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Is Svensmark to AGW as Copernicus was to the Ptolemaic planetary system?

Jack Hays

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Erm, no. Svensmark does good work and the cosmic ray/cloud research is an important component to climate research. He definitely shows that cosmic rays have an influence, particularly over the multi-million year time frame. But his work doesn't demonstrate that changes in cosmic rays are a substantial factor in the temperatures observed over the last century. We're talking a scale of spiral arms of the galaxy. Star movement over a more human time scale of a century just isn't that dramatic.

Svensmark's research suggests that more cosmic rays leads to more clouds which has a cooling influence. Less cosmic rays would lead to fewer clouds and therefore a warming effect. Over the last 50 years, temperature has increased. In that same time frame, cosmic rays have also increased. So, they should be having a cooling influence but temperatures rose anyway. Clearly other variables are also at play.

Research at CERN found the cosmic ray -> particles-that-eventually-form-condensation-nuclei-and-therefore-affect-cloud-formation link was weaker than expected.

And I should also comment on the implication that Svensmark is treated as some sort of outcast in the scientific community. This just isn't the case. He's a well-respected scientist doing important work. Remember those climategate emails that supposedly show climate scientists being all sorts of mean to the brave skeptics? How come not one disparaging remark about Svensmark?
 
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Erm, no. Svensmark does good work and the cosmic ray/cloud research is an important component to climate research. He definitely shows that cosmic rays have an influence, particularly over the multi-million year time frame. But his work doesn't demonstrate that changes in cosmic rays are a substantial factor in the temperatures observed over the last century. We're talking a scale of spiral arms of the galaxy. Star movement over a more human time scale of a century just isn't that dramatic.

Svensmark's research suggests that more cosmic rays leads to more clouds which has a cooling influence. Less cosmic rays would lead to fewer clouds and therefore a warming effect. Over the last 50 years, temperature has increased. In that same time frame, cosmic rays have also increased. So, they should be having a cooling influence but temperatures rose anyway.

Research at CERN found the cosmic ray -> particles-that-eventually-form-condensation-nuclei-and-therefore-affect-cloud-formation link was weaker than expected.

Keep up the denial.:lamo
 
There was nothing to rebut. You have not taken up the core of Svensmark's work.

Which fact is untrue:

1) That temperatures have risen in the last 50 years
2) That galactic cosmic rays have also increased in that time period
3) That Svensmark's work suggests more cosmic rays creates a cooling influence
 
Since all three are true it really doesn't matter. The link points to a paradigm shift.:peace

If cosmic rays cannot explain temperature trends over the last 50 years, why on earth would you say it's a paradigm shift on AGW?

Maybe you should explain, in your own words, what significance you think this holds regarding temperature trends over the last century or so.
 
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If cosmic rays cannot explain temperature trends over the last 50 years, why on earth would you say it's a paradigm shift on AGW?

Maybe you should explain, in your own words, what significance you think this holds regarding temperature trends over the last century or so.

I don't believe, and have never claimed, that temperature trends over the last century mean much at all. Too many mixed and conflicting influences on such a short time scale. :peace
 
I don't believe, and have never claimed, that temperature trends over the last century mean much at all. Too many mixed and conflicting influences on such a short time scale. :peace

Svensmark's work can't be both a paradigm shift in AGW and not significant enough over the last century due to "too many mixed and conflicting influences on such a short time scale."

You are contradicting yourself.

Maybe this will help: Svensmark's work isn't wrong. You are wrong about Svensmark's work and what it means.
 
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Svensmark's work can't be both a paradigm shift in AGW and not significant enough over the last century due to "too many mixed and conflicting influences on such a short time scale."

You are contradicting yourself.

Maybe this will help: Svensmark's work isn't wrong. You are wrong about Svensmark's work and what it means.

