Opinion: Putting the climate-change debate to rest
By Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global warming, it’s getting awfully cold out there.
The latest icy blast of reality comes from an eminent scientist whom the climate-change skeptics once lauded as one of their own. Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, used to dismiss alarmist climate research as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead, the record set him straight.
“Global warming is real,” Muller wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.
Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the neo-Luddites who are turning the GOP into the anti-science party should pay attention.
“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote. “Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.”
In other words, the deniers’ claims about the alleged sloppiness or fraudulence of climate science are wrong. Muller’s team, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, rigorously explored the specific objections raised by skeptics — and found them groundless.
Muller and his fellow researchers examined an enormous data set of observed temperatures from monitoring stations around the world and concluded that the average land temperature has risen 1 degree Celsius — or about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — since the mid-1950s.
It’s laughable that this is even a story.
Climate change skeptics are not only stubbornly ignorant, they are plainly biased by……well, their fuzzy little opinions. I’ve personally had it with these people, as though their doubts have EVER had ANY clout.
The only real-person GOP candidate up there is Jon Huntsman. He said it best. Is the GOP going to be the anti-science party?
Yes they are-
GOP supporters are good with anti-science…until their doctor tells them to take this drug or that, then, well, science IS to be trusted.
Oh but they can cling to their ant-Socialist position, …well, until their Social Security check comes in the mail
But ultimately it’s personal responsibility!.. then the disability check comes.
The GOP doesn’t have a philosophy anymore, they have fuzzy feelings that they contradict at every turn. Do as I say, not as I do….garbage.
They all need their own planet where they can convince each other of these ridiculous ideas, then go about burning up , shooting up, cashing up behind each other’s backs on their own time, on their own planet.
Our planet is worth more than their petty ‘philosophies’.
Mr. Robinson, an extreme right winger, the University of California at Berkeley, another extreme right wing organization, and Dr. Muller, another right wing extremist agree we are about to fry. These right wing wackos are making big money off the hysteria they created and are so enjoying their notariaty. And their right wing media like the New York Times and the Washington Post do propagandize exactly like their masters tell them.
When will the nice guy lefties be able to get the truth out that an ice age is upon us. Unfortunately they were banished from main stream media by the cutthroats at right wing central.
Time is very short to start the needed government regulations to prevent a world wide catastrophe. Please help before it is too late.
This article is reporting?
The tone of the article is bombastic, insulting and not dealing with science at all.
No one ever said that the climate does not change, that is intuitive, where does that point come from?
The other parts are, as Atomic put it above, garbage.
I am surprised really, most of what i have read here in the past was at least reasonably balanced.
This is insultingly biased and fundamentally ignorant.
Mob thinking. Not logic.
The choice of this article for reprint is very questionable, is the editor just trying to stir up a fight?
Well said Atomic!
We all should consider that sometime tomorrow the world population will hit 7 billion persons. That’s up about 2 billion in the last 25 years.
If the Chinese hadn’t instituted their “socialist” law about 28 years ago restricting families to one child we would probably have another billion persons about now and China would not be the economic juggernaut they are now.
We have enough people on this earth now. We need to work on making earth, our country, our towns, better places to live with better education and continuing education for our citizens as jobs become obsolete.
We need to tax gas about $2 spread out over 3 years and use the money for infrastructure to create jobs and make our country a better place to live. More expensive gas will help people make the decision to drive a “greener” car.
‘…last week in The Wall Street Journal.’
WSJ is not a scientific publication. To sight it in a scientific argument is irresponsible.
The Washington Post should never have considered running this article in the first place. They should have better journalistic standards
Sheep will believe this type of stuff reprinting it for SLT will just hurt the many dim minded people that live there.
The Tahoe News has suffered journalistically by reprinting it.
From both a journalistic and scientific point of view this is a terrible article, how did it get into Lake Tahoe News?
You censor too, what has become of you?
Down the brain drain with the rest of the south shore?
wow? no puns intended, but obvioulsy a hot button issue for folks!
“When will the nice guy lefties be able to get the truth out that an ice age is upon us”
-Turnip truck
Please provide sources for that statement. My BS meter is off the charts right now. I don’t think you have one single credible source to back up that statement.
The point of this article should to encourage you to read the scientific publication yourself.
