ggoodknight

Lots of things to conclude all at once. You don't cite anyone, or present any quantitative analysis. Might I guess that this is an original theory? Just wondering about this massive E-M field you believe is powering solar system wide warming... is there something special about it such that it is able to induce significant currents in planets but not change magnetic variance on our planet's surface day to day, year by year. Shouldn't this be detectable? I mean, our planet spins, is in orbit about the sun, wouldn't there be something of a Milankovitch cycle for which way a compass points on any given day? Is there any quantitative analysis supporting this notion, or has it skipped directly from being a metaphysical musing to certitude?

What changes in cloud formation? How are folks looking at temperature, humidity, windspeed, barometric pressure, satellite photos, etc, going to know whether cloud formation is being helped or hindered by the flux of GCR that day? Here's an interesting link from the Earthshine project at the Big Bear Solar Observatory: Big Bear Solar Observatory - Science May 28: Earthshine If you click on the top left image on the right side, you'll see a plot of albedo, with the axis also labeled in Watts per square meter. The red line is the IPCC claim for CO2 forcing over the range of a century for comparison, small compared to the range in albedo in just a 20 year period. More interesting documents, this time from CERN: CERN Press Release http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/documents_cloud/cloud_memo.pdf Blue Skies For CLOUD Another interesting paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/2004ja010964.pdf "Sunspot numbers and cosmic ray fluxes reconstructed from records of the cosmogenic isotopes 10Be and 14C, respectively, show correlations and anticorrelations with a number of reconstructions of the terrestrial Northern Hemisphere temperature, which cover a time span of up to 1800 years. This indicates that periods of higher solar activity and lower cosmic ray flux tend to be associated with warmer climate, and vice versa."

Have you read the Cosmoclimatology paper?

Variations in albedo dwarf the 1.2W per sq.m posited for CO2 warming by the IPCC. Shaviv calculated something like 2/3 being a lower bound for GCR temperature change in one period studied in the geologic record. Jasper KIRKBY, the lead for the CERN CLOUD experiment was said to believe, when CLOUD was first proposed, that GCR were responsible for half to virtually all of the observed climate change since the end of the little ice age, which apparently helped kill the CLOUD funding the first time around. Go to the Svensmark Cosmoclimatology paper in Astronomy and Geophyics (Feb '07). Look at Figure 8, the plot (after Shaviv) of temperature and GCR flux (derived from C14 and Be10 records, iirc) over the past 600 million years. Assuming GCR is causing the temperature change of the Earth and not the other way around, :( , if GCR can cause a swing from the heat at the Permian Triassic boundary to a virtual snowball Earth, it can easily be responsible for a half degree since the mid 1800's. I'd be happy to give you links but this forum does not yet allow me to do so. cheers Greg

If GCR (galactic cosmic rays) are responsible for at least 67% of the warming, as one paper has found for a past time period, that certainly makes CO2 a maximum of 33% of what has been observed, quite a slashing, and certainly does discredit *ALL* of the computer climate models cited by the IPCC, none of which (to date) include GCR effects. *ALL* of said models apparently expect and assume cloud cover is the result of temperature, not the other way around. By the way, I've been waving this flag for a few months. To begin with, it was met with condescension and a basic science lecture, then political name calling along the lines of right wing denier or tool of Big Oil. I think many AGW proponents are beginning to worry that there really might be something to it, and are just trying to ignore it hoping some failure (like CLOUD being inconclusive) will let GCR cosmoclimatology fade away. This is possible, but I am betting against it. This is simple, it is clean, it is supported by the geologic record, written history, even short term with a daily observation, and down to seconds, the time frame the SKY experiment found for generation of very small droplets, too small to be the actual cloud condensation nuclei but chances are very good they are a precursor.

The heading gyros (aka Heading Indicator or HI) that are slaved to a magnetic fluxgate are generally Horizontal Situation Indicators (HSI) that are combination gyrocompass/VOR/ILS indicators. Very cool. Some GPS navigators present the information in the same way and it is very easy to use when flying by instruments. Yes, they have been required equipment for all certificated aircraft. Actually, nowadays air traffic controllers pretty much expect that even aircraft whose designators do not show they are equipped with a GPS at least has a handheld GPS. While the airways continue to be defined by VOR placements, the primary nav really is GPS and the FAA's policy has been that the terrestrial navaids will be decommissioned as they age. This is required, though if you are using a GPS to fly the VOR defined Victor airways you don't verify the VOR because your NAV gear isn't really using the VOR, it's just assuming the VOR is where the database says it is. It is unclear to me that the "ILS" first used in a very few airliners at a very few airports in '36 (or '38) is the final ILS system that was put into wide use later. I have seen a number of claims that the first of the modern ILS systems was at Arcata, California, a site with the most foggy days of any US airport (and coincidentally the airport I flew my first solo IFR ILS approach through the coastal stratus). A standard ILS approach will generally give a private aircraft guidance down to 200' above ground level, at which time if you can't see the runway you start a climb, pronto. GPS approaches can bring you down almost as low. That is in process and is the policy of the US FAA. A sticking point among many is that there is a defacto monopoly for the database updates required for operation, by a company called Jeppessen. It galls many that Jepp rakes in a bundle of money for repackaging information that the FAA generates.

No, it's needed on a regular basic by pilots. GPS is really not that reliable to bet your life on, and aviation maps all have the local magnetic variance clearly marked. I believe even the most sophisticated airliners still have a magnetic compass somewhere in the panel (although that could have possibly changed in the last year or so).

