Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/07/2010 1:49:58 PM PST by Enchante
The CLOUD team will be able to recreate the conditions of any part of the atmosphere inside the new chamber, from the polar stratosphere to the low level tropics.
The link between cosmic rays and climate change is one that has been hotly debated over the past decade, grabbing the attention of the media. The idea revolves around the possibility that particles entering the atmosphere from space can affect cloud formation, which in turn affects the climate. But despite the controversy surrounding the theory, the central question – ‘do cosmic rays help create clouds?’ – has barely been tested in a laboratory before.
The CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment here at CERN will be one of the first experiments in the world directly to test the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation under controllable laboratory conditions. The experiment’s three-metre diameter aerosol/cloud chamber arrived on Wednesday 20 May. This crucial piece of the experiment will be used to recreate carefully various conditions in the atmosphere.
The chamber is the culmination of three years’ research and design since the experiment was first approved in 2006. After being fitted with an array of sensitive analysing instruments, it will be carefully cleaned, tested and calibrated. The team hope to start collecting data later this year.
"I think the evidence for a link between reconstructions of past climate change and solar activity is too strong to ignore," explains Jasper Kirkby, Spokesperson for the CLOUD experiment. "There are a lot of observations showing that variations of the sun seem to be affecting the climate, but we don’t yet know what the mechanism for this is."
"The aim of CLOUD is to understand whether or not cosmic rays can affect clouds and climate, by studying the microphysical interactions of cosmic rays with aerosols, cloud droplets and ice particles." This is one of the possible mechanisms for solar-climate variability since the solar wind – the stream of charged particles ejected from the sun – varies over time and affects the intensity of the cosmic rays that reach the Earth.
"The whole process is well understood except for whether or not cosmic rays do indeed affect clouds. If that process can be established then I think solar-climate variability will very rapidly change from being a controversial subject to one with a lot of respectability. If, on the other hand, we rule out the process then this will allow us to focus on other mechanisms that might be causing the link," continues Kirkby.
A beam from the Proton Synchrotron is used to create a beam of ‘artificial cosmic rays’. These can be carefully controlled and aimed into the new chamber, which is bristling with sensors like spectrometers, ice-crystal detectors and CCD cameras. With the addition of a thermal housing and control system next year the team will be able to recreate the conditions of any part of the atmosphere inside the chamber, from the polar stratosphere to the low level tropics.
"We can carefully control what is inside the chamber, but we can also control the cosmic rays," say Kirkby. Being able to test under controllable conditions is what makes CLOUD different from atmospheric observations. "If you measure something directly in the atmosphere then you can never be certain what caused it as there are so many changing variables to take into account."
Cloud formation strongly depends on certain trace gases in the atmosphere, and their concentrations inside the chamber need to be controlled precisely. So one of the big challenges is to make the chamber as clean as possible, which has involved CERN experts who are used to dealing with ultrahigh vacuum components for the accelerators. "But even by CERN standards, the CLOUD requirements are challenging. We control the concentrations of certain gases to better than one part per trillion, which is 4-6 orders of magnitude below what is necessary for most particle physics liquid or gaseous detectors".
This is the first time a particle accelerator has been used to study atmospheric and climate science and CLOUD therefore lies at an intersection between several different disciplines. The team includes atmospheric physicists and chemists, solar physicists, cosmic-ray physicists and particle physicists.
"CLOUD has a world-class experimental team, bringing together the leading aerosol and cloud physicists in Europe and America", says Kirkby. "Working on an interdisciplinary experiment is certainly exciting. Particle physics and atmospheric physics tend to approach things differently - there is almost a cultural difference. Particle physicists are always happier to look at the simplest, most fundamental systems, whereas most atmospheric and climate physicists approach from one of the most complex systems possible – namely the atmosphere and climate."
In fact, the team come from such a variety of disciplines that the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne have initiated a sociological PhD project on CLOUD to observe how interdisciplinary collaborations work.
For more information please visit the CLOUD website: http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/
The full-length video of Jasper Kirkby’s recent CERN colloquium ‘Cosmic rays and Climate’ is available here:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confid=52576
Copyright CERN 2010 - CERN Publications, DG-COCERN Document Server
I'm no scientist, so of course I may be missing all the subtleties that Phil Jones, Michael Mann, et al understand so brilliantly...... BUT, I'd think it obvious that you can't go about drawing large conclusions about possible AGW without a high level of confidence that all other causes have been ruled out.
Now it seems that the major experiments in this area of cosmic rays and cloud formation are only now underway. Maybe it will or maybe it won't have any bearing on the AGW and CO2 debates, but it seems incredible to me that all these people, supposedly scientists, have been running their mouths for years about AGW and "climate change" when the kinds of experiments described here had not even been done, so there was no way to rule out the extent of possible influence of the sun on these phenomena. Seems like an ass-backwards way to proceed to my little non-scientific mind....... but what do we peons know, compared to our betters like Phil Jones and Michael Mann and Al Gore?
[Hat tip to algernonpj who posted link to a different article on the subject of the CLOUD experiments]
started a thread with a doc I found on the CERN website which gives more info about the status of the CLOUD cosmic ray experiments there..... sounds like it’s been delayed more because they are now expecting to start getting some initial results during 2010
incredible that this was not done many years ago if the whole AGW/climate change hoopla depends upon the assumption that the sun has had little or no effect upon 20th century climate (leaving aside for the moment the issue that any warming seems to have stopped in the last decade)....
I don’t pretend to any scientific expertise, but it does astonish me that anyone in the “climate science community” could make grand claims about AGW and CO2 unless it were strongly established that the sun is NOT relevant to changes being discussed. If it’s still quite possible that cosmic rays account for 50% or more of such changes, and other atmospheric processes may not yet be completely understood, then how can anyone rationally express confidence in an AGW hypothesis?