As Mr. Robinson’s story is actually about a FORMER climate change skeptic, is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist (known for the depth of their research) and is a respected (Leftist)commentator on regular basis on MSNBC, I wonder how so many respondents to this story ended up implying otherwise ?
Hopefully, if & when we get closer to 7 billion people, somehow the tide of actual ignorance will move closer to “getting it”, so Kae can get a better and more informative dialogue than with these folks . . .
By the way, the UN population estimates have now been “upgraded” from 9 billion to 10.5 by the middle of the century. . .
So, when are we going to stop categorizing everything as either Left or Right, as the above numbers, coupled with the subject matter, should concern every single person on the planet. . . which political side you choose is of course increasingly irrelevant to everything except our own demise. . .
Get it ??
If Mr. Robinson wants to make a serious scientific point, he needs write his stories with a different tone! That is not the type of column that promotes serious thought.
But just as the Earth has come and gone from Ice Ages before there was ever a human foot print, climate will change over time. Agreed! Is human activity currently causing a warming of the planet? Sorry, but I and others, don’t take that as a fact!
Yet the bigger question is, if it is a fact what can or should be done? Yes, we as a country are a better place with higher pollution standards. For instance who likes/d seeing vehicles belch filth into the sky?
But if this is truly a planetary problem, what can we do OR ENFORCE, to get the entire planet to go along with some sort of cohesive solution? If Chinese or Indian factories fail to adhere to any standards, who’s going to march into their countries and shut the factories down?!
The implication of the article as I understand it is that climate changed is man made…
Where is the SCIENCE.
So, the earth warmed. Maybe – the calibration of 1950s instruments are reasonably suspect, but if it did. SO ?
Climate change happens.
Man can’t even predict the weather – East coast was hit with a storm YESTERDAY that was far worse than predicted YESTERDAY morning.
Yet uninformed people can make the claim that first – Man changes the weather and second some scientists could even control it properly.
It’s a stupid argument with no SCIENCE to back it up.
To me the intellectual ineptitude of the ‘Man Made Global Warming’ community now also known as ‘Climate Change’ is staggering.
The USA prowess on the world stage is crumbling and if you wonder why you need not look much further than the ‘mob’ mentality of this group. It is prolific in those educated in California public schools. It is a scary education in how group think works.
So much has gone wrong in California in the past few decades and so few seem to get it.
A scary Halloween season for sure.
I wonder if Richard Muller, the physicist, would be willing to put his “findings” on the line in a debate with Dr. Richard Lindzen, the world-renowned meteorologist from MIT. Enough with the tree-huggers and their pseudo-scientific political yes-men (always wanting to secure a grant from NSF!). The global warming lobby has done NOTHING to lift it to a level of dignified debate from their half-baked, tree-hugging, anti-developmental ways. This is how we got the hockey stick curve, the runaway global circulation climate computer models that cannot be substantiated with real world measurements in the troposphere, climategate, and now NASA’s new data showing DROPPING sea level. And all the while it seems that Obama’s corrupt EPA cannot stop stroking them in their obsessive and false claims! The USEPA never worked hard enough to address the real problematic Superfund sites in meaningful and efficient ways in the past, and those who seek to promulgate in favor of the next governmental would-be scam of carbon-credit trafficking should be suspect from the get-go. There are enough credible environmental concerns which in my estimate the EPA has been historically and grossly negligent on, and I don’t trust their “expertise” in this discussion either. The global warming/climate change/flim-flam lobby is discredited and no longer relevent in any true discussion about the environment. Just kick them out of Washington DC already and take away anything sharp from them!
‘Is human activity currently causing a warming of the planet? Sorry, but I and others, don’t take that as a fact!’
Then present your data and research
‘Where is the SCIENCE.’
Lazy. Go read the paper this article is about…. and all of the sources that were evaluated in it.
‘Yet uninformed people can make the claim that first – Man changes the weather and second some scientists could even control it properly.’
What? Who said that?
‘To me the intellectual ineptitude of the ‘Man Made Global Warming’ community now also known as ‘Climate Change’ is staggering.’
That is the most ironic statement, coming from a skeptic that discusses the people surrounding the issue and not the issue its self. Show us some of the research that goes against the current understanding of climate change.
