One Response to “what causes global warming – Sunspots don't cause global warming, say scientists – Yahoo! India News”

1. artesian Says:
   December 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am

   As a geologist I am very comfortable with the multiple working hypothesis – I would like someone in media to start noticing there are other ideas out there. I offer this. The Danes have been on the case for a long while, studying the sun; who would have thought? The first paper to get is Friis-Christensen and Lassen (Science; 1991) If you can find the entire issue in the reference library, you will see the editors comment referred to this paper as hitting the ball into the anthropogenic court. George Monbiot of the Guardian attacked this paper in an article a few years ago wherein Monbiot stated the results BACKWARDS.
   In 1991, the Danes revealed an important correlation between warming and cooling with the sunspot peak frequency (not the actual number of spots, but the cycle length). When the cycle is long all the planets cool; when the cycle is short, the planets warm. Furthermore, cosmic radiation is currently at its highest ever measured. This is happening because the sun is currently relatively inactive and the earth’s magnetic shield is down; therefore, climate is changing (and it always will). This correlation between long sunspot cycle and weather is happening at the moment and spoiling the party. However, correlation is not causation.
   The climate celebrities, however, are linking climate and the economy. We can likely kick some of the carbon economy late the twenty-first century, but we must not rush to judgement for the wrong reason. There has been warming to end the Ice Age. Climate is a chaotic system; the facts, however, do not support CO2 as a serious ‘pollutant’. In fact, it is plant fertilizer and seriously important to all life on the planet. It is the red herring used to unwind our economy. That issue makes the science relevant.
   Sulphate from volcanoes can have a catastrophic effect, but water vapour is far more important. Water vapour (0.4% overall by volume in air, but 1 – 4 % near the surface) is the most effective green house blanket followed by methane (0.0001745%). The third ranking gas is CO2 (0.0383%), and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves rapidly in cold water and bubbles rapidly out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high; making seawater a great ’sink’; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
   CO2 has been rising and Earth and her oceans have been warming. However, the correlation trails. Correlation, moreover, is not causation. The causation is under scientific review, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome.
   In 2006 the Danish geophysicists published an experiment in the papers of the Royal Society: “Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy – the cosmic rays – liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.” The condensation in the chamber formed instantaneously.
   Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has further experiments scheduled for the Hadron collider to test his basement experiment. He believes in muons, but elevated solar flux (> 10 protons per cc) appears to cause fog in the Great Lakes and clouds too.
   As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows: quiet sun allows the geomagnetic shield to drop. Incoming galactic cosmic ray flux creates more low-level clouds, more snow, and more albedo effect as more is heat reflected resulting in a colder climate. Active sun has an enhanced magnetic field which induces Earth’s geomagnetic shield response. Earth has fewer low-level clouds, less rain, snow and ice, and less albedo (less heat reflected) producing a warmer climate.
   That is how the bulk of climate change likely works, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, all the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, as they have been for this century, all the planets cool. The change in cloud cover is only a small percentage, but enough to be subtle. In other words, it’s not the heat, it is the humidity. The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be a wobble in the cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that.
   Although the post 60s warming period appears to be over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to build up with more humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. Ancient sedimentary rocks and paleontological evidence indicate the planet has had abundant liquid water over the entire span. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat. In my opinion, nothing unusual is going on except for the Orwellian politics.
   Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center and read Svensmark and Calder’s book, “The Chilling Stars”.

Leave a Comment