Cosmic Rays, Solar Flares, and Clouds

The following commentary is extracted from yesterday's e-mail to the kids.
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From M. Simon's post, "Clouds in Chambers", quoting a review of Dr. Henrik Svensmark's work (emphasis added):

For more than a decade, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. His findings -- published in October in the Proceedings of the Royal Society -- the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London -- are now in, and they don't point to us. The sun and the stars could explain most if not all of the warming this century, and he has laboratory results to demonstrate it. Dr. Svensmark's study had its origins in 1996, when he and a colleague presented findings at a scientific conference indicating that changes in the sun's magnetic field -- quite apart from greenhouse gases -- could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures. The chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, the chief agency investigating global warming, then castigated them in the press, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible." Others accused them of denouncing the greenhouse theory, something they had not done.

Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their theory after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays --highspeed atomic particles originating in exploded stars in the Milky Way -- and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increased when the intensity of cosmic rays grew and decreased when the intensity declined.

Low-altitude clouds are significant because they especially shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square metre during that same period. "That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," Dr. Svensmark explained.

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To which I add:

Why do you suppose the Al Gores, the IPCC, and the other warming enthusiasts are so rabid in denoucing other scientists who challenge their pet theory that human caused CO2 is to blame for the insignificant amount of warming observed to date, and further challenge that their projections of catastrophic warming in the future are a fallacy? There are a couple of reasons, depending on who's talking.

The community of climate scientists pushing the warming mantra have literally billions of dollars in grant money flowing toward them for furthering their research along their own avenues of inquiry. The more they reinforce the political biases of the policy wonks who control the purse strings, the more they gain. Yes, children. Science is not pure as the driven snow. There is bias, fiddling with the data, withholding of data from those who would critique it, elitist posturing, and even some some nasty name calling. These folks have a lot of their lives invested in proving a certain outcome, and have become "believers" in the religious sense. That's not science as it should be, but it's never been a perfect world. Ask Galileo. The "believers" he encountered also had a religious bias; they gave us the science that said the universe revolved around the earth, but that was the "consensus science" of the day. Remember that the next time the warmers speak of the vast consensus for warming prognostications.

The other community that's just as dangerous, if not more so, is the leftist liberal elites who can't wait to seize control of the economic engines of the world's strongest economies to push through their command and control policies of social, business, industrial and energy regulation. No long term beneficial results have ever resulted from a socialist command and control government. You have only to look at the failed Soviet Union, the rust bucket states of Eastern Europe like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and East Germany before the yoke of Soviet oppression was lifted, the failing French economy, China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, today's Venezuela under Chavez, North Korea under Kim, the entire middle east under the oppressive yoke of 12th Century Islamic psychopaths, Laos under Pol Pot, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and Pemex...the government controlled Mexican oil industry. The United Nations, sponser of the IPCC, is a bloated, self-serving, feckless, impotent, inefficient debating society. Their "scientists" cannot even publish their latest IPCC update until it passes the scrutiny of the political bosses who have commissioned it. The IPCC Summary Report, intended for policy makers (i.e., politicians), was published months in advance of the final scientific report, and then the scientific report was revised to fit the conclusions presented in the Summary Report. Word games by word smiths with Ph.D. after their names.

Al Gore belongs to this second group, the elitists, who are forever telling everyone else how to live their lives, but who exempt themselves from the hardships they promote for the masses. Al Gore needs to get over himself, but sadly, he's probably so invested in his own messiah complex that it won't happen. He can't even accept that he lost the 2000 election to (gasp) George Bush.

Think of global warming as a period of really nice weather before the next big chill. You could witness a drift into the next ice age within your life times.

No pix tonight. Sorry.

Love, Dad