Re: Israeli Scientist Changes Sides On Global Warming

On Wed, 30 May 2007, El Castor wrote:

On Wed, 30 May 2007 16:57:27 -0500, Jean Smith <gotermite@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In article <Pine.BSI.4.64.0705300956200.6825@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Alvin E. Toda" <aet@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 30 May 2007, El Castor wrote:

On Wed, 30 May 2007 09:03:43 -0700, sordo ?@mini-tru.org wrote:

On Tue, 29 May 2007 19:01:30 -0700, El Castor <No_One@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Lawrence Solomon
National Post

Friday, February 02, 2007

ice
CREDIT: AFP Getty
ice

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists,
describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to
conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global
warming.

Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in
carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.

Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the
20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human
activities.

Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another
candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself
assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer
accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted:
"Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit
in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the
evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the
story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories
regurgitated by the media.

"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."

Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is
no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse
gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the
worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything
here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own
findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong
possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth.
Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has
been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we
might cause in the future.

All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr.
Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why
climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of
fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which
to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other
'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible
"other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior
explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global
warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has
been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that
cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now
been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate
link] does not exist."

The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much
of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate
through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially
potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being
unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor
cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the
climate.

Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not
dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put
another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase
by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a
doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global
temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."

The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories
around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his
study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical
Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth
collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way
sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of
cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global
temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or
off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence
Earth's climate.

In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy,
Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550
million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more
than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most
dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also
found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as
a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming
witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it
is attributable to the increased solar activity.

CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary
role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also
believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their
adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.

"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap
alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of
course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into
Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but
this is an altogether different issue." His
conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right
way to go."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-1
06fef8763c6&k=0

I've none this all along............8^) It's just
another liberal tree-hugging bull*** story.

Nope, it's another liberal tree hugger who gave up on
CO2 as a source for global warming. I could post
something from the Oil Institute, but who can argue
with this guy's left wing credentials -- and he still
doesn't swallow the CO2 bull***.

Bottom line:

"Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth
over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic
ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of
Earth's temperature variance, making it the most
dominant climate driver over geological time scales.
The study also found that an upper limit can be
placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate
driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global
warming witnessed over the past century could not be
due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the
increased solar activity."

His work needs to be verified. As an astrophysicist,
his work and background in global warming is in
question. For example, his data for the 550 million
year history is probably indirect rather astronomical.
If it turns out that the data on cosmic ray activity is
dependent of termpurature as well, then the data may be
an effect rather than a cause of the phenomena.

But he would know that the ozone in the atmosphere protects us from cosmic rays upa hundred miles or so, right?

Not just the ozone. Cosmic rays strike atoms high in the atmosphere and the resulting collision showers the earth with ionized particles. These particles have been shown by Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Center for Sun-Climate Research and the Max Planck Institute to provide the nucleus for cloud formation. Scientists from the Armagh Observatory further refined his work by showing that these particles had no impact on the formation of clouds at high altitude, but rather only at low altitudes. They speculate that the physics of high altitude clouds, which consist of ice crystals is different than low altitude clouds which are made up of droplets of condensed water vapor. At any rate, low altitude clouds have a cooling effect on the Earth's atmosphere, while high altitude clouds have just the opposite effect. http://www.solarstorms.org/CloudCover.html

Professor Nir Shariv has demonstrated a relationship between cycles of climactic temperature change and cosmic ray activity -- activity which is influenced both by solar activity and the solar system's position relative to the arms of the Milky Way galaxy. This relationship explains the cycles of warmth and cooling which have led to ice ages and period on inter-glacial warming, such as we are experiencing now. http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages


A relationship does not necessarily mean cause and effect. And position is a theoretrical projection from the point of cosmic ray activity. He needs to have a record of cosmic ray activity.