Intellectual ineptitude…
How many of you skeptics out there can define climate? How many of you can distinguish between weather and climate?
‘Uhh it was cold last year, so much for global warming…’ You hear that a lot from skeptics.
How many ‘weathers’ does it take to make a ‘climate’?
Present your data and research! Don’t say read this or that or take a test. Present your data and research here on this blog site!
Robot, (good name)
You miss the obvious very well. Two GLARING examples in your post.
Where is the science that says the change in climate is man made?
Where is it? Point it out,… you can’t – you can just call others that don’t buy the silly dribble “lazy”. AN obnoxious tactic.
Two, what do you think the premise is for the whole anti-oil and Anti-carbon fuel deal is all about? Climate Control, dah… (and more taxes too) You should think it through before you spout off.
I agree with X Californian, The best approach at this point is to leave the leftist state of California to people like you and let it collapse.
For me, after that perhaps I’ll come back and pick up the pieces for pennies.
FYI – I support continued climate research 100 percent. RESEARCH and SCIENCE. In fact I have a degree in Plant Science and use to respect most of those in the field.
From personal observations over the years I am happy to see that it is a lot cleaner in the USA today than it was 25 years ago.
China, Russia not so good.
You are really going to tell us that there is no published papers that show a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature?
Or are you trying to make the argument that ‘we can’t know with 100%’ certainty. I think that is what you are getting at. Not falling for it. There are dozens of papers linking co2 from fossil fuels to increases of c02 in the atmosphere, to increases in global temperature….
Surprise me. For once link up some research….
Labeling the science as being a front for an anti-carbon conspiracy is ridiculous. The data came first…. data could show something completely different, but it does not. The more data that is collected, the more corroboration there is.
My favorite data set is from the US Navy’s submarines. They breached arctic sea ice regularly and recorded the location and thickness. Decades worth of data, for military purposes. And the trend is very clear, it is getting thinner.
Parker is one of those ‘i dont know the difference between weather and climate’ types. Pretty funny stuff.
So put up guys. Link us up to some research that challenges the current understanding of climate change.
I always ask, and no one ever delivers.
This is a matter of science, if you want to talk abut it, you need sources.
Google Scholar. Is this the first you have heard of it?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=anthropogenic+climate+change&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on
So tell me, what kind of trap were you trying to set?
Since you’re still playing your take a test and refer to something else game, and refuse to ever come up with evidence to support your view Robot, let me quote a PhD. in Astrophysics from Harvard Univ.-
Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics:”Most of the increase in the air’s concentration of greenhouse gases from human activities–over 80 percent–occurred after the 1940s. That means that the strong early 20th century warming must be largely, if not entirely, natural.” “The coincident changes in the sun’s changing energy output and temperature records on earth tend to argue that the sun has driven a major portion of the 20th century temperature change.” “The recent warming trend in the surface temperature record cannot be caused by the increase of human-made greenhouse gases in the air.”
Again, that’s not a commentator, that’s a PhD. From Harvard yet! The funny stuff is how those in the media and academia try to ram the Global Warming/Climate Change/Man is Causing It stuff as though it’s unquestioned fact down the public’s throat. Funnier yet, is how some people are a Robot, and buy into it!!
Now I could quote other scientists, but I’m sure so can the Global Warming crowd! Moral of the story is that’s a debatable point! If people want to continue to sing the, “it’s an unquestioned fact!” without backing it up so be it!
As I originally asked, even if it is an unquestioned fact, (which it’s not!) What’s the plan to get the whole globe behind a unified program?
Eugene is a global warming hoax denier. Science is provable and repeatable. “Global warming” or “climate change” is neither.
I think by and large most people support a clean and respectful treatment of our ecology. That is evidenced by how we continue to develop clean technology for our energy needs. Including cleaner use of carbon based fuels.
The challenge in these discussions is dealing with faux intellectuals using faux science to support false proof.
There is no value in arguing with faux intellectuals. The limits of intellect are for some, … limited.
That is a start Parker… I would like to see the paper, which I assume is published. In a peer reviewed journal.
That is how science works.
Because there is a lot of evidence against what they say. This is just a quick summary.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Look at that data…. it goes against everything they say.
The fact that you did not provide any link to your source, and their published science, is highly suspect. No data, no analysis, no science.
