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Disclaimer: I’m not implying that every scientist who believes that human created CO2 is the main reason for the temperature increases of the 20th century is a fetishist. My targets are the scientist and science journal editor jerks who suppress competing scientific efforts. Also, my targets are laymen who behave like crazy and/or nasty sports fans, not rational and reasonably humble amateurs.
Sorry, I don’t want to take the time to write a polished diary. Yesterday I got slimed in a recent diary called Climate Scientist investigated (again!), vindicated (again!), where the diarist claimed that
In other words, Mann got the fine-tooth-comb treatment. And he was cleared, not just partly, but completely. After a series of investigations this exhaustive, on a subject this important, one would expect some news about it.
even though his link to the NSF “report” telling us so, was all of 5 pages. (The last page had all of 1 sentence.) I came across some new information in the process of looking stuff up for my replies to the slimers.
There’s a beautiful film on youtube that explains Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray mediation of Earth’s temperature, via modulating low cloud formation (which has implications for reflecting solar energy back into space). Please watch it. A scientist interviewed in this film is astrophysicist Nir Shaviv. Turns out Shaviv has a blog, sciencebits.com.
Before I get to Nir’s writings on his blog, please note that Svensmark’s theory has recently gotten experimental support from experiments done at the Large Hadron Collider. (This is by Shaviv, but writing on Lubos Motl’s blog. The Large Hadron Collider is the relatively new, massive particle collider lab in Europe.)
Nir has 2 diaries of particular note. Regarding the “ugly” one, concerning ugly behavior by people in the scientific community, see Climategate and the “hockey stitch” – Not news to me..
So, why is the climategate scandal “not news to me?”
Well, the e-mails demonstrated that:
Elements within the global warming alarmists community do their best to inhibit “skeptics” like myself from getting their papers published. This includes for example coercing editors from accepting papers which do not follow the party line.
Elements within the global warming alarmists community follow non orthodox (and non kosher…) methodologies, which include creative “cut” and “paste” data manipulation techniques, as borne from the e-mails.
Since I have witnessed this kind of behavior before, I was totally unsurprised with the content of these e-mails, hence “it is not news to me”.
So, what did I witness before? Here are a few exemplars.
I witnessed how an editor rejected a paper I wrote without forwarding the reviewers my detailed response to their comments (he was perhaps afraid that the reviewers would actually be convinced with my detailed response which included detailed referrals to published results proving my points).
I saw another rejection (perhaps by the same editor…), this time of a paper written by a colleague that included the punch line: “any paper which doesn’t support the anthropogenic GHG theory is politically motivated, and therefore has to be rejected”
I saw how proposal reviewers bluntly reject funding requests, based on similar beliefs in the global warming apocalypse. I even know of someone who didn’t get tenure because he advocated non party line ideas.
I also saw how two Canadians tried to reconstruct the hockey stick only to find that some data mysteriously disappeared from a public ftp server.
Considering what I recently learned from an interview of Lindzen, about an editor of a journal that published him (Lindzen) getting canned shortly thereafter, this was not totally surprising. Also, such behavior is consistent with the career threats involved in other areas of physics, where an intolerant orthodoxy prevails. See The Trouble with Physics and Not Even Wrong for insights into scientific tribalism and irrationality amongst string theorists. One of these books talks about a “string theory mafia”.
I also noticed a very interesting diary by Shaviv that indicates that simply focussing on solar irradiance as the main factor in any possible effect of the sun on earth’s climate, is really stupid. In Shaviv’s current guest blog at Lubos Motl’s website, he says, “First, it is well known that solar variability has a large effect on climate. In fact, the effect can be quantified and shown to be 6 to 7 times larger than one could naively expect from just changes in the total solar irradiance.”. See The oceans as a calorimeter This is of particular interest because, at least if IIRC, Catastrophic AGW websites like to say “it can’t be the sun”, and then focus on solar irradiance vs. temperature. A truth seeker, however, will not attempt to debunk a first order effect by talking about a 2nd order effect…
One of the raging debates in the climate community relates to the question of whether there is any mechanism amplifying solar activity. That is, are the solar synchronized climatic variations that we see (e.g., take a look at fig. 1 here) due to changes of just the solar irradiance, or, are they due to some effect which amplifies the solar-climate link. In particular, is there an amplification of some non-thermal component of the sun? (e.g., UV, solar magnetic field, solar wind or others which have much larger variations than the 0.1% variations of the solar irradiance). This question has interesting repercussions to the question of global warming, which is why the debate is so fierce.
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So what does it mean?
First, it means that the IPCC cannot ignore anymore the fact that the sun has a large climatic effect on climate. Of course, there was plenty of evidence before, so I don’t expect this result to make any difference!
Second, given the consistency between the energy going into the oceans and the estimated forcing by the solar cycle synchronized cloud cover variations, it is unlikely that the solar forcing is not associated with the cloud cover variation.
Note that the most reasonable explanation to the cloud variations is that of the cosmic ray cloud link. By now there are many independent lines of evidence showing its existence (e.g., for a not so recent summary take a look here). That is, the cloud cover variations are controlled by an external lever, which itself is affected by solar activity.
(emphasis mine; note the author’s confidence that IPCC will continue to ignore evidence!)
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UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
I’m 2/3 way through a lecture by Shaviv on cosmic particle modulation of earth’s climate, here. Highly recommended.
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UPDATE 2 UPDATE 2 UPDATE 2 UPDATE 2 UPDATE 2 UPDATE 2
Though I haven’t read the book, The Deniers looks to be very useful for opening the eyes of laymen who have been essentially brainwashed into believing the CO2 fetishist framing. From The Deniers
“I have been asked many times why I titled my series and now this book The Deniers, in effect adopting their enemies’ terminology. Many of the scientists in this book hate the term and deny it applies to them.
I could give several reasons, but here is the most important. The scientists are not alone in having their credibility on trial in the global warming debate. They are not the only “authorities” in the argument, and not even the most important “authorities.” Most laymen, most citizens, owe most of what we think we know about global warming not to science directly, but to science as mediated by the media and by political bodies, especially the UN and our governments. We citizens, trying to discern what to do about global warming, must judge not only the credibility of the scientists but of those who claim to tell us what the scientists say. To that end, as you read through this book, judge for yourself the credibility of those who dismiss these scientists as cranks or crooks, and call them The Deniers.[17]
As these rather dramatic reversals for the doomsday view mounted, however, I also noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers.”[18]
(emphasis mine)
75 Comments
Thanks, very interesting. A few years ago I read a book by climatologist Fred Singer and food and agriculture expert Dennis Avery called Unstoppable Global Warming. They believe there’s a 1,500 year mini-cycle of moderate warming and then cooling, within larger cycles. Anyhow, this is interesting, especially on this site.