No, we will never run out of fossil fuels, it will just eventually get too expensive to obtain to just burn. I recall one of my first undergrad chem lectures... the chairman of the chemistry department saying what a waste it was to use it as fuel when when you could make such great stuff with it.

It isn't denial. The Cosmic Ray theories already are better fleshed out, as far as the basic science goes, than the CO2 models, and the RealClimate folks whose business (mostly at NCAR) is writing grants and generating computer models are very possibly in process of becoming eclipsed. The arguments given by the CO2 believers against cosmoclimatology seem to me to be much like the arguments that Creation "scientists" make against evolution. If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Cause precedes effect. However, with CO2, the warming starts before the CO2 rise in the climate record, and CO2 falls after a cooling starts. The CO2 as warming bogeyman depends on a feedback model that posits a feedback mechanism such that it forces the heating despite not being the immediate cause. My brain hurts. I'll reach for Occam's razor, the galactic cosmic ray model is much more simple and elegant, and explains the temperature / Carbon 14 tracking over the past 600 million years, not to mention the warmings and coolings of recorded human history. See the cosmoclimatology thread. I'd post some links but I'm in newbie link purgatory.

This past weekend, on the USA National Public Radio network's Weekend Edition (Saturday), there was an interesting story a book regarding how quickly our works might crumble without our maintenance. There was a line at the end regarding the Permian Extinction and a coming "human caused extinction" that just begged to be responded to. Since it may well go nowhere at NPR, I thought you guys might like to read it. Sorry, but cutting and pasting into the NPR "email" page stripped apostrophes and sundry other formattings: (DEAR NPR WEEKEND EDITION) "The World Without Us" segment with Alan Weisman was riveting, but his final comments regarding the Permian extinction and a future "human caused extinction" to be overcome bear closer examination. The Permian-Triassic extinction 251 million years ago did wipe out about 90% of all species, and is held up by some as an example of a greenhouse gas caused global warming catastrophe, with CO2 levels (and perhaps other greenhouse gases) rising dramatically in a positive feedback heating disaster that didnt even spare the insects. However, there is another feature of the Permian-Triassic boundary and another theory for global climate change that deserve notice at NPR. Over the last 600 million years, it was during the time of the P-T extinction that our world was bombarded by the fewest galactic cosmic rays (or GCR) of that entire period. Is it only a curious coincidence that the hottest periods in the last 600 million years have been during periods of scarce GCR, and the coldest (with perhaps the whole planet freezing over) during times of GCR plenty? Physicist Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center (who has coined the term cosmoclimatology) and a number of other scientists have been quietly building a case for over a decade that galactic cosmic rays help low level clouds to form, and when there are more GCR, there are more clouds, less sunlight reaches the land and seas and it gets colder and conversely when there are fewer GCR (and therefore fewer clouds) more sunlight reaches the surface of the planet and we get warmer. The high energy charged particles arriving from beyond our solar system are deflected away from the earth with varying vigor by the solar wind and solar magnetic activity. In the latter part of the 20th century, galactic cosmic rays were as rare as they were during the Medieval Warming (or Medieval Climate Optimum) a thousand years ago, when the sun tended to shield our planet from them. Conversely, during the so-called Little Ice Age (think Breugels Hunters in the Snow and ice skating on the Thames), sunspots (indications of high solar magnetic activity) were rare and all but vanished at times. In our time, the overall level of galactic cosmic rays bathing the earth is as low as it has been in 1000 years, and possibly as low as it has been in the last 8000 years. Should we be surprised we are as warm now as when the Vikings were farming Greenland? It may be warm now but we still have a cosmic ray bombardment perhaps three or four times as high as is was at the P-T event. It is a shame when politics drives science, and it is global politics that has driven CO2-driven climate simulations to the forefront and done its best to bury Svensmark et al. Funding was killed in the late 90s for an experiment that could have settled the question, CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets). At Europes CERN particle accelerator, CLOUD was to investigate the role particle physics plays in the atmosphere, but that experiment was recently started in earnest after a low budget version using natural cosmic rays was performed in a basement science lab in Copenhagen and showed positive results. Dont be too surprised if CLOUD gets the results they expect. Its about time NPR takes a serious look at the very real alternative to CO2 for the current warming that has taken place since the Little Ice Age waned. There are very good reasons to burn oil sparingly, but some smart folk have concluded that avoiding an imminent "human caused extinction" due to CO2 emissions is not one of them. If you can, do the story without giving the CO2 warming proponents the obligatory last word. One thing is clear, no one is sure right now what the temperature would be right now if no one was alive to complain about how hot it is. (links to Svensmark papers, Discover interview and CLOUD papers deleted)

It's real. The main CERN collaborator in the CLOUD experiment made the mistake 10 years ago of saying galactic cosmic rays might be the cause of most or even all of the measured global warming, then found the money for CLOUD had disappeared. It was the cheap and dirty (and successful) SKY experiment in a Copenhagen basement that provided the rationale for CLOUD to finally be funded last year. I tried to post a number of links to interesting CERN documentation but spamming measures blocked the posting.

Found this forum, looked interesting. I have a science bent, have read virtually all of the papers by and referenced by Henrik Svensmark, wish I was an undergraduate physics major again, I might have stayed in Physics rather than jumping into engineering. I think the CERN CLOUD experiment is a watershed event and will be exciting, and galactic cosmic ray interactions with moisture in the lower atmosphere may well be proven to be significant, dwarfing the effects of greenhouse gases, natural and anthropogenic, in observed climate change. Time will tell. I googled something and got a hit on the cosmoclimatology forum, thought this might be an interesting place to discuss it. I live in the boonies of Nevada City, a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in northern California.