http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/10/the_galileo_of_g...
February 10, 2012
The Galileo of Global Warming
I have written before about how the left loves to invoke the example
of Galileo in order to present themselves as the great defenders of
science against all of those knuckle-dragging religious bigots who
don't believe in global warming. But these same people don't
understand science very well themselves (remember amateur neurologist
Janeane Garofalo lecturing us about the "limbic brain"?), so they end
up using Galileo, a man who defied the "consensus" of his day, as a
propaganda talking point to enforce the consensus of today.
It occurred to me a while back that there is something worse about
this invocation of Galileo, because there is a modern-day equivalent
to Galileo, specifically on the issue of global warming—and he's on
the other side. In this more civilized age, he is thankfully not
threatened with torture or any kind of persecution. But he is a
pioneer of new and important scientific truths who is being ignored
and vilified because his discoveries run counter to the quasi-
religious dogma of our day.
That man is the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who seems to have
discovered the most important factor that actually regulates Earth's
climate, and who is quietly in the process of proving it.
I linked last year to Svensmark's latest big breakthrough, but I
didn't get a chance to discuss it much, so I want to give a little
more detail now, then show one of the recent consequences of
Svensmark's achievement.
Let me briefly sum up Svensmark's theory. The temperature of the
Earth, he argues, is regulated by the intensity of solar radiation,
but not in the obvious way. It is not that the increase is solar
radiation heats the Earth directly. (It does, of course, but not to a
sufficient degree to explain climate variations.) Rather, an increase
in solar radiation extends the Sun's magnetic field, which shields
Earth from cosmic rays (highly energetic, fast-moving charged
particles that come from deep space). How does this affect the
climate? Here is the crux of Svensmark's argument. When cosmic rays
hit the atmosphere, he argues, their impact on air molecules creates
nucleation sites for the condensation of water vapor, leading to an
increase in cloud-formation. Since clouds tend to bounce solar
radiation back into space, increased cloud cover cools the Earth,
while decreased cloud cover makes the Earth warmer.
So if Svensmark is right, lower solar radiation means more cosmic
rays, more clouds, and a cooler Earth, while higher solar radiation
means fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer Earth.
Those who have followed the global warming controversy over the years
may recall that cloud-formation is one of the major gaps in the
computerized climate "models" used by the consensus scientists to
predict global warming. They have never had a theory to explain how
and why clouds form or to account accurately for their effect on the
climate. Svensmark has smashed through this glaring gap in their
theory.
Like I said, Svensmark hasn't just put this theory out there. He has
been working to prove it. He has done some studies that attempted to
track measurements of cosmic ray flux against surface temperature and
cloud cover, with some success. But his big breakthrough last year was
a long-awaited experiment at Switzerland's CERN particle accelerator
that demonstrated the most controversial part of Svensmark's theory.
It is widely accepted that the Sun's magnetic field helps shield Earth
from cosmic rays, and it is also widely accepted that increased cloud
cover cools the Earth (though expect this to suddenly come into
question as Svensmarks' theory gains ground). What Svensmark needed to
demonstrate was that cosmic rays form nucleation sites that seed
clouds.
Hence the aptly named CLOUD experiment performed at CERN last year,
with the results published last August. The experiment was actually
more than a decade in the making, but as Lawrence Solomon explains, it
was help back for years by the scientific bureaucracy because of its
potentially unwelcome results.
The results are indeed unwelcome, at least for the advocates of the
global warming consensus. Anthony Watts explained the experiment at
his blog, Watts Up With That? The CLOUD experiment used CERN's
particle accelerator to send a beam of artificially generated charged
particles—simulated cosmic rays—into a gas-filled chamber and then
measured the formation of aerosols, the kind of compounds that can
serve as cloud nucleation sites. It found a direct and very
significant relationship.
This is not a total demonstration of Svensmark's theory. The Nature
paper on the CLOUD experiment notes that "the fraction of these
freshly nucleated particles that grow to sufficient sizes to seed
cloud droplets, as well as the role of organic vapors in the
nucleation and growth processes, remain open questions
experimentally." But last year's result is a clear demonstration of a
crucial step in Svensmark's theory. It's certainly a lot farther than
the warmthers have ever gotten in demonstrating the physical basis for
their theory.
("Warmther," by the way, is a coin termed—if I recall correctly—by
occasional TIA Daily contributor Tom Minchin. It's intended to put
advocates of the global warming hysteria in the same category as the
"truthers" and the "birthers.")
What impact did the CLOUD experiment have? Well, the global warming
establishment set out to make sure it would have no impact. Like I
said, this is a more civilized age, so Svensmark and his colleagues
will not be subject to an Inquisition. They will just be ignored, for
as long as the entrenched establishment can manage to do so.
This campaign began immediately. James Delingpole's overview of the
reaction to CLOUD quotes the statement given to the press by Rolf-
Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN.
I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to
interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political
arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic
radiation is only one of many parameters.
I don't know what I find more amusing about this quote: the fact that
he is directing scientists not to draw conclusions from data, or the
fact that he then proceeds to assert his own interpretation of the
data, that "cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters." Well,
no, if Svensmark's theory is right, it is not "only one of many," it
is the central factor, far more important than human emissions of
carbon dioxide. But thanks for telling us all ahead of time what we're
supposed to think.
Heuer's statement is an example of an old warmther practice of
releasing scientific results to the media only on the condition that
upper-level science bureaucrats, the ones who want to increase or
preserve the funding they get from government, provide the politically
appropriate "spin" to the press. In this case, the appropriate spin
is, "move along, nothing to see here."
The BEST study provides an example of a different kind of spin. BEST,
which stands for Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, was a study begun
in response to the Climategate scandal. Part of the Climategate
scandal, you may recall, was the refusal of prominent climate
scientists to share their raw data on global temperatures, as well as
evidence that this data was unreliable. So Berkeley scientist Richard
Muller, a believer in global warming who nonetheless publicly
criticized the Climategate miscreants, started a program to examine
the accuracy of global temperature measurements and make the data
publicly available. As part of his team, he drafted Judith Curry, a
scientist with a history of sympathy for global warming skeptics.
But Muller is still a warmther, and old habits die hard. So he
released the study's first set of data shortly before an international
global warming conference—then pulled the old warmther trick of
summing it up in a press release promoting the politically correct
conclusions, claiming that this data "proved you should not be a
skeptic, at least not any longer." Curry was then forced to go the
newspapers to contradict this spin, telling the Daily Mail that "There
is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped. To say
that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very
unfortunate."
The Daily Mail, being a London tabloid, present the controversy in
very sensational terms. But here is the crucial passage that indicates
what is going on.
[A]lthough Prof Curry is the second named author of all four papers,
Prof Muller failed to consult her before deciding to put them on the
internet earlier this month, when the peer review process had barely
started, and to issue a detailed press release at the same time.
He also briefed selected journalists individually. "It is not how I
would have played it," Prof. Curry said. "I was informed only when I
got a group email. I think they have made errors and I distance myself
from what they did."
I am afraid Professor Curry has been a bit naïve, because this is an
exact repeat of the technique long used by the organizers of those
United Nations global warming panels. The technique is to get a bunch
of honest, legitimate scientists to contribute to your report and be
listed as "co-authors," so long as their contributions are safely
buried in the dense minutiae of the body of the report, which no
politician or reporter is going to bother reading. Then, without their
knowledge or consent, you "summarize" the work of these "co-authors"
in a politically slanted press release and claim all of them as part
of the "consensus" for your political conclusions.
So there you have
...
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