I could not disagree more. The point of Svensmark is that AGW is a puny little theory that mistakes a couple of trees for the forest. Svensmark does not so much contradict AGW as envelop and bypass it with a mechanism much larger, more powerful and more important -- and on a longer time scale. His point is that CO2 may indeed influence climate, but that influence is negligible compared to the cosmic mechanism he studies. It's a comparison between a lightning bug and lightning.:peace
 
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Is Svensmark to AGW as Copernicus was to the Ptolemaic planetary system?

Well, given how science works, the chances of this happening are extremely small. Its more like he will be as an alchemist is to a modern chemist.

His hypothesis will be tested, tested and re-tested. If it survives all of those, it will go through multiple other tests and probably decades worth of work, much like the thousand other nutty scientific ideas that are generated each year, and then discarded as false.

Maybe, if he's lucky, one day his theory will be as highly regarded and as solidly backed up as the theory of AGW. But that theory is based on decades of work and thousands of scientific studies. As far as I can tell, Svensmark is pretty much a lone wolf. Those guys tend not to have theories that survive, especially ones that have kicked around for years with no advancement from others.
 
Is Svensmark to AGW as Copernicus was to the Ptolemaic planetary system?

Well, given how science works, the chances of this happening are extremely small. Its more like he will be as an alchemist is to a modern chemist.

His hypothesis will be tested, tested and re-tested. If it survives all of those, it will go through multiple other tests and probably decades worth of work, much like the thousand other nutty scientific ideas that are generated each year, and then discarded as false.

Maybe, if he's lucky, one day his theory will be as highly regarded and as solidly backed up as the theory of AGW. But that theory is based on decades of work and thousands of scientific studies. As far as I can tell, Svensmark is pretty much a lone wolf. Those guys tend not to have theories that survive, especially ones that have kicked around for years with no advancement from others.

After Einstein's work on relativity appeared, 100 German physicists published an open letter, "Hundert Gegen Einstein" (One Hundred Against Einstein). No one remembers their names. Einstein's only comment was to point out that if their arguments had merit, "one would have been enough.":peace
 
After Einstein's work on relativity appeared, 100 German physicists published an open letter, "Hundert Gegen Einstein" (One Hundred Against Einstein). No one remembers their names. Einstein's only comment was to point out that if their arguments had merit, "one would have been enough.":peace

Yeah. Because his work got so much recognition upon publication. It was a huge revolution in physics, and was immediately recognized to be so by many physicists.

Svensmark- not so much, except on denier blogs.

But thanks for playing.
 
Yeah. Because his work got so much recognition upon publication. It was a huge revolution in physics, and was immediately recognized to be so by many physicists.

Svensmark- not so much, except on denier blogs.

But thanks for playing.

On the contrary, the "Hundred" included many leading thinkers of the day in Germany. They considered Einstein to be a crackpot. His work was widely ridiculed.:peace
 
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If cosmic rays cannot explain temperature trends over the last 50 years, why on earth would you say it's a paradigm shift on AGW?

Maybe you should explain, in your own words, what significance you think this holds regarding temperature trends over the last century or so.

That would be impossible because there are no links which point to any explanation in JH's own words.

His MO:

1) Post a link, and claim it means X (without explanation)

2) Wait for rebuttal, and claim (without explanation) the rebuttal doesn't address his point (which he never explained)

3) Wait to be asked for an explanation, and respond by claiming it was already given

4) When it's pointed out that he never explained anything, claim that the poster doesn't know enough to understand the explanation (which was never given)
 
I could not disagree more. The point of Svensmark is that AGW is a puny little theory that mistakes a couple of trees for the forest. Svensmark does not so much contradict AGW as envelop and bypass it with a mechanism much larger, more powerful and more important -- and on a longer time scale. His point is that CO2 may indeed influence climate, but that influence is negligible compared to the cosmic mechanism he studies. It's a comparison between a lightning bug and lightning.:peace

Well, you're wrong, and I don't expect it's possible to show you why because you wont listen. You decided what the paper meant without actually reading it. You can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into.

Temperatures increased in a time period where this cosmic ray influence would have been a cooling influence. Until you can explain that, there's nothing else to talk about.
 
Well, you're wrong, and I don't expect it's possible to show you why because you wont listen. You decided what the paper meant without actually reading it. You can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into.

