on that graph up until about 1994, where there is a breakout.
But I think someone’s already examined a particular section of the paleorecord, where there was either a wave of intense cosmic ray activity or a stark lack of such, and it didn’t seem to do anything to the temperature.
That could be the so called Laschamp Anomaly, or Laschamp Event, which is described here Galactic Cosmic Rays and other places including Real Climate.
In Paleoclimates: Understanding Climate Change Past and Present by Thomas M Cronin, page 162, it is named the Laschamps Geomagnetic Event.
As we have seen so many time,s mere contrary evidence doesn’t kill off dearly-held positions. It could force a layer of conspiracy on top of them, which might serve to warn off first-time readers to some extent.
You will never convince a denier to change his mind using logic, reason or evidence because their postion was not formed using logic, reason or evidence in the first place.
It makes no difference how much more obvious AGW has become in the last 30 years nor how much the mountains of evidence have built up to the point were it is simply undeniable – they simply don’t think the way normal people do.
To them it’s a political stance and it just so happens that all those feckless tree-hugging dirty hippies that they have been indoctrinated to hate since birth have been proved right beyond all reasonable doubt.
They will NEVER accept that.
Spot on, Leslie!
Too true. I butt heads with people like that all the time. Would you believe some of them have the gall to invoke Carl Sagan… the man who worked out the model of the greenhouse atmosphere of Venus?
Bully…we can now look forward to an exclusively human caused apocalypse. Thank heavens this cosmic ray theory is dead.
Very good analysis P. S. of CR – I say this sincerely and honestly – as a skeptic, but …
“Changes in solar activity, sunspots and cosmic rays, and their effects on clouds have contributed no more than 10 percent…”
The sun, is not only the CR – and not even mainly: CR.
I look forward to as well – a precise analysis for the length of the day, change the length of an average 11 year solar cycle, the effects of indirect and second-order (including ozone – stratosphere, QBO), delayed in time, “regulating” Earth’s energy storage systems in the atmosphere (wind) and the ocean (circulation) …
Why I wait?
omnologos in his first comments mentioned N. Shaviv.
Lockwood (http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/466/2114/303.full):
“If … … 65 per cent of the observed warming were due to solar effects [contra N. Scafetta paper] … … plus the feedback would need to supply 0.65×5.15=3.35 W m−2. In this case, the feedback must supply 3.35−0.23=3.12 W m−2, which means that they need to explain an amplification of the solar input by a factor of 13.5.”
13.5 … – Impossible? But in the past …
N. Shaviv: “According to the IPCC (AR4), the solar irradiance is responsible for a net radiative forcing increase between the Maunder Minimum and today of 0.12 W/m 2 (0.06 to 0.60 at 90% confidence). We know however that the Maunder minimum was about 1°C colder …” “This requires a global sensitivity of 1.0/0.12°C/(W/m 2 ).” For doubling the CO 2 we obtain, in this way – for such “… plus the feedback … “- up to 31 degrees C warming …
Weng, 2012 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00376-012-1238-1): “The atmospheric amplifying mechanism indicates that the solar impacts on climate should NOT BE SIMPLY ESTIMATED by the magnitude of the change in the solar radiation over solar cycles when it is compared with other external radiative forcings that do not influence the climate in the same way as the sun does.”
(http://www.clim-past.net/7/339/2011/cp-7-339-2011.pdf) Varma (2011):
“Since the reduction in TSI is only 0.15%, the global cooling effect is small and ADDITIONAL FEEDBACKS are required to induce a significant change in the westerlies.”
“… we propose that the role of the sun in modifying Southern Hemisphere tropospheric circulation patterns has probably been UNDERESTIMATED in model simulations of past climate change.”
(http://www.leif.org/EOS/2010JC006264.pdf) Sejrup (2010):
“The observed ocean temperature response is LARGER than expected based on simple thermodynamic considerations, indicating that there is dynamical response of the high‐latitude ocean to the Sun. […]”
(http://www.wsl.ch/info/mitarbeitende//frank/publications_EN/Raspopov_etal_PPP_2008.pdf) Raspopov ( 2008, coauthors: Esper, Frank et al.):
“The climate response to long-term solar activity variations (from 10s to 1000s years) manifests itself in different climatic parameters, such as temperature, precipitation and atmospheric and oceanic circulation.”
(http://atmospheres.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/index.php?section=136) NASA:
“Based on SIM observations Cahalan et al. [2010] demonstrate REMARKABLE different climate responses (stratosphere, troposphere, ocean mixed layer) to SORCE-based and proxy-based SSI variations. The OUT-OF-PHASE SSI variations also have implications to re-examine the connection of the Sun and stratosphere, troposphere, biosphere, ocean, and Earth’s climate.”
“Even though TSI and SSI at UV wavelengths have been observed to vary during solar cycles, how the Sun varies (both TSI and whole spectrum SSI) and how solar variations influence the Earth’s climate over long time scales REMAIN UNRESOLVED.”
(http://www.citeulike.org/group/1174/article/969558) Bard and Frank, 2006.:
“Overall, the role of solar activity in climate changes — such as the Quaternary glaciations or the present global warming — remains unproven and most probably represents a SECOND-ORDER EFFECT.”
… because ALWAYS (ie also in the past), we obtain for example the (how actual) conclusions:
“…no consistent correlation emerges between spectral maxima in records of storminess and solar irradiation. We conclude that solar activity changes are unlikely to be a primary forcing mechanism of millennial-scale variability in storminess.”
(http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n12/full/ngeo1619.html, Sorrel et al., 2012)
Strewth! Is it just me or is trying to reason with omno’ like trying to pin a jelly to the wall? Not worth the effort.
There is no effort going on. Most if not all are stuck at the 3-year-old reasoning level ‘if he disagrees with me and I cannot find any way to reply, he must be evil’. Yeah, right.