I am going to go out on a limb here… and guess that your quote is not from a publication. And that you can’t provide a link to the source that contains data anlysis.
Do you now know that one year of weather observation, or 5 years for that matter, is insufficient evidence to judge climate?
‘How many weather are in a climate’ is not a silly test. It is a question that reveals if you have a basic understanding of the subject. Which is climate. And if you can even define it before you say something silly like ‘well last year was really cold, there is no global warming’
Eco Tahoe….. who exactly has the faux science?
Is it the people who can’t back up anything they say with research, only cherry picked data?
Oh and this gets even better. Parker I just looked up your source, Sallie Baliunas. Another ‘scientist’ that takes money from the fossil fuel lobby.
’11 June, 2003
Wrote, with Willie Soon, a paper which collated data from a number of scientific papers which came to the conclusion that the climate hasn’t changed in the last 2000 years. The American Petrolem Institute partially funded the paper. The paper was later refuted by a panel of 13 scientists, the authors of the papers Baliunas and Soon cited. Several editors of “Climate Research”, the journal which published the paper, later resigned in protest at a flawed peer review process which allowed the publication.
Source: Jeff Nesmith, Cox News’
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=3
And more information about the people who pay her (Exxon-Mobile)
‘Funnier yet, is how some people are a Robot, and buy into it!!’
Your sources main paper that was published, was so poor that numerous scientists resigned over its publication because the science was so poor that they did not want to be remotely associated with it. Your source also later went on to acknowledge that the data they did not take into consideration disproved their paper and acknowledged the warming trend….
Wow. This is hilarious.
So now that we sunk that ship…. what else do you have?
The second link I alluded to:
http://www.desmogblog.com/sallie-baliunas
Burn.
Oh and it just gets worse for you…
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Sallie-Baliunas.html
‘James McCarthy, a Harvard climate scientist says:
“It was sham science,” … “It’s almost laughable, except that this study was held up by the administration as a definitive refutation of the temperature record.”
“Serious scientists will tell you over and over again that this was a deeply flawed study that should never have been published,”
“Scientifically this study was considered not even worthy of a response. But because it was used politically, to justify policy changes in the administration, people in my field felt they had to speak out.”
Here’s some more fuel for the fire:
“The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/26/lawrence-solomon-science-now-settled/
Poor Conservation Robot-If you want to discredit someone cause of the funding source, then just about all scientists would be discredited!! This story originated because a writer for the Washington Post, a liberal paper and a big supporter of the current Pres., who backs the whole Global Warming/Man Causes It, is a fact thing, published a column of Journalist, Eugene Robinson who unabashedly has the same biases! Eugene Robinson writes about someone who has switched his views, but that someone works for a renowned liberal University that gets its funding, so then does the professor, from the State of CA. You want funding from the State of CA and its Democratic Leg. & Gov? Gee, I bet you now better buy into the whole Global Warming thing!
Now Robot, that’s if you want to go into questioning the integrity of everyone’s research! You question Ms. Baliunas’ research, as I said, read very carefully,- There are others! As there are others who the Global Warming crowd could use. But Ms. Baliunas is still head of the Harvard/Smithsonian Center isn’t she? If she did something that liked scientific integrity wouldn’t they remove her? Are you head of a renowned institute? An Astrophysics Phd?
But as I stated, and this is the point if you’d read-There are are others if I chose to fill this blog up with them! It’s a debatable point! You don’t think it is then here’s the real point-What’s your plan to deal with it!! And then how are you going to get the World to go along??
Robot is a huge supporter of government research and government programs. It’s where his paychecks come from. Think there might be a little bias there?
I find it ironic that you morons that hate california and lake tahoe so much keep putting your nose in to all the issues discussed here. Obviously you have nothing better to do than write dribble that means nothing in the big world
“Ignorance is bliss, until & unless one is surrounded by it. . .”
We love our Country. And we’re trying to protect it from people who think it’s greedy to keep what you’ve worked for, but, oddly, not greedy to DEMAND that those people pay for THEIR wants.
Bats last,
Again your comprehension is outa whack,
I love California and Lake Tahoe, it’s the liberals and socialist that are destroying it that I have a problem with.
Dogwoman,
You state your points of view very well.
You are like a breath of fresh mountain air.
Why, THANK YOU, Public Works TV. I love reading your posts too. And I like your middle name best.
