Some remarkable news hit the wires this past week but, not surprisingly, it has been completely ignored by the mainstream media. What has happened is that scientists have finally proven that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is nothing more than misguided nonsense. Of course, true scientists would never say it quite as bluntly as I do but then this is my opinion and is not subject to peer-review.
The original news broke in Nature when preliminary results of an experiment dubbed CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets were unveiled. Conducted by scientists at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, the experiment attempts to replicate atmospheric conditions by filling a custom-built chamber with ultrapure air and chemicals believed to seed clouds: water vapour, sulphur dioxide, ozone and ammonia. They then bombard the chamber with protons from the same accelerator that feeds the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle smasher. As the synthetic cosmic rays stream in, the group carefully samples the artificial atmosphere to see what effect the rays are having. You can read about it here.
To understand what it all means, however, one must refer to sources who are less reticent about interpretation of the results of the experiment. Over at the Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon is unequivocal: “New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans,” he writes.
Another interpretation takes the form of a video clip on the LaRouche Political Action Committee web site. Presented by Oyang Teng of the LaRouche Basement Research Team. Suggesting these experiments have proven the fallibility of current climate models, he says that, “…rather than revise current models, it’d probably be better to scrap them altogether and rebuild climate science on a whole new basis of actual experimental work.” You can watch the clip here.
Today there are indisputably more than a handful of genuine climate scientists – as opposed to the politicians and sycophants who make up the UN’s IPCC – who feel thoroughly vindicated for their opposition to the IPCC-sponsored climate orthodoxy. But being proper scientists, they probably won’t say “I told you so”, so I’ll do it on their behalf by quoting the title of the first Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report on the subject: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”.
Perhaps now we can consign to the annals of history, the completely idiotic idea that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is the cause of climate change. In years to come, we will probably be look back on that idea in a similar way to how we now look back on the era of bleeding patients in western medical science: It’s as crude and as misguided.

Aug 28, 2011 @ 13:00:08
brian, you are quoting these very prliminary findings out of context:
Svensmark, the originator of the theory, said the following: “We were clear in the 2006 post that establishing a significant GCR/cloud/climate link would require the following steps (given that we have known that ionisation plays a role in nucleation for decades). One would need to demonstrate:
1) … that increased nucleation gives rise to increased numbers of (much larger) cloud condensation nuclei (CCN)
2) … and that even in the presence of other CCN, ionisation changes can make a noticeable difference to total CCN
3) … and even if there were more CCN, you would need to show that this actually changed cloud properties significantly,
4) … and that given that change in cloud properties, you would need to show that it had a significant effect on radiative forcing.
these findings do not even (yet) prove condition one as fact – it does go so me way to that end though
so, let’s be scientific about this and not use it as the “smoking gun” which it certainly is not
i am as eager as most for science to take us to the thruth (and we will eventually get there), but let’s not overstretch (vastly) the current empirical state of the hypotheses
you are, in fact, doing the cause a disservice by supplying the AGW adherents with ammunition e.g. (“denialists are relying on tentative science”)
let science do its work…and it will
Aug 28, 2011 @ 13:15:26
I’ll consider myself chastised. Perhaps my enthusiasm to see an end to the CO2 bollocks got the better of me. Still, while the science has some way to go for us to fully understand how the climate works on our mortal coil, one thing has become abundantly clear in recent time: the prevailing climate models are very wrong because they failed to predict the more than decade-long lull in global warming.
This experiment may not be the “smoking gun” but it is actual science; something that has been conspicuous by its absence from the politically driven AGW arguments.