Several years ago I saw the editor of Science magazine say on C-Span that Michael Crichton doesn’t have the right to express his views on global warming.
Crichton caught a lot of flak for his views. I saw my first youtube of him, just yesterday. He said that when Nixon declared his war on cancer, if you were a researcher in a related field, and you wanted to successfully get funded, you “had” to modify your proposal so that it had some promise of curing cancer.
(Certainly, there were exceptions. I think he exaggerated, but still made his point.)
metamars, you have every right to your opinion. But what makes you think you deserve a “pass”…
…when you question the validity of an official report of the NSF merely because of its length?
The length of the report (which is what I assume you are referencing, though your unpolished sentence implies THE LINK is 5 pages long) is not germane. At all. Even if YOU think it should be. Sometimes it takes very few words indeed to explain why a case was without basis. In Mann’s case, it took just over four pages. The facts are that he did get the fine-tooth comb treatment and was totally cleared. Why should the NSF take even one more sentence than necessary to explain that? Because YOU say so? Sometimes less is more; this is one of those of those times.
Similarly, the climate change deniers can make all the “beautiful films” they want, replete with the “facts” as they see them. But neither those films’ length – nor “beauty” – makes their subjects even one iota more right than Mann’s total absolution makes him wrong.
Maybe you felt unjustifiably slimed. Okay. But the way to prove it is not by sliming back. You do it with facts. You may not like that 90 percent of scientists of ALL political persuasions now agree that human-caused climate change is a reality. But if you’re serious about showing that the other 10 percent are actually correct, believe me: Diaries like this won’t get the job done.
There’s actually a bunch of cycles that relate to climate. See here, about 20 seconds in. Half are solar, 1 galactic, 1 lunar, and 3 orbital.
Yet another anti-science Post. Yes, more scientists should act as James Hansen has and become activists.
But you totally ignore the facts about CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Methane, natural gas is a more potent “greenhouse gas”. Modulation of Earth’s weather by “cosmic rays” and energetic solar wind particles has been known for decades.
Bashing scientists is easy because many of them have sold out. But some, such as Hansen, have not sold out. You have neglected to include the millions of dollars that Exxon and BP and KochRoaches spend to suppress scientific research about climate change, and alternate sources of energy, such as solar energy to replace Fossil Fuels.
What else have you neglected? Tars Sand Pipeline, requiring more energy than is produced from Dirty Oil Shale. Then there is the Gulf of Mexico Oil Volcano, gushing again. Do you think the earth’s atmosphere is an endless sewer that can support any amount of toxic corporate garbage?
Didn’t you see those silly posts by Orion? That person wasn’t interested in having a discussion.
As I said on the other thread earlier, the NSF’s investigation should really be used as an offensive tool rather than the defensive reaction “See? Mann was cleared.”
Some of the evidence found in NSF’s investigation of the “investigation” could surely be used as a foot in the door to look into Penn State and every other corporate-funded research school in the nation for “scientific” studies tied to corporate profits.
As confucious said, a man who points a finger has three pointing back, any such investigation into funding and research at these schools will without a doubt root out the very unethical behavior they failed to find with Mann.
The noise meta is making is a hullaballoo to distract attention from the real problem this kind of insight is close to exposing.
Elements within the global warming alarmists community do their best to inhibit “skeptics” like myself from getting their papers published.
They have this thing called Peer Review to get published in Academic Journals.
You would have to prove solar variability is happening now at a rate big enough to explain all or some of the rise in temperature to get published.
If you want bring your friend’s paper facts, sources to the Lake and make sure the sources are linked and we can review it.
If we get enough interest we might be able to do a good job. But so far the sun is getting hotter recently has not been a story I have heard at all.
I admit it is possible however the sun getting hotter does not disprove CO2 causing global warming all you do is add in another contributing factor.
@Anthony Noel September 2nd, 2011 at 5:58 am
You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. The scientists who are falsely slimed as “climate deniers” by and large agree that humans cause climate change. I know of maybe 2 exceptions, and I seriously doubt that either one doesn’t believe in the urban heat island effect, which is certainly manmade. One of those two (Rancourt) probably believes in a tiny human effect, via CO2, but doesn’t think it’s detectable, so was glossing over this nuance.
The other guy (don’t remember his name, but I think I linked to him at docudharma) claimed that adiabatic forces caused all the warming due to the atmosphere. He’s quite alone, AFAIK. :-)
In fact, most scientists, even the so-called denialists, believe in the Green House Gas effect (see Bob Carter video), but in the case of CO2, the effect has basically reached near saturation. (It’ll never quite reach that, growing logarithmically. See Ian Plimer lecture, part 3, at 7:08. I just noticed that his label doesn’t match his graph. The label says “Doubling CO2 at 385 ppm has no effect.” Sloppy. The graph clearly shows an effect, but is puny. Most of the effect comes from the first 200ppm. And even that only amounts to about 1.6 deg Celsius.) The dire predictions of the defective climate models, so beloved of the climate catastrophists, all depend on sensitivity via positive feedback with other physical mechanisms to ‘achieve’ their catastrophes. What they lack is proof of their models.
The real debate is about the degree of warming to be expected due to human CO2 production. Anybody who obscures that, like the ‘climate croc of the week’ dude, is a dishonest propagandist.
Oh, yeah. I’m an unpaid amateur blogger, who nevertheless has made an informal, modest study of scientific myth making. NSF has professional, paid scientists. They should earn their money. I provided enough links to get people started, if they’re seriously interested in the subject.
I’ve already invited Nir Shaviv to cross post his diaries here at MyFDL, pointing out that he’d be doing a public service, and that if he’s really pressed for time (which is likely), he doesn’t have to respond to comments. Trust me when I tell you, I’d much rather have professionals arguing their case in public forums, than me.
A recent survey of its members by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association found that respondents had sold off 40% of their cattle inventory, compared with 5% to 10% on a normal year, says Joe Parker, association president. Also, 10% said they sold off all their cattle and left the industry.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-09-01/Drought-puts-cattle-ranchers-at-a-crossroads/50230906/1
The facts are the earth is getting hotter. Obama should be giving Texas cattlemen cheap corn sold at cost to keep the cattle alive as a short term measure. We should be building plants to take the salt out of sea water and using the water to grow forests the trees could provide shade to cool Texas and that would effect local weather patterns the water could also be used for cattle and crops.
