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When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.
The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.
Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.
Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.
Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.
The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.
What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.
Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.
He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.
The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.
In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.
Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.
Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.
The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.
The Chilling Stars is published by Icon. It is available for £9.89 including postage from The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585
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The problem with "taking precautions" is that we have absolutely no idea what long term effects those precautions will have on global warming. Its the law of unintended consequences. If we wreck the US economy by mandating we lower our "carbon footprint", that could mean that even more manufacturing will move to third world countries that have no such restrictions and could end up generating far more carbon in the long run. It is the height of human arrogance to think that we have the power to control such things. Perhaps instead of trying to change the world's temperature, we should plans just in case temperatures should rise or fall significantly.
Mark Granger, Placerville, CA, USA
Hundreds of millions of years ago we didn't have a "carbon rich" atmoshpere. We had an atmosphere of carbon. That is why we call this our second atmoshpere. The recent increase of carbon into the atmosphere pale in comparison to the atmosphere hundereds of millions of years ago. To refer to such a radically different world as evidence for global warming seems a stretch at best. This theory however seems to able to predict changes in global temperature over the entire span of our history.
I would be much more inclined to hear a theory that explains temperature change over a long geologic time period than one that can only point at a possible reason something is happening currently. Do we forget that the worlds scientists thought we going into another ice age in the 1970's? Now suddenly we are going to burn! Global temperature change is not something that can be explained decade to decade, we need to look over longer time periods if are ever to understand what is really going on.
Dustin, San Deigo, Ca
This is a very interesting article. I am always reminding people the environment and pollution issues will never be controlled by the posturing of political leaders nor stopped at national borders.
True science governs everything and we need to stay open to that fact. This is the only home we have and we must take better care of it.
Mary , akron, Ohio, USA
the global warming advocates of today remind me of the earth-centric believers of yesteryear. They believed that and it shaped their reference point on everything. when it proved to be wrong they reacted violently. Not a good harbinger for our global warming adverents.
matt proctor, seattle, usa
The "harm" from granting the theory of global warming the status of truth will be the economic changes being proposed to combat the "evil" the warming is producing. Cleaning the air we breathe by taxing the polluters is one thing. Cleaning the water we drink by penalizing the polluters is an appropriate response. Claiming that global warming is "proven" and then taxing producers and consumers in a handful of countries in order to "combat" the warming evil is a bad decision and makes for poor economic policy.
Mark, Dunedin, FL
There's a lot of valid science on both sides of this issue. Unfortunately, ignorant politicians like Al Gore think the scientists are voting. They are not. Even the IPCC people are afraid to make unqualified statements. All this certainty from the politicians and the press, and the strongest statements from the scientific community itself are loaded with escape clauses: "maybe" "90% certain" "could be as much as" "possibly underestimated".
This is your 90% of scientists who are your true believers in the global warming crisis. They know they are walking out on a skinny branch. They know they don't have certainty. They know they could be just flat completely wrong about man-made global warming, and they are making sure that they can defend their careers if they are proven wrong. Make no mistake about it: The scientists are sincere about their positions. 90% of those who end up on the wrong side will be flipping burgers, and they know it.
Rick, baltimore, md
In regard to the Kyoto Protocol, I don't know why any loyal American would support ratification of an amendment that would penalize the U.S. in order to prop up Third World industrialization. Those Americans who want to join hands with the world need to recall how the last 100 years of U.S. sacrifice and beneficence has been repaid by its recipients. The U.S. gives, the rest of the world takes and takes and takes. A healthy dose of tough love never hurt any adolescent.
J. Wright, Memphis, USA
Those of us who are not climate science specialists find it ludicrous that people who we respected when they focussed on balanced assessments of new research start attacking other researchers. I have Nigel Calder's "The Life Game" and enjoyed it. I am contemptuous, however, of his approach in this article that attacks others rathr than giving a considered view. He has clearly become a partisan on this issue.
in my view policymakers are getting it about right on global warming - the IPCC report is the best summary of what we know and moving to develop ways of controlling green house gases is the optimal aproach.
Those who want to throw insults at each othr are welcome to do so - the rest of us will get on with evaluating theisue with thehelp of moderate analysts who offer careful asessments.
Pat Duignan, Wellington , New Zealand
At last some one writes a piece that makes sense and stops ignorance in its tracks. I've hated the ignorance that i've seen lately, and I am glad that the author stated the true pursuit of science with a hypothesis, it seems that the mainstream media has forgotten what this and most of what the old "scientific method" from grade school is all about.
Josh, Phoenix, AZ
The U.N.'s forecasts are done on computer models. If that was an accurate way to forecast temperature they would be able to forecast the tempurature into the future. This is impossible. There are millions of tons of dust in the atmosphere, blocking and moving the sun's rays. If you're a denier of global warming you're considered a heretic these days. This is a money grab pure and simple. Back to the U.N. , they released a synopses of the report. So the report must now agree with the synopses. That's like a general in battle releasing a report on a batlle that has not taken place yet. Then making the battle fit the report. Smoke and mirrors. Forive my spelling and grammar I am a product of a public education.
Burton, Nashville, U.S.A. Tennessee