“We need to consider the very real possibility that carbon dioxide – which is necessary for life on Earth and of which there is precious little in the atmosphere – might well be like the innocent bystander who has been unjustly accused of a crime based upon little more than circumstantial evidence.” Read more here.
Climate & Climate Change
Cosmic Rays, Clouds and Climate (Part 2)
THERE is a theory that the earth’s climate is influenced by cosmic rays that penetrate our atmosphere from outer space. In particular it is thought cosmic rays influence the production of cloud condensation nuclei with periods of higher cosmic rays penetration associated with more cloudiness. The power of what is known as the solar wind, the magnetic force associated with the sun, is thought to influence the extent to which these high-energy charged particles composed of protons, electrons, and ionized nuclei reach earth.
The theory has been based to a large extent on correlations between climate and sunspot cycles. There is now a research effort to establish a physically-plausible link between cosmic rays, clouds and climate including through laboratory experiments in clouding at the Cern Cloud Facility in, Geneva, Switzerland. The theory and the experiments are explained in ‘Cosmic Rays and Climate’ by Jasper Kirkby, Surveys in Geophysics, Volume 28, pages 333-375.
I know of no equivalent research effort looking at establishing a causal link between carbon dioxide and climate.
This paper by Dr Kirby was first discussed here in a blog post by Paul Biggs on May 21 this year. I’ve only just properly discovered it – and thought it so good you should read about it a second time. I posted ‘Cosmic Rays, Clouds and Climate (Part 1)’ on April 13, 2008.
Ten Worst Blog Posts: A Note from Cohenite
EVER since public computer networks burst onto the scene in the 1980’s, the subject of online content has been a controversial one, explained Mark Newton at e-journal On Line Opinion last week. A few months ago, 30 July 2008, John Stewart on Australian ABC television’s Lateline described online blogs as one of the few places where the science of climate change is still debated. Now, occasional blogger, Cohenite, has come up with the 10 worst climate blog posts on the basis, “they all represent a denial of not only the intrinsic transparency of the web but also the openness necessary for scientific debate and to this extent they reveal that at least part of this debate about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not about science, but its suppression.”
Here goes, the ten worst, according to Cohenite:
1. On April 16, 2008, at a blog called ‘Open Mind’, the prince of AGW, he who is known as Tamino, posted a piece entitled ‘Perjury’. Tamino’s basis for the charge of perjury was that someone had claimed there had been a temperature decline since 1998. [Read more…] about Ten Worst Blog Posts: A Note from Cohenite
News Reports for October Indicate Global Cooling
Following are 12 pages of sampling of news reports from the US and around the world for October 2008, via Marc Morano in Washington, providing some anecdotal evidence that global warming has perhaps stalled:
Delayed World Series raises anger after frigid weather – Sportswriter. October 29, 2008. Excerpt: Al Gore is full of crap. The predictor of global-warming doom and gloom is way off base, at least in late October in frigid eastern Pennsylvania. Consider that when Major League Baseball called off its first makeup date of the suspended Game 5 early yesterday, the weather conditions were far worse than they had been Monday. Rescheduled again for tonight at 8, the forecast is also bad. A cold rain continued all day yesterday with up to 30 centimetres of snow reported…” http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/526445
Cold spring, summer stunts apple production in Washington State – October 27, 2008. Excerpt: As the apple season wraps up in Whatcom County, some local orchardists are having to cope with lower yields caused by a cold spring and summer. “The quality is there, however, there’s going to be a lot (of apples) left hanging on the tree that we can normally pick” because they won’t ripen in time, said Dorie Belisle. http://www.bellinghamherald.com/602/story/628109.html
Arctic sea ice almost 2 million square kilometers higher than a year ago – Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl. Excerpt: The total Arctic sea ice area is currently almost 2 million square kilometers higher than one year ago. It is near normal for the end of October. http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/10/snow-in-london-freezing-florida.html
[Read more…] about News Reports for October Indicate Global Cooling
Worldwide Surge in Atmospheric Methane Levels
“The amount of methane in Earth’s atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end a period of about a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable, according to a team led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers.
Methane levels in the atmosphere have more than tripled since pre-industrial times, accounting for around one-fifth of the human contribution to greenhouse gas-driven global warming. Until recently, the leveling off of methane levels had suggested that the rate of its emission from the Earth’s surface was approximately balanced by the rate of its destruction in the atmosphere.
However, since early 2007 the balance has been upset, according to a paper on the new findings being published this week to be published in Geophysical Review Research Letters. The paper’s lead authors, postdoctoral researcher Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, say this imbalance has resulted in several million metric tons of additional methane in the atmosphere. Methane is produced by wetlands, rice paddies, cattle, and the gas and coal industries, and is destroyed by reaction with the hydroxyl free radical (OH), often referred to as the atmosphere’s “cleanser.”
One surprising feature of this recent growth is that it occurred almost simultaneously at all measurement locations across the globe. However, the majority of methane emissions are in the Northern Hemisphere, and it takes more than one year for gases to be mixed from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere. Hence, theoretical analysis of the measurements shows that if an increase in emissions is solely responsible, these emissions must have risen by a similar amount in both hemispheres at the same time.
A rise in Northern Hemispheric emissions may be due to the very warm conditions that were observed over Siberia throughout 2007, potentially leading to increased bacterial emissions from wetland areas. However, a potential cause for an increase in Southern Hemispheric emissions is less clear.
An alternative explanation for the rise may lie, at least in part, with a drop in the concentrations of the methane-destroying OH. Theoretical studies show that if this has happened, the required global methane emissions rise would have been smaller, and more strongly biased to the Northern Hemisphere. At present, however, it is uncertain whether such a drop in hydroxyl free radical concentrations did occur because of the inherent uncertainty in the current method for estimating global OH levels.”
Read more here from David Chandler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Carbon Fools’ Day in London
“October 28, 2008, will go down in history as ‘carbon fools day’, a sad day for democracy and science, a day when opposition parties [in the British Parliament] failed to challenge a dangerously unsound policy, devoid of any real scientific basis, without any hope of influencing climate change. Ironically, it was also a day when London saw the earliest October snow for seventy years.” Read more here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.