Sure its expensive whether its CO2 or the sun getting hotter or both doesn’t matter no matter what WE DO HAVE TO EAT.
shorter metamars:
How dare anyone question scientists paid by the most profitable industry in the world (oil).
The sky might be falling, but surely it’s anything but the stuff we are burning day and night at an unprecendented rate.
And anyway, the planet needs more shit in the air.
What the science says…
Various independent measurements of solar activity all confirm the sun has shown a slight cooling trend since 1978.
The ACRIM composite shows a slight increase in TSI – the PMOD composite shows a slight decrease. Regardless of which dataset you use, the trend is so slight, solar variations can at most have contributed only a fraction of the current global warming. Scafetta 2006 uses the ACRIM composite and finds 50% of warming since 1900 is due to solar variations. However, the warming from solar influence occured primarily in the early 20th century when the sun showed significant warming. As for the global warming trend that began around 1975, Scafetta concludes “since 1975 global warming has occurred much faster than could be reasonably expected from the sun alone.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/acrim-pmod-sun-getting-hotter.htm
For a century, scientists have known that charged particles from space constantly bombard Earth. Known as cosmic rays, the particles are mostly protons blasted out of supernovae. As the protons crash through the planet’s atmosphere, they can ionize volatile compounds, causing them to condense into airborne droplets, or aerosols. Clouds might then build up around the droplets.
The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.
Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.
[...]
Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, [Physicist Jasper] Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says. [Nature, 8/24/11, emphasis added]
http://mediamatters.org/research/201108310023
You are mixing your metaphors. The ugly scientific tribalism I’m referring to has to do with the human created CO2 production leading to catastrophic global warming. I said nothing about pollution, which is certainly a huge problem.
As for where the big money is on the climate issue (which at least suggest where we should focus our attention to see the largest potential sources of corruption, see this video, and Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone:
What’s so sad is to see the people who are falling for Koch-funded and Exxon-funded climate-change denialism and think it makes them mavericks: “Ooh, ooh! I’m parrotting the oil and coal companies’ arguments and ticking off people! I guess that makes me cool and transgressive and stuff!”
“What is Electromagnetic Interference?
Telecommunication is made possible through radio waves which are traveling electromagnetic waves. Every wireless communication device including cell phones, radio, GPS tracking devices and satellite communication devices rely on radio waves for transmission and reception of signals. What leads to electromagnetic interference is the property of these radio waves to superimpose on each other. ”
”
With so many electric devices around, we are facing a new problem of electromagnetic noise pollution. It is difficult for scientific instruments like radio telescopes to operate because of the radio noise permeating the space. It is hard to find a ‘radio quiet’ area today for building of such telescopes! The situation is similar to that of optical telescopes which suffer from ‘light pollution’ from surrounding sources, that makes it difficult to get good images of astronomical objects.
Other than that, torrents of cosmic rays get bombarded on Earth from external sources. This includes solar radiation bombarded as well as cosmic radiation emitted by other galactic objects. The thin shield of Earth’s magnetic field can trap charged particles and save the Earth’s surface from the full blast of cosmic radiation. However, satellites orbiting around the Earth are vulnerable. The electromagnetic interference caused by solar flares can disrupt radio communication that depends on satellites for hours. ”
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/electromagnetic-interference.html
As I understand this argument more cosmic rays can affect cloud formation and this effects global temperatures.
I don’t know if more cosmic rays can be produced without the sun getting actually hotter my comment above shows the sun is not getting hotter.
As far as there being more Cosmic Rays being produced by the sun well except for periods of sun spot activity we are not getting more Cosmic Rays than normal I would expect if we had more Cosmic Rays cell phone service would be impossible.
Really! Can’t say I thought of it that way!
Why do you think the Republicans haven’t brought Mann in to answer tough questions about his hockey stick? Do you think Republicans are really going to bite the hands of their Goldman Sachs buddies? There are certainly antagonistic, plutocratic forces at play – nobody should deny that. Look at the current copyright legislation (or did it pass, already?) that had Microsoft on one side, and pharmaceutical companies on the other. (Sorry if I screwed up on details of that legislation, haven’t followed it carefully. Anybody?)
There’s corruption galore, to go around. Metamars was not trying to distract from any of it, but rather merely focus attention on one sorry piece of the puzzle.
The solar storm of 1859, also known as the Solar Superstorm,[1] or the Carrington Event,[2] which occurred during solar cycle 10, was the most powerful solar storm in recorded history, and the largest flare, observed by Richard Christopher Carrington, became known as the Carrington Super Flare.
On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[4]
Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators.[5] Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire.[6] Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
If we had more cosmic rays cellphones would not be working, Aurorae (the Northern Lights) would be seen in the Caribbean and Rocky Mountains
Maybe Meta fancies himself a Texas intellectual:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/08/17/298288/rick-perry-big-oil-climate/
Cosmic rays can come from the cosmos. That was covered in the film. When the earth passes through the more densely populated spiral arms of the galaxies, it gets more of a bombardment than when outside those spiral arms, no matter the current degree of shielding that the sun’s magnetosphere may provide. Thus, we have some very long cycles for glaciation. The cosmic ray bombardment leads to low cloud formation, which leads to more reflection of sunlight, which leads to cooling of the earth.
When you talk about the “sun getting hotter”, you are probably referring to total solar irradiance. But that is a second order effect, compared to the sun’s magnetic field shielding effects, etc. that Shaviv has quantified as about 6-7 times more significant. Shaviv, again: “First, it is well known that solar variability has a large effect on climate. In fact, the effect can be quantified and shown to be 6 to 7 times larger than one could naively expect from just changes in the total solar irradiance.”.
That statement show your complete lack of understand of the scientific method.
First, though lets dispose of the Superstring vs Quantum Gravity argument in Physics, It’s just not relevant to the climate discussion. It’s an argument between theoretical physicists, which is not new. Newton’s Corpuscular theory of light and Huygen’s wave theory has similar arguments, with Huygen’s theory prevailing until until they were both proven right.
There is an there will be no “proof” of the climate change models. There will be and is an accumulation of data which shows the models prediction to be consistent with the data. But, and this is a big but, CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.
The modellers will admit the climate system on Earth is complex, and all the interactions of the variables not know, and possibly all the variables not know.
You dismiss a 1.6 deg C raise in average temperature as if it were insignificant.
It is not. 1.6 deg C average temperature rise is very significant, and a 4 to 6 deg c rise in average temperature is a life extinguishing event.
