Climate, Sun, and Cosmic Rays
December 22, 2011
Been working on this for a while, and got the final piece in an interview with Gavin Schmidt at the American Geophysical Union convention early this month. (see that whole – brief – interview on this page)
The “cosmic ray – climate” connection is a perrenial favorite on the denial circuit. It sounds cool, and there is some effect at the tiny level, too tiny to matter.
As far as effects on climate – it’s probably more likely that cosmic rays will make you super-strong, invisible, or really, really stretchy – than it is that they have a ruling effect on climate.
See full Gavin Schmidt interview, and Potholer’s Useful take below…
Gavin’s Realclimate post on what’s useful and what’s not in the research.
We were clear in the 2006 post that establishing a significant GCR/cloud/climate link would require the following steps (given that we have known that ionisation plays a role in nucleation for decades). One would need to demonstrate:
- … that increased nucleation gives rise to increased numbers of (much larger) cloud condensation nuclei (CCN)
- … and that even in the presence of other CCN, ionisation changes can make a noticeable difference to total CCN
- … and even if there were more CCN, you would need to show that this actually changed cloud properties significantly,
- … and that given that change in cloud properties, you would need to show that it had a significant effect on radiative forcing.
Of course, to show that cosmic rays were actually responsible for some part of the recent warming, you would need to show that there was actually a decreasing trend in cosmic rays over recent decades – which is tricky, because there hasn’t been (see the figure).
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
December 23, 2011 at 4:37 am
[…] Climate, Sun, and Cosmic Rays « Climate Denial Crock of the Week […]
December 23, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Another great one Peter!
December 23, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Peter- you’d probably be interested in a related paper I covered recently, in case you hadn’t seen it. (Ignore the general review stuff and skip to the last section.) http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/do-cosmic-rays-set-the-earths-thermostat.ars
December 23, 2011 at 9:21 pm
that’s a devastating graph.
May I repost this in the new year? — I’m thinking a lot of people may already be swept up in the holidays and could have missed this…
December 25, 2011 at 3:40 am
Sure thing.
The lead author made a manuscript available on Judith Curry’s blog, if you don’t have journal access: http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/agee-cosmic-rays.pdf
December 26, 2011 at 1:49 am
thanks much – very valuable.
December 23, 2011 at 5:27 pm
I posted a link to your video on my home-town newspaper’s on-line message-board.
Here are the insightful and incisive replies that I’ve gotten so far:
“Does Sinclair ever say anything that makes sense? What an idiot.”
“Get out your decoder rings, folks. When these threads are titled with superaltives such as “Most excellent”, “Reknowned”, and so forth regarding the presented chart, or rants about “climate deniers”, the meaning is clear- replace the words ‘hard physical science” with the phrase “Ideological crapology”. ”
Linky here: http://forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=116427
So take *that*, Peter. The tinfoil-hatters are really on to you now!
December 23, 2011 at 9:24 pm
this is why I love what I do.
December 24, 2011 at 9:32 am
[…] Posted by SirCharles For our conspiracy theorist, Cassandra Syndrome: Climate, Sun, and Cosmic Rays [ Hey, this one stars Alex Jones, King of the Conspiracy Theorists. One for Cassandra Syndrome, […]
December 24, 2011 at 5:52 pm
this is why I love what I do.
Couldn’t resist giving the hometown tinfoil-hatters a nice poke in the eye — linky here: http://forums.signonsandiego.com/showpost.php?p=4571304&postcount=4
December 24, 2011 at 9:43 pm
I have just enough Christmas Grinch in me to laugh my ass off.
Be well.
December 28, 2011 at 9:50 am
I remember hearing about how the movie “The Great Global Warming Swindle” had been debunked, but I had never seen the actual details of how. Now I know!
Thanks.
January 2, 2012 at 1:01 pm
I’m sensing that you screen out all dissenting views in these comment threads. Is that a policy? (I’m not saying that’s wrong, since they’re usually mostly utterly without merit.)
January 2, 2012 at 5:22 pm
I only block comments that contain threats, tasteless obscenity or run-on screeds that don’t carry the conversation.
May 3, 2013 at 10:59 pm
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