Shock: Warming Of Earth May Have Something To Do With Billion Ton Nuclear Furnace At Center of Solar System

Global warming scientists are like OJ Jurors, looking about for unlikely conspiracies when there's a guy dripping with blood right in front of them.

The BBC spends the bulk of its ink trying to debunk the theory, but at least they noted it:

Henrik Svensmark and his collaborators at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC) believe the missing link between small solar variations and large temperature changes on Earth are cosmic rays.

"I think the Sun is the major driver of climate change," he says, "and the reason I'm saying that is that if you look at historical temperature data and then solar activity and cosmic ray activity, it actually fits very beautifully.

"If CO2 is a very important climate driver then you would expect to see its effect on all timescales; and for example when you look at the last 500 million years, or the last 10,000 years, the correlation between changes in CO2 and climate are very poor."

When hugely energetic galactic cosmic rays - actually particles - crash into the top of the atmosphere, they set in train a sequence of events which leads to the production of ions in the lower atmosphere.

The theory is that this encourages the growth of tiny aerosol particles around which water vapour can condense, eventually aiding the formation of clouds.

And the link to the Sun? It is because cosmic rays are partially deflected by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles rushing away from the Sun, and the magnetic field it carries. A weaker solar wind means more cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere, hence more clouds and a cooler Earth.

The theory makes some intuitive sense because over the last century the Sun has been unusually active - which means fewer cosmic rays, and a warmer climate on Earth.

"We reconstructed solar activity going back 11,000 years," relates Sami Solanki.

"And across this period, the level of activity we are seeing now is very high - we coined the term 'grand maximum' to describe it. We still have the 11-year modulation on top of the long-term trend, but on average the Sun has been brighter and the cosmic ray flux lower."

There is evidence too that cosmic rays and climate have been intertwined over timescales of millennia in the Earth's past.

One of the scientists who doubts this theory -- apparently a fan of carbon-based warming -- has a precious quote: Proponents of this mechanism have tended to extrapolate their results beyond what is reasonable from the evidence.

Ummm, yeah.

posted by Ace at 12:14 PM

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