Those are the results of climate change. Back to causes.
You other “beautiful film” claims the albedo of the earth is modulated by cloud cover. There are many sources of the albedo of earth (reflecting heat out to space), clouds, arctic ice, mountain ranges, and heat in the oceans (causing evaporation and clouds).
The data supports the measure increase in the earths temperature correlates well with the carbon dioxide concentration (and consequently all Greenhouse Gases) in the atmosphere.
The theory is that the GHGs are the cause. I believe there is NO OTHER SOURCE OF DATA that correlates so well.
If there is another source of data that correlates well with the measured effects, temperature rise, please post its source.
The make GHGs the best theory we have as the cause of climate change. No competing theory (actually dogmas, unfounded irrational beliefs) have any supporting data.
Put up or shut up with the data. Otherwise, you are as bad as the Koch’s, and just arguing for your own ends (Which are what? We believe the Koch’s are fear-of-loss and greed based).
Solar storms are, I believe, a grave and possibly imminent problem. At least some scientists believe that a storm of the magnitude of the largest one of the 1800′s will do a lot more than knock out a few satellites – they will also fry the transformers needed to run our electrical power grid. Transformers that normally can’t be replaced quicker than 3 years!! How’d you like to be without power for 3 years??
Somebody PLEASE write diaries about this. There was relevant legislation passed, near unanimously, by the House, to correct this, but the Senate punted.
The winter of 1859 and 1860 was particularly cold and snowy in the Great Basin, and was a great hardship to the Paiute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paiute_War
Earth’s Magnetic field is getting weaker but again if cosmic rays had this drastic an effect one would expect that the winter of 1859 and 1860 would not have been so cold in America.
Maybe the heat changes you would expect if your theory is right happened a year 2, 5, 10 years later?
If so explain exactly when your theory predicts more cosmic rays will effect the earth’s weather and make the planet hotter.
Then show when greater cosmic rays and or a weaker earth’s magnetic field resulted in our current global warming.
Agreed this needs more coverage plus it would create jobs doing nothing however would end the global economy and quite possibly modern civilization.
The Sun produces cosmic rays the other stars etc in the galaxy produce cosmic rays still more cosmic rays means cell phones should not be working.
And what will constitute them having done so in your mind, metamars? If not four pages (and one sentence), does it take 10? 20? 2,000?
You miss my point entirely, which is that you are unjustifiably attacking people with far more research-based insight than you and faulting them for not meeting some arbitrary work threshold YOU set – while excusing YOURSELF for not producing a “polished” diary.
Amateur or professional doesn’t matter. The issue is that if you’re trying to contribute something to the literature, your contribution better have some weight, meaning FACTS. The number of trees killed (or bandwidth used) to convey those facts is of no consequence, and your amateur status isn’t either. Reference sources work the same for professionals and amateurs alike. Your caveat that you “don’t want to take the time” to write a polished diary is just another way of saying you don’t want to put the work into proving your point, that we should just take your word for it that others have already done so.
So tell me again – exactly WHO is the Kool-Aid drinker here?
“Why do you think the Republicans haven’t brought Mann in to answer tough questions about his hockey stick?”
Because they don’t want to look stupider than they already do and they don’t operate out in the open. Why get your hands dirty when you can have the hired help harange people and fuck up their lives?
And are you seriously trying to make the argument that oil and energy companies aren’t part of Wallstreet’s protfolio? This country is involved in four or five wars over oil and gas.
Any logical mind would say it is a resource we should conserve and use wisely rather than burn up in our Hummers in the parking lot to keep the air-conditioner going while we wait outside of Wall-Mart before driving home 30 miles to a 3000 foot mcmansion we can’t afford to heat.
But hey, Dick Cheney says the ‘Mercan way of life is not up for negotiation, so let’s keep dying and killing people in the desert, polluting the planet, denying the change in climate has anything to do with our behavior, and persectuting people who point out the very, very likely probability it DOES.
The theory is that the GHGs are the cause. I believe there is NO OTHER SOURCE OF DATA that correlates so well.
The make GHGs the best theory we have as the cause of climate change. No competing theory (actually dogmas, unfounded irrational beliefs) have any supporting data.
I am arguing against Cosmic Rays being a factor in global warming or rather the main cause of it.
I don’t understand your comment.
Also, my comment was off. The magnetosphere doesn’t belong to the sun, it belongs to the earth (also some other planets), an is an effect of the interaction of the earth’s magnetic field with the solar wind.
How about they write a report even half as big as the books that have been written on ClimateGate?
I don’t think you have a point that would matter if it was accurate, which it’s not. My problem with the CO2 fetishists is their mafia-like behavior. The 5 page NSF report is a relatively minor concern to me, though you seem to have glommed onto it as something really important.
The mafia like behavior (to be clear, nobody’s implying physical violence. Rather, the analogy refers to their attacks on honest scientists’ and editors’ livelihoods) contradicts scientific ethics, which Smolin went into a length in The Trouble with Physics. If you are claiming that I have to have Smolin’s level of expertise in a scientific field, in order to point out their unethical behavior, I call baloney on 2 counts.
First, scientists themselves are poor, indeed, at recognizing their own tribalism.
Secondly, one exception would be scientists NOT in the field under consideration. These would be anthropoligists.
From “The Trouble with Physics”, p. 345
You’re making up crap, Anthony. I’ve already stolen too much time from my more personal, pressing needs.
You are, for precisely the reason I told you. Let’s take a trip down memory lane:
All BS’ing aside, do you agree with this, or not?
I have criticized Cap and Trade since always. It is not an energy plan, it is another financial gamble. Putting investment bankers in charge of present and future energy sources is what the fight is all about.
Your fetish meme is an insult.
You criticize real scientific theories. But you cannot explain to us your wacky “theories” from the Youtube. But I will give you credit for discovering that the Sun has a large effect on Earth’s climate.
Are you against replacing Fossil Fuels with Solar Energy?
By using thee term “ClimateGate” you lose any credibility that you may have had. Only AlexJones and Rush Limbaugh use those terms. You are presenting the Oil Company Fraud. You are defending polluters and you are lying about environmentalists and scientists.
How do you enjoy living in Shillsville?
Arguing over the cause is pointless, we need to focus on what we are going to do about it. And I don’t mean in terms of trying to stop or reverse it — I mean in terms of moving constructions away from the ocean and planning how we are going to deal with the decreased food supply from an increasingly acidic ocean.
Because like it or not, friends, it’s coming. The ocean doesn’t give a shit what you believe or don’t believe.
