Monday, August 29, 2011

Stray Cosmic Rays

We joke about them all of the time in the IT world as the cause of all kinds of unpleasant surprises, so it's easy to forget that they are, in fact, something real and they do have their effects.  And not surprisingly, they have their effects on our atmosphere.

To bring those who don't hang around these parts up to speed, I do have a degree and about 3 years of graduate study in Atmospheric Science.  Weather has been an interest and hobby for me since I was about 12 years old.  I've known about "global warming" since before most of you heard of it.  I've worked the black body equations upon which it is based.  And I follow it.

And if you have been around these parts much you know I am a skeptic as to the impact of any man-made CO2 contribution to the global carbon budget has on the Earth's temperature.   And I know that very well respected figures from the early IPCC conferences complained about the politicization of the science and its impact on what went into the reports and especially what went in to the "IPCC Summary for Policy Makers" and the massive distortions and clearly intentional omissions that went out to the media and world governments.

Since the Climategate scandal, we now have clear evidence outside of hearsay that Lindzen et. al. weren't making it all up.

All this to set this up -- I had read articles on this theory of the relationship between cosmic rays and condensation nuclei and thus cloud cover, which, in fact, would have an impact on Earth's energy budget due to increased albedo.

But enough political roadblocks have been removed (probably thanks to Climategate) for an important experiment (the stuff on which science is based) to go forward.  And the result will upset the followers of The Goracle.

It's nice to see Science making  a play for the front seat again in this debate.

1 comment:

Severian said...

You know, for such "smart" people, leftists are remarkably incurious. They're always telling us about "science," but can they actually explain how "global warming" is supposed to work? The actual mechanism, I mean, by which "greenhouse gasses" (a definition here would be nice too) somehow trap temperatures in? As upset as they all are about it, they can surely do that much, right? Ummm.... right?

Similarly, one goes over to their houses and peruses their bookshelves and finds.... nothing much, quite often. Novels and whatnot like we all have, but the only "intellectual" books in the place tend to be either Malcolm Gladwell I'm-the-everything-expert crap or "No Logo" or "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot." It's not that they're not reading Hayek -- that's a bit much to ask of even most conservatives -- it's that they're blissfully unaware of even the smallest challenge to their worldview. Pretty much any conservative can spell out the liberal position on just about everything; your average liberal isn't even aware that a conservative argument exists.

Weird, innit? It's like they think their BAs in Communications from Chico State really does make them experts without portfolio. They know everything they need to know, and everything they will ever need to know. This, they tell us, is "intelligence"....