Well lets hope they are doing something with it. The last time they updated the “cloud” website was in 2006.
I am anxious to see the results of the experiments if they are doing any. I think the lack of sunspots and resultant increase in cosmic rays hitting the Earth in the past 2 years has had a profound effect on climate.
yes, I did notice that the main CLOUD page had not been updated since 2006
but that’s why I thought this 2009 doc from CERN did seem highly relevant since it does indicate ongoing and imminent work
bound and determined to “get” their “data” anyway they can...
It’s one thing to gripe and complain about these things and disagree with it, but it’s quite another to convince your friends and neighbors and relatives and coworkers...
THEREFORE..., it’s also absolutely necessary for people to know the information in the following documentary. If there were simply one video that you could see and/or show people you know... this would be the one...
The following is an excellent video documentary on the so-called “Global Warming” I would recommend it to all FReepers. It’s a very well-made documentary.
“The Great Global Warming Swindle”
If you want to download it, via a BitTorrent site (using a BitTorrent client), you can get it at the following link. Information about BitTorrent protocol and BitTorrent clients and their comparison at these three links (in this sentence). Some additional BitTorrent information here and here.
Download it here...
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3635222/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
[This is a high-quality copy, of about a gigabyte in size. This link is the information about it, and you have to click the download link to get it on your BitTorrent client software. You'll also find users' comments here, too.]
It’s worth seeing and having for relatives, friends, neighbors and coworkers to see.
Also, see it online here...
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/great_global_warming_swindle.php
[this one is considerably lower quality, is a flash video and viewable online, of course..., and also, you can download flash video on a website either yourself or some software doing it.]
Buy it on DVD here...
[this would be the very highest quality version, on a DVD disk, of several gigabytes in size...] At Amazon, it seems to be high-priced now and have only a few copies right now.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000WLUXZE
At WAGtv (a UK shop), but don't know about shipping. The price is reasonable, though.
https://www.wagtv.com/product/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle-322.html
[And..., some information from WAGtv about this item.]
Also, in split parts on YouTube...
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 1 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TqqWJugXzs
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 2 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rGpDMN8lw
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 3 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzFL6Ixe_bo
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 4 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNQy2rT_dvU
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 5 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dzIMXGI6k8
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 6 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GjOgQN1Jco
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 7 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHI2GfbfrYw
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Part 8 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N9benJh3Lw
The Great Global Warming Swindle - Credits (Part 9 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_1ifP-ri58
Heck! I built a cloud chamber 50 years ago for my 8th grade science class. Worked quite well. Got the plans from Scientific Experimenter Magazine. I had to use radium from a watch dial though, as the magazine didn’t include plans for a Proton Synchrotron.
Cosmic rays have been suspected in triggering lightning. They could cause the atmosphere to heat up also.
If you haven't read Henrik Svensmark's book, "The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of Climate Change", I'd recommend it. I believe it is HIS experiments that they are doing at CERN, because he's been talking about cloud nucleation for years. The experiment was delayed for the last year or two, because of the accident that destroyed one of the magnets in the ring at CERN.
Svensmark discusses this in the book I mentioned in one of the posts above.
Excuse me?? "Cloud Chambers" (containers with air and moisture near the water saturation point) have been used to detect nuclear events just about forever. I suspect back in the early days of nuclear physics they built cloud chambers the equal or larger than the one these guys plan to build. And I suspect they were operated across the spectrum of conditions these guys are planning to examine.
The only thing the seems to be "new" about this is they're gonna shoot their pretty little accelerator proton beam into it (instead of, for instance, using an alpha or beta particle emitting radioisotope).
well as I said I’m no scientist
but your post does not answer that question “do cosmic rays help create clouds” (and if so does it account for a certain % of observed temperature changes in the lower atmosphere etc.)
it’s one thing to say similar lab set-ups have been used for 50+ years, but has this specific question been answered or not?
I don’t know why some at CERN and elsewhere think this is an important experiment worthy of a lot of money and scientist-hours, but they seem to believe that this question has yet to be answered.....
The answers are "yes" and "yes". If you know the physics of how cloud chambers work (which we do), then we know that cosmic rays unquestionably DO help create clouds. The ONLY thing this experiment "might" do is generate more precise data to answer the quantitative question of "how much". But the problem is that any data generated in lab experiments get plugged into math models, which have the same problems as CO2/warming models....they are MODELS. And unless verified by field experiments (which I have no idea how anyone would do) basically PROVE nothing.
Thanks for the link, and the hat tip.
The article I linked to is one of a series of brief articles from 2007 about those who were labeled ‘The Deniers’ because they opposed the mythical ‘consensus’ on CO2 and Man-Made global warming:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=c6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71
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Thanks for the explanation, and I certainly yield to your knowledge of the physics involved.
However, I still don’t see why it would not be important to have more precise measurements of how the process works under various conditions. Simply showing that there is a range of credible possibilities (if that proves to be the case) would undermine all the pretence that there are NO doubts about the processes of “climate change” and/or AGW.
Kirkby was quoted in one of the articles (from way back around 1988) that the contribution of cosmic rays to potential climate warming might turn out to be anywhere from very low to 50% or more.
Even if it can only be estimated by more mathematical and computer models, at least that might prove some comparison to all the AGW hype artists who pretend that their modeling is definitive. Let’s assume that nothing can be settled or proved by the measurements of these experiments — even if they establish that the range of uiencertainty and debate on AGW vs. cosmic rays etc. is wide, that goes against all the claims that “the science is settled” for the AGW movement.... or so it seems to me looking at what you’ve emphasized and what is discussed in these articles.
Anyway, I do appreciate your insights and comments.
oops, that Kirby quote (in the National Post article) was from 1998 not 1988 - just a typo!
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