If the cause is not man, we won’t be able to change it.
If the cause IS man, we still won’t be able to change it because mankind hasn’t learned not to shit in its own food dish. We will not change.
We need to get started on this, neither Aliens nor God is going to come down and Deus Ex Machina us out of it.
Do you mean hot weather? Yesterday or day before I saw about a 10-minute piece on the News Hour about how hot it is in Texas, historically hot. Pretty interesting, actually.
Solar Wind is in part made of Cosmic rays from the sun and other galactic sources, light rays every type of radiation the sun puts out.
Proof that Cosmic Rays causes ice ages very well might be true but ok now I’m confused I thought you were complaining that the theory that Comic Rays were causing global warming was not getting into academic journals?
I have been trying to show you the type of questions and arguments academic journals would ask before they publish that theory.
Comic Rays causing ice ages really should be another diary or else everyone will get confused.
But if you write another diary and I’m around I can research that topic as well.
We should be talking about what we can do about Global warming I did mention turning sea water into fresh water as a long term solution and giving Texas Cattle government corn at cost to help us short term. I agree no more building near the coasts is necessary and a Great Idea.
However we should try and stop Global Warming unless we all want to move to Canada and even then we can’t feed the world with the reduced cropland lost to desert so either we do population control a one child policy world wide or we have wars over food.
I would prefer we all drive 40 MPG cars until we can make enough hybrids and electric cars for everyone. I would prefer we grow more forests to suck up the CO2 and provide shade to cool the planet.
Lets say Global Warming in not caused by CO2 America still can’t afford wars for oil.it makes more sense to spend trillions on green power and electric cars rather than trillions for oil wars.
Ah-h-h-h, since when have Republicans been concerned about looking stupid?
Are you seriously suggesting that Goldman Sach doesn’t know how to make money in both directions? Have you ever heard of selling short? Due to the unregulated wonders of hedge fund capitalism, it’s possible to make tons of highly leveraged money, in ways that the average investor can’ even understand. Indeed, as there have been spectacular failures of highly leveraged hedge funds, it’s likely that they don’t understand them, either.
When Bush was president, oil went up to over something like $130 per barrel. Word is that that had nothing to do with supply and demand.
What would Matt Taibbi say about your “coolness”?
Well, I’d say we have ourselves a little dilemma here, then. From Shaviv’s blog article The Oceans as Calorimeter
So, how good are the correlations derived from the climate models, really?
As for correlations with other factors, besides CO2, I don’t have numbers, don’t know if they exist, and don’t want to take the time to dig them up, if they do. That would be an advantage to have guys like shaviv post here (assuming he has time to field questions). They would likely know the answers, already.
I will say, though, that I’ve seen lots of graphs that show a pictorial correlation between solar factors and temperature, or temperature proxies.
If the fetish meme is an insult, I can still think of worse sins than hurling it against scientific mafiosos, who stifle the careers of honest scientists and editors, when they’re not actually getting them fired.
As for the peanut gallery of amateurs, well, some of them are completely nasty, and fact free. I specifically pointed to the crazy and/or nasty amateurs. Perhaps I should have been kinder to the crazy ones?
Once again, my disclaimer, which I posted at the very top of my diary:
Disclaimer: I’m not implying that every scientist who believes that human created CO2 is the main reason for the temperature increases of the 20th century is a fetishist. My targets are the scientist and science journal editor jerks who suppress competing scientific efforts. Also, my targets are laymen who behave like crazy and/or nasty sports fans, not rational and reasonably humble amateurs.
Nothing like having an informed commentator to bring me down to earth. Just kidding!
You left the NY Times out of your list. Funny, that.
E.g., here’s one NY Times article: ‘Climategate’ Scientist Admits ‘Awful E-Mails,’ but Peers Say IPCC Conclusions Remain Sound
Awful e-mails! That is a feature not bug for most people. Perhaps we could see your e-mails and perhaps there is one or two that are awful.
The NYT put Climategate in quotes because “Some People”, funded by Oil Companies are calling it that. We should actually investigate the AntiClimateGate of Exxon and BP.
Bjorn Lomborg has looked closely at this approach. He basically accepts the IPCC middling warming scenarios, as a starting point.
Much ado about, well, almost nothing.
Professor Shaviv used “ClimateGate”, but without the quotations. Does he lose credibility, thereby? Read the following before you reply, especially the bolded part.
(emphasis mine)
Of course. This implies some scandal, criminal activity. You may disagree with scientific conclusions. But to complain about the Global Warming Industry conspiring to lie about global heating as the globe heats, is “scientific misconduct”. Who could be more criminal than Oil Companies? They are a true mafia.
That would FALSE EQUIVALENCE, that is not equivalent at all.
Have any of the “scientists” you mentioned, actually done anything? I have never heard of them. It is so sad that the scientific establishment censors the revolutionary new theories.
Oh wait, it is not that sad. Anyone can publish any theory on the intertubes. Of course, they may have to learn LaTeX.
But it is so sad that
ClimateGate was a real scandal. The emails revealed a manipulation of the peer review process, not just people being mean.
When it comes to “soft” sciences (like climatology) the scientific consensus is often wrong. Add in factors like peer review manipulation self-selecting for certain views, and it becomes even more suspect. Accusing honest questioners of being shills/denialists/etc is both unfair and unwise in cases like these. There are other vested interests at play besides oil companies.
Shaviv appears to be pretty well published and cited (in actual scientific journals):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Shaviv+climate&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C43&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0
Oops. This was supposed to be @Synoia September 2nd, 2011 at 7:01 am
Please watch Shaviv’s presentation, that I mentioned in the Update. Starting at about 17:45, he gets into using the oceans as a calorimeter. Specifically, the thermal expansion of the oceans acts as a temperature proxy. At about 19:56, Shaviv shows you a graphs of solar flux and sea level change. You can see that they are in synch (i.e., there is your visual correlation). You certainly can’t show me CO2 data that matches this level of correlation with sea level.
metamars’ editorializing: (my commentary, not Shaviv’s lecture)
As the thermal capacity of the oceans is something like 33x the thermal capacity of the atmosphere, I’m thinking that the ocean’s sea level change is a far more reliable global temperature proxy than taking the actual temperature of air. Because, for one thing, temperature is an intrinsic property, so the very idea of a global temperature proxy is questionable. The thermal expansion of the oceans, that mirrors the solar cycle so closely, is a good (heat) energy proxy, and this is actually more significant, anyway.
