Trust science ? Part 2...

...Of all the unknown factors regarding our weather and climate, the role of clouds and their relationship and interaction with cosmic rays from the sun remains the most significant. While the red/greens and the IPPC state the science is settled, scientists at heart know there is much to learn. What is known for sure however, is that clouds contain water vapour, and water vapour constitutes an essential blanket around the planet and is largely responsible for the now maligned greenhouse effect - an effect which preserves life on earth rendering Earth our climate temperate. Many who doubt greenpeace's grasp of scientific reality have theorised that clouds, water vapour and cosmic rays from the sun constitute an essential and perhaps even a primary driver of our climate, and that CO2 occupies a back seat, rather than a major role in global warming. I've blogged before on this, and reported on the CLOUD experiment underway at CERN - the home of the large HADRON collider. The CLOUD experiment alone has the potential to be the final nail in the AGW coffin. While this report from CLOUD may not constitute that nail, it is possibly the decisive start of the endgame. Ian Sample, the science correspondent for the UK Guardian writes...

...Some climate models may need to be "substantially revised" in the light of new research into the airborne particles that seed clouds.One of the most detailed studies to date of the particles, known as aerosols, has found serious shortcomings in existing descriptions of how they arise in nature. The work suggests that one or more unidentified organic gases – produced either naturally or from human activities – has a significant influence on the Earth's cloud cover. The research, reported in the journal Nature, has implications for certain predictions about climate change because aerosol particles and the clouds they seed have a cooling effect on the Earth by reflecting radiation from the sun.Jasper Kirby head of the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment at Cern, the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, studied various gas mixtures of sulphuric acid, water and ammonia – the three gases thought to give rise to aerosol particles at the low altitudes where clouds form...more here...

...and Nigel Calder, writing on WuWT, has this to say... to see it on the broader canvas of the politicized climate science of the early 21st Century, the chief reaction becomes a weary sigh of relief. Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases.In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise...more here... and from Henrik Svensmark... convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans...The science is now all-but-settled on global warming... 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...

Trust science, and scientists ? Sure can...

...Some media commentators with a special interest in science think they detect a palpable lack of trust within the community for science and scientists. As is often the case, such a lack of trust is over-stated. Its existence however, is real, and may be growing. It is seen in limited areas, particularly healthcare (and the billion dollar alternative medicine industry is responsible for this. Think iridology, homeopathy, reflexology, etc, etc.) Within climate science the distrust has arisen from the unholy alliance between climate scientists and politicians, inside and outside of Government, and the reluctance and inability of many within the climate science community to question political distortion of their findings. This comment below is unashamedly pinched from Australian Climate Madness and sums up the situation well...In reality... there isn't a lack of respect for scientists as a whole, there is a lack of respect for CLIMATE scientists and their associated advocates and public figures. We still trust doctors to make the right diagnoses, trust our engineers to build safe buildings and bridges, trust the particle physicists when they tell us that a multi-billion dollar circle of magnets kilometres across is required to find a new sub-atomic particle. No-one questions any of that. The problem with climate scientists and their hangers-on is the result of the actions of a small but visible minority, who are guilty of:

politicising science by advocating particular responses to climate change (most of which will damage our standards of living for no benefit)
claiming that the IPCC is an impartial review of climate science,
passing off greenpeace and WWF propaganda as credible science,
making catastrophist predictions about future climate,
conflicting themselves by accepting research grants from a government that itself advocates AGW alarmist policies,
playing down uncertainty in their results and claiming the science is settled,
fudging data in order to make it fit with their pre-conceived conclusions,
silencing dissent and skewing the peer-review process (so that it essentially becomes "pal-review")
refusing to share methods and calculations for independent confirmation of their results,
hypocritical do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitudes (eg. Al Gore and Flannery, above)
abusing and smearing (dare I say, disrespecting) anyone that dares mention any of the above.Those are the simple reasons why climate science as a discipline has lost respect. The public is not stupid, and it can see when it is being misled. More openness, more debate, more honesty and less divisive language would help reverse the trend. Read the full article here...

The London riots...

...which are spreading across England will of course be seen by the left as a symptom of inequality and by the right as a symptom of judicial weakness and political correctness. Both are probably partially correct. Like any complex issue, there are many facets and causes. Whatever the cause though, we here in NZ are likely to see the same anarchy in due course simply because our social environment is so similar. For enlightened comment see this from Cranmer...It is quite moving to read of Sikhs in Southall guarding their gurdwara, and of those three Muslims in Birmingham who died trying to protect their property and community. It is reported that some of those involved in the violence are as young as 10 or 11, and that it is principally being perpetrated by those in their late teens - early 20s. This is the price we pay for moral relativism. Parents and teachers can no longer instruct their children in the difference between right and wrong, and so there is no distinguishing between good and evil. If it feels right and good, do it: the moral course of action is what the individual determines. The truth is what you make it, for there is no universal view of morality; no absolute standard by which all may be judged. And so we must tolerate the beliefs and actions of others even when they impinge upon the rights and liberties of others. Our politicians have spent decades dismantling the foundations of our moral order; fracturing and fragmenting the culture that made England cohesive and the United Kingdom coherent. They have created a culture of rootless individualism, for which we are now paying the price. May God forgive them...more here...

Polar bears and satellites...

Global warming proponents can catch up on the sleep they lost worrying about the planet getting hotter with each passing day. (And polar bear fetishists can relax too,"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s.)

A NASA study which analyzes satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011, published in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing, reports that Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than global warming proponents' computer models have predicted.
The data also supports prior studies which suggested that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap is far lesser than what has been claimed by the global warming doomsters. The discrepancy between the model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming has given rise to heated debates for more than two decades. "The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Dr. Roy Spencer, study co-author and principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, said in a press re the oceans." Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. "At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained," Spencer said. When applied to long-term climate change, the research suggests that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modelers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle. Numerous decisive factors, including clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and different time lags make it impossible to accurately identify which piece of Earth's changing climate is a feedback from man-made greenhouse gases. "There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that," Spencer said. "The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations." The research team used surface temperature data gathered by the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain. The radiant energy data was collected by the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The six climate models were chosen from those used by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. " Read the full article here...