63. CLIMATE CHANGE: Another truth about climate change

From The Sunday Times February 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist,
says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the
science of global warming is settled, they show a
regrettable ignorance about how science works. We
were treated to another dose of it recently when
the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change issued the Summary for
Policymakers that puts the political spin on an
unfinished scientific dossier on climate change
due for publication in a few months’ time. They
declared that most of the rise in temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse
gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning
that the experts who made the judgment felt 90%
sure about it. Older readers may recall a press
conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John
Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said
he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved
controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he
was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in
any theory is a wide open breach for any
latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through
with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became
politicised in favour of one particular
hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the
study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a
result, the rebellious spirits essential for
innovative and trustworthy science are greeted
with impediments to their research careers. And
while the media usually find mavericks at least
entertaining, in this case they often imagine
that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made
global warming must be in the pay of the oil
companies. As a result, some key discoveries in
climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also
ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while
contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s
billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to
unusual frost, are relegated to the business
pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in
spring provides colourful evidence for a recent
warming of the northern lands. But did anyone
tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie
penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their
spring nesting sites around nine days later than
they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has
diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the
Southern Ocean.




Background

*
‘Blame

cosmic rays for warming up the planet’
*
No
excuse for soft climate change laws
*
Jeremy

Clarkson: Cornered by the green lynch mob




Related Internet Links

*
New
Scientist on Climate Change

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re
forking out those extra taxes for climate change,
is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It
makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is
driving global warming. While you’re at it, you
might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you
a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming
has stopped. The best measurements of global air
temperatures come from American weather
satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by
the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the
sun drives climate changes more emphatically than
greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more
active during the 20th century, the sun now
stands at a high but roughly level state of
activity. Solar physicists warn of possible
global cooling, should the sun revert to the
lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid
support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century
episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest
in a long string of similar events produced by a
hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in
Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders
prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes
come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in
2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world
was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with
such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm
and cold periods, linked to solar activity and
going on long before human industry was a
possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007
Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in
half a very small contribution by the sun to
climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the
self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with
inconvenient discoveries about how the solar
variations control the climate. The sun’s
brightness may change too little to account for
the big swings in the climate. But more than 10
years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in
Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite
data that cloudiness varies according to how many
atomic particles are coming in from exploded
stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s
magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays,
and its intensification during the 20th century
meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a
warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice
Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more
cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea ­ apart
from its being politically incorrect ­ was that
meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be
involved in cloud formation. After long delays in
scraping together the funds for an experiment,
Svensmark and his small team at the Danish
National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able
to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays
coming through the ceiling stitched together
droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are
the building blocks for cloud condensation. But
journal after journal declined to publish their
report; the discovery finally appeared in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book
about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in
1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside
track for reporting his struggles and successes
since then. The outcome is a second book, The
Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and
published next week by Icon books. We are not
exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A
new theory of climate change”.

Where does all that leave the impact of
greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be
a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can
really say until the implications of the new
theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where
those contradictory temperature trends are
directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario,
because the snow there is whiter than the
cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of
Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than
arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even
control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

The Chilling Stars is published by Icon. It is
available for £9.89 including postage from The
Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585

* Have your say
* Have your say

I have myself been arguing against allowing the
climate change threat to be used by peddlers
selling us their magical potions but, having said
that, the truth is that the costs of doing
something about the climate change and being
wrong, seem much lower than the costs of ignoring
it and having thereafter the climate change threat to turn out true.

Per Kurowski, Bethesda, Maryland/USA

The climate change theory is repeated frequently
because it diverts the attension of evryyone from
real problems facing the world. This is also a
novel method to pile on new taxes on already overtaxed population.

Abdul Basit, Newcastle, U.K

I think the title says it all - "An experiment
that hints we are wrong on climate change". Is
this 'hint' a 90% probability or something less?

Would Mr Calder decline to insure his house and
contents because there is a less than 100%
probability of them suffering damage or loss in a
particular year? I think not. Why doesn't he
apply the same common sense to the probabilities
used by scientists on climate change?

If he's so confident we don't need to modify our
energy-intensive behaviour, here's a challenge.
As a writer, perhaps he can draft a convincing
letter to his descendants, explaining why we have
left them so little oil and gas and why they are
having to deal with floods, heat waves, food shortages and climate
migrants.