In a nutshell: the oceans, which dominate the surface of the earth, gain and loose heat energy in a CLOSELY coupled/correlated cycle mirroring solar activity.
As Shaviv goes on to point out, the magnitude of the energy change cannot be explained by solar irradiance, alone. It is far too small. The magnitude is well matched, however, by calculating the effects of cosmic ray modulation, as an amplifying effect. See the graph at 20:16.
Uh, excuse me, but I’m not the one who made the big deal abou tit’s length metamars, YOU DID, and at the top of your “unpolished” post.
metamars, quoteing me:
You’re making up crap, Anthony. I’ve already stolen too much time from my more personal, pressing needs.
And there we are again, with YOU taking too much time from YOUR pressing needs.
If you’re not prepared to defend your words, Metamars, you shouldn’t write them. Noboby held you at gunpoint and told you to write thei diary; it was a choice YOU made, and now you’re upset that few here are buying it, and whiningthat you don’t have time to defend it.
My premise was and remains quite simple: With this diary, you demonstrate the very laziness you decry in others, but because YOU SAY SO, that’s okay.
As to your final questions, of course I don’t agree with it, for precisely the reason that my (now thrice) elicidated point makes: “By and large” is not a percentage, nor a proof, nor a number borne out by any sort of poll or scientific method. It is (yet again) metamars SAYING something is true, then claiming to be TOO BUSY to back it up.
But thanks for playing.
(yipes, sorry for the typos! totally forgot the proofreading step!)
Yet again, metamars, you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of punctuation in your attempt to escape criticism. As Frank correctly points out, “Climategate” was put in quotes by the NYT as a nod to rational people – who recognize it as a effort by Big Oil to make something out of jack shit.
Your conservative slip – and agenda – is increasingly showing.
Thanks athena1! That’s the funniest thing I’ve read today!
The top of my post, after the disclaimer, gives some idea of my motivation to write this diary. I made a much bigger deal out of it, in comments in the diary where I was slimed. The intention of THIS diary – which can be inferred from the title – is to teach about ugly tribalism. The reference to NSF’s puny 5 page report was mostly residual disgust at the absurdity of what was offered, vs. what was being claimed. Yes, it can also be counted as part of an argument against CO2 fetishists, but so what?
I’m amazed that you would defend it, anyway. Did you even look it over? Did you see any specifics, regarding the validity of Mann’s “cut and paste” techniques? Did you read my comments in the slimey diary, where I quoted from it? Viz.,
So, which is it, Mr. Noel-who-wants-to-make-a-big-deal-about-the-5-page-NSF-”report”-which-I-used-as-a-segue? If you put credence in their report, they’re telling you that they didn’t think an investigation was warranted. That’s all the more reason to document what lesser investigation they actually did. I mean, what’s the excuse? Lack of time and resources? But you think they documented everything that should have been documented, to make their claim convincing? Is this right?
You may not know this, but applied mathematicians don’t generally release their computer code to their journal audience. There’s a certain amount of trust involved. Publishing calculations underlying their algorithms is what’s normally considered sufficient.
In Mann’s case, though, his integrity is much in doubt, and a completely open investigation – details and all – is called for. NSF apparently disagrees. You may agree with NSF, but what do you know about scientific corruption and tribalism? From your comments, I think you know very little.
Since it’s the CO2 fetishists who make this disgustingly false claim, the burden of proof should actually be on them. I’ve never read or heard of any CO2 fetishist calling for an honest survey of climate scientists, in general. (I.e., including the dissenters, or so-called denialists). That’s kind of funny when you think about it. I mean, according to the fetishists, the fate of the entire earth is hanging in the balance. And those terrible “denialists” are jeopardizing that future. Shouldn’t they be the ones doing the research to back up their bogus claim?
But they’re not interested in such facts, and more than they are, generally, interested in debating the likes of Shaviv. Have you heard Al Gore call for such a debate? No, he just wants to say that “the science is settled”, which is a lie, and have you believe it.
I don’t have the means or resources to conduct such a survey. From the dissenter camp, I’ve heard that they are the ones who want climate scientists honestly surveyed. With all the money and power that the climate catastrophists have at their disposal, if they wanted such facts ascertained on a firm, statistical basis, it would have happened.
They do not.
While the point of this diary was mostly about pathological science, on the one hand, and pointing people in an alternative direction, on the other, I did get into the scientific evidence for cosmic ray modulation, in the comments. See my replies at 8:34 and 12:18.
Oh, yeah, another point. If you watch Shaviv’s presentation that I link to in the update, you will see at 2:55 a slide that has a bullet point “Part of the 20th century warming is human, part is solar”. So, like it or not, the lying talking point about so-called “climate denialists” doesn’t apply to Shaviv. I’ve heard a number of so-called “climate denialists” interviewed or in debates, and with 2 exceptions, nobody ever denied a human factor in global temperature increase, via CO2 production.
Furthermore, in a debate between Lord Monckton and Lambert, Lambert (the CAGW proponent) starts out by saying that the debate boils down to climate sensitivity. See this link, starting at 2:44. He means, of course (given the debate) climate sensitivy wrt human generated CO2.
See what happens when you have a real debate, Anthony? Neither Monckton nor Lambert are climate scientists, but are very knowledgeable amateurs. Even so, their debates are substantive, and it’s well understood what the basic debate is even about! You have questions in your mind about so-called denialists, because you haven’t heard them make their case. What you’ve heard are talking points, perhaps from dishonest propagandists like the “Climate Croc of the Week” guy.
It’s not the so-called denialists who are avoiding debates. And as the evidence for solar/cosmic causation continues coming in, and the IPCC models’ deficiencies get further elaborated, I expect even more ducking of debates. A lot of careers and Wall Street cash depend on keeping the game going. Honest debates won’t help with that, they really won’t.
@Anthony Noel September 2nd, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Methinks you’re projecting your lefty mindset into the NY Times. And wasn’t the NY Times guilty of under reporting the massive demonstrations in NYC, against the Iraq invasion? If you insist in projecting your lefty mindset into the NY Times, but not have it appear that way, shouldn’t you make a case for the NY Times being lefty? Good luck with that!
And anyway, who cares what the NY Times motivation was? Shaviv knows much more about global warming than their typical editors or writers ever will, but doesn’t used quotation marks.
You again focus on things of lesser importance. I guess that’s your way of avoiding having your belief system challenged. As such, you would make a lousy scientist, anytime your scientific endeavors conflicted with your political passions.
PW is way past cool!
However that is a clever trick. You invoke Taibbi to defend yourself.
metamars – what is your science background?