Keep plugging.
Parker did you read what her peers had to say about her research? It was so bad that people resigned from the journal.
This never ceases to amaze me. Skeptics and their ‘scientists’ are the ones who are starting their research with a bias. This is proven over and over. Look at the Heartland Institute. They take money from Phillip Morris to and say cigarettes are not bad. They do the same with with Climate Change.
So now they have just given up the debate on scientific grounds… and accuse everyone else of doing what they do.
There are others? Cite them.
You are the post child for confirmation bias.
Did you miss the part where she later retracted her data analysis that there is no correlation between solar activity and temperatures?
*SHE* said that.
And you still cite her.
Give me a break. The level of confirmation bias going on inside your head is insane.
Honkylong read the link I posted earlier. Look at the data yourself. There is no positive correlation between solar activity and temperature.
In fact, solar activity has DECREASED and temperature was INCREASED.
Furthermore, that paper that in the opinion piece (wow another skeptic not even citing scientists, nor actual research), is taken completely out of context.
Is this all a joke?
Seriously, cite some RESEARCH PAPERS
Dogwoman believes the earth is 20,000 years old. That is a bias. Which requires one to deny knowledge that is the foundation of all science. All of it. That is beyond bias.
How valuable are her opinions on what is good science?
Have fun in fantasy land. Leave the science to the educated people.
Dogwoman,
Thanks, I am glad you caught the works part.
Pub as you may have surmised stands for Public House – as in days of old where all people could gather, unlike in the Guilds and religious buildings. It was in these public houses that Ben Franklin and Sam Adams, Tom Jefferson all in their respective locations, would share beers with the travelers and towns people. They would argue politics and over time crafted the foundations for our Constitution.
A friend of mine, the owner of Murphy’s Pub in SLT told me that it was also where travelers would come and share information from the
N orth
E ast
W est
S outh
hence the word NEWS.
I didn’t know that when I started, but i like it.
*sigh*
Robot, your theory of evolution of man from ape is absolutely faith based. There is no proof.
I believe in science. Real science. Theory will only take you so far.
You and Smegma Butler need to get a grip.
Oh, and your response that, “well, dogwoman believes. . .” smacks of: kindergarten argument. “my mom can beat up your dad. . .” You didn’t respond to my statement that you get your paychecks from the government so you definitely have a vested interest in government studies. Deflect and distract. Typical leftist tactics.
Conservation Robot, since you can’t answer the simple question of, “What’s your plan to deal with Global Warming?” you are in your own little reality! Thank you dogwoman for revealing Robot is a bureaucrat and obviously inept in coming up with solutions! Not to mention unable to recognize basic facts, such as the fact that many educated people, more educated than you (unless you have a PhD?) don’t buy into it.
Now by your logic Global Warming is false because here’s another fact-Many people are making money off of it! That’s a fact! As is many educated, knowledgeable people don’t buy into it!
As someone previously stated, “”experts can’t predict what’s happening tomorrow let alone years down the road. (Also interestingly Paul 427 stated that according to NASA ocean levels are receding.)
Now again, you ignore basic facts and don’t read what I say. #1 Many educated people don’t buy into it! Here’s another one-William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy, Princeton University:”All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it’s not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide”
#2 If you want to disregard the previously stated basic fact, and are so sure that human activity is causing Global Warming/Climate Change, as I’ve asked over and over again-“What’s your solution to get every major industrialized behind a coherent plan to deal with it?”
“Robot, your theory of evolution of man from ape is absolutely faith based. There is no proof.”
Mitochondrial DNA. Numerous studies have been done on bateria that show inheritance via mitochondrial DNA.
“I believe in science. Real science.”
In order to believe that the earth is less than billions of years old you have to deny the fundamental principles of light (its speed and wave/particle duality). Which leads to a denial of quantum mechanics and the nature of matter. Which then leads you to deny chemistry. And further into biology. And geology.
You would have to deny tectonic plate drift. And deny the cause of the earthquake that happened days ago.
None of that is theory.
You admittedly went to one of the worst public school in HI. I don’t know exactly what decade that was… but if it was more than 30 years ago that was probably one of the worst schools in the country.