Temperatures increased in a time period where this cosmic ray influence would have been a cooling influence. Until you can explain that, there's nothing else to talk about.

[h=2]Climate Physics 101[/h] Climate change: news and comments
Sorry folks, cosmic rays really are in charge

On this blog and others, most comments about my previous post “Yet another trick of cosmic rays” have been friendly. Thank you. But some people still want to dismiss all the meticulous experimental, observational and theoretical work of Henrik Svensmark and his colleagues in the Danish National Space Institute by saying there is simply no link between cosmic rays and the climate.
Having written two books on the subject, and still engaged with it, I could in rebuttal flood this post with evidence of many kinds, on time scales from days to millennia or longer. I’ll content myself with just one pair of graphs spanning 50 years. They’re from a 2007 report by Svensmark and the Institute’s director, Eigil Friis-Christensen, and they’re based on a European Space Agency project called ISAC. The carbon dioxide boys and girls would die for a match of cause and effect of this quality.
Cosmic ray intensity is in red and upside down, so that 1991 was a minimum, not a maximum. Fewer cosmic rays mean a warmer world, and the cosmic rays vary with the solar cycle. The blue curve shows the global mean temperature of the mid-troposphere as measured with balloons and collated by the UK Met Office (HadAT2).
In the upper panel the temperatures roughly follow the solar cycle. The match is much better when well-known effects of other natural disturbances (El Niño, North Atlantic Oscillation, big volcanoes) are removed, together with an upward trend of 0.14 deg. C per decade. The trend may be partly due to man-made greenhouse gases, but the magnitude of their contribution is debatable.
From 2000 to 2011 mid-tropospheric temperatures have remained pretty level, like those of the surface, despite the continuing increase in the gases – in “flat” contradiction to the warming predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Meanwhile the Sun is lazy, cosmic ray counts are high and the oceans are cooling.
Reference
Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E., “Reply to Lockwood and Fröhlich –The persistent role of the Sun in climate forcing”, Danish National Space Center Scientific Report 3/2007. :mrgreen:
 
[h=2]Climate Physics 101[/h] Climate change: news and comments
Sorry folks, cosmic rays really are in charge

On this blog and others, most comments about my previous post “Yet another trick of cosmic rays” have been friendly. Thank you. But some people still want to dismiss all the meticulous experimental, observational and theoretical work of Henrik Svensmark and his colleagues in the Danish National Space Institute by saying there is simply no link between cosmic rays and the climate.
Having written two books on the subject, and still engaged with it, I could in rebuttal flood this post with evidence of many kinds, on time scales from days to millennia or longer. I’ll content myself with just one pair of graphs spanning 50 years. They’re from a 2007 report by Svensmark and the Institute’s director, Eigil Friis-Christensen, and they’re based on a European Space Agency project called ISAC. The carbon dioxide boys and girls would die for a match of cause and effect of this quality.
Cosmic ray intensity is in red and upside down, so that 1991 was a minimum, not a maximum. Fewer cosmic rays mean a warmer world, and the cosmic rays vary with the solar cycle. The blue curve shows the global mean temperature of the mid-troposphere as measured with balloons and collated by the UK Met Office (HadAT2).
In the upper panel the temperatures roughly follow the solar cycle. The match is much better when well-known effects of other natural disturbances (El Niño, North Atlantic Oscillation, big volcanoes) are removed, together with an upward trend of 0.14 deg. C per decade. The trend may be partly due to man-made greenhouse gases, but the magnitude of their contribution is debatable.
From 2000 to 2011 mid-tropospheric temperatures have remained pretty level, like those of the surface, despite the continuing increase in the gases – in “flat” contradiction to the warming predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Meanwhile the Sun is lazy, cosmic ray counts are high and the oceans are cooling.
Reference
Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E., “Reply to Lockwood and Fröhlich –The persistent role of the Sun in climate forcing”, Danish National Space Center Scientific Report 3/2007. :mrgreen:

Oooh, a blog post!!
 
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