“Accusing honest questioners of being shills/denialists/etc is both unfair and unwise in cases like these.”
Thank you for saying this. You are so right. Anyone who shows even a healthy skepticism seems to get pounced upon using Alinsky’s Rule # 5.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about solar activity, especially about sun spots and their effect on climate change. Here are excerpts from one of the articles I read.
“But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. “This is solar behaviour we haven’t seen in living memory,” says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.”
“Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading, UK, may already have identified one response – the unusually frigid European winter of 2009/10. He has studied records covering data stretching back to 1650, and found that severe European winters are much more likely during periods of low solar activity (New Scientist, 17 April, p 6). This fits an emerging picture of solar activity giving rise to a small change in the global climate overall, yet large regional effects.
Another example is the Maunder minimum, the period from 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots virtually disappeared and solar activity plummeted. If a similar spell of solar inactivity were to begin now and continue until 2100, it would mitigate any temperature rise through global warming by 0.3 °C on average, according to calculations by Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. However, something amplified the impact of the Maunder minimum on northern Europe, ushering in a period known as the Little Ice Age, when colder than average winters became more prevalent and the average temperature in Europe appeared to drop by between 1 and 2 °C.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640.800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun.html?full=true
I’ve always found it prudent to study, in-depth, all sides of an argument.
B.A. Physics (“professional option”) and Math
most of an M.S. coursework in Applied Mathematics
Correlation is not Causation.
Solar irradiation multiplied by n * cosmic radiation -> heat gained.
Iffy at best. Not enough variables of the planets climate in that equation. Certainly no feedback loops.
Not saying they are not factors, I’m saying they are not the only factors. As we eventually found out, both Newton & Huygens theories of light became correct.
The Climate Model is very complex, with all interaction of all variables not fully understood, even if we have a definition of the complete set of variables (which is doubtful).
The temperature historically is not measured by taking air temperature, but by looking a fossil data. That give the temperature series, the “hockey stick”.
The Oceans are a good calorimeter, granted.
ahh, thank you.
You’re welcome.
Well said
I was amazed that the original post did not realize how many of us have followed the real research – and know how solid man made global warming is. The poor fellow found the fact of climate cycles and went off the deep end.
Someone should get him to the papers on the 10,000 years in the ice bore and the fact we are now going outside of the range of those cycles.
The deniers get good funding from the fossil fuel folks and hey, everyone needs to make a living. :-) And Michael Crichton. undergrad in biological anthropology and MD who believes disease is all in the mind discussing science is a bit like the GOP’s Ryan discussing economics – both had training but did not learn a great deal.
How is unethical, underground manipulation of the peer review process not genuinely scandalous?
Viewed the film again. It tells a compelling tale, but ignore one person from the British Met Office who dismisses the cloud physics emphatically.
That requires research.
It also make the leap to conclusion from actions too quickly, in many places, without reviewing the connecting steps, and I distrust that for of storytelling, as the are many uncertainties in the chain from result to cause.
I probably know the Met Offer Scientist, or know someone who knows him. I’ll call him.
It’s well done. Interview many people around the globe and visits at least three countries. Who paid for that?
If there is an ax to grind, then it will be revealed in the money trail. Have any links to the money for the film?
Its presentation is devastating the the carbon dioxide theory. Complete transparency is required at this stage due to the complete politicization of the subject (and the money involved in dismissing the carbon dioxide theory).
I’m also in Socal. I will call the professor featured in the film at UCLA.
I deal with fraud on a daily basis in my business, and I know I’m lied to in every meeting with people, I just have to find the lies. Due diligence is required at ever step.
No idea, but have at it. I mean this quite seriously, and have said so, before. Still, though, to be fair, you will hopefully check out the money trail on the global warmist side.
I suggest you also check out a book on so-called scientist “global warming denialists”, which rhymes with “Holocaust denialists”. The book is The Deniers. That link will show that the book had some defects, e.g., with Shaviv, that I mentioned a few times in this diary.
Anyway, though I haven’t read the book, it looks very useful for opening the eyes of laymen who have been essentially brainwashed into believing the CO2 fetishist framing. From The Deniers
(emphasis mine)
This seems quite clear:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm
There is no measured downward trend in cosmic ray flux in the graphs (reports) shown that is the inverse of the increase in temperatures.
Frorm the citation two posts above:
GCR Cloud Seeding
Numerous studies have investigated the effectiveness of GCRs in cloud formation. Kazil et al. (2006) found:
“the variation of ionization by galactic cosmic rays over the decadal solar cycle does not entail a response…that would explain observed variations in global cloud cover”
Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found:
“we estimate that less than 23%, at the 95% confidence level, of the 11-year cycle changes in the globally averaged cloud cover observed in solar cycle 22 is due to the change in the rate of ionization from the solar modulation of cosmic rays.”
Kristjansson et al. (2008) found:
“no statistically significant correlations were found between any of the four cloud parameters and GCR”
Calogovic et al. (2010) found:
“no response of global cloud cover to Forbush decreases at any altitude and latitude.”
Kulmala et al. (2010) also found
“galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation events, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well.”
@Synoia September 3rd, 2011 at 10:41 am
You are getting into the physics deeper than I wanted to, though I commend you for having such an interest. Automatically, that has made your posts more substantive than most of the other commentators.
Nigel Calder has on article on the attempts to falsify Svensmark, et.al., using Forbush events, in Falsification tests of climate theories – Do clouds disappear when cosmic rays get weaker? or “Don’t you worry, my dear, we’ve seen no tigers”. He mentions work by Wolfendale, Kniveton, and Calogovic. I’ve not studied the article carefully, but I get the gist of it. Please check out the link, as it has graphs that make things clearer.
The upshot is that, to put it kindly, the attempts at falsification were so poorly done, that they failed at falsification. To be a little less kind, perhaps, Calder has wondered out loud whether Svensmark’s challengers “don’t want to understand the physics, or to see the Forbush effects on clouds, because Mother Nature is not being politically correct”
From the article, the strongest rebuttal:
ETA: Svensmark found some of his critics works laughable. From the article: “At the risk of discourtesy to the distinguished authors, I can report that Svensmark laughed when he read the paper from Arnold’s group.”
@Synoia
Re: the money trail:
I posted at wattsupwiththat.com about an article back in April which made claims about anti CAGW scientists called Analysing the ‘900 papers supporting climate scepticism’: 9 out of top 10 authors linked to ExxonMobil
Here was an answer by somebody in the community:
If you have the time, energy, and interest to double check the rebuttal, by all means, feel free.