Unless you want to deny everything we know about visible light, there are object in the sky at night that prove that the earth is billions of years old and that we are witnessing events in the galaxy that happened before homo sapiens evolved.
All those stars are just pretty little dots…. right?
I don’t see any links to research papers posted.
That is how science works.
You haven’t actually cited one single paper to support anything you say. You quoted a person. And it turns out they are a joke and by their own admission what they put out int he research paper was wrong.
What else do you have.
This is a matter of science.
Are you even familiar with statistics and the practice of testing data with a null hypothesis?
You just made all kinds of claims, and cite NOTHING. And I am supposed to accept what you say as truth given that you previously demonstrated an inability to cite a source, let alone a reliable source?
If this were an AP class in high school you would have failed. Not because you are wrong, but because you can not come up with anything to support anything you say.
Solutions? We are talking about the basics here.
‘how many weathers does it take to make a climate’
A question that you have failed to answer, and have preciously shown to not even understand.
‘duhhhhh it was cold last year, ask anyone, so much for climate change.’
(loosely paraphrased from you).
Parker I have completely destroyed everything you said earlier about the sun causing an increase in temperature.
Put up or shut up.
Post some links to research papers, dont quote scientists out of context. It is not serving you well at all.
Robot, you are CONSTANTLY getting your “facts” wrong. I never said I went to one of the worst public schools in Hawaii. That would be a lie. I went to a good Catholic school in Hawaii.
You make up so many absurd stories, why should we believe anything you say? Reminds me of the current Administration.
PS I never said anything remotely close to, “duh, it was cold last year. . .so much for climate change”.
I believe there is climate change. Constantly. I don’t believe that spending billions of tax payer dollars to try to control it can or should work. Every time man tries to wrest more control over nature, he screws it up royally.
What I do believe is that you lefties saw that you had to change your rant from “global warming” to “climate change” because the facts weren’t turning out to fit your mold. When I was a kid they were screaming about the coming ice age. Then it was global warming. Now it’s just climate change. Hard to argue with climate change. Just look back a couple hundred years and you’ll see it happens. This way you can claim that you were right! Finally!
Oboinko,
Apparently you did not read this earlier link or no doubt you would have “completely destroyed” it by now so I’ll post it in full this time:
The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.
The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.
In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — – demonstrate that cosmic rays can seed clouds, and that the more that cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere, the cloudier it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.
The hypothesis that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate has been Enemy No. 1 to the global warming establishment ever since it was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute, at a 1996 scientific conference in the U.K. Within one day, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bert Bolin, denounced the theory, saying, “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible.” He then set about discrediting the theory, any journalist that gave the theory cre dence, and most of all the Danes presenting the theory — they soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials.
The mobilization to rally the press against the Danes worked brilliantly, with one notable exception. Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets.”
But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had — not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.
“The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century,” Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.
The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.
Yet this spectacular success will be largely unrecognized by the general public for years — this column will be the first that most readers have heard of it — because CERN remains too afraid of offending its government masters to admit its success. Weeks ago, CERN formerly decided to muzzle Mr. Kirby and other members of his team to avoid “the highly political arena of the climate change debate,” telling them “to present the results clearly but not interpret them” and to downplay the results by “mak[ing] clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” The CERN study and press release is written in bureaucratese and the version of Mr. Kirkby’s study that appears in the print edition of Nature censored the most eye-popping graph — only those who know where to look in an online supplement will see the striking potency of cosmic rays in creating the conditions for seeding clouds.
CERN, and the Danes, have in all likelihood found the path to the Holy Grail of climate science. But the religion of climate science won’t yet permit a celebration of the find.
Oh…once again:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/26/lawrence-solomon-science-now-settled/
Rather than responding to the facts, of mine & others, Mr. Robot chooses to create his own reality! Rather than respond, he chooses personal attacks. Some might say being able to tune out reality is a strength. So good for him!
But I’ll repeat to him and anyone else who’s you’re so sure there’s dramatic, human caused Climate Change/Global Warming. What is the plan to deal with it and solve it? Or is it just a Damacles sword to hold over everyone’s head in order to continue the stream of taxpayer funded research and regulation?
Hmmm… still waiting for Pineapploopey/Bongo-Oboinko/Obamatron-robot to “completely destroy” the über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories.
Bueller? …… Bueller?….. Bueller?