Let’s focus on the set of graphs at the link I posed above.
If Global Warming is caused by absence of cosmic rays, even the specific ones you mention, muons. Where are the muon flux curves published?
This is incorrect in part: “Neutrons are uncharged. They don’t ionize the air or affect the clouds.” Any highly energetic particle will ionize air by collision. And cosmic rays are clearly highly energized.
Given the circumstances in cosmic ray production, do Neutrons differ in the proportion to muons in some way, making NM measurements of cosmic ray flux invalid for muons? Hard to understand why.
Muons, being charged, are most certainly affected by the earth’s magnetic field. Fleming’s Law.
Let’s focus on the facts that need proving: The assertion that Cloud Forming Cosmic Ray (asserted to be muons) flux densities are less than they were 50 years ago. Please post a link to those peer-reviewed measurements.
All the rest is just noise.
Please do not talk down to me. You have no idea of my background, nor my understanding of these issues.
Need more data on this:
“he added small diamonds linked by the red line are computations of relative changes in lower air ionization at various latitudes.”
What were those computations? Published anywhere? Modification a Lambert’s cosine law? Anyone can draw lines on a piece of paper.
On reading the muon flux densities are a function of:
1. Comsic ray flux density (wikipedia states most cosmic rays are protons).
2. Depth of atmosphere transversed by cosmic ray (probability of collision)
There still is no variation shown in the NM flux densities which correspond to the global warming hockey stick curve.
You’ve asked some interesting questions, which I mostly don’t know the answer to. I’d appreciate it if you found the answers, yourself, and posted them in a new diary.
I took a little time to read up on cosmic rays and muons. About the only thing I remembered of muons is the famous quip about “Who ordered that?”, and that it has the same charge as the electron, but a different mass. (We may now have the answer. God ordered the muon, so that we would have climate change on the earth! :-) )
From wikipedia, “cosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space”… “About 89% of cosmic rays are simple protons or hydrogen nuclei, 10% are helium nuclei or alpha particles, and 1% are the nuclei of heavier elements. These nuclei constitute 99% of the cosmic rays. Solitary electrons (much like beta particles, although their ultimate source is unknown) constitute much of the remaining 1%.”
So, nowhere does it even mention neutrons! So, I’ll guess that the neutrons detected were of cosmic rays that were originally in helium nuclei and/or their proportion is so tiny, that the wikipedia author didn’t think it worth mentioning, explicitly. See the next quote, re: “occasional neutrons”, which supports the latter interpretation.
From this source, we read that
So, to your question, “Given the circumstances in cosmic ray production, do Neutrons differ in the proportion to muons in some way, making NM measurements of cosmic ray flux invalid for muons? Hard to understand why.”
I can suggest 2 possible answers. Note well that I’m just reporting to you my guesses based on 30 minutes of google-vestigation. If you seriously want to know the answers, you need to seek them out. Of course, it’d make good sense to ask Svensmark and/or Nigel Calder, correct?
My first guess is that the neutron flux from cosmic rays varies greatly compared to the non-neutron components. And my second guess is that even if the neutron component may vary just a “little”, but you want to estimate the proportionalities between neutron and non-neutron components at sea level, you still are in a near hopeless situation to calculate the non-neutron fluxes, partly because of the ratios involved, and partly because the different ionizing potentials of the neutral neutrons vs. charged cosmic ray particles.
E.g., to make up numbers, let’s say that .1% of cosmic ray particles in the upper atmosphere are neutrons, and that 99% survive to sea level, at time t0. At time to + 1 minute, your readings at sea level of neutrons reflected an incident concentration of .125%., or 25% more. I take this to be a “little”, natural variation.
Question: will your number of muons at sea level have increased by 25%?
Answer: Absolutely not. (I’m assuming the remaining species are almost in the same concentrations as those in the t0 measurement. So, this plausible assumption rules out a 25% increase in muon production, by itself.)
================================
Regarding the solar wind, what I think is your expectation for the neutron component to be a very accurate measure of the charged particle components, appears to be highly accurate. I say that because of Figure 5 on this page There’s an obvious inverse-correlation between sunspots and neutron detection.
================================
Well, looks like another source of neutrons at ground level is muon capture by hydrogen I’d guess that that’s a far more accurate measure of muon products from cosmic rays. The muons only live 2.2 micro-seconds; it’s not like they can hang around and accumulate. However, I still have no idea about the relationship between such neutrons and neutrons that are “primary” incident components of cosmic rays.
Yet another complication….
As muons are produced in quantities 2 orders of magnitude greater than neutrons, and as they are easy to detect, why would any scientist prefer trying to falsify Svensmark via neutrons, when neutron measurements give very different experimental results? The burden of proof to show that neutrons are a good proxy for muons should be on the scientists who use neutrons – do we at least agree on that much? I don’t know if Svensmarks’ challengers even attempted to make an argument as to why neutrons are a more intelligent parameter to study, but given the fact that Svensmark laughed at them, I have a feeling they did not.
Figure 3, in a research paper called Cosmc Ray Neutrons Near the Earth, shows energy spectra for neutrons at 45 feet and 1175 feet. The shapes are pretty much the same.
Not sure what to make of this. Looking at the peaks, it looks like the counts drop by about a factor of 2 every 1130 feet. So, neutrons either incident or created high in the atmosphere don’t make it to the ground. I see no reason why their decay rate should shadow muons, or have some easily calculatable relationship. Nor why their ionizing action would shadow that of muons, that are charged particles.
IOW, I don’t see how they could serve as any sort of good proxy for muons produced by cosmic rays.
The sunspot relation ship is another story, though, since the sunspot activity that is measured is not affected via what happens after charged solar wind particles pass through the atmosphere. As long as the decay of solar neutrons, passing through the atmosphere, is a simple function of the amount of solar neutrons that reached the upper atmosphere, we should still be able to get a handle on the incident flux by measurements on the surface of the earth. Again, I’m not sure, but Figure 3 seems to imply so much.
If you tried to measure what happens to charged solar wind particles, or their byproducts, at ground level, by comparisons with solar neutrons, I expect you’d run into the same, prohibitive complications.
Consequently, when Nigel Calder says, ” Neutrons are very handy for showing changes in cosmic ray intensities, whether in a Forbush decrease or during a solar cycle.”, I think he means in the sense of a gross detection method. (I.e., “Are we having a Forbush event, yes or no?”) Looks like the precise measurements of Forbush events involve spectroscopy of one sort or another, not neutron measurements.